“It's pretty rich that suddenly he's in a hurry,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told Raw Story. “It's very weird. We're not being a deliberative body.”
In the two weeks the Senate was in session between the election and lawmaker’s Thanksgiving recess, Schumer held 40 roll call votes. In September, the Senate only voted 25 times, 30 times last January and a mere 28 in July (including Aug. 1st; their only day in session that month).
Schumer is under pressure from progressives, and he’s now focused on getting President Joe Biden—who’s had 221 of his judicial nominees seated on the federal bench—on par with Trump and the 234 judges he saw confirmed in his first term.
“It’s been a busy week”
ALSO READ: Trump's failure and the next pandemic
Before senators flew home last week, Capitol Police officers complained of 16-hour shifts, while Senate attendants—from those who run the elevators to those who stand watch at the main entrance to the Senate chamber—were putting in 12-plus-hour days babysitting senators as they caught up on their long-neglected homework.
“It’s been a busy week,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) told Raw Story before the Senate gaveled out of session last Thursday afternoon.
But Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, contends the Senate’s breakneck speed of late was always their post-election design.
“We wanted to save the judicial nominations to a point where we could call groupings of them,” Durbin said. “And we achieved that.”
“I've been here 18 years, I think it's the first time I've seen three-day weeks — where you come in Tuesday and then leave Thursday,” Raw Story pressed. “Looking back, would it have maybe been better for some of your candidates if they could show voters they work five-day weeks?”
“The reality of campaigns is something we have to take into consideration,” Durbin said.
And this Senate knows campaigning. The chamber sat empty all of August — Congress’ traditional summer recess because the swamp gets sticky in the summer — and October, which has become the election-year norm in Washington in recent cycles.
But on top of that, senators took seven entire weeks off to mark America’s day-long national holidays — from President’s Day
week to Thanksgiving week, with the exception of Juneteenth, which senators just took a day off to commemorate.
The rare times they were in Washington, senators brought their campaigns with them, as Schumer used the Senate floor for partisan show votes — on everything from the border to abortion — instead of bringing up measures with broad bipartisan support, like on artificial intelligence or protecting children’s privacy online.
Throughout the entire 118th session, Congress has only sent 139 measures to President Joe Biden. In context, in the lame duck session following the 2022 midterms, Congress passed 148 measures the president later signed.
Trump allies say retribution is coming
But, in this post-
Roe v. Wade world, both parties now prize their side’s preferred judges and are willing to expend political capital, remaking the federal bench in their party’s image.
That’s why Schumer’s newfound speed has Trump and his GOP allies itching for payback in the new year, even as Democrats don’t seem to fear retribution.
“They should,” Cramer of North Dakota said.
While Republicans threw procedural roadblocks up that caused late Senate nights last week, Schumer and GOP leaders ultimately caved to holiday-induced pressure and struck a deal they hope will speed things up in December.
Four Biden appellate court nominees now won’t come to the floor for votes, even as Republicans promised to stop using every delay tactic at their disposal in the waning days of this 118th Congress.
On cue, the deal angered the progressive left and many in the GOP, who were already up in arms after a handful of Senate Republicans didn’t even bother showing up to all the judicial votes.
Watching Biden nominees start to fill most of the federal bench openings hasn’t been lost on Trump himself.
“The Democrats are trying to stack the Courts with Radical Left Judges on their way out the door. Republican Senators need to Show Up and Hold the Line — No more Judges confirmed before Inauguration Day!" Trump tweeted on Truth Social last Wednesday.
But at their weekly Senate Republican Conference lunch last week, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed back. He reminded his troops that Trump had so many vacancies to fill in 2017 because Senate Republicans followed his strong-armed lead and blocked many of former President Barack Obama’s final nominees.
“As Mitch reminded us at lunch, one of the reasons we had so many last time we were in the majority in Trump’s first term was because Mitch had held up a bunch of Obama's, and so there were more vacancies,” Cramer said. “So now, they’re in the opposite situation. And don't have, you know, we’re one vote short of holding things up, but at least we're putting them through the exercise.”
With the Senate divided at 51 Democrats and 49 Republicans, there are only so many tools at Republicans’ disposal. That has rank-and-file Republicans itching to turn the table on Democrats when they take over Congress in 2025.
“We just got to remember the same thing when we get in,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told Raw Story. “Not a lot we can do if they get enough people here because they got us outnumbered.”
“Knowing Trump, isn't this just gonna p— him off?” Raw Story pressed. “Like, aren't you gonna get an equal and opposite reaction?”
“I don’t think the Democrats care, to be honest with you,” Tuberville said.
ALSO READ: A dark mystery from America's past could save us from Trump's tyranny
