Democrats look at late-night, weekend votes to confirm last Biden judicial nominees
Senate Democrats are expected to vote late into the night Monday in a frantic effort to confirm as many of President Biden’s nominees to the federal judiciary as possible before President-elect Trump takes over in January.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told colleagues on the Senate floor Monday that the Democratic majority “will keep working to confirm as many of President Biden’s judicial nominees as we can before the end of the year.”
That means Senate votes stretching late into the night and possibly working over weekends and even during the Christmas recess in late December.
Senators were expecting to hold a series of procedural votes late into Monday night or early Tuesday morning to allow Schumer to file cloture on a batch of Biden nominees, which would set up confirmation votes for later in the week.
Republicans were dragging out the process Monday night by forcing Democrats to hold time-consuming votes on procedural motions to switch from executive to legislative session and back again.
Usually shuttling in between legislative and executive session is a routine move that the minority party agrees to by unanimous consent, without forcing colleagues to show up on the Senate floor to vote for an arcane motion.
Senate staff warned that senators could hold as many as 18 votes Monday night to conduct the procedural business that is often handled with a simple request for unanimous consent.
Schumer asked for unanimous consent at 7:32 pm to limit the length of the procedural votes to 10 minutes.
Republicans confirmed 234 of Trump’s nominees to the federal courts during his four years in office, and so far the Democrat-controlled Senate has confirmed only 216 of Biden’s Article III judicial nominees — at least, as of Monday afternoon.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters that holding votes over the weekend and even during parts of the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks is a possibility.
“I wouldn’t rule those out and Schumer has not ruled them out either,” Durbin said. “I hope that the Republicans will at least be as cooperative with us as we were with them.”
Leading progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) urged Schumer in a Time magazine op-ed to “use every minute of the end-of-the year legislative session to confirm federal judges and key regulators — none of whom can be removed by the next president.”
The Senate voted at 5:30 p.m. Monday to confirm Embry Kidd of Florida to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
Senators were facing 18 more procedural votes Monday evening to set up cloture votes later in the week on nine more nominees.