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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowPresident Joe Biden on Monday vetoed a once-bipartisan effort to add 66 federal district judgeships, saying “hurried action” by the House left important questions unanswered about the life-tenured positions.
The legislation, which was pushed for by Sen. Todd Young of Indiana and included a new judge for the state’s Southern District, would have spread the establishment of the new trial court judgeships over more than a decade to give three presidential administrations and six Congresses the chance to appoint the new judges.
The bipartisan effort was carefully designed so that lawmakers would not knowingly give an advantage to either political party in shaping the federal judiciary.
The Democratic-controlled Senate passed the measure unanimously in August. But the Republican-led House brought it to the floor only after Republican Donald Trump was reelected to a second term in November, adding the veneer of political gamesmanship to the process.
The White House had said at the time that Biden would veto the bill.
“The House of Representative’s hurried action fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judgeships are allocated, and neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate explored fully how the work of senior status judges and magistrate judges affects the need for new judgeships,” the president said in a statement.
“The efficient and effective administration of justice requires that these questions about need and allocation be further studied and answered before we create permanent judgeships for life-tenured judges,” Biden said.
He said the bill would also have created new judgeships in states where senators have not filled existing judicial vacancies and that those efforts “suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now.
“Therefore, I am vetoing this bill,” Biden said, essentially dooming the legislation for the current Congress. Overturning Biden’s veto would require a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, and the House vote fell well short of that margin.
Organizations representing judges and attorneys had urged Congress to vote for the bill. They argued that the lack of new federal judgeships had contributed to profound delays in the resolution of cases and serious concerns about access to justice.
Young, a Republican who helped lead the once-bipartisan bill, reacted swiftly, calling the veto a “misguided decision” and “another example of why Americans are counting down the days until President Biden leaves the White House.” He alluded to a full pardon that Biden recently granted his son Hunter on federal gun and tax charges.
“The President is more enthusiastic about using his office to provide relief to his family members who received due process than he is about giving relief to the millions of regular Americans who are waiting years for their due process,” Young said. “Biden’s legacy will be ‘pardons for me, no justice for thee.’”
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Americans are counting down the days Trump is out of office.
First he pardons his slimy son. Then he pardons his constituents who embezzled millions. Then he commutes the sentences of mass murderers, child murderers and those who killed servicemen. This lying, corrupt, miscreant can’t be gone soon enough.
So the lying, corrupt, miscreant Trumpf can take office?
Who cares? Trump pardoned a bunch of slimy individuals on his way out the first time and now he’s appointing them to cushy positions and Ambassadorships. He’s also saying he’s going to pardon the people who hate America and our Constitutional Republic.
I’m tired of Republicans clutching their pearls in bad faith. Y’all LOVE criminals, stop pretending that you hold some kind of moral high ground.
But back to the issue at hand, Todd Young’s standard babbling not withstanding…
This bill was intended to allow appointment of judges over an extended period of time, in an attempt to de-escalate the partisan rancor that is the trademark of almost all governmental appointments. The House Republicans did not vote to pass the bill earlier this fall, hoping to secure some benefit if Trump won, and more likely than not to scuttle the proposal if Harris won.
Note the comment about Senators not moving to fill currently approved judicial offices. They were holding out, again to gain partisan advantage.
What’s needed here is a complete re-write of how judges and justices are appointed. Maybe involving judicial conferences in the relevant Districts and Circuits to act in advisory capacity, offering two or three names from which to choose.
I don’t have the answer worked out. But the problem is obvious, and a better way is needed.
And as to the comments about Hunter Biden’s pardon, someone leveling such claims might want to review the list of Trump pardons in 2020. Ivanka’s Father In Law, who was in jail for attempting to blackmail folks in a marital dispute. And other equally outstanding citizens. Hunter had a drug problem, and it led to problems with guns and taxes. The gun law has already been declared unconstitutional in a case arising from Texas. And as for the availability of guns to someone with those issues, well, let’s just look to who keeps passing laws to make it easier for almost anyone to go buy a gun…
They will never release the results, but it is likely Hunter has a significant case of CTE. Physical trauma combined with mental trauma on the same day as a yound child? There is highly significant chance he never fully recovered from such a traumatic injury since they did not even know how to test for it back then.