Trump seeks to reshape judiciary as first nominees face Senate

(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump's first batch of judicial nominees since returning to the White House is set to go before a U.S. Senate panel as the Republican looks to further reshape a judiciary whose members have stymied parts of his agenda.

    Five of the 11 judicial nominees Trump has announced so far are slated to appear on Wednesday before the Republican-led U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which will weigh whether to recommend them for the full Senate's consideration.

    Those nominees all have conservative bona fides that their supporters say will help Trump shift the ideological balance of the judiciary further to the right after making 234 appointments in his first term, which was a near-record for a president's first four years in office.

    Trump's first-term appointees included three members of the U.S. Supreme Court, which since gaining a 6-3 conservative majority has curtailed abortion rights, rejected affirmative action policies on university campuses and limited the power of administrative agencies.

    White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement that Trump was committed to "restoring integrity to the judicial system, which begins with appointing America First judges, not unelected politicians in robes."

Among Wednesday's nominees is Whitney Hermandorfer, who as a lawyer serving under Tennessee's Republican attorney general has defended the state's abortion ban and challenged federal protections for transgender youth.

    Hermandorfer, who is nominated to a seat on the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, will appear before the Senate panel with four nominees to fill trial court vacancies in Missouri.

    Those include Joshua Divine, Missouri's solicitor general, who challenged Democratic former President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness efforts and has defended abortion and transgender healthcare restrictions.

The hearing comes days after Trump broke with conservative legal activist Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who advised Trump on judicial appointments in his first term.

    “I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations,” Trump wrote. “This is something that cannot be forgotten!"

    Leo in response said he was grateful Trump transformed the courts. He said the judiciary "is better than it’s ever been in modern history, and that will be President Trump’s most important legacy."

Trump's attack on Leo came a day after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade that included a Trump-appointed judge blocked most of his tariffs. It is one of several rulings White House officials describe as part of a "judicial coup" by judges who have blocked his policies.

     Mike Davis, whose conservative Article III Project backs Trump's judicial nominees, said that in his second term Trump "doesn't need to appease the D.C. establishment with weak and timid judges."

    "He is picking bold and fearless judges, like Emil Bove, who will follow the Constitution instead of seeking establishment favor."

    Bove, a Justice Department official who previously served as Trump's defense lawyer in the New York criminal trial over hush money paid to a porn star, was nominated last week to join the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

    His nomination drew criticism from Democrats and Ed Whelan, a conservative legal commentator who in a piece in the National Review called Bove's nomination "disturbing."

    "Clearly you have some folks agitating for MAGA-type nominees, and the White House will be open to those folks so long as they also have good legal qualifications," Whelan said in an interview.

    But he said most of Trump's nominees, as well as candidates in the pipeline, have fit within the rubric of what Trump would have sought in his first term.

    "It's going to be very hard for Trump to pick people other than people with traditional conservative qualifications," Whelan said.



(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Lisa Shumaker)