The Senate has confirmed President Donald Trump’s first judicial nominee of his second term, a notably slower pace than at the same point in his first term or former President Joe Biden’s.
The Senate voted 46-42 to confirm Whitney Hermandorfer to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The vote was along party lines.
Hermandorfer leads the strategic litigation unit in the Tennessee attorney general’s office. Her previous experience includes clerkships with Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, and then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit.
A George Washington University Law School graduate, Hermandorfer has earned a lifetime seat on the influential Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees cases from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. Circuit courts wield significant power, as their rulings often stand as final decisions in cases the Supreme Court declines to review.
By this point in Trump’s first term, the Senate had already confirmed three judicial nominees: Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, Sixth Circuit Judge Amul Thapar, and U.S. District Judge David Nye of Idaho. In contrast, by the same point in 2021, President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats had secured confirmation for 14 judges.
Both Trump and Biden oversaw the confirmation of hundreds of judges during their respective terms, reshaping the federal judiciary and altering the confirmation process. As a result, Trump returned to office in January with relatively few vacancies to fill. According to U.S. courts data, about 49 judicial seats remain open.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and the Trump administration are eager to ramp up judicial confirmations, but their efforts have been constrained by the limited number of current vacancies.
“One of the great achievements of President Trump’s first term was the confirmation of some 234 judges to the federal bench,” Thune said Thursday on the Senate floor.
Thune added, “We’re not facing the number of judicial vacancies in this Congress that we faced during President Trump’s first term.”
Trump set a new benchmark during his first term, with 234 federal judges confirmed, including three to the Supreme Court. Biden squeezed past that total, leaving office in January with 235 confirmations, including one Supreme Court justice.
Judicial confirmations were once a slower, more contentious process, often requiring 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. That changed in 2013, when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) invoked the “nuclear option,” eliminating the supermajority requirement for most judicial nominees.
During a June hearing for Whitney Hermandorfer and four district court nominees, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) used his opening remarks to urge his colleagues to look past party lines. He noted that several of Biden’s judicial picks had garnered bipartisan backing, even when Republicans found them contentious.
“Elections, as we all know, have consequences … I worry that partisanship will hamper these efforts,” Grassley said, referencing recent comments from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the committee’s top Democrat, who floated the possibility of delaying quick approval of future U.S. attorney nominations.
Durbin justified his stance during the hearing by citing precedent set by Vice President JD Vance, who, while serving as a Republican senator from Ohio, took similar steps to delay the confirmation of Biden’s judicial picks.
Republican senators largely praised Hermandorfer’s qualifications, but Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) raised concerns about whether her background met the typical standards for a federal appellate judge.
“I am concerned about the striking brevity of your professional record,” Coons said during her hearing, noting that she earned her law degree only ten years ago.
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During questioning, Hermandorfer acknowledged that she has never served as lead counsel in a federal jury trial, conducted a deposition, or questioned a witness, explaining that those responsibilities don’t typically fall within the scope of her appellate work.
While she has been involved in more than 100 appellate cases, she admitted she has argued only four times before federal appeals courts and has never delivered oral arguments before the Supreme Court.