Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP
S. Chad Meredith, Kentucky solicitor general, speaks to members of the media at the state Capitol in Frankfort, Kentucky, June 10, 2021.
President Biden is reportedly bound and determined to nominate Chad Meredith, a young, reactionary anti-abortion zealot, to a lifetime post as a federal judge on the district court in Kentucky, so that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will stop blocking the nomination of two U.S. attorneys in the state. Initially, this nomination was scheduled to be announced on the day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade; it was postponed for obvious reasons. However, “behind the scenes, the White House is apparently signaling that it still plans to move forward with his nomination,” reports Jennifer Bendery. “‘They’re defending it,’ the source briefed last week on the White House’s plan told HuffPost, after requesting anonymity in order to speak freely about private conversations.”
This is an appalling idea, and Senate Democrats could and should swat it down posthaste. Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) should not give Meredith so much as a hearing. But while they’re at it, they should change the Senate rules to speed up the judicial confirmation process, as the slowness of which is what sparked the Meredith deal in the first place.
On the merits, Meredith is a deranged choice for any Democrat. Not only is he fervently anti-choice, but as solicitor general for the Kentucky attorney general he was involved in a successful legal effort to roll back Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s pandemic-fighting measures. Worse, he was involved in former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin’s spree of incredibly suspicious pardons in 2019—including one convicted murderer whose family donated heavily to Bevin’s campaign.
The coalition politics of nominating Meredith are similarly nonsensical. Women are a key part of literally any governing coalition in the U.S., but in particular Biden’s—57 percent voted for him, according to exit polls—and they are facing the greatest attack on their reproductive rights in at least half a century. Yet not only has Biden’s response been haphazard and listless, here he is proposing to nominate yet another anti-abortion conservative to the federal judiciary—the very same institution from which the attack is coming. A better way to depress morale among the Democratic base is hard to imagine.
Even longtime Biden-watchers are baffled as to what he thinks he’s getting out of this. One possibility is that he just really likes making deals with Mitch McConnell. Back in 2012, he infamously led the negotiations around what to do about the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, and ended up giving away the store, extending nearly all of them and giving up leverage that then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wanted to use. Biden giving up a powerful lifetime judiciary appointment for posts that are both less important and temporary would be a similarly epic negotiating fail.
Another possibility is that Biden is convinced Democrats’ Senate majority is toast, and so is preemptively trying to curry favor with McConnell. That would come as news to Senate incumbents who are fighting for the majority, along with well-positioned challengers looking to flip seats, like John Fetterman in Pennsylvania.
Sen. Durbin should completely ignore this nomination, as he suggested he might do.
Whatever the reason, trusting McConnell on a deal like this is delusional. We’re talking about one of the most cynical and proudly ruthless operators in the history of the U.S. Congress—a guy who is publicly promising to “paralyze” the Senate if Democrats try to pass any kind of bill with their priorities in it. He’s been vowing to tank a domestic manufacturing bill, Biden’s top industrial-policy priority, which even numerous Republicans support. McConnell is not going to give Biden anything good if he doesn’t have to.
All that is why Sen. Durbin should completely ignore this nomination, as he suggested he might do to Politico. (At time of writing, Durbin’s office had not responded to a request for comment.) There would be precedent for this: In 2013 and 2014, President Obama nominated an anti-abortion judge, Michael Boggs, and although the Democrats who held the Senate at the time did grant Boggs a hearing, they fiercely opposed confirmation, enough to prevent a vote.
Durbin has the prerogative to not even hold the hearing. He didn’t make a deal with McConnell, Biden did, and he doesn’t have to honor it. Meredith’s nomination, if it’s made, would die at the end of the legislative session. If Republicans win the Senate, it could be revived, but Durbin should make clear that Democrats won’t be confirming Chad Meredith, no way, no how.
That said, Senate Democrats don’t escape blame here. The apparent reason why McConnell can even hold up the nomination of those U.S. attorneys is that Democrats are respecting the nonsensical “blue slip” rule, which gives senators veto power over judicial and U.S. attorney nominations in their home state. Republicans even ignored this rule for Democratic senators under Trump, but in a classic display of defending fake norms that are both pointless and already dead, Democrats brought it back, and thereby pinned a “kick me” sign to their own backs.
Moreover, as Christopher Kang writes at Slate, blue-slip holdups as well as the glacial sluggishness of Senate procedure have left nearly 120 vacancies on the federal court, and more than half don’t even have a nominee. Under the current practice of one committee hearing every two weeks, with three circuit and two district court nominees in each one, there would still be 60 vacancies at the end of the congressional term.
That’s simply unacceptable. However, a solution is obvious: Just change the rules so that judicial nominees can be processed at a rate sufficient to fill up every vacancy before the end of the term, or better still by the end of the month. Any self-respecting institution, concerned with actually serving its constitutional duties, would have done this years ago.
At any rate, Biden may be thinking twice about his deal with McConnell. On Tuesday, he announced five more judicial nominees; notably, Meredith was not among them. But Senate Democrats should still be ready to quash such a selection—and if they have even an ounce of self-respect, they will throw out their silly traditions that achieve nothing but enabling Republican obstruction, and start confirming judges at all possible speed.
