Democratic Judges Now Outnumber Republican Ones on the Federal Bench

     February has started off with good news for President Biden and America. The leader of ISIS, the man who engineered the genocide of the Yazidi people in 2014 and led the metastasis of the ISIS model across Africa and the Arabian Peninsula while leading the failed prison break in Syria in an obvious attempt to rebuild his forces and his caliphate, was taken out by a raid in Northwest Syria. Meanwhile, President Biden announced a goal of cutting the cancer death rate in half over the next 25 years. Congress is closing in on two landmark bills: one that will punish Russia for actions already taken and actions they may take in the future and another that will invest $100 billion in creating hundreds of thousands of American manufacturing jobs and solving America's supply chain issues. The January 2022 Jobs Report, expected to show a loss of 300,000 jobs, actually showed a gain of 467,000, while the revised December 2021 Jobs Report showed that 311,000 more jobs had been created than were previously thought. This comes as the Omicron wave of COVID recedes and Pfizer announces it has asked for approval for COVID vaccines for kids under five. President Biden has taken additional actions to combat gun violence and expand collective bargaining rights for 200,000 construction workers while the field of contenders for the first black female Supreme Court justice narrows. States are taking action to legalize medical and recreational marijuana at record pace this month.

     There's more. With the confirmation of three federal judges to the Northern District of Ohio, shifting the balance of that court while giving it historic political and professional diversity, Democratic judges now outnumber Republican judges on the federal bench for the first time in over six years, with 398 judges appointed by Democrats and 396 appointed by Republicans. Meanwhile, there are still 74 vacancies to fill, which will shift the balance of at least a dozen more courts. This number, of course, is not indicative of the balance of the federal courts as a whole. Republican appeals court judges still outnumber Democratic ones while the Supreme Court remains solidly conservative. However, this number is symbolic of what President Biden is managing to achieve with his judicial nominees. There is the very real chance that, by 2025, both the district court system and the circuit court system of the federal bench could lean left, which would be a significant accomplishment for the United States and for President Biden.

     While the Supreme Court nominee will be decided this month, the focus in terms of the judiciary for now should be flipping the circuit and district courts to the left while ending the professional and personal disparities that exist. This is an achievable goal with tangible results, and the fact that judges appointed by Democrats now outnumber judges appointed by Republicans is a great first step.