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WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden secured the 235th judicial confirmation of his presidency Friday, an accomplishment that exceeds his predecessor’s total by one after Democrats put extra emphasis on the federal courts following Donald Trump’s far-reaching first term, when he filled three seats on the Supreme Court.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., teed up votes on two California district judges, and they were likely to be the last judicial confirmations this year before Congress adjourns and makes way for a new, Republican-led Senate.
The confirmation of Serena Raquel Murillo to be a district judge for the Central District of California broke Trump’s mark. Come next year, Republicans will look to boost Trump’s already considerable influence on the makeup of the federal judiciary in his second term.
Biden and Senate Democrats placed particular focus on adding women, minorities and public defenders to the judicial rank. About two-thirds of Biden’s appointees are women and a solid majority of appointees are people of color. The most notable appointee was Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first African American woman to serve on the nation’s highest court.
“Prior to our effort, the number of women on the federal bench was really diminished. It was overwhelmingly white males,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “We consciously moved forward to bring more women to the bench, and believe me, we had a great talent pool to work with. So I think it’ll enhance the image of the court and its work product to bring these new judges on.”
Biden also placed an emphasis on bringing more civil rights lawyers, public defenders and labor rights lawyers to expand the professional backgrounds of the federal judiciary. More than 45 appointees are public defenders and more than two dozen served as civil rights lawyers.
While Biden did get more district judges confirmed than Trump, he had fewer higher-tier circuit court appointments than Trump — 45 compared to 54 for Trump. And he got one Supreme Court appointment compared with three for Trump. Republicans, much to Democrats’ frustration, filled Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the court the week before the 2020 presidential election. Ginsburg had passed away in September.
Democrats also faced the challenge of confirming nominees during two years of a 50-50 Senate. Rarely a week went by in the current Congress when Schumer did not tee up votes on judicial confirmations as liberal groups urged Democrats to show the same kind of urgency on judges that Republicans exhibited under Trump.
Some Senate Republicans were harshly critical of Biden’s choices. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said talk of diversity did not extend to the views of the nominees.
“One of the consequences of the age of Trump is that it drove Democrats insane and it drove them to the extreme left, so they put people on the bench who were selected because they were extreme partisans,” Cruz said.
Liberal-leaning advocacy groups said they are delighted with the number of judges Democrats secured, but even more so with the quality of the nominees. They said diversity in personal and professional backgrounds improves judicial decision-making, helps build public trust and inspires people from all walks of life to pursue legal careers.
“For our federal judiciary to actually deliver equal justice for all, it really has to be for all, and that is one reason why we certainly applaud this administration for prioritizing both professional but also demographic diversity,” said Lena Zwarensteyn, senior director of the fair courts program at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and the next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Democrats showed newfound resolve on judicial confirmations.
“They learned a lesson from the first Trump administration,” Grassley said. “Paying attention to the number of judges you get and the type of judges you put on the court is worth it.”
Part of the urgency from Democrats came as they watched the nation’s highest court overturn abortion protections, eliminate affirmative action in higher education and weaken the federal government’s ability to protect the environment, public health and workplace safety through regulations. The cases showed that the balance of power in Washington extends to the judicial branch.
Trump will inherit nearly three dozen judicial vacancies, but that number is expected to rise because of Republican-appointed judges who held off on retirement in hopes that a Republican would return to office and pick their replacements.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, acknowledged that the sense of accomplishment for Democrats is muted somewhat knowing that Trump will have another term to continue shaping the federal judiciary.
“I’m not ready to uncork the champagne just because we’ve done some really good work over the last four years,” Blumenthal said. “We need to be prepared to work, hope for the best and try to defeat nominees who are simply unqualified. We have our work cut out for us. The prospects ahead are sobering.”
Grassley promised that he’ll work to best Biden’s number.
“Let me assure you, by January 20th of 2029, Trump will be bragging about getting 240 judges,” Grassley said.

KYIV, Ukraine: A Ukrainian attack Friday on a town in Russia’s Kursk border region using US-supplied missiles killed six people, including a child, a senior local official said. The attack came hours after Ukrainian authorities said a Russian ballistic missile strike on Kyiv killed at least one person and wounded 13.
