Trump abandons his most impressive presidential legacy: Conservative judges | Opinion
President Donald Trump has made a point to attack the very conservative judges who helped boost his first term in office.
It's official.
President Donald Trump has turned on the conservative legal movement because its activists refuse to put his bidding over the Constitution. Frustration has been building for some time, but late on May 29, Trump posted a lengthy rant about the judiciary to his Truth Social page, criticizing many of the conservative judges he had embraced during his first term.
“I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges,” Trump said on Truth Social. “I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations.”
With that, Trump shifted from being a Republican president with a strong legacy of appointing conservative judges to a Republican president with a growing legacy of attacking conservative judges. That's a bad sign for any of his upcoming judicial nominations.
Trump turns on conservative legal movement he helped build
Trump and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, helped deliver Republicans a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court. A significant part of that effort was The Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization that advocates for an interpretation of the Constitution that adheres to its original meaning.
During his first term, Trump's judicial picks were tightly curated by adviser Leonard Leo, then the executive vice president of The Federalist Society. Most notably, all three of Trump's Supreme Court picks ‒ Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett ‒ all had ties to the organization.
These three justices had a hand in overturning Roe v. Wade, striking down unconstitutional firearm restrictions, striking down racist affirmative action practices, curbing the power of administrative state bureaucrats and blocking much of the illegal Biden agenda.
Even beyond the Supreme Court, Trump nominated 226 federal judges during his first term, many of those nominations guided by Federalist Society advisers.
When did Trump start to turn on conservative judges?
While the beginning of this spiral happened when the Supreme Court refused to entertain his 2020 stolen election claims, things have accelerated in his second term. Now, originalist judges have halted Trump’s unconstitutional trade policy and have ruled against parts of Trump’s mass deportation attempts.
Even so, Trump until now was reluctant to outright condemn The Federalist Society. After all, one of the high points of his conservative agenda was his redecorating of the American courts with top-tier judges.
The track record of Federalist Society judges is nothing short of a resounding victory for conservatives and the single best accomplishment of Trump’s first term in office.
None of that matters now. Trump despises those judges because their loyalty is to the Constitution, not to him. He cannot fathom the discipline or honor required to be committed to preserving America’s founding documents, rather than his own self-interest.
The partnership between the conservative legal movement and Trump was always a temporary one, and Republicans in Congress had to have known that. While Republicans used Trump to reach their goals within the conservative legal movement, they made the mistake of allowing him to undermine the very accomplishments they made in his first term.
Trump’s future judicial nominations have judges worried
Data from Notre Dame Law professor Derek Muller shows that federal judges are retiring at a record-slow pace at the beginning of Trump’s second term. Just 11 vacancies have opened up since January, likely because judges are thinking twice about retiring in the face of who may replace them.
Trump’s first slate of judicial nominees is taking longer than it did in his first term, with confirmation hearings to take place on June 4, according to Axios.
There are also fewer vacancies compared with Trump’s first term, when he was handed more than 100 on Day 1 as a result of a stubborn Republican Senate majority in President Barack Obama’s second term.
Trump appears to be prioritizing his supporters in his early slate of judicial picks. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who has previously represented Trump personally, has been nominated to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Courtof Appeals and sparked some concern even among conservatives.
Trump’s early judicial picks will determine how comfortable more aging federal judges are with retiring under his second administration. Those committed to the Constitution are understandably worried about who may replace them, and his recent rhetoric does not help me feel better.
As Trump's brand of the Republican Party drifts from most of the conservative values it once claimed to support, so too does his support for conservative legal philosophy. Now, anything that stands in the way of Trump is bad, even if it is conservative in ideology.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for Paste BN and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.