President Donald Trump talking to reporters at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida on Sunday, November 16, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley/Flickr)
After returning to the White House 11 months ago, President Donald Trump not only made a concerted effort to fill his administration, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI with MAGA loyalists — he also pushed for far-right judges to be confirmed for the lower federal courts.
But according to HuffPost reporter Jennnifer Bendery, Trump's push for MAGA-friendly federal judges is encountering a bump in the road: fewer retirements.
"President Donald Trump had a pretty good run in 2025 when it came to confirming judges," Bendery explains in an article published on December 29. "Republicans control the Senate and rubber-stamped most of his court picks, confirming a total of 25 lifetime federal judges. That's more than Trump got by this point in his first term (19), though not as many as former President Joe Biden (40). But the president was also hampered by a surprising new trend among sitting judges: They're not retiring when they're eligible to do so, and in effect, they've been denying Trump the ability to fill more vacancies with his picks."
Bendery notes that according to George Washington University law professor John Collins, only 30 court vacancies have been announced.
"Of those, 27 are on district courts and just three are on appeals courts — a more powerful tier of courts that often has the final say in federal lawsuits," Bendery observes. "Compare those numbers to the roughly 70 court vacancies that opened up during this same period in (former President Joe) Biden's first year in office — more than twice as many. Part of the reason there aren't as many vacancies to fill is because Trump and Biden both appointed huge numbers of judges over the last eight years, leaving a smaller pool of retirement-eligible judges."
Bendery adds, "But another reason is almost certainly that some judges simply don’t trust Trump to replace them with a qualified pick, given his record of putting far-right ideologues, loyalists and otherwise unqualified people onto the federal bench."
Collins told HuffPost that the judges deciding against retirement is "one of the biggest stories this year." And Russell Wheeler of the Brookings Institution told HuffPost, "It's really pretty striking: Judges, for one reason or another, aren't stepping away."
Read Jennifer Bendery's full HuffPost article at this link.