This morning, two judicial nominees were scheduled for a vote before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Unfortunately, Republicans on the committee delayed the votes for Kara Farnandez Stoll (for the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals) and Roseann Ketchmark (for the Western District of Missouri) by at least a week.

Why? Because they could.

Committee rules let senators “hold over” (i.e., delay) committee votes without explanation. This can be a useful mechanism when a nominee is controversial or when senators need more time to evaluate a particular nominee. At its best, the rule can be of use to senators who take seriously their constitutional obligation to staff the federal courts with highly qualified, apolitical judges.

Unfortunately, it can also be of use to Republicans senators seeking to slow down the confirmation process as much as possible in order to maximize the number of vacancies available for a future Republican president to fill with right-wing ideologues.

Since Obama became president, only 12 of his circuit and district court nominees have had their committee votes held on schedule. Republicans have had committee votes held over without cause for all but 12 of his judicial nominees, which is an unprecedented abuse of the rule. That’s less than 5% of all the Obama judicial nominees who the Judiciary Committee has voted on.

It was bad enough when Republicans were in the minority and demanding needless delays of President Obama’s nominees over the course of six years. But now they are in the majority. They’re demanding delays in the schedule that they themselves set up.

So while the number of circuit and district court vacancies has jumped from 40 at the beginning of the year to 50 today, and while judicial emergencies have nearly doubled from 12 to 23 in the same period, Sen. Grassley and his GOP colleagues on the Judiciary Committee are using every opportunity to delay the consideration of judicial nominees.