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{"id":3743,"date":"2024-12-16T18:38:33","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T18:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/republicans-cry-foul-with-some-judges-unretiring-before-second-trump-term\/"},"modified":"2024-12-16T18:38:33","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T18:38:33","slug":"republicans-cry-foul-with-some-judges-unretiring-before-second-trump-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/republicans-cry-foul-with-some-judges-unretiring-before-second-trump-term\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans cry foul with some judges \u2018unretiring\u2019 before second Trump term"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>With little more than a month to go before Donald Trump\u2019s second term in the White House, a set of federal judges who previously announced retirements are pulling back those decisions. And Republicans are none too pleased.<\/p>\n<p>Most prominent among the federal jurists to reverse a retirement announcement is Judge James Wynn of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. His name vanished from a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uscourts.gov\/data-news\/judicial-vacancies\/future-judicial-vacancies\" target=\"_blank\">list of pending vacancies over the weekend<\/a>, joining two district court judges in North Carolina \u2014 Algenon Marbley and Max Cogburn \u2014 in pulling back their decisions once it became clear President Joe Biden would not be able to appoint their successors.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tillis.senate.gov\/services\/files\/3ECC1F33-75E0-4A81-8ECD-23EA64BDCE0E\" target=\"_blank\">a letter to Biden<\/a>, Wynn wrote \u201cthat, after careful consideration, I have decided to continue in regular active service\u201d on the bench. All three were appointed by Democratic presidents.<\/p>\n<p>Their decisions serve to deny Trump further bench vacancies to fill as he hopes to capitalize on his push to move the federal judiciary rightward. Though judges routinely time retirements to allow a desired president to appoint their successors, the GOP backlash has been consistent and heated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJudge Wynn&#8217;s brazenly partisan decision to rescind his retirement is an unprecedented move that demonstrates some judges are nothing more than politicians in robes,\u201d said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), whose state is part of the circuit, in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tillis.senate.gov\/2024\/12\/tillis-statement-on-judge-wynn-s-partisan-and-unprecedented-decision-to-rescind-his-retirement\" target=\"_blank\">a statement over the weekend<\/a>. \u201cThe Senate Judiciary Committee should hold a hearing on his blatant attempt to turn the judicial retirement system into a partisan game, and he deserves the ethics complaints and recusal demands from the Department of Justice heading his way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tillis isn\u2019t alone in his criticisms, as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has previously warned judges of consequences should they rescind previously announced retirements.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNever before has a circuit judge unretired after a presidential election,\u201d McConnell said on the Senate floor on Dec. 2. \u201cIt\u2019s literally unprecedented. And to create such a precedent would fly in the face of a rare bipartisan compromise on the disposition of these vacancies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>McConnell has urged any judge pulling back on their retirement announcements to recuse themselves from matters coming before them. He urged the incoming Trump administration to \u201cexplore all available recusal options with these judges,\u201d since in his view they \u201chave a political finger on the scale.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s hard to conclude this is anything other than open partisanship,\u201d the outgoing Republican leader said on the floor.<\/p>\n<p>For Democrats\u2019 part, they pointed to previous instances of Republicans making choices around the federal bench post-elections, including McConnell\u2019s decision to not consider a Supreme Court vacancy during the 2016 election cycle while President Barack Obama was in office. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I hear the senator [McConnell] come to the floor \u2026 and talk about whether there is any gamesmanship going on, I don\u2019t know. But I can tell you we saw it at the highest possible level in filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court when Antonin Scalia passed away,\u201d said Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on the floor following McConnell\u2019s remarks. <\/p>\n<p>The backdrop for the reconsideration of retirement announcements is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2024\/11\/21\/congress\/schumer-on-gop-judges-deal-00191038\" target=\"_blank\">a deal struck between Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republicans<\/a> to grant Trump four circuit court nominations to fill \u2014 Democrats said President Joe Biden\u2019s replacement picks for those slots lacked the votes for confirmation \u2014 in exchange for quicker consideration of a dozen or so district court vacancies.<\/p>\n<p>But Wynn\u2019s decision \u2014 he was one of those four circuit court positions \u2014 complicates that math. Durbin defended the deal as having \u201creflected some realities that haven&#8217;t been publicized much.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwo of them did not have the total support of the Democratic caucus \u2014 it was an uphill struggle,\u201d Durbin said. \u201cTwo more of them decided to stay on and not leave,\u201d he added, reflecting the future decision of Wynn to retain active status on the bench.<\/p>\n<p>Another one of those involved in the appeals court deal, Adeel Mangi, decried the \u201cbroken\u201d confirmation process in <a href=\"https:\/\/aboutblaw.com\/bgA0\" target=\"_blank\">a letter to Biden obtained by BLaw<\/a> on Monday. He would have been the first Muslim appeals court judge in the country, if confirmed, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2024\/03\/19\/congress\/fight-over-judicial-nominee-senate-democrats-mangi-00147901\" target=\"_blank\">couldn\u2019t command sufficient support from Democrats<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is no longer a system for evaluating fitness for judicial office,\u201d Mangi wrote in the letter. \u201cIt is now a channel for the raising of money based on performative McCarthyism before video cameras, and for the dissemination of dark-money-funded attacks that especially target minorities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He added: \u201cFor my part, I entered this nomination process as a proud American and a proud Muslim. I exit it the same way, unbowed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the whole, reconsidering a judicial retirement decision is not an entirely new phenomenon.<\/p>\n<p>Take, for example, the case of Judge Karen Caldwell of Kentucky. The longtime George W. Bush appointee was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.courier-journal.com\/story\/news\/politics\/2022\/07\/01\/kentucky-judge-leaves-opening-spot-bidens-gop-pick-chad-meredith\/7784121001\/\" target=\"_blank\">ready to step aside in 2022<\/a>, but on the condition that Biden appoint a suitable conservative replacement in her place. But that rumored deal between Biden and McConnell eventually fell through, and Caldwell rescinded her initial decision to retire.<\/p>\n<p>There are other recent examples. A conservative Wisconsin federal judge, Rudolph Randa, <a href=\"https:\/\/freerepublic.com\/focus\/f-news\/2179907\/posts\" target=\"_blank\">pulled back on his announced retirement<\/a> in 2008 following the victory of President Barack Obama. And an appeals court judge from Indiana, Michael Kanne, abandoned his retirement in 2018 after then-Vice President Mike Pence <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2019\/07\/12\/mike-pence-kanne-judge-trump-1411915\" target=\"_blank\">spiked his intended successor<\/a> from being tapped.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With little more than a month to go before Donald Trump\u2019s second term in the White House, a set of federal judges who previously announced retirements are pulling back those decisions. And Republicans are none too pleased. Most prominent among the federal jurists to reverse a retirement announcement is Judge James Wynn of the 4th [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}