Donald Trump
WASHINGTON — After a slow start, President Donald Trump has been ramping up the pace of judicial nominations — but it remains to be seen if his recent public breakup with the increasingly far-right Federalist Society will impact the quality of his picks.
While Senate Republicans have tried to stay out of the fray, Democrats have enjoyed watching the brewing right-wing civil war.
“I love it. It's delicious,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told Raw Story.
“It's a fine sight to have those two corrupt factions warring with each other, and it puts the point on the fact that this is, in fact, a captured [Supreme] Court. Trump is just discovering that the wrong people captured it.”
‘Got what they wanted’
In late May, after Trump’s new tariff regime was blocked in federal court, the president lashed out at first-term allies who helped him transform large swaths of the federal judiciary.
“I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, before lashing out at one of the group’s longtime leaders by name.
“But then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.”
Leo is the fundraising Svengali behind a range of right-wing groups who has become a bête noir of Democratic progressives.
Leo did not fire back at Trump — in public, at least — choosing to tell reporters he was "very grateful for President Trump transforming the federal courts.”
Regardless, Democrats can’t get enough.
“Listen, those are judges that Trump nominated,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) told Raw Story. “The whole strategy of the Federalist Society was to create a court that ruled in favor of corporations and the rich. They got what they wanted.
“If you want a conspiracy thesis that is actually true, it's how [the Federalist Society was] created 30 years ago for this purpose, basically, to ensure that we don't have government by and for the people, but by and for the powerful, and the Federal Society succeeded.”
Other Democrats agree that Trump got played.
“It's a little bit Bizarro World,” Sen. Whitehouse said, referring to the world in the Superman comics in which everything is the opposite of the same thing on Earth.
“But it's not Bizarro World if you have thought that you appointed a court that was going to do what you wanted and you've discovered that you've appointed a court that's going to do what the polluter billionaires want, and you got had in the scheme.
“You were the chump at the table. You weren't the person who was calling the shots.”
Whitehouse pointed to the libertarian-leaning Koch brothers — billionaires Charles and David Koch, the latter now deceased — and their political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, which opposed Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.
“That was real combat back then,” Whitehouse said.
But the former Rhode Island attorney general said it was evident the Koch brothers came around to Trump after he pledged to only nominate Federalist Society approved judges for lifetime appointments.
“The combat evaporated, and the Federalist Society list emerged,” Whitehouse said.
“Now it wasn't the Federalist Society list. The Federalist Society never considered a list, never approved a list, never had a list on the agenda — not a thing. But they called it a Federalist Society list to give it some cover.
“Every clue points to there having been a deal where the Koch political apparatus would back off of thrashing Trump and the Kochs would get to appoint his Supreme Court justices.
“House of Trump is beginning to figure out that they had their pants pulled down around their ankles by the House of Koch.
“It appears now that Trump has finally figured out that he was the chump in the scheme, and that his rivals, who he despised, the Kochs, actually picked his Supreme Court justices.
“They've got the 100 percent batting record at the Supreme Court for polluter interests, and he does not have a 100 percent batting record.”
‘Those who will serve him’
Republican senators have tried to avoid the rift between Trump and the Federalists altogether.
“What have you thought of this little spat between Trump and the Federalist Society?” Raw Story asked.
“Who? I don’t keep up with that — why would I keep up with that?” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) said. “It’s for you guys. We got day jobs.”
The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee also shrugged off the spat.
“I don't know anything about the fight between the Federalist Society and Trump,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told Raw Story.
In Trump’s first term, Senate Republicans confirmed 234 of his picks to fill vacancies on the federal bench. But after former President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats confirmed 235 federal judges between 2021 and 2025, there just aren’t many vacancies left to fill.
That’s partly why Trump didn’t get his first federal judicial nominee confirmed until July 14th, just before senators left Washington for their summer recess.
Before Trump sent five more nominations to the Senate on August 12th, an Associated Press review found “roughly half” of his first 16 judicial nominees had “revealed anti-abortion views, been associated with anti-abortion groups or defended abortion restrictions.”
While such views are in line with those of the Federalist Society, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), said Trump was deploying a new litmus test.
“Don't look for any consistency. He is just looking for those who will serve him personally,” Durbin told Raw Story.
“Occasionally the Federalist Society, which was the secret handshake of Republicans for so many years, disappoints him.”