The legal roadblocks have fueled concerns from Democrats about a “constitutional crisis,” while Trump supporters argue the judiciary is being weaponized against the administration. The White House recently signaled that judicial nominations are on the horizon with the hiring of Stephen Kenny to the Counsel’s Office, a longtime ally of Trump legal adviser Mike Davis, Bloomberg Law reported.

Kenny worked alongside Davis during the first Trump presidency, when the administration secured 234 federal judicial appointments — a figure that transformed the judiciary for decades to come.

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“The secret weapon to then-Chairman Chuck Grassley’s success in confirming President Trump’s judges was Stephen Kenny,” Davis said, according to attorney David Lat’s Original Jurisdiction blog, lauding the hire as a strategic step toward countering what conservatives see as left-leaning judicial activism.

The urgency of these appointments became evident after a string of rulings stymied Trump’s early actions. Judges have blocked executive orders related to immigration restrictions, the U.S. Agency for International Development closure, and workforce reductions, along with attempts to overhaul federal spending mechanisms.

Last Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the judiciary was “abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump’s basic executive authority.”

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, a vocal Trump supporter, has been one of the loudest voices advocating judicial reforms. After Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York temporarily restricted access to a Treasury Department payment system, Musk called for his impeachment.

VOX POPULI
VOX DEI

The people have spoken

Impeach the CORRUPT judges!! https://t.co/AGfVut7y5x

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 13, 2025

Meanwhile, several House Republicans are taking Musk’s call seriously.

Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) is preparing impeachment articles against Engelmayer, while Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) is targeting Rhode Island District Judge John McConnell, who recently halted Trump’s freeze on federal funding, the Hill reported Friday. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who chairs the Oversight Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, said, “We will hold this judge and others who try to stop the will of the people and their elected leaders accountable.”

Impeaching federal judges requires near-unanimous Republican support in the House and bipartisan agreement in the Senate, making it a long shot. The last time Congress removed a federal judge was in 2010. But Crane remains undeterred.

“I’m not a wait-and-see kind of guy,” Crane said. “I’m not going to sit around and just, you know, watch these individuals stop President Trump from doing exactly what he told the American people he was going to do.”

Trump’s first judicial nominees loom

While some Republicans rally behind judicial impeachments, Trump is poised to expand his influence on the federal bench through traditional means: strategic nominations. His first term saw the appointment of three Supreme Court justices and 54 appellate judges, significantly shifting the ideological balance of the courts. The 9th Circuit, once a bastion of liberal rulings, is now moderated by Trump’s 10 appointees, meaning Trump has shaped roughly a third of the 29-member appeals court.

A Jan. 30 post on Lat’s blog highlighted that Trump could alter the dynamics of the 1st Circuit, a court that has seen frequent appeals from district court judges who ruled against Trump and is composed of four Biden appointees and one appointee of former President Barack Obama.

“With only six seats for active judges, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is the smallest federal appellate court. It’s also the court with the highest percentage of Democratic appointees among its active judges: 100 percent. Expect it to be a popular jurisdiction for filing lawsuits challenging Trump policies,” Lat wrote. He highlighted that the single current vacancy is a Maine-based seat, with possible contenders including Chief Judge Lance Walker and conservative attorney Patrick Strawbridge.

For now, the vacancies list is short, with just four seats open to fill in circuit courts.

Trump’s chance to match his historic counterpart

This time, it’s not impossible that Trump could surpass former President Ronald Reagan’s record of 83 appellate appointments, though it would be a challenge and largely a game of luck to see how many vacancies open during his final term.

But with aging justices and possible retirements, the president may also get the chance to appoint more Supreme Court justices, said Davis, who has even floated U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over Trump’s criminal classified documents case, as someone who should be top of the list for a promotion to an appeals court and even the Supreme Court.

Such moves would certify conservative dominance in the judiciary, particularly if Trump capitalizes on Senate procedural reforms that limit debate time on judicial nominees. Still, it’s worth noting that the three eldest members of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, have not publicly signaled any intent to retire under Trump.

The setbacks for a second-term president

There are still some hurdles to the president’s ability to reshape the judiciary that are baked into his second term.

Trump does not have as many judicial vacancies to fill as he did during his first term when he inherited over 100 open seats. This time, he has around 40 vacancies and could see an additional 35 openings as judges transition to senior status, according to legal experts.

The blue-slip process, which allows home-state senators to block judicial nominees, could complicate Trump’s strategy in states with Democratic representation.

In Trumpworld, confidence is key

However, the administration is likely confident that its partnerships with conservative advocacy groups, such as Davis’s Article III Project, will streamline the process.

“For the next four years, we will dedicate ourselves to highlighting quality candidates for President Trump’s careful consideration and defend his nominees from leftist attacks,” Davis said in an emailed statement to the Washington Examiner. “January 20 marked the revving up of our never-ending effort to make American law great again.”

As the battle between Trump and the judiciary escalates, the stakes are higher than ever. For the president and his supporters, filling judicial vacancies isn’t just about legal philosophy — it’s about survival against what they perceive as a judicial apparatus determined to derail their agenda.

Trump’s acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris laid out one of the cornerstone changes Trump would like to see in a letter Wednesday, stating that the Justice Department is ready to overturn a 1935 ruling that has long shielded the independence of federal agencies, known as Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. If overturned, it would greatly enable many of the sweeping changes he has made during his first month in office thus far.

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“Humphrey’s Executor, I think, is on the chopping block,” said Ben Flowers, a former solicitor general of Ohio, during a Federalist Society virtual forum on Friday.

“If you have someone wielding executive power who’s not ultimately answerable to some elected official, then the president can dodge responsibility. There can ultimately be a loss of liberty because people are subject to the authority of someone who they didn’t elect and who can’t be removed by someone who they elected,” Flowers added, responding to various legal challenges against Trump’s efforts to remove solicitors general.