Congress
The Trump judge wars are back
President Donald Trump’s first term was marked by a contentious and ultimately wildly successful campaign to overhaul the federal judiciary — one that dominated the Senate floor calendar for nearly four years straight and occasionally exploded in partisan fury.
Now, with Trump dealing with unpredictable foreign crises and a sprawling domestic policy megabill, judge nominations have been almost an afterthought in the White House and on Capitol Hill.
That changed Wednesday, when Emil Bove — Trump’s former personal lawyer, now a top Justice Department official — appeared for the Senate Judiciary Committee for a fiery hearing on his nomination to an appeals court judgeship.
The decision to nominate Bove, and the apparent willingness of Republican senators to fall in line behind him, suggests Trump is embracing a new kind of judicial pick as he continues to face significant resistance to his governing decisions in the federal courts.
Bove, 44, faced intense questioning from panel Democrats who pressed on his loyalty to the president as reflected not only in his private representation of Trump but his actions as principal associate deputy attorney general. Those include dismissing prosecutors tied to cases involving the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, ending the corruption prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams and pursuing the administration’s deportation agenda.
“Bove has led the effort to weaponize the Department of Justice against the president’s enemies,” said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Judiciary Democrat. “Having earned his stripes as a loyalist to this president, he’s been rewarded with a lifetime nomination.”
The tenor of Wednesday’s hearing suggested that there is no detente in sight in the escalating partisan fight over federal judges, which reached a crescendo in 2018 with the searing confirmation battle over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The only check on the rancor might be the fact that there are relatively few judicial vacancies for Trump to fill at the moment. According to the U.S. court system, there are just about 50 across the country, the vast majority of which are on district courts. The president’s first slate of judicial nominees, including a pick for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, is poised to have a vote Thursday before the Judiciary Committee.
There are, however, three Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices 70 or over who are considered possible candidates for retirement over the next three-and-a-half years. Trump’s willingness to nominate Bove — and to weather a hardball confirmation fight when a lesser-known nominee might have had an easier time — suggests he won’t hesitate to tap another loyalist when a high-court slot opens up.
With a potential lifetime appointment to the 3rd Circuit, with jurisdiction over appeals from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the Virgin Islands, Bove himself could emerge as a SCOTUS short-list candidate if confirmed.
The questioning Wednesday appeared to underscore the high stakes. Democrats questioned Bove about the pardons of Jan. 6 convicts and his role in the removal of the line prosecutors who sent them to jail.
The issue was effective in sinking one prior Trump nominee: his initial pick for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a Judiciary member up for next year, effectively tanked his chances by objecting to Martin’s comments minimizing the Capitol riot. (Tillis said Wednesday he has not yet taken a position on Bove’s nomination. “Honestly I haven’t discussed it with my staff yet,” he said.)
Democrats also seized on the Justice Department’s decision to abandon the Adams prosecution — a controversial order from Bove himself that triggered the resignation of at least 6 prosecutors in New York and Washington. In her resignation letter, then-acting Manhattan U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon accused Bove of engaging in a corrupt deal to drop the case in exchange for the Democratic mayor’s support of Trump’s immigration policies.
Asked during the hearing to swear to his “higher being” that he didn’t make a “political deal” with Adams, Bove replied: “I swear to my higher being and on every bone in my body.”
But Bove also said that he ordered the case dismissed based on “policy considerations,” explaining that “the prosecution placed an inordinate burden on the mayor’s ability to protect the city and to campaign in an ongoing election cycle.”
Using that logic, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said, “there would be two classes of justice – one for people who are in office and one for everyone else.”
Bove also denied allegations from a former DOJ official that he suggested defying court orders for the administration’s deportation agenda.
“I am not anybody’s henchman,” Bove told senators. “I am not an enforcer. I am a lawyer from a small town who never expected to be in an arena like this.”
Republicans rallied to Bove’s defense, with the tone set early in the hearing by Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who noted that the nominee had seen an “intense opposition campaign” and extolled his credentials as a former prosecutor.
Democrats, on the other hand, cast the fight over Bove’s nomination as one of grave significance for the rule of law, echoing a familiar fight from Trump’s first term. Indeed, federal judges appointed by presidents of both parties have been some of the most effective checks on Trump’s power early in his second term — much to the president’s frustration.
Yet Democrats have little power to stop Trump’s nominees so long as Republican senators stick together. With a 53-vote Senate majority, GOP leaders can lose several votes and still confirm Trump’s picks with Vice President JD Vance as a tie-breaker.
Democrats also lack the benefit of the “blue slip” policy that gives home-state senators effective veto power over court nominees. Republicans abandoned the practice for circuit judges during Trump’s first term, one of the procedural changes in the Senate that allowed the party to confirm hundreds of judicial nominees during those four years. Democrats maintained the practice after they won control of the Senate and Joe Biden won the presidency.
Among those attending Wednesday’s hearing were Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — Bove’s supervisors at the Justice Department. Blanche and Bove worked together as Trump’s criminal defense attorneys, including during last year’s criminal trial that resulted in his conviction on 34 felony counts of business fraud. Bondi defended Trump during his first impeachment trial.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) contended that Bondi and Blanche attended for the sole purpose of “whip[ping] the Republicans into shape, to make sure that they toe the line.”
