The Senate, and its confirmation process for nominations, is closed until after Election Day, so it’s a good time to evaluate President Trump’s judicial appointment success so far in his second term.
A few notes from recent confirmation history will set the stage. Republicans controlled the Senate during the 114th Congress (2015–16), President Obama’s final two years in office, and confirmed 22 nominees to Article III courts. The historical average is about 45 per year and, as a percentage of the judiciary, the confirmation pace in the 114th Congress was the lowest since the birth of the republic.
As a result, 108 judicial positions, 12.6 percent of the judiciary, were vacant when Trump first took office. Republicans controlled the Senate during his first term and helped him appoint 234 judges, at the time the second-highest single-term total in history. Republicans left just 46 vacancies when President Biden took the oath in January 2021.
Democrats had razor-thin control of the Senate during Biden’s term, 50–50 during the 117th Congress and 51–49 in the 118th. Still, Democrats made judicial appointments a top priority and Biden appointed 235 judges, 138 of them during his last two years. As a result, only 40 judicial positions, 4.6 percent of the judiciary, were vacant when Trump took the oath the second time.
The latest Judicial Appointments Memo compares the percentage of the judiciary appointed by Trump with that of his seven predecessors at this point in his term. Trump’s 3.2 percent is the lowest on the list, one-third of Biden’s mark and well below the historical average. Biden and Trump may have taken office with nearly the same low number of vacancies, but it’s what happened after they took office that explains the difference.
Three-quarters of new vacancies occur when a judge takes “senior status,” continuing judicial service (often with a reduced caseload) and opening the appointed position for a new nominee. Ninety-six judges took senior status at this point under Biden, compared with just 33 so far under Trump.
Current month-to-month vacancies on Article III courts have averaged 32 this year, the lowest since 1983, when the judiciary was 23 percent smaller. In addition, as of today, there are 15 future vacancies, where a judge has announced the intention to leave the bench at some point in the future. One-third of them have named a specific vacancy date; the others leave that date “TBD,” which typically means when a successor has been appointed.
Looking specifically at the U.S. Court of Appeals, there has not been a current vacancy on any circuit since November 2025. Trump has appointed several appeals court judges since then, but each was nominated to a future vacancy. In fact, only three of the ten appeals court judges Trump has appointed this term has filled a vacancy that was already open.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is doing its part, holding a hearing on 94.5 percent of Trump’s second-term nominees, higher than four of Trump’s seven predecessors and above the historical average. The full Senate has confirmed 76.3 percent of Trump’s judicial nominees, higher at this point than under any president since Bill Clinton. The ongoing process of presidential nomination and Judiciary Committee evaluation means that additional nominations regularly become available for final Senate action. This means that the Senate rarely, at any given time, confirmed every available judicial nomination.
This confirmation efficiency is more significant than it might appear because tactics designed to slow the confirmation process have never been used more aggressively. The confirmation process, for example, is now firmly in the grip of partisanship. During the administrations of Ronald Reagan through Barack Obama, a Senator of one party voted against an average of 3.5 percent of judicial nominations from the other party. During Trump’s first term, Democrats decided to fight him by opposing his nominees, and the average opposition rate soared twelvefold.
Republicans continued the trend under President Biden, and now the average Democratic senator has opposed 94 percent of Trump’s second-term judicial nominations. From the turn of the 20th century through Obama’s presidency, 94 percent of judicial nominations were confirmed unanimously. That dropped to 22 percent during Trump’s first term, 3 percent under Biden, and a flat zero in Trump’s second term.
Senate rules have, since 1949, provided for a procedural vote to invoke cloture, or end debate, on a nomination before final confirmation. Cloture required a supermajority vote until November 2013, when Democrats changed this requirement to a simple majority, the same as that required for confirmation.
Since cloture can no longer be used to defeat a majority-supported nominee, cloture votes since 2013 have had no purpose other than delay and obstruction. And that’s exactly how it’s been used. Ninety percent of all cloture votes on judicial nominations since 1949 have occurred since November 2013, and 76 percent of them since Trump was first elected.
Presidents do not control when judges choose to leave the bench, and neither party controls whether the other will make the confirmation process efficient or cumbersome. Still, Trump and Senate Republicans are taking every step they can to continue his positive impact on the judiciary.