Trump’s judicial appointment pace is unlikely to match his first-term record

Senate Republicans took a judicial-confirmation victory lap before leaving town for Independence Day. They proclaimed that “the total number of U.S. circuit and district judges confirmed this Congress [is] 45 … well ahead of the pace of confirmations … compared to this point during the first Trump administration, when only 40 [41 actually] had been confirmed.” They vowed to “continue confirming President Trump’s … judicial nominees at a rapid pace … ” And they have—eight confirmations in July.

Trump appointed a near-record 231 circuit, district, and Court of International Trade judges in his first term. Those judges and the 53 second-term appointees occupy almost 1 in every 3 life-tenured federal judgeships. They have—in the aggregate—strongly supported the administration’s policy goals at the district and court of appeals levels. Trump and the Senate are of course eager to add more appointees.

The 119th Senate’s full two-year confirmations might top the 83 in the first Trump administration (115th Senate). But there is a huge gap both in pending nominations waiting for confirmation and vacancies waiting for nominees—and little reason to expect either gap to close. Thus, unlike Trump 1.0’s third and fourth years, Trump 2.0’s will have a paucity of vacancies and thus nominees. Matching Trump’s 231 first-term appointments by the end of 2028 would require adding 178 appointments to the 53 achieved so far—a long shot. And, as explained below, he is unlikely to achieve anything close to record numbers for eight years.

First 2 years of nominations and confirmations

Figure 1 shows that by July 31, 2018, the Senate confirmed 44 Trump nominees (three up from the end of June), and a final two-year count of 83. That is almost twice the figure at mid-year, a proportional increase greater than that for any other president shown in Figure 1, even if Trump’s actual numbers are lower than all but Obama’s.

Figure 2 again shows the 53 confirmations as of July 24, 2026, and the 44 eight years earlier, but it also shows that through July, 2026, Trump 2.0 had submitted only 60 nominees.

At the same date in 2018, Trump had submitted over twice as many—137. Ninety-two nominees were pending before the Senate as grist for the confirmation mill in the rest of 2018 through the end of 2020. By contrast, at the end of July 2026, only 6 nominations were awaiting Senate action.

The dearth of vacancies

But couldn’t Trump flood the Senate with nominees during the limited time that the Senate is in session in 2026 and then through 2028? The starting point for that project is vacancies, and, again, the Trump 2.0 landscape is much more barren than in Trump 1.0’s first two years. The district and appellate courts have 30 vacancies without nominees (vacancies in place and announced future vacancies). Compare that to the 92 vacancies waiting for nominees in July 2018.

Trump 2.0 inherited far fewer vacancies (50) than did Trump 1.0 (119). Trump 1.0 reaped the fruits of Senate Republicans’ near freeze on confirmations in Obama’s final two years.

But judges in Trump’s first term created many more additional vacancies for him than judges have created so far in his second term. From Election Day 2016 through July 2018, 97 judges either announced they would leave active status at some future date or simply left without an earlier announcement. In the same period (2024-2026), the number is 42. (The numbers don’t reflect vacancies that judges announced before Election Day but created after. The focus is on judges’ retirement decisions once they know who could nominate their successors.)

Indeed, Figure 3 shows, for the roughly 20 months starting on Election Day, that the second Trump administration has seen the lowest number of vacancy creations of the five most recent administrations. (Vacancy archives before then do not allow the calculation.)

Plenty of judges are now eligible to retire on salary (which is how almost all vacancies get created), but few of them are likely to do so. Forty-six Republican appointees are now eligible (22 appellate, 24 district), but 37 of them have been eligible since Biden was inaugurated. They are unlikely to retire in droves over the next six months or beyond. (One-hundred and two Democratic appointees are eligible; they are even less likely to provide Trump with appointment opportunities, especially as he approaches lame-duck status.)

Retirement-eligible judges no doubt leave—or decline to leave—active status for any number of reasons. Multi-variate analysis has suggested an increase in judges who time their retirements to avoid replacement by any president not of the same party as their appointer (which Figure 3 illustrates). Others probably want to avoid some of the restrictions that senior status impose on their participation in their court: senior circuit judges’ limited role in en banc proceedings, for example, and restrictions on case assignments to district judges. Others, of course, take senior status because of the continued economic benefits and reduced caseload.

The sharp drop-off in the first 20 months of Trump’s second term—42 judges versus from 63 to 101 in the same time frame for other presidents—prompts speculation about another factor (as noted in my earlier articles). Trump in his second term has upped his vitriolic attacks on judges whose decisions displeased him compared to his first term behavior. In August 2025, a district judge (a Trump appointee, in fact) described a “concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it [as] both unprecedented and unfortunate” (listing examples of the aspersions tossed out by Trump and his underlings). Some retirement-eligible judges might balance leaving full-time service and possibly avoiding such attacks (and the physical violence they spawn) against the alternative of creating vacancies for such an administration to fill. This is, to repeat, only speculation, absent hard data, but certainly plausible.

Looking ahead 2 years and beyond

Given the paucity of vacancies, it is questionable whether Trump will end the first two years of his second term with more than the 83 confirmations he achieved by December 2018. Granted, if the Senate confirmed all six pending nominees and filled all 30 vacancies currently without nominees, those 36 additional appointees would produce 89 two-year appointments. But, of the 30 nominee-less vacancies (all but one in district courts), 15 are in states with one or two Democratic senators. With Senate Judiciary chair Grassley’s commitment to the blue-slip process for district nominees, home-state senators—Democrats included—have a virtual veto power over nominations. All but two of Trump’s district nominees have been to vacancies in states with two Republican senators (discounting the Court of International Trade nominee).

8-year prospects

Trump and his supporters revel in his comparatively high number of appointments for a first term president—231, basically tied with Biden for second place, behind Carter.

As to appointments over eight years, President Reagan leads with 379 appointments, followed closely by Clinton’s 376. Contrary to his incessant and not-always-accurate first-term boasts about number of appointments (”We are shattering every record!”), Trump has said little in his second term, certainly not predicting shattered records. With 231 first-year appointments, and 53 so far in his second term, he will need 95 more to top Reagan.

If Republicans retain control of the Senate for 2027-28, we can assume a continuation of confirmations but at a pace dictated by the number of vacancies, with no reason to expect a surge in retirements. If Democrats gain a Senate majority, expect a virtual shutdown of the Trump effort to transform the federal judiciary.