2026-03-18T06:00:00-0400 / CBS新闻
华盛顿—— 特朗普总统在白宫的第一个四年给联邦司法系统和最高法院带来了重大变革，使其向右倾斜。
但在总统的第二个任期，其对联邦法院的影响可能会减弱，因为多种因素——职位空缺减少、退休速度放缓以及即将到来的中期选举结果——可能会减缓特朗普在第一个任期内推动超过200名法官确认的司法机器。
截至目前，参议院已确认特朗普总统提名的33名联邦法官：6人进入上诉法院，27人进入地方法院。虽然这一数字超过了总统第一任期前13个月任命的24名法官，但当时的任命包括一名最高法院大法官和13名上诉法院法官。
美国有37个联邦地区法院职位空缺，未来几个月还将有6个职位空缺。上诉法院也有4个未来职位空缺。
在这47个当前和未来的空缺职位中，特朗普仅宣布提名了12人。
“在第一届政府中，任命优秀法官是非常高的优先事项。我认为在本届政府中，这一优先级没有那么高，原因有三：第一，没有那么多职位空缺；第二，他们第一次就取得了很大成功，尤其是在最高法院，没有太多进一步成功的空间；第三，他们现在更多地通过行政行动来推进议程，这显然是当前的重点，”美国伦理与公共政策中心高级研究员、司法提名领域的主要评论员埃德·惠兰在接受CBS新闻采访时表示，“我认为现在对空缺职位的关注程度不如第一次那么高。”
特朗普的第一任期
2017年特朗普入主白宫时，有大量联邦司法职位空缺，这得益于当时的参议院多数党领袖米奇·麦康奈尔在奥巴马总统任期最后两年阻止其提名。这包括2016年安东宁·斯卡利亚大法官去世后留下的最高法院席位，特朗普选择尼尔·戈萨奇大法官填补该席位。
由于麦康奈尔的阻挠，以及当时的白宫法律顾问唐·麦加恩和参议院司法委员会主席查克·格拉斯利对司法确认的高度重视，参议院确认了特朗普提名的234名第三修正案法院（联邦法院）法官，其中包括戈萨奇以及另外两名最高法院大法官布雷特·卡瓦诺和艾米·科尼·巴雷特。
在本届政府中，司法提名由白宫提名事务副法律顾问史蒂夫·肯尼领导。白宫发言人阿比盖尔·杰克逊在声明中告诉CBS新闻，特朗普政府在确认速度上已经超过了第一任期，“刚刚开始”。
“特朗普总统正在挑选高度合格的候选人，他们对宪法充满尊重，正在迅速获得确认，并将在法庭上任职数十年，”她说，“面对民主党的历史性阻挠，特朗普政府仍然在确认那些将维护宪法和法治的候选人方面取得了巨大成功。”
尽管如此，总统要想达到第一任期的确认水平仍需面临严峻挑战。
“蓝色便条”政策
对特朗普来说，一个复杂因素是参议院的“蓝色便条”政策，即表明本州参议员对司法提名的支持或反对。在总统第一任期内，格拉斯利允许上诉法院的提名在没有两位本州参议员的积极支持的情况下继续推进，但他对地区法院提名保留了这一政策。
因此，地区法院候选人除非得到两位本州参议员的支持，否则不会在参议院司法委员会获得确认听证会。
特朗普曾推动格拉斯利废除对法官和美国检察官提名的蓝色便条政策，因为他提名的领导弗吉尼亚州东部和新泽西州联邦检察官办公室的人选——他的前私人律师林赛·哈利根和阿利娜·哈巴——遭到了代表这些州的民主党参议员的反对。但格拉斯利一直坚定地拒绝废除这一长期存在的参议院传统。
目前尚不清楚缺乏民主党参议员对有空缺地区法院席位的支持，在多大程度上阻碍了总统的司法提名进程。28个现有空缺职位中，有11个没有提名，这些空缺位于蓝色州或一共和一民主两党议员的州。但7个没有提名的空缺席位位于德克萨斯州的地区法院，该州有两名共和党参议员。
一位白宫官员表示，政府始终会咨询本州参议员。
反对声更强烈，退休人数减少
布鲁金斯学会研究司法确认的学者罗素·惠勒1月份的分析显示，特朗普的司法提名在本任期面临更大的反对。
在第一任期的第一年，总统提名的12名上诉法院法官中，有7人获得至少40票反对。但截至第二任期，他提名的6名上诉法院法官均获得40票或更多反对票，惠勒发现。
在地区法院确认方面，总统第一任期前10名确认的地方法官中没有一人获得40票或更多反对票，而第二任期第一年的21名确认中，有18人至少得到40名参议员的反对。
“这只是我们两极分化政治的一部分，”惠勒告诉CBS新闻，“过去的想法是，总统赢得了选举，我们会让他任命法官，除非他们真的越界。现在这种想法已经荡然无存。”
总统面临的另一个挑战是法官选择继续在职的数量。惠勒发现，现任法官的退休率不如特朗普第一任期。
法官通常会在与任命他们的总统同党执政期间退休。例如，根据惠勒的分析，在拜登前总统任期内，2020年大选至其第一年末，有26名民主党任命的上诉法院法官和3名其他党派法官离职。
在特朗普第一任期内，同一时期内有15名共和党任命的上诉法院法官和4名民主党任命的法官离职。但在总统第二任期内，2024年大选后至其重返白宫第一年结束时，上诉法院仅出现3个空缺——均为共和党任命的法官。
“我们都可以猜测原因，”他说，“一方面，你可能会说，‘天哪，我是联邦法官，这家伙（特朗普）一直说我的坏话，煽动他的支持者。我不想让我的丈夫和孩子在杂货店被疯子攻击。’所以法官说，‘我要离开这里。’但他们没有这样做，我认为这可能是因为他们不想给他留空缺职位让他填补。”
