WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (MD-08), Hank Johnson (GA-04), Ranking Member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, AI and the Internet, along with Jerry Nadler, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust (NY-12), re-introduced Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved Act of 2025 (JUDGES Act) to create more federal judgeships.
“As Trump and his lawless Administration demand judges be impeached for the crime of upholding the Constitution against them, it would be unconscionable to reward the Republican party’s constant betrayals of the Constitution and their own agreements by giving them even more power to stack the bench,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee. “We won’t be party to another Republican court-packing scheme—that’s why we're introducing legislation to give additional judicial appointments to the next unknown president, restoring the fair and bipartisan deal we struck last Congress, the only kind of deal that has ever worked in this field.”
It’s based on S. 4199, a formerly bipartisan bill that passed the Senate in 2024 that Democrats and Republicans in Congress negotiated to give the next unknown president 23 new life-tenured judges over the next four years in office. House Republicans reneged on that deal and refused to bring the Senate-passed bill to the House floor until after the election, once they knew Trump would get the first set of judges. They are now forcing the bill through to pack the federal courts with judges driven not by a duty to the law, but by their ultra-conservative ideologies and fealty to Trump.
“MAGA Republicans only want to add new judgeships when they can rig the game in their favor,” said Rep. Johnson. “And that’s exactly what they are trying to do by pushing through more judges now: Make certain our third branch is so deeply loyal to one man that our system of justice cannot possibly work without him. Our 250-year experiment in self-governance will succeed only if Americans continue to believe that judicial independence means that judges are not subject to pressure and influence from an administration trying to lay waste to our democratic system of government. So I am proud to reintroduce this bill with my colleagues, which gets back our original deal and takes the politics out of judgeships by giving judges to the next unknown president. Because our independent judiciary is the backbone of our democracy, I will not just stand here and let the Trump-Musk administration try to dismantle it one branch of government at a time."
“Last Congress, Ranking Member Johnson and I worked together to advance the bipartisan JUDGES Act to give the next, then unknown, President additional judicial appointments to eliminate the backlog in our federal court system,” said Congressman Nadler. “We had sought a commitment from Republicans to pass this bill before the November 2024 election, but when Donald Trump wasn't doing so well in the polls, Speaker Johnson refused to bring the bill up for a vote. Democrats refuse to reward this betrayal by letting President Trump continue to pack the courts. I'm proud to join Ranking Members Johnson and Raskin in introducing the JUDGES Act to give the next, still unknown, President additional judgeships.”
Background: S. 4199 was a bipartisan bill predicated on the agreement that Republicans and Democrats would give future unknown presidents federal judgeship appointments. In doing so, Congress could expand the number of federal judges in the United States while avoiding the trap of knowingly giving any one political party or president more power. The JUDGES Act was only going to work if Republicans and Democrats worked together to pass the bill before Election Day, on November 5, 2024. The Senate did its job and unanimously passed S. 4199 in August 2024. But Speaker Johnson refused to move this important bill before the election. Now that the central promise of the JUDGES Act is broken, MAGA Republicans are playing politics and trying to force their version of this bill through to give Trump more judges in an attempt to undermine the very backbone of our democracy: the independent judiciary.
The last time Donald Trump was in power, he used his office to appoint individuals driven not by a duty to the law, but by their ultra-conservative ideologies and loyalty to him.
Here are a few examples of the federal judges he nominated during his first term:
Judge Kyle Duncan was appointed to the Fifth Circuit by Trump in 2017, where he allowed the Texas ban on abortions to take effect during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite a district court finding that it would cause “irreparable harm”; undermined the Fair Housing Act; and blatantly sided with employers in labor cases.
Trump appointed Judge Aileen Cannon to the federal bench in 2020 only 12 years after she was first admitted to practice law. She has garnered widespread criticism for her conduct in the Trump documents case, including her decision to appoint a special master to review Trump’s documents, which was overturned by the 11th Circuit.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk was a First Liberty attorney known for his anti-LGBTQ cases when he was appointed by Trump in 2019. As a federal judge, conservative activists have successfully sought to end up in his courtroom, where he has suspended the FDA’s approval of lifesaving abortion pills and ruled against LGBTQ protections
Text of bill HERE.
