Free Republic

Now with bogus claim number two against Judge Kavanaugh, Republicans are busy taking notes about using the Democrats Dirty Play Handbook. At some point in the future Democrats will be in charge (God forbid!) and will bring forward their leftists nominees for important appointments. Republicans will have fun finding women or men to come forward with some bizarre accusation that will delay, or end, the appointment. Won't it be fun! Two can play the game!

Full title: The left's obstruction of qualified Trump nominees is yet another front in the war against the presidentMore than a year and a half after the inauguration of Donald Trump’s presidency, the left continues to obstruct the confirmation of nominees to critical posts in both the executive and judicial branches. The unprecedented obstructionism denies leadership to executive branch departments and agencies and impedes the fair and swift administration of justice. It is also an abuse of the Senate’s constitutional obligation to provide “Advice and Consent” regarding presidential nominations of judges and key “Officers of the United States.” The Senate...

It's been less than 24-hours since Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy met with President Trump at the White House to declare his retirement. After the announcement hit the news wires, President Trump said he would be choosing Kennedy's replacement from a list of 25-individuals. That list was released shortly after the 2016 presidential election by his transition team. Before President Trump has declared a new nominee, Democrats are arguing every person being considered is already disqualified. They're demanding Trump "ditch the list" and come up with candidates that meet their leftist standards of constitutional revision.

Senate Republicans, frustrated by delaying tactics imposed by Democrats on President Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees, are on the verge of altering the Senate rules in order to speed up the process. GOP lawmakers told the Washington Examiner Tuesday that momentum is building for a change in the Senate rules that would shorten the time frame allowed for lawmakers to debate each nominee. One proposal by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., would reinstate a temporary rules change made by Democrats in 2013 that reduced debate time from 30 hours to eight hours for most executive branch nominations and from 30...

ASHINGTON, DC – President Donald Trump announced his 12th wave of judicial nominees for 19 lifetime federal judgeships on Tuesday, including two short-listers for the U.S. Supreme Court. The president nominated three people for the U.S. courts of appeals: Justice Britt Grant currently serves on the Georgia Supreme Court, and is nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Grant is the former Georgia solicitor general who previously served in the Bush 43 White House and litigated at the powerhouse law firm Kirkland & Ellis. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School and clerked for Judge...

Judicial and LGBT advocates are slamming Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for scheduling a vote on a horde of judicial nominees ahead of a possible government shutdown. The Senate Judiciary Committee is slated to vote Thursday on 17 judicial nominees, who were re-nominated by President Trump at the beginning of the month. Under Senate rules, nominees have to be approved by the full Senate in order to carry over into a new session of Congress. But advocates are accusing Grassley of trying to avoid public scrutiny by slipping controversial candidates opposed by Democrats into an already stacked agenda....

17 judges

Today President Donald J. Trump announced his intent to nominate a ninth wave of judicial nominees and a tenth wave of United States Attorney nominees as follows: If confirmed, Joel M. Carson III of New Mexico will serve as a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Joel Carson currently serves as a part-time Magistrate Judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico and as a partner in the Roswell-based firm Carson Ryan, LLC. Prior to being selected as a Magistrate Judge in 2015, and starting his own firm in 2014,...

Fewer than half of President Donald Trump’s executive branch and judicial nominees have been confirmed by the Senate—the lowest number of confirmations in the past four administrations at comparable points in their presidencies. The dismal numbers—a total of 223 confirmations of 519 nominees—were circulated by the White House amid complaints of unprecedented Democratic obstruction and the Senate’s lax schedule.

President Trump announced Thursday night his intention to appoint a new round of 10 federal judges, the sixth group of judicial nominees since he took office, and five more federal prosecutors. The president is tapping attorney Michael B. Brennan of Wisconsin to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a seat that has been vacant since 2010, longest in the appellate system. Mr. Brennan served for nine years as a judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court. Mr. Trump also is nominating attorney L. Steven Grasz of Nebraska to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals...

The health care push collapsed. The White House is the scene of a frantic game of musical chairs. And the looming specter of the Russia investigation has plagued President Trump since he took office. But amid the chaos, the Trump administration is steadily making progress on a campaign promise that will outlast this administration for decades: the confirmation of federal judges to lifetime positions on the bench. Trump wooed wary Republicans last year with pledges to appoint conservative judges. His administration so far has delivered. The White House has announced more than two dozen lower court nominees to date, and...