“They were there to send a message to Republicans: We are watching you,” Blumenthal said during a news conference after Bove’s testimony. “They were there to watch members of this committee, the Republicans, whom they expect simply to fall into line.”
Bove wasn’t the only Trump nominee answering questions about his loyalty to the president Wednesday. Edward L. Artau, one of four district court nominees to also appear before Senate Judiciary members, was asked by Blumenthal why he did not recuse himself from a case involving Trump after he began lobbying for a federal judgeship.
Blue Light News previously reported that Artau, a state judge, was lobbying for a seat on the federal bench while he sat on a three-judge panel in Trump’s defamation case against the board of the Pulitzer Prizes.
Asked by Blumenthal why he did not recuse himself, Artau maintained that he abided by the relevant judicial conduct rule. He said he did know he was under consideration from the White House at the time he wrote the opinion.
“Had the timing been differently, then I may have handled it differently,” Artau said.
Calen Razor contributed to this report.
Trump administration officials have told key Hill Republicans they should expect a request for an Iran war supplemental funding package by the end of this week.
The request is expected to be about $80 billion, according to five people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
But House GOP appropriators believe the Senate will likely add additional non-military items, such as disaster relief or farm aid. House GOP leaders are worried the push for a supplemental bill will undercut their effort to pass another party-line reconciliation bill with GOP priorities and extra defense funding.
Congress has long awaited President Donald Trump’s request to cover the cost of the military campaign in the Middle East. But the measure, which would need at least some bipartisan support to pass the Senate, will face an uphill fight to become law.
Many Democrats who oppose the war are almost certain to object to funding a conflict they disagree with and regard as illegal because Trump didn’t seek congressional approval.
The roughly $80 billion price tag, though, is significantly less than the approximately $200 billion the Trump administration was reportedly weighing in recent months.
The supplemental request would likely be dedicated to replenishing stocks of missiles fired off in the early stages of the war and cover other costs of military operations in the Middle East in recent months.
The leaders of several prominent House Democratic caucuses are proposing a Supreme Court overhaul as well as the Senate filibuster in response to the justices’ decision to narrow the 1965 Voting Rights Act earlier this year.
Their resolution obtained by POLITICO calls for the expansion of the Supreme Court and to establish term limits and a code of ethics for justices. It also calls for the elimination of the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate.
While the resolution stands virtually no chance of adoption, it is the latest indicator of how the Congressional Black Caucus and other key Democrats want to respond to the April decision that cleared the way for Republican states to redraw their congressional maps and eliminate majority-minority districts. The measure also lays down a marker for progressives — who will be emboldened next Congress after defeating several incumbents in New York City Tuesday — as they seek to influence the Democratic agenda.
“The Court’s far-right supermajority poses a serious threat to any future attempts by Congress to realize the promise of a multiracial democracy, rein in executive power, champion worker’s rights, protect voting rights, and restore and strengthen the Federal protections against racial discrimination in the Voting Rights Act,” the resolution reads.
The measure is led by Democratic Reps. Greg Casar of Texas, who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus; Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, who leads the CBC, Rep. Grace Meng of New York, who leads the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus; and Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia. Rep. Adriano Espaillat of New York, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair who lost his bid for renomination Tuesday to a hard-left challenger, is also a lead sponsor.
The leaders of the resolution will speak at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
House Republicans have advanced a bill that would prohibit members of Congress and their family members from trading on certain Washington-focused prediction markets.
The House Administration Committee’s GOP members on Wednesday voted along party lines in favor of the legislation, which proposes to bar lawmakers, their spouses and their dependent children from participating on prediction markets that are based on the outcome of elections or government actions.
It marks the latest in Capitol Hill’s efforts to curb the threat of insider trading on the prediction markets — a risk that has burst into the spotlight in recent months after a series of well-timed trades around the capture of then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Google’s search results and the Iran war. Earlier this year, the Senate banned its members and their staffs from trading on the prediction markets altogether, effective immediately.
And yet, the House Administration Committee vote also revealed a fracture within the House over how far to go in clamping down on lawmakers’ use of the prediction markets. Democrats opposed the bill, saying it didn’t go far enough, while Republicans supported it.
Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, who is the committee’s top Democrat, argued that the legislation is “so filled with loopholes that it looks more like a sieve than a bill.” Instead of passing such a bill, he said the House should follow the Senate’s lead and approve a new and broader resolution aimed at prediction market use among members and their staffs.
“The Senate did it in a matter of minutes — no six-month grace period, no procedurally laborious process,” Morelle said. “They just went to the floor with a two-page resolution and banned it all unanimously. We should do the same.”
House Administration Chair Bryan Steil, who introduced the bill, hit back at his Democratic counterpart’s concerns by questioning why members’ families shouldn’t be allowed to bet on sports through the prediction markets — but can through sportsbooks or casinos.
The Wisconsin Republican pointed to a hypothetical scenario where a member’s child is at college and bets on a sporting event through a prediction market platform. That situation, he said, could be covered by a broader prohibition.
Steil, rather, said his bill is aimed at addressing public policy- and election-focused markets.
“Lawmakers elect to serve the American people, not to enrich themselves by wagering on outcomes from the decisions they make,” he said. “We have a real opportunity to restore trust in Congress by taking necessary steps to eliminate even the appearance of impropriety.”
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