


Senate Democrats are weighing a major push in the coming weeks to confirm as many of President Biden’s judicial nominees as they can in the lame-duck session of Congress, before their power to reshape the federal courts ends with the Republican takeover of the White House and the Senate in January.
Democrats had hoped to hold onto the Senate and the White House, allowing them to continue their drive to counterbalance the 234 conservative-leaning judges — including three Supreme Court justices — who were confirmed during the first Trump administration. But with the re-election of Donald J. Trump and Republicans winning control of the Senate, that possibility is now gone.
Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader who has prioritized judicial confirmations, on Friday indicated a willingness to devote significant Senate floor time to seating more judges in the post-election session that begins next week. About 30 nominees were already in the confirmation pipeline, and Mr. Biden announced two more on Friday night.
“We are going to get as many done as we can,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement.
Progressive groups have ramped up the pressure for them to do so.
“The reality is that we now have a rapidly closing window to confirm well-qualified, fair-minded judges who will protect our rights and serve as one of the last guardrails in upholding our nation’s laws and the Constitution,” Maggie Jo Buchanan, the managing director of the progressive group Demand Justice, said in a statement this week. “Even one judge can make a difference.”
With the clock ticking, some liberal activists are even agitating for Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who at 70 is the senior Democratic-nominated member of the Supreme Court, to step aside and allow Democrats to rush through her replacement. That would be reminiscent of what Republicans did in 2020, when they moved quickly after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to speed through Mr. Trump’s nominee to replace her, Amy Coney Barrett, in the weeks before the election. But there is no indication that Justice Sotomayor would leave the court, and no guarantee that Democrats could succeed in swiftly replacing her if she did.