尽管如此，三名由前总统乔治·W·布什任命的上诉法院法官上月宣布转为高级法官（一种半退休状态，允许总统填补其职位）。他们的宣布是在11月中期选举之前，这次选举将决定共和党是否继续保持参议院多数席位。
“最大的问题是，共和党是否会在选举中保留参议院控制权？”惠兰表示，“如果他们不保留，特朗普任期最后两年的确认数字将会非常低，甚至可能为零。但即使他们保留，也不清楚会有多少职位空缺。”
对潜在继任者的担忧
一些人猜测，退休人数不足可能是因为对潜在继任者的担忧。特朗普目前提名的一些候选人，如被提名为第七巡回上诉法院法官的丽贝卡·泰布森和第六巡回上诉法院法官的惠特尼·赫尔曼多弗，都拥有传统保守派背景，包括分别为斯卡利亚和塞缪尔·阿利托大法官的书记员经历。
但其中一人，被提名为第三巡回上诉法院法官的埃米尔·博韦，去年因在司法部的工作受到审查，其资格受到质疑。博韦曾担任特朗普的私人辩护律师，在被提名联邦法官之前是司法部高级官员。一名司法部吹哨人指控博韦暗示政府律师应无视法院命令。他还指示检察官放弃对前纽约市市长埃里克·亚当斯的腐败指控，以换取其与联邦移民执法部门的合作。
博韦以50-49票的微弱优势在参议院获得确认。
退休决定是个性化和个人化的，一些法官尽管多年前就有资格退休，但仍继续在职。然而，一些保守派法官，包括一些由特朗普任命的法官，不喜欢总统谈论司法系统的方式，并担心这些言论可能预示着他对填补空缺职位的看法，根据前参议院司法委员会共和党提名首席法律顾问格雷格·努齐亚塔的说法。
“没有法官会对总统基于对白宫主人忠诚度的任何概念来挑选未来候选人感到兴奋，”努齐亚塔如今领导法治协会，他在接受CBS新闻采访时表示，“这让所有意识形态背景的法官都感到反感，包括那些由总统任命、通常对总统评价不错的法官，他们真的不喜欢这种心态或言论，我认为这普遍被认为对司法系统有害。”
第一任期遗产——以及日益紧张的关系
特朗普在第一届政府重塑联邦司法系统的成功归功于麦加恩、麦康奈尔、格拉斯利以及外部保守团体的努力，他们将他的当选视为向右倾斜法院的难得机会。由于司法任命，特朗普扭转了三个上诉法院的意识形态构成，并使曾被视为自由派法院的第九巡回上诉法院更接近意识形态均衡。
通过他的三位最高法院任命，法院的保守派多数派扩大到6-3。最高法院随后实现了保守法律运动的几个长期目标：推翻确立堕胎宪法权利的里程碑判决罗伊诉韦德案；终止高等教育中的平权行动；削弱联邦监管机构的权力。
在当前任期内，最高法院似乎准备推翻一项已有90年历史的裁决，该裁决允许国会保护某些独立联邦机构的官员免受总统随意解雇，这将赋予特朗普对这些委员会和机构更多权力。
但总统公开对他的前外部司法顾问之一伦纳德·利奥表示不满，利奥在2016年斯卡利亚去世后帮助制定了一份最高法院候选人名单。特朗普抨击利奥是“卑鄙小人”，“可能恨美国”。
这一攻击是在国际贸易法院的一个三人法官小组裁定他的许多关税非法之后发生的。最高法院上月维持了这一裁决，之后特朗普在社交媒体上对他任命的两位大法官——戈萨奇和巴雷特——进行人身攻击，指责他们投票废除关税。
总统在周日的社交媒体帖子中继续谴责最高法院的关税裁决，称其“完全无能且令人尴尬”，是一个“被武器化和不公正的政治组织”。
他写道，共和党任命的大法官“公然不尊重提名他们担任美国最高法院最高职位的总统，并且通过错误和不当的裁决和意图，证明他们有多‘诚实’、‘独立’和‘合法’”。
由前总统乔治·W·布什任命的首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨与巴雷特、戈萨奇和三名自由派大法官组成六人多数派，裁定特朗普的全面关税制度违宪。
努齐亚塔指出，总统对司法系统和他在第一任期任命的法官的攻击，使得关于特朗普在白宫第二次任职的一个重大问题是，他是否会寻找“不同类型的法官”，能够展示政治忠诚而非司法保守主义。
“他当然开始本届政府时试图用个人忠诚而非其他标准来挑选行政部门人员，包括他试图任命的美国检察官职位，我认为这引发了人们对他将对司法系统应用此类忠诚度测试的担忧，特别是如果最高法院出现空缺的话，”他说。
尽管博韦的提名加剧了这些担忧，但努齐亚塔表示，目前还不清楚这是否是一种模式的开始。
Trump’s judicial confirmation machine shows signs of slowing compared to first-term boom
2026-03-18T06:00:00-0400 / CBS News
Washington — President Trump’s first four years in the White House brought about significant changes to the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court, shifting it rightward.
