The surprising trend that hindered Trump’s ability to confirm judges in 2025

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump had a pretty good run in 2025 when it comes to confirming judges. Republicans control the Senate and approved most of their judicial picks, confirming a total of 25 lifetime federal judges. That’s more than Trump got at this point in his first term (19), although not as many as former President Joe Biden (40).

But the president has also been hampered by a surprising new trend among sitting judges: They are not retiring when they are eligible to do so, and in fact have been denying Trump the ability to fill more vacancies with his picks.

Since Trump won re-election, only 30 judicial vacancies have been announced, says John Collins, an associate professor at George Washington University Law School who specializes in judicial nominations. Of those, 27 are in district courts and only three are in appeals courts, a more powerful level of court that often has the final say in federal trials.

Compare those numbers to the roughly 70 judicial vacancies that opened during this same period in Biden’s first year in office: more than double that.

Part of the reason there aren’t as many vacancies to fill is because Trump and Biden appointed a large number of judges over the past eight years, leaving a smaller pool of judges eligible to retire. But another reason is almost certainly that some judges simply don’t trust Trump to replace them with a qualified pick, given his record of putting far-right ideologues, loyal and in another way unqualified people to federal court.

“One of the biggest stories this year,” Collins reflected to News themezone in an email, about the retirement-eligible judges who won’t resign in 2025.

Russell Wheeler, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program and a longtime expert on judicial nominations, has also been watching this trend develop all year. He noted that the rate of job creation under Trump has been “well below” that of his predecessors, dating back to former President George W. Bush.

“It’s really surprising,” Wheeler told News themezone in an interview. “Judges, for one reason or another, don’t walk away.”

On the one hand, he said he would understand why some judges would want to retire as soon as possible, given that Trump routinely attacks those who rule against him and has fueled a frightening rise in violent threats against federal judges. But that’s not happening, he continued, so perhaps those reasons are precisely why some judges refuse to retire.

“The view may be that, ‘As long as he keeps calling us all idiots and appointing people like Emil Bove, I’m not going to give that guy any openings,'” Wheeler said, referring to Trump. name his hugely problematic former personal lawyer to a seat on the appeals court earlier this year. “’He won’t get my job.’”

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on judges eligible for retirement not creating vacancies for Trump to fill.

Pool via Getty Images

Trump will begin 2026 with eight judicial nominees still pending, and there is no reason to believe that most or all will not make it to confirmation. Republican senators have shown that they have neither the will nor the courage to reject even the most troubling of Trump’s choices.

Never was that clearer than in his July. vote to confirm Bovewhen only two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against granting the 44-year-old Trump loyalist a lifetime seat on a U.S. appeals court, while facing credible allegations that he told Justice Department lawyers. defy court orders that went against the Trump administration.

In addition to Bove, the five other appeals court judges Trump got confirmed in 2025 fit the mold of the judges he appointed in his first term, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who tracks judicial nominations.

All are “young and far-right,” Tobias said in an email, and many have experience as “‘culture war’ lawyers for conservative groups or individuals, especially on abortion, religion, LGBTQ issues, etc.”

Collins agreed that Trump’s judicial choices so far are similar to his nominees in the first termbut “taken to a greater extreme.” This time they are slightly younger (average age of 45, up from 48) and mostly white and male.

What was also different in 2025 was that Trump did not rely on the conservative Federalist Society to choose his appointed judges, as he did in his first term. Instead, it has been prioritizing loyalty in his court selections. Like Mike Davis, a right-wing lawyer who has advised Trump in his judicial elections, put it in marchthis White House wants “battle-tested judges.”

Democrats can’t do much to prevent Trump’s judicial nominees from being confirmed until they regain the majority. Senate procedural rules that used to require longer debate on judicial nominees are gone, as are previous rules that required 60 votes to advance a nominee, compared to the current threshold of 51 votes. All those rulesintended to create bipartisanship, fell victim to years of partisan fighting in which one party, largely Republican, abused those rules. to block qualified candidates from a president of the opposing party.

“I think blue leaves are a shame.”

