According to a report from Politico, Donald Trump's court-packing during his one term has resulted in a series of "envelope-pushing rulings" by judges who are proving to be unpredictable -- even in cases involving him.
As Politico's Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney wrote, the former president was more than successful getting his selections on the court during his four years with the report noting that "he replaced a third of the Supreme Court, 54 members of the circuit appeals courts and 174 district court judges. In all, about 30 percent of the federal bench."
But, as the report notes, it has been a mixed bag with analysts saying the way they have ruled has lawyers guessing how cases will pan out.
"Those envelope-pushing rulings have fueled questions about whether Trump’s judicial picks are more conservative or more partisan than those of previous Republican presidents and whether decades of unorthodox decrees from those judicial picks lie ahead," the report states, "Academics who’ve scoured the data say Trump judges do indeed appear to be different, both in their rulings and their backgrounds, although some of the differences are surprising."
"Despite some rulings that have backed Trump or his allies, his judicial picks have hardly proven to march in lockstep to Trump’s political desires. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were met with vehement rejections by some of his own appointees, who in some cases issued rulings eviscerating the claims Trump allies made and expressing alarm at the relief they were seeking," Politico reports. "His three appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court voted with their colleagues in dismissing a Texas lawsuit in December 2020 challenging the results of the election."
The report adds that "one reason some Trump-appointed judges may appear more eccentric or even extreme than their colleagues is that Trump nominees were typically picked from a smaller pool of candidates. Some legal conservatives declined to be considered for executive branch and judicial branch jobs because of distaste for Trump or concerns about being tarnished by association with him."
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