But the president’s second term could yield less of an impact on the federal bench, as a confluence of factors — fewer vacancies, a slower pace of retirements and the results of the upcoming midterm elections — are likely to slow the judicial machine that churned out more than 200 judges in Mr. Trump’s first term.
The Senate has so far confirmed 33 of Mr. Trump’s nominees to the federal bench: six to the courts of appeals and 27 to the district courts. While that surpasses the 24 judges who were appointed in the first 13 months of the president’s first term, those picks included one Supreme Court justice and 13 judges named to the courts of appeals.
There are 37 current vacancies on the nation’s trial courts, and another six seats are set to open up in the coming months. There are also four future vacancies on the appeals courts.
Of the 47 vacancies, current and future, Mr. Trump has announced just 12 nominees.
“Getting good judges on the courts was a very high priority in the first administration. I don’t think it’s as high a priority in this administration for three reasons: One, there just aren’t as many seats available. Two, they succeeded so much the first time around, especially with the Supreme Court, that there’s not that much more room for success. And three, they are trying to do so much through executive action. That’s clearly been the focus now,” Ed Whelan, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who is a leading commentator on judicial nominations, told CBS News. “I don’t think that the vacancies are getting the same level of attention that they got the first time around.”
Trump’s first term
Mr. Trump came into the White House in 2017 with an abundance of judicial vacancies to fill, thanks to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to block former President Barack Obama’s nominees during his final two years in office. That included a Supreme Court seat left open by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. Mr. Trump selected Justice Neil Gorsuch to fill it.
