Trump's judicial nominees are his legacy — and why we cannot elect Joe Biden

The president has always been committed to appointing jurists who understand, respect and follow the Constitution. The Democrats are not.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh shakes hands with President Donald Trump after being nominated to the Supreme Court in the East Room of the White House on July 9, 2018.Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images file
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For the sake of the judiciary — and of our nation — we cannot risk having Joe Biden pick our nation's federal judges for the next four years.

The federal judiciary was designed by our Founding Fathers to render impartial decisions on what the Constitution allows the state and federal governments to do; it was designed as a check against encroachments on individual freedom and abuses of power by the legislative and executive branches of government. But, as we have increasingly seen over the last few decades, impartiality and deference to the Constitution among federal judges is ignored when Democrat presidents make appointments.

Joe Biden would stack the federal bench with activist judges who find reasons to rule in favor of their own dangerous vision for remaking our country, and those judges hand-picked by Joe Biden and his radical Democrat allies would threaten our fundamental American freedoms. They would abandon the principle of religious liberty, refuse to protect the lives of the unborn and systematically erode the right to keep and bear arms.

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Take, for instance, this year's Supreme Court decision Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which was split 5-4 between the court's constitutional conservatives and its liberals. The conservative majority ruled in favor of three Montana families that had wanted to use their state's school choice scholarship program to attend a Christian school but were denied based on a section of the state's Constitution dating to 1889 that prohibited state funds from going to "sectarian" schools. That law, versions of which are on the books in 37 states, originally targeted Catholics.

The court's liberal majority would have allowed Montana's ban on using state scholarship money at religious schools to remain in effect. However, this Supreme Court — with two Trump appointees — struck what most observers believe was a fatal blow to this outdated, anti-Catholic set of laws, known as Blaine Amendments.

A court filled with Biden-appointed judges and justices (as evidenced by the current court's liberal minority) would have promulgated further discrimination against Catholics and other religious people and families.

Even just the specter of a Supreme Court dedicated to preserving Americans' Second Amendment rights has the effect of protecting them: New York state's efforts to impose incredibly onerous restrictions on gun owners' ability to legally transport their firearms between legal locations was unilaterally changed after it seemed unlikely that the Supreme Court would strike the law down. (The court likely would have further enumerated what the right to bear arms actually means.) A court packed with Biden nominees, however, would embolden governors like Andrew Cuomo to continue undermining the freedoms Americans have enjoyed since the founding.

Implications also exist regarding executive powers — and thus national security — which can be either derived from the willingness of the Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution or led by fleeting social norms.

Left-wing activists have attempted to block seemingly every commonsense immigration policy implemented by President Donald Trump — including the construction of the border wall. Although the enforcement of immigration policy duly passed by Congress is well within the scope of the executive branch powers laid out by the Constitution of the United States, the left continues to block the implementation this legitimate policy.

Thankfully, President Trump has worked to prevent such obstructions through his landmark appointments to the Supreme Court. After Justice Antonin Scalia's passing in 2016, the president, then still a candidate, worked diligently to find an immensely qualified successor with a judicial philosophy akin to Scalia's; it was crucial to ensure that the justice's legacy would be carried forward for the next generation. (In fact, the campaign released a list of potential replacements prior to the election so the American people could judge for themselves who might be appointed.) In 2017, the president did exactly as promised by nominating Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. The president delivered again for conservatives by nominating Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.

Beyond these monumental victories on the Supreme Court — and possibly his biggest achievement of his first term — President Trump has nominated more than 200 federal judges to the bench, which is more than a quarter of the judges currently sitting. The number of federal judges appointed to the judiciary by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate has far outpaced President Barack Obama's record.

This administration has appointed 53 federal judges to appeals courts, where many cases are determined without ever making it to the Supreme Court. No president has nominated and confirmed that many appeals court judges so quickly in 40 years. President Trump also flipped three appeals courts to Republican-appointed majorities and changed the long-understood left-leaning 9th Circuit court with a record-breaking 10 appointments.

With a second term, President Trump will have a unique opportunity to continue reshaping the judiciary. He'll be committed to appointing jurists who understand, respect and follow the Constitution to the letter.

Our constitutional rights — and the values we hold dear — are on the line in November. We know who Joe Biden would pick to fill vacant seats: liberal judicial activists who interpret the law based on social norms and judicial fiat, rather than what the Constitution prescribes.

This is why it's essential that we re-elect President Trump to continue protecting our judiciary and its adherence to the Constitution. We simply cannot hand the radical left the power to appoint judges; too many aspects of American life hang in the balance. The risk to all of us, and our constitutional rights, is far too great.

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