– President Donald Trump

There is still one bipartisan tradition that senators have not discarded that relates to the confirmation of judges, and it has infuriated Trump all year.

District court candidates (and US attorney candidates) cannot get a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee until the two senators from their home states (i.e., the two senators representing the state where the candidate’s seat is located) file a so-called blue slip. These are literally blue pieces of paper indicating a senator’s support for holding a hearing for a particular candidate. If both senators from a candidate’s home state do not turn in the blue slips, the candidate will not have a hearing and will be blocked indefinitely.

The goal of blue ballots is to ensure that the White House consults with senators before naming candidates in their states. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but a courtesy that judicial panel chairs of both parties have been proud to uphold for decades. It used to apply to all lower court candidates, but now they only use it for district court selections.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), current chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has upheld the tradition and drawn Trump’s ire, as Democrats have been using blue ballots to effectively veto some of Trump’s nominees for office in their states.

They have mostly done this with their chosen American lawyers; only two of Trump’s 18 US lawyers confirmed in 2025 to serve in states with at least one Democratic senator. But Trump did not name a single district court judge in 2025 in a state with one or two Democratic senators, a sign that either Democrats are privately rejecting potential nominees Trump wants to name or that the White House is unwilling to work with Democrats on choosing people.

“I think they should get rid of the blue cards, because as a Republican president, I can’t put anyone in office who has to do with U.S. attorneys or judges,” Trump complained to reporters earlier this month in the Oval Office.

“I think blue sheets are a shame,” he continued. “They shouldn’t be relevant anymore. This is a different world than it was 15 or 20 years ago, you know? It was a world of gentlemen and ladies. Unfortunately, this is a little different.”

Grassley, the 92-year-old Senate veteran and institutionalist, doesn’t seem fazed by Trump’s complaints. He has argued that when senators do not hand over a candidate’s blueprints, it is a sign that that candidate has bigger problems among senators.

“President Grassley wants President Trump’s candidates to succeed,” a spokesperson for Grassley told News themezone in a statement. “Candidates without a blue ballot do not have the votes to leave the committee or be confirmed in the full Senate.”

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson brushed aside Trump’s complaints with blue sheets and touted the president’s success in confirming judges.

“In the face of historic Democratic obstruction, the Trump administration has still had great success confirming nominees who will defend the Constitution and the rule of law,” Jackson said in an emailed statement, which incorrectly claims that Democrats, and not Republicans, have long been behind it. unprecedented Senate obstruction of a president judicial nominees.

“With the nominees confirmed, the Administration has already surpassed the pace of confirmations of the first Trump Administration and we are just getting started,” he said.

Tom Williams via Getty Images

The strange thing is that, at a time when Republicans are afraid to break with Trump on almost anything, they have held firm on the blue sheets. Several Republican members of the judiciary committee have worked to defend the tradition in the face of Trump’s attacks.

“I urge my colleagues to respectfully tell the president that we would harm this institution and harm the power of individual senators if we rescinded the blue slip,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). in a speech in July on the Senate floor.

“It’s no secret that senators have a lot of say in who the president nominates for these positions, especially on the district court. I, for one, want to keep it that way, Mr. President,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) in a committee hearing on October 22. “I want to thank you for your bravery, regarding Democratic and Republican presidents, for standing firm on the blue ballot, which I support unconditionally.”

Some Democrats also They praised Grassley for opposing Trump with the blue sheets.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the top Democrat on the judiciary panel, faced intense criticism of progressives for maintaining the custom when he was president and when Biden was president, since Republicans used it to block several of their nominees. At a hearing earlier this month, Durbin noted that the multiple district court candidates who appeared before the committee that day were there because senators handed them blue slips.

“Just this week, the president falsely stated, ‘If there is a Democrat in a state, you can’t appoint him because of the blue ballots.’ Simply false,” Durbin said at the Dec. 17 hearing. “In fact, this year the committee has reported on, and the Senate has confirmed, numerous judicial and U.S. attorney nominees from Democratic states with the support of Democratic senators.”

“Blue cards remain a fundamental part of this body’s advice and consent, even when they frustrate the party in power,” he added. “I want to thank President Grassley for continuing this practice.”