As a result of McConnell’s blockade, and a sharp focus on judicial confirmations from then-White House counsel Don McGahn and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, the Senate confirmed 234 of Mr. Trump’s nominees to the Article III courts, a figure that includes Gorsuch and two other Supreme Court justices, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
In this administration, judicial nominations are led by Steve Kenny, deputy White House counsel for nominations. Abigail Jackson, White House spokeswoman, told CBS News in a statement that the Trump administration is “just getting started” after surpassing the pace of confirmations from the president’s first term.
“President Trump is selecting highly qualified nominees, with great respect for our Constitution, who are being confirmed expeditiously and will serve on the bench for decades,” she said. “In the face of historic Democrat obstruction, the Trump administration has still be[en] wildly successful confirming nominees who will uphold the Constitution and rule of law.”
Still, the president faces a steep climb to match the level of confirmations in his first term.
The blue slip
One complicating factor for Mr. Trump is a Senate policy known as the blue slip, which signals a home-state senator’s support or disapproval of a judicial nominee. During the president’s first term, Grassley allowed picks to the appeals courts to proceed without positive blue slips from both home-state senators, but he has kept the policy in place for district court nominees.
As a result, a candidate for the district court doesn’t get a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee unless they have the backing of both of their home-state senators.
Mr. Trump has pushed Grassley to get rid of the blue slip for his nominees for judges and U.S. attorneys, as his picks to lead federal prosecutors’ offices in eastern Virginia and New Jersey — his former personal lawyers Lindsey Halligan and Alina Habba, respectively — were opposed by the Democratic senators representing those states. But Grassley has remained firm, refusing to do away with the longstanding Senate tradition.
It’s unclear how much a lack of support from Democratic senators in states with open district court seats is stymieing the judicial nomination process for the president. Eleven of the 28 existing vacancies without a nominee are in blue states or states with one Republican and one Democratic senator. But seven of the open seats without nominees are on district courts in Texas, which has two GOP senators.
A White House official said the administration always consults with home-state senators.
Sharper opposition, and a dearth of retirements
Mr. Trump’s judicial nominees face greater opposition from senators this term, according to a January analysis by Russell Wheeler, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who studies judicial confirmations.
During the first year of his first term, seven of the president’s 12 confirmations to the appellate courts received at least 40 “no” votes. But so far in his second term, all six of his picks to the appeals courts received 40 or more votes against their confirmations, Wheeler found.
For district court confirmations, none of the president’s first 10 district judges confirmed in his first term garnered 40 or more “no” votes, while 18 of his 21 confirmations in the first year of his second term were opposed by at least 40 senators.
“It’s just part of our polarized politics,” Wheeler told CBS News “It used to be the idea was that the president won the election and we’ll let him appoint judges unless they’re really just beyond the pale because we expect the same thing when our person is in the White House. Well, that’s all out the window now.”
Another challenge for the president is the number of judges choosing to remain active. Wheeler found that sitting judges today are not retiring at the same rate they did during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Judges typically retire during the administration of the same party as the president who appointed them. During former President Biden’s term, for example, 26 Democratic-appointed appeals court judges and three from the opposite party stepped aside between the 2020 election and the end of his first year in office, according to Wheeler’s analysis.
In Mr. Trump’s first term, 15 Republican appointees to the appeals courts and four Democratic appointees left their seats within that same time frame. But in the president’s second term, there were just three appeals court vacancies created — all from Republican appointees — after the 2024 election and through the end of Mr. Trump’s first year back, Wheeler found.
“We can all speculate why that is,” he said. “On the one hand, you might say, ‘Geez, here I am a federal judge and this guy is saying all this stuff about me, riling up his base. I don’t want my husband and kids to be attacked by some lunatic in the grocery store.’ So the judge says, ‘I’m going to get out of here.’ But they’re not doing that, and I think it could be because they just don’t want to give him vacancies to fill.”
Still, three appeals court judges appointed by former President George W. Bush announced last month that they are taking senior status, a form of semi-retirement that allows the president to fill their seats. Their announcements come ahead of the midterm elections in November, which will determine whether Republicans hold onto their majority in the Senate.
