President Donald Trump is failing big-time in federal court, legal experts Norm Eisen and Josh Kolb wrote for their Contrarian newsletter on Substack Monday, despite his years of efforts to transform the federal judiciary in his favor, including three Supreme Court appointments.
Eisen and Kolb wrote their analysis in response to a New York Times article over the weekend that flagged how Trump-appointed judges have handed the president a wave of wins, siding with him in 133 out of 145 rulings, they wrote.
“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 ⅔ of the time. That is a remarkable success rate for litigants against the administration.”
Two such losses occurred Monday, as federal judges ruled his budget director violated the Constitution by cutting off environmental grants strictly to blue states, and restarted a wind energy project Trump tried to block.
Moreover, they noted, Trump’s appointments to the federal bench haven’t had quite the level of influence it would seem at first glance, at least in the lower courts.
“The article noted Trump appointed 54 appellate judges in his first term and six so far this term,” wrote Eisen and Kolb. “Though that sounds like a lot, there are 179 full-time judgeships across the 13 courts of appeal throughout the country. On top of that, there are 112 judges serving 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%.”
Additionally, “More than half of the rulings from Trump-appointed appellate judges in favor of the Trump administration come from just three MAGA judges, all on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals,” they wrote. “Thanks to the luck of the draw, these three Trump-appointed judges appeared on successive emergency panels in the D.C. Circuit last year, unusually tipping the balance in Trump’s favor. 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. Thus, a disproportionate number of Trump-appointed judges will not be able to unduly influence the outcome of cases against the Trump administration.”
The bottom line, they concluded, is that “While Trump continues to threaten judges, in increasingly desperate and deranged fashion, the courts have largely held. That is a remarkable testament to the courage of the individual judges who make up the judiciary, and the resilience of the American legal system. As we head into the second year of Trump’s second term, that should be the headline.”
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