Supporters and opponents of former President Donald Trump agree that the cornerstone achievement of his first term will continue shaping the American legal and political landscape for decades.
“I totally transformed the federal judiciary,” Trump boasted at a summit hosted by the right-wing Moms for Liberty group last summer. “Many presidents never get the opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice. I had three, and they’re gold.”
That claim, the numbers show, is not hyperbole. As president, Trump named 234 judicial nominees to seats on the most critical benches across the country, including 54 who reshaped the ideological makeup of federal appeals courts and three who drove a generational shift in the highest court in the land.
But as Trump drives toward a potential second term, one thing is clear: He’s just getting started. It’s a reality that thrills supporters – and strikes fear among even a few right-leaning legal scholars.
“I fear that in a second term, you might see a reelected President Trump imposing more of a political test on prospective judges and looking for people who will be more loyal to him personally or to the Republican Party in general,” Gregg Nunziata, the executive director of the conservative Society for the Rule of Law and a former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNN.
It’s a fear President Joe Biden said was a top concern heading into November.
“It is one of the scariest parts of it,” he said at a star-studded Los Angeles fundraiser last month in response to a question about Trump’s potential court nominees. “Look, the Supreme Court has never been as out of kilter.
Trump campaign officials and allies have made clear that victory in November, paired with what they view as an increasingly likely Republican flip of the Senate, would set the stage for a renewed – and far more Trumpian – stamp on the courts.
“I will once again appoint rock solid conservative judges to do what they have to do in the mold of Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, a great gentleman, and another great gentleman, Clarence Thomas,” Trump promised a cheering crowd at the Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit in September. It’s a promise he made in 2016, and again in 2020, and more than delivered on.
Alito and Thomas aren’t just important to Trump as models for future judicial selections. Many allies of the former president see it as likely that one or both could step aside due to age – and grant Trump the opportunity to cement the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority for a generation.
