Johnson Passes House Bill Amid Veto Threat by Joe Biden

We are about to see just how bipartisan Joe Biden is.

He is about to have a piece of legislation on his desk for his signature to turn it into a law. The bipartisan bill that would more than five dozen new district judges to be added over the next decade.

If Biden signs the law, it would allow Trump to fill about a third of those seats, but now Biden is threatening to veto the legislation.

Not on My Watch

This country is no longer run by Congress; it is run by the courts who seem to be called in on every piece of legislation passed these days.

To that point, the Senate had passed the "Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved Act,” known as the JUDGES Act of 2024.

This will stagger 63 new appointments to the bench over the next decade.

However, this was done when Democrats thought they would be winning the White House again in 2024.

Now that they have lost, and Trump would be able to appoint 22 of those judges, Dems are pulling their support for the bill, even though they already passed it in the Senate.

House Speaker Mike Johnson put the bill on the floor this week, with the bill passing on Thursday. We should note it passed in bipartisan fashion, with 29 Democrats crossing the aisle to support the legislation.

After the bill passed, Speaker Johnson stated, "Today, the House passed the JUDGES Act to authorize additional federal judges to ensure the American people receive timely and fair justice.

"This important legislation garnered broad, bipartisan support when it unanimously passed the Senate in August because it directly addresses the pressing need to reduce case backlogs in our federal courts and strengthen the efficiency of our judicial system."

"At that time, Democrats supported the bill — they thought Kamala Harris would win the Presidency.

"Now, however, the Biden-Harris Administration has chosen to issue a veto threat and Democrats have whipped against this bill, standing in the way of progress, simply because of partisan politics. This should not be a political issue — it should be about prioritizing the needs of the American people and ensuring the courts are able to deliver fair, impartial, and timely justice."

Prior to Johnson putting the bill on the floor, the White House stated that it would veto the legislation, calling the appointments unnecessary.

The White House stated, "The bill would create new judgeships in states where Senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies.

"Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now. In addition, neither the House nor the Senate fully explored how the work of senior status judges and magistrate judges affects the need for new judgeships.

"Further, the Senate passed this bill in August, but the House refused to take it up until after the election. Hastily adding judges with just a few weeks left in the 118th Congress would fail to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the judges are allocated.”

That statement is a bit misleading because when the House took up the bill is irrelevant because the first judges are not added until 2025.

This is nothing more than Biden pouting because it will not be Harris appointing those judges.

The Republican co-sponsor of the legislation, Senator Todd Young (R-IN), stated, "In a bipartisan vote, the House just passed my JUDGES Act to address the shortage of federal judges and the severe delays Americans are experiencing. I urge President Biden to do the right thing for our judicial system and sign it into law.

"The legislation is widely supported by leading legal organizations and advocates across our country."

I will be the first to admit there is some gamesmanship going on here with the Republicans, but the fact of the matter is that Republicans in the Senate were willing to pass this even with the possibility of Dems winning the White House in 2024.

And now nearly three dozen Democrats walked across the aisle in the House to approve this legislation after Trump won the election.

The judges are clearly needed, yet it is Biden, once again, getting ready to veto bipartisan legislation because he does not like it personally, and it will not directly benefit Democrats.

Biden is hardly the president of all Americans as he claims to be.