On Friday, it was revealed that a last-minute attempt to jam through a judicial confirmation has pitted President Donald Trump against several Republican senators. According to attorney Mike Davis – who served as Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee and as a clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch – the senators in question have committed an “unforgivable sin” by opposing Trump and blocking their own party’s nominee.
As Davis notes, Trump has nominated Lee Rudofsky – the current U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Arkansas – to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, an appellate court that covers Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. After the midterms, however, which dealt a generational blow against the GOP, eliminating the party’s majority in both the House and Senate, the clock is ticking before Democrats assume control over Congress in January, which will make it virtually impossible for Trump to have nominees like Rudofsky confirmed.
But if the narrow window to act wasn’t obstacle enough, the president is also facing opposition from his own party. According to Davis, “Arkansas' two Republican home-state senators – [John Boozman] and [Tom Cotton] – are blocking Rudofsky, as they wanted someone else.” According to Davis, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-SC) are acting as the public face of the blocking effort, as both are leaving the Senate at the end of the term and therefore can oppose Trump without worrying about drawing his wrath. But regardless of whether the departing senators take the blame, Davis asserts that the effort is an “unforgivable sin for Boozman and Cotton.” If they don’t change their minds fast, notes Davis, “Republicans will lose this key appellate court seat.”
Trump’s judicial appointments may represent his longest-lasting legacy. As Politico explains, “Trump has already, over the course of his two terms, appointed nearly 300 judges who, collectively, will pull the federal bench to the right for a generation. His second-term judges, in particular, have often proven to be outliers even among the conservative judiciary. But the lame-duck president will be able to confirm few, if any, new judges once Democrats formally take over the Senate in January.” What’s more, “Assuming the Senate maintains its longstanding ‘blue slip’ rule giving senators veto power over judicial nominees in their state, newly elected Democrats will have the ability to block appointments in states like Texas, Kansas and South Carolina until 2033 — even if the GOP manages to regain control of the chamber and a Republican keeps the White House in 2029.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, Rudofsky is a staunch constitutional originalist who played a key role in gutting the Voting Rights Act when his 2022 decision ruled that private parties can’t sue under the act’s Section 2 anti-discrimination provisions. Then, in 2026, the Supreme Court essentially ended the protections offered by Section 2 altogether.
