President Donald Trump is facing significant challenges in federal court, despite his years of efforts to reshape the judiciary in his favor, including three Supreme Court appointments. Legal experts Norm Eisen and Josh Kolb highlighted this in their Contrarian newsletter on Substack Monday.
Their analysis was prompted by a recent New York Times article that pointed out how Trump-appointed judges have ruled in his favor in 133 out of 145 cases. While acknowledging that Trump-nominated appellate judges often sided with the administration, Eisen and Kolb offered a different perspective.
“Yes, Trump-nominated appellate court judges have often and wrongly sided with the administration, as the Times noted,” they wrote. “But according to the Times’ own numbers, after one year in office, judges have overall ruled against Trump and his regime about two-thirds of the time. That is a remarkable success rate for litigants against the administration.”
Two notable losses for Trump occurred on Monday, when federal judges ruled that his budget director violated the Constitution by cutting off environmental grants exclusively to blue states. Additionally, a wind energy project that Trump had tried to block was restarted by court order.
Eisen and Kolb also pointed out that Trump’s appointments have not exerted as much influence on the lower courts as might appear initially. While the article mentioned that Trump appointed 54 appellate judges during his first term and six so far in his second, it’s important to consider the larger context.
“There are 179 full-time judgeships across the 13 appellate courts in the country,” they explained. “On top of that, 112 judges serve on ‘senior status,’ meaning they still hear cases and issue rulings but work a reduced schedule and don’t count toward the 179 statutorily mandated seats. So, those Trump judges who are ruling for him disproportionately make up only 60 out of more than 280 appellate judges issuing decisions, or about 20%.”
Furthermore, a majority of rulings from Trump-appointed appellate judges that favored the administration came from only three “MAGA” judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. This concentration, Eisen and Kolb noted, was partly due to an unusual occurrence where these three judges sat on consecutive emergency panels last year, skewing the statistics.
“Not only was that an odd occurrence that affected the stats, but the D.C. Circuit appears to have changed how its motions panel operates so that it no longer sits in place for a full month,” they said. “Thus, a disproportionate number of Trump-appointed judges will not be able to unduly influence the outcome of cases against the Trump administration.”
In summary, despite Trump’s strategic judicial appointments, the federal courts have demonstrated considerable independence, often ruling against the administration and limiting the overall impact of his appointees.
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-court-losses-2674877170/
