As a second Trump administration approaches, we’re running out of time to confirm as many federal judges as possible to provide a check on his presidential power and curb his stated policy priorities.
There are 42 federal judicial vacancies and 13 nominations before the Senate right now—as our civil rights hang in the balance, take action now!
Yesterday, the Senate confirmed Wilhelmina Wright, most recently an Associate Justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court, to be a federal judge on the district court for the District of Minnesota.
Now-Judge Wright, a well-respected jurist who was recommended to her home-state senators by a bipartisan judicial selection advisory committee, was nominated in April 2015 and was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee without a single dissenting vote in September 2015. For reasons that can only be attributed to partisan delay, Senate leadership agreed in December to vote on Judge Wright’s nomination — the following year.
Judge Wright will bring a wealth of legal experience and a lifetime of public service to the position to which she has been confirmed, and will add diversity to the federal bench. She will be the first African American woman to serve as a district court judge in Minnesota. It is shocking — but not surprising — that confirming a nominee of her stature has become such a rare and noteworthy event in this Senate.
