During the first Trump administration, Democrats accused Republicans of abusing the Senate process in order to confirm nominees. //

The House just passed the JUDGES Act, which would create the first new positions on the U.S. District Court since 2003. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., allowed the Senate to pass it on Aug. 1, when he thought Kamala Harris would win the White House. Now that Donald Trump has won, and the House has passed the bill, President Joe Biden says he will veto it to prevent Trump from having more vacancies to fill.

Democrats controlled the Senate side of the process during Biden’s term and ran a highly partisan operation — with tactics they once criticized Republicans for using — to steer the judiciary sharply to the left.

Biden will appoint a total of 235 judges to the four courts with life-tenured judges: 187 to the U.S. District Court, 45 to the U.S. Court of Appeals, two to the U.S. Court of International Trade, and one to the U.S. Supreme Court. He will exceed President Donald Trump’s first-term total by one and take the second spot on the list of most single-term appointments in American history. Only President Jimmy Carter, after Congress created 152 new judicial positions in 1978, appointed more.

Biden’s total is even more impressive because the confirmation process is more cumbersome than ever. //

While Democrats created a new process in 2017 in order to routinely challenge Trump’s nominees, a determined Republican leadership in the Judiciary Committee and full Senate kept the confirmation process trains running. Democrats have done the same for the past four years. Today, according to the Federal Judicial Center, appeals court judges in active service are evenly split between Republican and Democrat appointees, while 60 percent of active district court judges were named by Democrats.