By David Morgan and Nate Raymond
WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (Reuters) - A last-minute effort by US President Donald Trump to install as many judges as possible before Democrats take control of the US Senate is running into resistance from some fellow Republicans.
Until recently, Senate Republicans had routinely approved Trump's nominees for lifetime seats on district and appeals courts during his second term, confirming 57 so far and helping him cement a conservative imprint on the judiciary that will outlast
his presidency.
But as the White House and Senate Republican leaders press ahead with judicial nominees during the lame-duck session, a handful of Republicans have blocked or cast doubt on three nominees selected for their home states.
Senators traditionally help choose judges for vacancies in their states. Trial court nominees are especially vulnerable because, under Senate custom, home-state senators can block them by withholding a “blue slip," a form indicating support to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
While generally honoring that tradition, the White House has sometimes picked conservatives to fill judicial vacancies over the objections of Republican senators.
"We put up a lot of really qualified candidates that we sent to the White House, and they basically ignored that and just put through their one," Senator Alan Armstrong, an Oklahoma Republican, said.
Two outgoing Republican members on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, can deny such nominees the votes needed to advance.
'NOT THE WAY IT WORKS HERE'
The White House on Tuesday took the rare step of withdrawing US District Judge Lee Rudofsky's nomination to the St. Louis-based 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals and replacing him with Arkansas Supreme Court Justice J. Cody Hiland after US Senators John Boozman and Tom Cotton of Arkansas opposed Rudofsky.
Outgoing Republican Senators Armstrong and Cornyn have withheld public support for two nominees in their states, while Tillis has used his position on the committee to help block candidates opposed by his colleagues.
Tillis, who has a fractured relationship with Trump, told reporters on Thursday that the White House has at times essentially told senators, "This is our guy, I hope you'll get on board."
"That's not how it works here," he said. "They should expect they're going to get this response."
For the White House, the next few weeks reflect the last hurrah on a project that began during Trump's first administration to shift the federal judiciary's ideological balance to the right, an initiative whose effects will be felt for years after Trump leaves office.
"We expect all judicial nominees pending in the Senate to be confirmed this year," a White House official said in a statement.
Trump made 234 judicial appointments during his first term in office from 2017 to 2021, including three members of the US Supreme Court's current 6-3 conservative supermajority. Roughly one-third of active judges are now Trump appointees.
THUNE PRIORITIZING JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday that judicial confirmations were a top priority while Republicans retain control of the chamber.
The Senate confirmed its first judicial nominee of the lame-duck session on Thursday. Twenty-three nominees remain pending, including Colorado-based US District Judge Daniel Domenico, whose nomination to the Denver-based 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals is set for a Monday vote.
But Tillis, who is retiring, and Cornyn, who lost a primary to a Trump-backed challenger, are now in their final days in office and have indicated a willingness to block some nominees pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which they are both members.
Rob Luther, a George Mason University law professor who worked on judicial nominations in the White House Counsel's Office during Trump's first term, said senators who are now on "borrowed time" stand in the way of "movement conservatives" being appointed to the bench.
Tillis acknowledged he had supported efforts by Arkansas' senators to block Rudofsky, a first-term Trump appointee known for a ruling that weakened enforcement of a major voting rights law.
Boozman, who led the opposition, instead favored Hiland, who said in August that he had been offered a trial court nomination, which he declined.
SENATORS DESERVE 'RESPECT'
Tillis said senators deserved more "respect" from the White House in selecting judges for their states.
Cornyn has separately declined to commit to supporting T. Elliot Gaiser, Trump's nominee for a federal judgeship in Dallas. Gaiser, who hails from Ohio, was selected without going through the usual senator-driven screening process in Texas.
Gaiser now leads the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which has issued opinions endorsing some of the most controversial elements of Trump's agenda. Without a blue slip from Cornyn, Gaiser cannot appear at a Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.
Tillis is likewise backing Armstrong's opposition to Zach West, a lawyer in the Oklahoma attorney general's office who has drawn praise from conservative legal activists for defending abortion restrictions and supporting the participation of religious schools in Oklahoma's charter school program.
Armstrong initially returned a favorable blue slip for West but later withdrew his support. Tillis' backing leaves West without enough votes to clear the committee when it next decides whom to advance on Tuesday.
Complicating matters, Armstrong will leave the Senate on November 30 and be replaced by Senator-elect Kevin Hern, a Republican who could take a different position on West. Tillis said that, for now, he will continue blocking the nominee.
"When I've got two Republicans from the state telling me to move on it, I move on it," Tillis said. "If I have one or more asking me not to, then I'm not."
(Reporting by David Morgan in Washington and Nate Raymond in Boston. Editing by Michael Learmonth and Sanjeev Miglani)
