Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been vying to stop the advancement of President-elect Donald Trump's policies as he takes office and plans to do so by filling the federal courts with more liberal judges.
For at least the next two years, Democrats are shut out of power in the House of Representatives, Senate, and the White House. Given that the GOP has what is commonly called the trifecta of the levers of government, the Republican Party and Trump have odds stacked in their favor, but Schumer is looking to use everything at his disposal to stop the Trump train.
According to the Daily Mail, Schumer told reporters, "I don't know exactly what he'll do. But I can tell you this: The judiciary will be one of our strongest - if not our strongest - barrier against what he does."
Schumer added that he and Biden planned at the beginning of the president's term to fill judge seats with those wanting to push the Democrats' agenda. "When we started out, we knew it would be a very difficult job to do more than Trump had done but we did," Schumer added.
Although Biden was only able to appoint Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, the New York senator claimed that Biden's court appointments made up 25 percent of all federal judges. In recent weeks, Biden also vetoed legislation that would have formed 66 new federal judge roles.
Biden said in a White House statement on the matter, "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."
Schumer claimed that Trump, along with the GOP, will attempt to undo everything Biden did in his role as commander-in-chief. "They have so many different parts of MAGA: the people who are anti-women's rights; the people who are anti-environment; the people who are anti-working people rights and union rights; the people who are anti-the consumer. They're going to use the judiciary in every way they can," he said.
The number of judges confirmed by Biden in his single term is the largest amount since the time of President Jimmy Carter.
