Democrats win Senate, ending Trump's ability to reshape the courts for his final two years

Donald Trump's drive to fill the federal courts with his picks is effectively over. Democrats won control of the Senate in this week's midterm elections, and starting in January they will hold the votes needed to block every judicial nominee the White House sends up — including any future Supreme Court pick.

Democrats are set to hold at least 54 Senate seats in the new Congress, and possibly 56 if races still being counted in Alaska and Mississippi break their way, according to HuffPost. Confirming a judicial nominee requires 51 votes when all 100 senators are present, or a simple majority when they are not — meaning Trump will need Democratic cooperation to place a single judge on the federal bench for the rest of his presidency.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is expected to become majority leader in January, made clear Wednesday that Democratic votes will come with conditions.

Schumer said Democrats want judicial nominees like those confirmed in 2023 and 2024, who obey the law and show fidelity to it, noting that too many of Trump's nominees did not.— Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader (D-N.Y.)

The shift closes a chapter in which Republican senators confirmed 56 federal judges to lifetime posts since Trump returned to office in January 2025 — a pace that put him well behind where he stood at the same point in his first term, when 84 judges had been confirmed, according to HuffPost. As of Wednesday, 43 vacancies remain on federal courts.

Trump has already appointed three Supreme Court justices across his two terms. Any future vacancy on the court — a live concern given the ages of some sitting justices — would now require Democratic support to fill, a prospect that would have been unthinkable under the Republican-controlled Senate of the past two years.

Republicans are not waiting. With control of the Senate until January, GOP leaders are moving to confirm as many of Trump's pending nominees as possible during the lame-duck session. There are currently 22 judicial nominees at various stages of the Senate process; only three are ready for immediate floor votes, with the rest still awaiting action in the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to HuffPost. A senior GOP Senate aide, speaking on background, said the goal is to "confirm as many as possible."

The White House, for its part, is projecting confidence. A White House official told HuffPost only: "We expect all judicial nominees pending in the Senate to be confirmed this year."

Whether Republicans can deliver is uncertain. Several GOP senators just lost reelection and others are not returning next year, raising questions about attendance and motivation during a potentially drawn-out lame-duck period. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana flagged the risk weeks before the election.

You never know what kind of mood they're going to be in after the midterm elections. Somebody's going to be unhappy, and it could affect their appetite for getting something done. You could have attendance problems. That's why you want to actually plan.— Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.)

Democrats can also slow the lame-duck push. They can ensure full attendance at every vote — keeping pressure on Republicans to do the same — and deploy procedural tactics such as requiring all allotted debate time on each nominee to be used rather than waived, according to HuffPost. Any nominee who does not clear the Senate before January will have to start the confirmation process from scratch, this time before a Democratic-controlled committee.

That committee will be chaired by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who told HuffPost he is prepared to change how the panel operates. Progressive judicial advocacy group Demand Justice, whose president is Josh Orton, is pressing Democrats to hold a hard line and reject what Orton called "backroom, faux bipartisan insider horse-trading" with Trump's court picks.

He has been appointing people who lie and won't say he lost the 2020 election. You would have to be completely delusional to see last night's results and believe there is a mandate for bipartisan cooperation on election-denying corporatists for the federal bench.— Josh Orton, President, Demand Justice

Orton's comment points to a fault line that has already emerged within the Democratic caucus. Senators such as Peter Welch of Vermont and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania have voted for some of Trump's court picks during the current Congress — a practice Demand Justice has publicly opposed. With a larger majority and a presidential primary cycle approaching, some Democrats eyeing 2028 may be even less inclined to cross the caucus on judicial votes.

The practical question for the next two years is whether Trump and Senate Democrats can find any common ground on nominees, or whether the 43 remaining federal court vacancies simply go unfilled — leaving the judiciary short-staffed and cases backlogged until a new administration takes office.

Why it matters — Control of the Senate is the single lever that determines whether a president can place judges — including Supreme Court justices — on the federal bench for life, and Democrats now hold it for Trump's final two years.

Reported by nbcnews.com, politico.com, reuters.com, huffpost.com