Moscow claimed the Kyiv strike was in response to a Ukrainian strike on Russian soil using American-made weapons earlier this week.
Ten other people in the Kursk town of Rylsk, including a 13-year-old, were hospitalized after Friday’s strike with HIMARS missiles, Kursk acting Gov. Alexander Khinshtein said. He provided no further details.
Russia is trying to push back a Ukrainian incursion into Kursk that was launched in early August, but Ukraine’s troops are dug in.
The truck-mounted HIMARS launchers fire GPS-guided missiles capable of hitting targets up to 80 kilometers (50 miles) away. The mobile launchers are hard for the enemy to spot and can quickly change position after firing to escape airstrikes.
President Joe Biden last month authorized Ukraine to use US-supplied missiles to strike deeper inside Russia, easing limitations on the longer range weapons. The move was a response to Russia deploying thousands of North Korean troops to reinforce its war effort, officials said.
Shortly before sunrise Friday, at least three loud blasts were heard in Kyiv. Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted five Iskander short-range ballistic missiles fired at the city. The attack knocked out heating to 630 residential buildings, 16 medical facilities and 30 schools and kindergartens, the city administration said. Falling missile debris caused damage and sparked fires in three districts.
“We ask citizens to immediately respond to reports of ballistic attack threats, because there is very little time to find shelter,” the air force said.
During the nearly three years since the war began, Russia has regularly bombarded civilian areas of Ukraine, often in an attempt to cripple the power grid and unnerve Ukrainians. Ukraine, struggling to hold back Russia’s bigger army on the front line, has attempted to strike Russian infrastructure supporting the country’s war effort.
The falling debris in Kyiv caused damage to around two dozen high-rise office buildings in the city center as well as the landmark Catholic Church of St. Nicholas and the Kyiv National Linguistic University.
What may have been the blast wave from an intercepted low-flying missile also blew out windows and caused other damage at six embassies, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.
About five hours later, air raid sirens rang out again. Valeriia Dubova, a 32-year-old photographer, took cover with many others in a crowded subway station.
She said that in the morning attack, she sheltered at home and could feel the walls shaking. Outside, fire engines and ambulances raced down city streets, she said.
“You could see that many buildings, high-rises, were damaged, with glass shards on the ground, far from the explosion epicenter,” she said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that the strike was in response to a Ukrainian missile attack on Russia’s Rostov border region two days earlier. That attack used six American-made Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, missiles and four Storm Shadow air-launched missiles provided by the United Kingdom, it said.
That day, Ukraine claimed to have targeted a Rostov oil refinery as part of its campaign to strike Russian infrastructure supporting the country’s war effort.
Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied weapons to strike Russia has angered the Kremlin.
At the United Nations on Friday, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia asserted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “is doing everything he can to undermine any peaceful initiatives and to provoke Russia into escalating the conflict.”
Ukraine fired several American-supplied longer-range missiles into Russia for the first time on Nov. 19 after Washington eased restrictions on their use.
That development prompted Russia to use a new hypersonic missile, called Oreshnik, for the first time. Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that the missile could be used to target government buildings in Kyiv, though there have been no reports of an Oreshnik being used for a second time.
Answering the Ukrainian attack on Rostov on Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry said the military carried out a group strike with “high-precision, long-range weapons” on the command center of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and another location where it said Ukraine’s Neptune missile systems are designed and produced.
The attack also targeted Ukrainian ground-based cruise missile systems and US-made Patriot air defense systems, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
“The objectives of the strike have been achieved. All objects are hit,” the ministry said in a Telegram post.
Its claims could not immediately be verified.
In other Russian attacks on civilian areas of Ukraine, six people, including a 15-year-old girl, were injured by missiles in Kryvyi Rih, regional authorities said. It was the second straight night of attacks in Zelensky’s hometown.
Also, Russian artillery shelled the southern city of Kherson Friday morning, causing widespread damage and leaving around 60,000 people without power, regional Gov. Olesksandr Prokudin said.