U.S. Senate Democrats on Tuesday charged ahead with confirming more judges before Republican President-elect Donald Trump takes office by approving a new trial court judge in Oregon whose promotion of diversity and inclusion in the legal profession had fueled stiff Republican opposition.
The Democratic-led Senate voted 51-44 to elevate U.S. Magistrate Judge Mustafa Kasubhai in Eugene, Oregon, to a district court judgeship, making him only the third Muslim American to serve as a life-tenured federal judge.
All three were appointed by outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden, who has vowed to diversify the federal bench. Kasubhai was Biden's 217th confirmed judicial nominee, a tally Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday said Democrats would keep adding to "as quickly as we can."
Senate Democrats are trying to fill as many judicial vacancies as possible before handing over control of the chamber to Republicans on Jan. 3 following the Nov. 5 election, but Republicans are increasingly trying to impede those plans.
After Schumer moved on Monday to tee up votes on another nine judicial nominees, Republicans took the unusual step of forcing time-consuming roll call votes on scheduling the votes on their nominations, forcing senators to keep casting votes until nearly midnight. Usually, Schumer had been allowed to schedule such votes quickly through unanimous consent.
On Tuesday, Republicans again sought to slow the Democrats' progress by declining to waive, which they usually do, having a quorum of senators physically present on the floor before votes could be cast on Kasubhai's nomination.
Those moves were keeping with the wishes of Trump, who on social media urged Republicans to hold the line and block the nominees. "No more Judges confirmed before Inauguration Day!" Trump posted on his platform Truth Social on Tuesday.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates in a statement countered that there was "no excuse" for the partisan slowdown and that Americans expect their leaders "to ensure the criminal justice system can function effectively in every state."
Kasubhai's nomination was the longest pending of the more than two dozen judicial nominees awaiting Senate consideration at the time of the Nov. 5 election, having been first nominated by Biden back in September 2023.
Republican senators have sought since then to portray him as "extreme," in the words of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and that uniform opposition helped force Democrats, who have just a 51-49 Senate majority, to scrap an earlier planned vote to confirm Kasubhai in June.
Republicans among other things accused him of "bias" by adopting a policy of encouraging parties and counsel appearing before him of identifying their pronouns and talking in gender-neutral ways. Kasubhai defended the policy as voluntary and not a directive to parties.
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