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Biden Appoints 40 Black Women as Federal Judges, Breaking Record
In the final days of his presidency, Biden has made good on a campaign promise to diversify the federal judiciary, by appointing a record-breaking 40 Black women as judges. All together, Biden has appointed 63 Black judges.
As he approaches his final weeks in the Oval Office, political pundits are offering appraisals of his presidency’s impact on the Black community.
The Biden administration’s efforts to expand funding for historically Black colleges and universities, bolster gun violence intervention programs, and create the first-ever executive orders promoting equity and racial justice stand as examples of policies during a presidency that historians, analysts, and political scientists say was nothing if not consequential.
His Black judicial appointments, experts say, are also important because they may play a crucial role in serving as a judicial check on the second presidency of Trump, who has vowed to dismantle government agencies such as the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division — a move that is likely to face a stiff legal challenge.
Having the Black woman’s experience on the federal bench is “extremely important” because “there is a different kind of voice that can come from the Black female from the bench,” said Delores Jones-Brown, a professor emeritus at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York who studies judicial appointments.
Lena Zwarensteyn, who studies legal issues at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Humans Rights, said the move also signals a very specific ideological intent on the part of the president. Biden populated the bench with Black judges who may often be on the front lines of weighing some of the most significant issues facing the Black community, including health care access, equity in education, fair hiring practices, abortion, and voting rights.
“Those very district court judges are usually the first ones to hear cases, and they hear many, many, many more than our circuit courts,” added Zwarensteyn, whose group is a coalition of roughly 240 national civil and human rights groups. “Those decisions are often, at times, the very final decisions because very few cases actually get heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Biden’s appointments largely deliver on a pledge made during his presidential campaign to promote equity in the judicial system by diversifying the bench. The appointments come in addition to Biden’s most high-profile-judicial nominee, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court.
“Even if it means going against their colleagues”
Before Biden’s appointments, only eight Black women had ever served at the appellate court level of the federal judiciary, according to data compiled by Zwarensteyn’s group. The only other president who comes close to the pace of Biden’s appointment of Black judges was Carter at 37, but that included only seven Black women.
Out of the 234 lifetime judicial appointments during Donald Trump’s first term, only two were Black women. Seven of those judges were Black men.
“It’s astonishing,” Zwarensteyn said of the makeup of Trump’s appointments.
So far, Biden has made over 230 lifetime judicial appointments as of Dec. 9 when Tiffany Johnson was confirmed as the 40th Black woman judge, said Patrick McNeil, a spokesman for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Holding a lifetime appointment could empower a judge to issue rulings without fear that they may suffer political consequences, such as losing their seats on the bench, because of their decisions.
Jones-Brown said she was pleasantly surprised by the number of Black women who have received lifetime appointments. She said she expects those judges, in particular, to embrace the challenges that the next president’s term might bring.
“I think many of the Black women will understand that their role is to provide justice in places where it has not been,” Jones-Brown told Capital B. “Even if it means going against their colleagues, even interpreting the law in a way that others may not.”
Through their rulings, Jones-Brown said, those women judges can draw on their lived experiences to play a vital role in promoting fairness, particularly in cases on the bench that concern issues of race or gender.
And they provide “a sort of different kind of cultural presence that” Black women have, she said.
The cultural presence means that some judges are entering federal jurisdictions where few, if any, people of color have served on the bench before.
“There are still courts in the Southern states that still don’t look like … the people they serve because Republican senators have blocked all kinds of diverse nominees, or any nominee from the Democratic president,” said Carolyn Leary Bobb, vice president of communications for Alliance for Justice, a progressive group that advocates for judicial diversity.
Nancy G. Abudu, a Biden appointee who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in May 2023, is the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which is based in Atlanta and considers cases in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia.
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News
Bizarre Epstein files reference to Trump, Putin, and oral sex with ‘Bubba’ draws scrutiny in Congress
The latest tranche of emails from the estate of late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein includes one that contains what appear to be references to President Donald Trump allegedly performing oral sex, raising questions the committee cannot answer until the Department of Justice turns over records it has withheld, says U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.
Garcia insists the Trump White House is helping block them.
In a Friday afternoon interview with The Advocate, the out California lawmaker responded to a 2018 exchange, which was included in the emails released, between Jeffrey Epstein and his brother, Mark Epstein. In that message, Mark wrote that because Jeffrey Epstein had said he was with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, he should “ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba.”
“Bubba” is a nickname former President Bill Clinton has been known by; however, the email does not clarify who Mark Epstein meant, and the context remains unclear.
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Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday said the Trump administration is planning to have all Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries reapply for the program due to alleged fraud.
The secretary said after receiving data on SNAP recipients from 29 red states that “186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check.”
“Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data what we’re going to find?” she asked during a Thursday appearance on Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight.”
“It’s going to give us a platform and a trajectory to fundamentally rebuild this program, have everyone reapply for their benefit, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through SNAP or food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable, and they can’t survive without it,” she added.
Every state has a periodic recertification process that requires SNAP or food stamp recipients to update their whereabouts and earnings, according to the Department of Agriculture (USDA). Most municipalities require updated data every six to 12 months.
“Secretary Rollins wants to ensure the fraud, waste, and incessant abuse of SNAP ends,” a USDA spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill. “Rates of fraud were only previously assumed, and President Trump is doing something about it. Using standard recertification processes for households is a part of that work. As well as ongoing analysis of State data, further regulatory work, and improved collaboration with States. “
Earlier this month, food stamps were threatened amid the government shutdown as the Trump administration argued against using contingency funds to fuel the welfare program.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.
Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.
Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.
Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.
Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”
“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the Republican president wrote, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election victory over Bill Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Asked later Friday whether he should be ordering up such investigations, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “I’m the chief law enforcement officer of the country. I’m allowed to do it.”
In a July memo regarding the Epstein investigation, the FBI said, “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
The president’s demand for an investigation — and Bondi’s quick acquiescence — is the latest example of the erosion of the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House since Trump took office.
It is also an extraordinary attempt at deflection. For decades, Trump himself has been scrutinized for his closeness to Epstein — though like the people he now wants investigated, he has not been accused of sexual misconduct by Epstein’s victims.
None of Trump’s proposed targets were accused of sex crimes
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