People For the American Way

The Progressive Happy Hour: The Right-Wing Takeover of Our Courts

News and Analysis
The Progressive Happy Hour: The Right-Wing Takeover of Our Courts

Since President Trump took office, his administration and Senate Republicans have been filling our courts with narrow-minded, elitist judges at a record pace.

In the May 25 episode of “The Progressive Happy Hour,” co-hosts Christin “Cici” Battle and Drew Courtney sat down with Lena Zwarensteyn, director of strategic engagement at the American Constitution Society, to talk about the right-wing takeover of our nation’s federal courts.

Lena outlined the ways in which many of Trump’s nominees are not just conservative but truly extreme figures, well outside of the mainstream of legal thought.

When it comes to the diversity of Trump’s judicial nominees, Lena said, the landscape is bleak: “We’ve had more bloggers than women of color. We’ve probably had more people named Michael than women of color. Out of the 124 nominations made, only three have been women of color. Only 28—which is not even 25 percent of them—have been women. Seventy one percent of the total nominations have been white men.”

“If you walk through a courthouse and you only see people of one type, you’re probably not going to necessarily always feel heard—particularly if you are a person of color, a person of low-income means,” she explained. “We have now an administration that is actively de-diversifying [courts].”

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Tags:

judicial nominations, Protecting Lower Courts, The Progressive Happy Hour