Biden Vetoes Bipartisan Legislation to Add 66 Federal Judges

Joe Biden was actually true to his word for once.

After bipartisan legislation worked its way through the Senate and House to add more than five dozen federal judges over the next decade, Biden vowed to veto it.

Biden did just that this week, likely fearing the idea that Trump would get to appoint 22 of those judges.

No Longer Support It

Keep in mind, this legislation originated in the Senate, which Democrats control.

The fact that the first round of judges are going to appointed in 2025, then every two years until the cap was hit, should have made the election irrelevant in terms of this passing through.

Multiple Republicans crossed over in the Senate, and multiple Democrats crossed over in the House, but Democrats went off because Speaker Johnson (R-LA) did not floor the legislation until after the election.

Again, I get the gamesmanship here, but Dems in the Senate were passing this legislation regardless, so why is Biden vetoing it?

In vetoing the legislation, Biden stated, “The House of Representatives’s hurried action fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judgeships are allocated.

“Neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate explored fully how the work of senior status judges and magistrate judges affects the need for new judgeships.”

In reality, they were just worried about Trump being able to add 22 new judges to the roster, judges that are badly needed, by the way, as numbers show caseloads have increased by about 30%.

The only way to override the veto is with a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, and there is no way they have those numbers, especially now that Trump has won the election.

For his part, Biden has vetoed more bills than any sitting president since Bill Clinton, with more than two dozen bills rejected, many of them strong bipartisan bills that Biden just did not like, but never strong enough where a veto override would challenge him.