“The big question is, do Republicans retain control of the Senate in the elections?” Whelan said. “If they don’t, the numbers in Trump’s last two years are going to be very, very low if not zero. But even if they do, it just isn’t clear that there will be that many seats that become available.”
Concerns about potential successors
Some have speculated that the dearth of retirements may be because of concerns about potential successors. Some of Mr. Trump’s picks so far, such as Rebecca Taibleson to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and Whitney Hermandorfer to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, boast traditional conservative credentials, including clerkships with Scalia and Justice Samuel Alito, respectively.
But one, Emil Bove to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, came under scrutiny for his work at the Justice Department last year and faced questions about his qualifications. Bove served as Mr. Trump’s personal defense lawyer and was a high-ranking Justice Department official until he was tapped for the federal bench. A Justice Department whistleblower accused Bove of suggesting that government lawyers should ignore court orders. He also directed prosecutors to drop corruption charges against former New York City Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Bove was narrowly confirmed by the Senate in a 50-49 vote.
Retirement decisions are individualized and personal, and some judges have continued to remain in active service despite being eligible to retire years ago. But some conservative judges, including some appointed by Mr. Trump, dislike how the president talks about the judiciary and are concerned about what those comments may portend for how he views filling open seats, according to Gregg Nunziata, former chief nominations counsel for Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“No judge is going to be excited about the prospect of a president selecting future nominees based on any conception of loyalty to the occupant of the White House,” Nunziata, who today leads the group Society for the Rule of Law, told CBS News. “That offends judges across the ideological spectrum, including judges who were appointed by the president and who generally think well of the president and really don’t like that mindset or that rhetoric, and I think broadly view it as damaging to the judiciary.”
A first-term legacy — and growing tensions
Mr. Trump’s success in reshaping the federal judiciary in his first administration was attributed to the work of McGahn, McConnell, Grassley and outside conservative groups who viewed his election as a rare opportunity to shift the bench rightward. As a result of his judicial appointments, Mr. Trump flipped the ideological composition of three appeals courts and brought the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which had been regarded as a liberal court, closer to parity.
With his three Supreme Court appointments, the court’s conservative majority widened to 6-3. The high court would go on to achieve several long-held goals of the conservative legal movement: overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that established the constitutional right to abortion; ending affirmative action in higher education; and curtailing the power of federal regulatory agencies.
In its current term, the high court also appears poised to unwind a 90-year-old decision that allows Congress to protect officials at certain independent federal agencies from being fired by the president at will, which would give Mr. Trump more power over those boards and commissions.
But the president has publicly soured on one of his former outside judicial advisers, Leonard Leo, who helped craft a list of potential Supreme Court candidates after Scalia’s death in 2016. Mr. Trump has lambasted Leo, calling him a “sleazebag” who “probably hates America.”
The president’s attack came after a three-judge panel of judges on the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that many of his tariffs were illegal. The Supreme Court went on to affirm that decision last month, after which Mr. Trump lobbed personal attacks on two of the justices he appointed — Gorsuch and Barrett — for voting to invalidate the levies.
The president has continued to denounce the high court over its tariffs decision, calling it “completely inept and embarrassing” and a “weaponized and unjust Political Organization” in a social media post Sunday.
The Republican-appointed justices, he wrote, “openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the Land, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and go out of their way, with bad and wrongful rulings and intentions, to prove how ‘honest,’ ‘independent,’ and ‘legitimate’ they are.”
Chief Justice John Roberts, selected for the Supreme Court by former President George W. Bush, joined Barrett, Gorsuch and the three liberal justices to form the six-justice majority that ruled against Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariff regime.
Pointing to the president’s attacks on the judiciary and the judges he appointed in his first term, Nunziata said a significant question about Mr. Trump’s second stint in the White House is whether he’d look for a “different type of judge” who could demonstrate political loyalty over judicial conservatism.
“He certainly began this administration trying to staff the executive branch with nominees more distinguished by personal loyalty than anything else, and the pattern of those appointments to the executive branch, including people he’s tried to place into positions of U.S. attorneys, I think give considerable rise to a concern that he will apply such a loyalty test to the judiciary and particularly if a Supreme Court vacancy should open,” he said.
While Bove’s nomination amplified those concerns, Nunziata said it’s still too early to tell whether it was the start of a pattern.