The Next Trump Judges Will Be So Much Worse

January 22 2025

The Federalist Society’s waning influence in the Trump White House means that his next nominees will be considerably further to the right, and personally committed to the work of protecting Donald Trump.

Donald Trump re-made the federal judiciary between 2017 and 2021. His 234 nominees confirmed to the federal bench include judges like Matthew Kacsmaryk, Aileen Cannon, James Ho, and others who have become notorious for the lengths to which they’ll go to advance Trump’s personal and political agenda. They also include three Supreme Court justices, who voted to end federal protections for abortion, gut affirmative action, lay the groundwork to undo the regulatory state, and make the president a king. Trump’s judges were overwhelmingly white, male, young, and ideologically extreme. Many were hand-selected by the Federalist Society because of their fealty to the conservative legal project.

And if Trump gets his way, his first term’s impact on the judiciary will be just a warm-up act. Over the coming months and years, Trump is likely to fill the federal bench with radical, far-right lawyers dedicated not to the law, but to advancing his quest for unchecked and unmoderated power. 

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