Senate Republicans are furious as some Democratic-appointed judges cancel plans to retire in response to the GOP blockading the confirmation of outgoing President Joe Biden's final judicial nominees, Politico reported on Monday.
The most notable such new case is that of Judge James Wynn of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He had planned to take senior status — a form of semi-retirement that lets a new judge be appointed — but after Senate Republicans rallied to block Biden's nomination to replace him, he rescinded his decision, writing to the president in a letter, "after careful consideration, I have decided to continue in regular active service."
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) responded with an enraged statement.
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“Judge Wynn's brazenly partisan decision to rescind his retirement is an unprecedented move that demonstrates some judges are nothing more than politicians in robes," wrote Tillis over the weekend. "Judge Wynn clearly takes issue with the fact that Donald Trump was just elected President, and this decision is a slap in the face to the U.S. Senate, which came to a bipartisan agreement to hold off on confirming his replacement until the next Congress is sworn-in in January."
He finished by demanding a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation and warned that Trump's Justice Department would try to force his recusal from future cases.
While it is unusual for a judge to rescind a retirement decision, judges in both parties have politically timed their retirements for decades.
This comes as Trump has weighed in with frustration on the rapid speed at which Senate Democrats have used the final few weeks of their majority to ram through as many Biden judicial nominees as possible, demanding the Senate confirm "no judges" until he takes office.
Despite widespread GOP outrage over the pace of 11th-hour confirmations, former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) set a precedent in 2020 by doing the same thing — making Trump the first president to get judicial nominees confirmed in a lame-duck session since Grover Cleveland in 1896.
