Summary
- The
Senate confirmed the last of Trump’s four St. Louis nominees Tuesday. - Judges
have strong conservative backgrounds and GOP ties. - Judge
Maria Lanahan confirmed 52-45, key abortion ban litigants. - Missouri’s
Eastern District is now a conservative judicial stronghold.
Maria Lanahan, the chief deputy solicitor general in the
Missouri attorney general’s office, was confirmed by the Republican-controlled
Senate on a 52-45 vote to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern
District of Missouri.
She had defended Missouri’s draconian abortion restriction
against a judicial challenge while working in the attorney general’s office,
and she had assisted in the ongoing litigation to limit access to the abortion
drug mifepristone.
The Senate’s support for Lanahan was the result of years of
work by Missouri’s Republican senators, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, to move
Missouri’s Eastern District to the right in terms of ideology.
When four judges appointed by Democratic presidents
announced plans to retire or leave active service, those senators supported
Trump’s selection of four conservative candidates as his first trial court
picks of his second term in May. The appointments were made to fill vacancies
that had arisen during the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden.
In a recent interview, Schmitt stated
that shortly after Trump’s victory in the November presidential election, he
started discussing with his new staff that “there’s a real pipeline that’s
been developed of good young conservative lawyers that could fill these spots.”
When they were appointed, Schmitt stated
“the Eastern
District of Missouri would quite possibly be the best jurisdiction in the
country if you care about judges who want to interpret the law as it’s written,
not how they want it to be.”
They include Cristian Stevens, Zach Bluestone, and Josh
Divine, who are currently U.S. District Judges. Lanaham will take up a
position that was previously occupied by Ronnie White, a former U.S. District
Judge who was appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama. In
July, White took a leave of absence.
Lanahan had served under Divine, the state’s solicitor
general at the time, in the attorney general’s office. They collaborated
on an ongoing lawsuit in Texas brought by a number of Republican-led states to
block the sale of the abortion drug mifepristone, which has been approved by
the US Food and Drug Administration.
How do Trump’s judicial nominees compare to previous
administrations?
During his first term (2017-2021), Trump confirmed 234
federal judges to lifetime positions, including three Supreme Court justices
and 54 appellate judges. This number was extraordinary for a single term but
still less than the total judges confirmed by two-term presidents like Obama
and George W. Bush.
Trump benefited from a large number of judicial vacancies
when he took office, partly due to Republican opposition to President Obama’s
nominees. His second term is expected to see fewer vacancies to fill.
Trump’s nominees have been assessed as having strong legal
credentials overall. About 40% of his appellate nominees clerked for a Supreme
Court justice, and around 80% clerked at the federal appellate level, higher
than comparable figures for Obama’s nominees, indicating a very strong
professional pedigree.
