The Trump Record: 53 Appeals Court Judges, and Not a Single One Is Black
The overall numbers are damning for Democrats. President Trump has confirmed 200 judges, including 53 to the critically important appeals court, the most for any president in a single term since Jimmy Carter in the 1970s.
President Obama confirmed 55 appeals court judges, two more than Trump and including nine African-Americans, but it took him eight years. Trump has also appointed 143 federal district judges, and of course two Supreme Court judges (the remaining two are international trade court judges). We focus most on the Supreme Court, but in fact it hears only about 80 cases a year, while at the federal courts of appeal nearly 50,000 cases are filed a year, which means that for most Americans these courts have the final say on their rights and protections under the Constitution.
And with regard to these appeals courts, Trump owns a dubious, though not entirely shocking, distinction: He is the first president since Richard Nixon to serve a full term without placing a single African-American on them. And in the entire pool of Trump’s 200 judges, just eight are Black.