You can add the confirmation of thirteen of President Trump’s judicial picks to the list of good news coming out of the Senate’s work this week. Wrapping agenda items up as the senators headed out the door for August recess, Mitch McConnell made sure that the process flowed throughout the week. He scheduled four confirmation votes Tuesday and nine on Wednesday. Three of the votes Wednesday were voice votes.

McConnell has had enough of Democrat obstruction to moving forward with votes on President Trump’s judicial nominees, especially ones whom no one considers controversial. The tally to date is impressive.

“For too long fairly uncontroversial judicial nominees just like these have been held up and delayed by our Democratic colleagues even when the vacancy qualifies as a judicial emergency. Uncontroversial district judges used to be confirmed promptly in big groups by voice vote,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said from the Senate floor ahead of the votes on Wednesday.

Republicans have placed a premium on confirming Trump’s judicial picks, arguing that they are the best shot at having a long-term impact on the direction of the country. Republicans have confirmed more than 100 court picks for Trump since 2017, including two Supreme Court justices and a record number of appeals court judges.

The very best part of this success is that the judicial slots are being filled by young (ish) nominees who will sit on the bench for many years to come. The move back to judicial decisions based on the Constitution rather than Democrat feel-good ideology will be sustained well into the future.

This week the Republican-led Senate confirmed 13 new federal judges, bringing Donald Trump’s total to 144.

—99 district judges
—43 circuit judges
—2 Supreme Court justices

An extraordinary pace.

All lifetime appointments, nearly all of them are in their 30s, 40s or 50s.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) August 3, 2019

Guess who noticed? The darling of the far-left activist set in Hollywood – Alyssa Milano. She’s right about one thing. No one was really noticing McConnell’s accomplishment because of the usual day to day challenge of keeping up with non-stop outrage over one topic or the other in Trump’s America. Between Baltimore and the Democrat debates and Lindsay Graham going full cowboy in order to control the attempts at obstruction by Democrats on the Senate Judicial Committee, everyone was all ramped up about other things. McConnell just kept to his agenda and quietly completed the task. As Ms. Milano notes, #CourtsMatter.

While we weren’t looking— the Senate confirmed over a dozen Trump judicial nominees for lifetime seats. #CourtsMatter https://t.co/0DXzeOvZth

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) July 31, 2019

As you might expect, Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader is none too pleased about McConnell’s moves. Far-left activists continue to put pressure on Democrats to slow the process down. Instead of voice votes which have traditionally been used to confirm many judicial nominees in the past, the demand now is for roll call votes on everyone.

Democrats came under intense fire from progressive activists last year when they agreed to speed up votes on Trump’s judicial picks ahead of breaks in August and October. Democrats argued at the time that the nominees were going to get confirmed anyway and speeding up votes allowed vulnerable incumbents more time on the campaign trail.
Kristine Lucius, executive vice president for policy and government affairs at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, urged Democrats to force each of the nominations to have roll call votes this week.

“Senators must put an end to this blatant disrespect to our judicial system, traditions, and democracy. They must demand that each nomination receives a roll call vote, so the public knows where their senators stand,” she said.

Christopher Kang, the chief counsel for We Demand Justice, knocked Democrats for allowing a judicial nominee who wouldn’t say if Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided to be approved by a voice vote.

The power struggle over judicial nominations has been a constant between Schumer and McConnell since President Trump’s inauguration. When Trump ran for the office he promised conservative voters that he would take recommendations from groups like the Federalist Societ so as to ease concerns about who exactly he’d put on the bench. Back in June, Schumer spoke on the floor of the Senate about the nominees up for votes. He was particularly partisan and nasty to conservative groups advising President Trump on whom to put up as nominees, specifically the Federalist Society.

The parade of narrow-minded, often bigoted people who we’re putting on the bench simply because they’ve been members of the Federalist Society is unprecedented in this country. Unprecedented.

Trump made good on that campaign promise. He continues to listen to those who are experts in the field. The hypocrisy coming from the Democrats, especially Schumer, is just more of the same. Remember, it’s Democrats voicing support for packing the Supreme Court with more liberals, for example, when they win back the White House. Conservatives fed up with decisions made by liberal judges can rest assured that McConnell has got this. Take that, 9th Circuit of Appeals. That court’s liberal dominence is in the crosshairs, too.