Joe Biden Scores Huge Win With Judge Appointment, Outpaces Trump

The Senate voted to confirm Dale Ho, a leading voting rights attorney, to a lifetime federal judgeship on Wednesday in a major win for President Biden, who first made the nomination in September 2021.

Ho will become a district court judge for the Southern District of New York following his narrow approval, by 50 votes to 49, with 48 Republicans voting against, along with Democrat Joe Manchin.

Ho is the 133rd judge Biden has gotten approved by the Senate, beating former President Donald Trump who had 118 accepted at this point in his administration. One legal expert told Newsweek that Biden has "shattered records" for nominating judges since taking office.

The vote shows Biden is reaping the rewards of the Democrats' strong midterm election performance, which gave the party a slim majority of 51 affiliated senators. Though Kyrsten Sinema left the Democrats before being sworn in, she has generally carried on voting with the party.

In total, 49 of the 50 Democratic caucusing senators voted to approve Ho's appointment, along with Sinema. All Republicans voted against except for Tim Scott, who was campaigning in Iowa as part of his presidential bid, as well as Democrat Manchin. Even if Scott had been present the Democrats would still have been able to confirm Ho's appointment, thanks to the vice president's tie-breaking vote.

Ho has been director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) since 2013, and during this time he successfully scuppered the Trump administration's bid to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census.

Ho's judicial nomination became gridlocked in the last Congress, with the Judiciary Committee deadlocked with 11 votes in favor and against. However, after the midterm elections, the Democrats achieved a majority on the committee, allowing them to approve the confirmation which then passed to the Senate floor.

Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke out against Ho's appointment, commenting: "Let me be absolutely clear. Senate Republicans will not participate in rubber-stamping radical nominees."

Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee accused Ho of showing "open contempt for the Constitution" in past statements, including a tweet in which the judge referred to himself as a "wild-eyed sort of leftist." Ho later insisted the remark was a joke about how he is perceived by many on the right.

Ho is the fifth Biden appointee to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to be approved by the Senate and will be only the second Asian judge to preside over the court.

Professor Carl Tobias, an expert in courts and judicial selection at the University of Richmond, told Newsweek that Biden's record of nominating judges compares favorably with his three immediate predecessors.

"President Biden has been extremely successful in appointing judges. In his campaign, Biden pledged to make this a very high priority, and he has kept that promise," Tobias said. "Biden has shattered records for nominating and confirming record numbers of judges, who are well qualified, mainstream, and diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, experience, and ideology. For example, nearly two-thirds of his appointees are women and the same percentage are people of color.

"Biden's selection record compares very favorably with those of Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump," Tobias said. "For example, at this point in his presidency, Biden has confirmed 133 appellate judges and district judges, while Trump had appointed 118. Biden has specifically appointed more Black women to appeals courts, which are one level below the Supreme Court, than all of his predecessors combined. In sharp contrast, Trump nominated no Black individual to any appeals court."

Newsweek reached out to the White House and the ACLU via email for comment.

Earlier this month, Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville skipped a vote on appointing Jared Bernstein as the new chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, as he was attending an event with Trump. Bernstein, a top Biden economic aide, was approved by 50 votes to 49.

Update 6/16/23, 1:15 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with comment from Professor Carl Tobias.