The procedure for withholding consent is straightforward, but deploying it is tricky. For the Senate to move in a timely fashion on any order of business, it must obtain unanimous support from its members. But if a single senator objects to a consent agreement, McConnell, now majority leader, will be forced to resort to time-consuming procedural steps through the cloture process, which takes four days to confirm nominees and seven days to advance any piece of legislation — and that’s without amendment votes, each of which can be subjected to a several-day cloture process as well.

President Trump was sworn into office six months ago. Senate Democrats have had plenty of time to come to terms with the election results. Unfortunately, they are channeling their disappointment through the confirmation process by engaging in an unprecedented level of obstruction of President Trump’s well-qualified nominees. It’s nearly August, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have only allowed us to confirm 55 of President Trump’s 242 nominees – or 23 percent. By the August recess of President Barack Obama’s first term, the Senate had confirmed 313 of his 454 nominees – or 69 percent. At...

A Senate panel on Wednesday advanced the nominations of two lawyers picked by President Trump to fill the open seats on the National Labor Relations Board. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted 12-11 along party lines to send the nominations of Marvin Kaplan and William Emanuel to the floor for a full vote. Kaplan now serves as chief counsel for the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. Emanuel, an attorney with the law firm Littler Mendelson, works on labor and employment matters and has represented clients before the NLRB. With their nominations to the five-member board, Trump...

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton suggested Republicans should literally force Democrats to vote on President Trump’s nominees Tuesday, by ordering the sergeant at arms to “haul” them into the committee room.“I don’t know how long they plan to do this,” Cotton said on the Senate floor, after Democrats began a “boycott” of committee-level votes on several of Trump’s nominees. “I don’t know if they intend to abscond out of the District, if we’re going to have to vote to have the sergeant at arms track them down, haul them to work to do their business.”The sergeant at arms takes orders from the...

Full out war between Democrats and the White House broke out today when Senate Democrats on Tuesday refused to attend a committee vote on two President Trump’s more controversial nominees, effectively delaying their consideration. Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee boycotted votes to advance Tom Price, Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services, and Steven Mnuchin, his selection to head the Treasury Department. Since at least one democrat must be on present for the vote to be held, the move will effectively delay and potentially prevent the confirmation votes on Mnuchin and Price. The duo is...

Donald Trump expects to nominate a justice to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court within two weeks of his inauguration on Jan. 20, the President-elect said during a news conference on Wednesday. The nomination will likely come in the second week of his presidency, following inauguration celebrations, Trump said.

This was supposed to be the week President-elect Trump's nominees endured tough grilling and determined opposition in Senate confirmation hearings. "Trump Cabinet picks face extreme vetting ahead of confirmation," USA Today reported last month, predicting that several Trump picks could face a very difficult time on Capitol Hill. Now Week One is ending, and the tough grilling mostly didn't materialize. And all of Trump's first week of nominees seem headed toward confirmation. Seven Trump picks — Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions, Homeland Security Secretary-designate John Kelly, Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson, Transportation Secretary-designate Elaine Chao, Defense Secretary-designate James Mattis, Housing and...

Monica Crowley was recently tapped as Donald Trump’s selection to be the Senior Director of Strategic Communications on the National Security Council. Unfortunately for her, former Buzzfeed researcher (now with CNN) Andrew Kaczynski has been digging into her 2012 best seller, What The (Bleep) Just Happened and has turned up multiple instances of obvious plagiarism. Crowley is a long time Fox News host and conservative columnist, so she was no neophyte when it comes to the rules of the road for journalists and authors. Trump is calling this essentially a political hit job, but it’s definitely a problem. (CNN) Conservative...

The Office of Government Ethics is raising alarm over the pace of confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump's nominees, saying Saturday that they have yet to receive required financial disclosures for some picks set to come before Congress next week. In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released Saturday, OGE Director Walter Shaub wrote that "the announced hearing schedule for several nominees who have not completed the ethics review process is of great concern to me" and that the current schedule "has created undue pressure on OGE's staff and agency ethics officials...