The Trump administration has sent its first group of judicial nominees to be confirmed by the 116th Congress, which opened earlier this month.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has sent its first group of judicial nominees to be confirmed by the 116th Congress, which opened earlier this month.
Notably, all six nominees are men. All also appear to be white, though the White House declined to answer questions about their backgrounds.
None appears to be a judicial neophyte, a charge that dogged some Trump nominees his first two years in office. And each is sufficiently experienced to avoid the kind of embarrassing exchange that transpired last year between John N. Kennedy, R-La., and Matthew S. Petersen, a member of the Federal Election Committee who acknowledged that he had never tried a case.
John G. Malcolm, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, which has advised Trump on his nominations to the federal bench, speculates that the vetting process for judges has improved since Pat Cipollone replaced Don McGahn as White House counsel. “These people who are nominated appear to be somewhat more low-profile,” he says.
The nominees’ lack of ethnic or gender diversity suggests that, with a 53-47 majority in the Senate, President Trump has no need to placate Democrats or centrist Republicans.
