Welcome to the Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024, Brew.
By: Ethan Rice
Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:
- Judicial confirmations during lame-duck periods
- Trump nominating Cabinet members faster than previous administrations
- Two Mississippi judicial elections to be decided in runoff election
Judicial confirmations during lame-duck periods
President Joe Biden (D) and the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate have a little more than one month left to fill vacancies in federal courts until President-elect Donald Trump (R) takes office and the Republican Senate majority is sworn in.
So far, the Senate has confirmed eight Biden appointees in the lame-duck period since the Nov. 5 election:
- Sharad Desai to the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.
- Amir Ali to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
- Rebecca Pennell to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington.
- Mustafa Kasubhai to the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.
- Sarah Russell to the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
- Embry J. Kidd to the U.S. District Court for the Eleventh Circuit.
- Jonathan E. Hawley to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois.
- April Perry to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
In the past 100 years, there have been five lame-duck periods where a different party replaced the president and assumed majority control of the Senate.
- Trump in 2020 (replaced with Biden and a Democratic Senate majority)
- Jimmy Carter (D) in 1980 (replaced with Ronald Reagan (R) and a Republican Senate majority)
- Harry S. Truman (D) in 1952 (replaced with Dwight Eisenhower (R) and a Republican Senate majority)
- Herbert Hoover (R) in 1932 (replaced with Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D) and a Democratic Senate majority)
- William Howard Taft (R) in 1912 (replaced with Woodrow Wilson (D) and a Democratic Senate majority)
On average, the five lame-duck presidents appointed and received Senate confirmation of an average of three judges. In the five other lame-duck periods this century when Senate control and the presidency changed partisan hands, Trump had the most appointees confirmed with 14. Taft, Hoover, and Truman did not nominate any judges during their lame-duck periods. Of the other presidents during this period, three appointed judges during the space between the election of their successor and the end of their last term: Obama (1), Calvin Coolidge (R) (14), and Theodore Roosevelt (R) (2).
The newly-elected members of the Senate will be sworn in on Jan. 3. Heading into the 2024 general election, Democrats had a 47-49 majority with four independents. Three of those independents caucused with the Democrats, and one other counted towards the Democratic majority for committee purposes. Republicans won a 53-47 majority on Nov. 5, gaining seats in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Democrats gained one seat in Arizona.
Since taking office, Biden has nominated 252 individuals to federal judgeships on Article III courts. Two hundred nineteen of the nominees have been confirmed.
Forty-three of the 870 total federal judgeships are vacant. Including non-Article III judges from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the United States territorial courts, there are 43 vacancies out of 890 active federal judicial positions.
There are five key steps in the vacancy process: a presidential nomination, a U.S. Senate committee hearing, a Senate committee vote to report the nominee to the full Senate, a full Senate vote on confirmation, and a confirmed nominee taking their judicial oath and receiving their judicial commission.
Ballotpedia publishes a federal vacancy count report tracking vacancies, nominations, and confirmations to all United States Article III federal courts each month. Click here to view the most recent report covering activity in November.
Trump nominating Cabinet members faster than previous administrations
President-elect Donald Trump (R) has named 21 Cabinet nominees since being elected on Nov. 5. Trump announced these nominees an average of 10.7 days after Election Day, the fewest out of the last four presidents, including Trump himself in 2016.
Joe Biden’s (D) average for the same positions was 38.5 days after Election Day, Trump’s first term average for these positions was 27.2 days after Election Day, and Barack Obama’s (D) average was 36.2 days after Election Day.
The following chart shows how long it took the projected winner of four recent presidential elections—Obama in 2008, Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020, and Donald Trump (R) in 2024—to announce their nominees for Cabinet and Cabinet-rank positions.
White House chief of staff was the first position all four announced, with Obama and Trump ahead of his second term taking the shortest time (2 days after the election) and Biden the longest (8 days after the election).
The Cabinet comes from Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution, which states that the president “may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices.”
While not explicitly identified in the Constitution, Cabinet secretaries include the 15 agency heads who are in the presidential line of succession. There are other Cabinet-rank positions, such as director of national intelligence and ambassador to the United Nations, that vary by administration. All of these positions require Senate confirmation. The vice president and White House chief of staff, which do not require Senate confirmation, are also part of the Cabinet.
Republicans won a 53-47 majority as a result of the Nov. 5 elections, gaining four seats in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Democrats gained one seat in Arizona.
Click the link below to see a full list of Trump’s Cabinet appointees.
Two Mississippi judicial elections to be decided in runoff election
Two Mississippi judicial elections will be decided in a runoff election, one for Mississippi Supreme Court District 1 Position 3 and one for Mississippi Court of Appeals District 5 Position 2.
There were four Supreme Court seats up for election this year. Three were decided at the Nov. 5 general election. The runoff for the fourth seat is on Nov. 26. Judicial elections in Mississippi are officially nonpartisan.
Bolts Magazine’s Caleb Bedillion and Daja E. Henry wrote that an “overall shift in power on the court depends on the outcome of [the] runoff election.” The court has nine members. While conservatives will still have a majority on the court, the outcome of the election could reshape the court’s ideological makeup to a less conservative court, or leave the current conservative majority largely intact.
Justice Jim Kitchens is facing state Sen. Jenifer B. Branning (R) in the runoff. In the Nov. 5 election, Branning finished first with 41.7% of the vote to Kitchens’ 35.5%. Three other candidates split the remaining 22.7% of the vote. Because no candidate received 50% of the vote, the election went to a runoff.
Kitchens was elected to the court in 2009. According to Mississippi Today’s Taylor Vance, “Kitchens is one of two centrist members of the high court and is widely viewed as the preferred candidate of Democrats, though the Democratic Party has not endorsed his candidacy.” Kitchens is campaigning on his experience and said voters should choose someone “who knows the courtroom from experience rather than just theory.” The Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund has endorsed Kitchens.
Branning campaigned as a more conservative justice and wrote in a Facebook post, “There’s a clear choice in this Runoff because I’m the only candidate who will bring new energy and Constitutional conservative leadership to the Mississippi Supreme Court.” Branning also said, “I’m the only candidate with legal and legislative experience…I’m a wife and a mother and running to bring a new generation of constitutional conservative leadership to the people of Mississippi on the Supreme Court.” The state Republican Party has endorsed Branning.
Four justices ran for re-election, two with opposition and two without opposition. Justices Robert P. Chamberlin and Jimmy Maxwell ran unopposed. Justice Dawn H. Beam ran for re-election but lost to David Sullivan.
Three seats were up for nonpartisan election on the Mississippi intermediate appellate court on Nov. 5. Jennifer Schloegel and Amy St. Pe advanced to today’s runoff for Mississippi Court of Appeals District 5 Position 2. St. Pe received 35.3% of the vote in the general election and Schloegel received 33%.
The judges on the Mississippi Court of Appeals are elected to eight-year terms in nonpartisan elections. All candidates must run in the general election (as Mississippi holds no primary for judicial candidates) and must face re-election if they wish to serve again.
Three states—Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana—require runoff elections in a general election when no candidate receives a majority of the vote. In every other state, a candidate can win a general election with a plurality of the vote.
To read more about state supreme court elections that occurred in 2024, click here.