President Donald Trump will nominate 10 people to federal judgeships on Monday, the New York Times reported Sunday evening. The nominations include five appeals court seats, four district court seats, and a federal clams court seat.
Among those expected to be nominated for vacancies on an appeals court are Joan Larsen and David Stras, state supreme court judges in Michigan and Minnesota, respectively. Both Larsen and Stras were also on the list of 21 potential nominees to fill the Supreme Court seat occupied by the late Antonin Scalia, which Trump released during his campaign. The list was compiled with the help of two conservative groups, the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. One of the judges on the list was Neil Gorsuch, who Trump successfully nominated to the Supreme Court. Another on the list is Amul Thapar, whom Trump has already nominated to an appeals court vacancy on the Sixth Circuit.
Leonard Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society who advised Trump on the Gorsuch selection, says the selection of Larsen and Stras for appeals court judgeships isn’t unexpected. “These are very impressive state judges who are natural prospects for federal judicial service at the Court of Appeals level. That was always a possibility,” Leo told me.
It also doesn’t necessarily mean Larsen, Stras, and Thapar would be out of the running for any future Supreme Court vacanices. The federal appeals courts can serve as a farm system for the high court. Eight of the nine current justices were sitting on a federal appeals court when they were nominated to the Supreme Court. And a few, including Chief Justice John Roberts, were only on the appeals court for a few short years before rising to the Supreme Court.
After Monday’s nominations, there will still be more than a dozen vacant appeals court seats without nominees to fill them, though the Times writes this week’s is the “first in what could be near monthly waves of nominations” for federal judgeships. And White House counsel Don McGahn told the newspaper the president and his team are looking at other sources besides the list of 21 for potential nominees. McGahn told the Times the White House is looking for “intellectual boldness” in candidates for the bench.
