Working on the very relevant and dynamic topic of judicial nominations and amplifying the importance of the court to the issues near and dear to all of us. We believe the wall should be a force to improve the lives of all people. A nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, we work for positive change by shaping the vitally important legal and constitutional issues and we have networks olawyers and polil across the country dedicated to those ideas. I encourage you to visit the website, acs wall. Org, attend the event and get involved in the local chapters all across the country. For those of you here in dc, please get in touch with our chapter and many of the leaders are here in the room this evening and are happy to speak with you more. We also ask those of you on social media to follow us on twitter, please follow us and for dc lawyer chapter. They will be live with this event and we encourage you to join the chapter in using the hash tag acstalk and you can view photos at the truckers instead ran page at acsdc. I want to take a moment to thank the chapter. Theyve been steadfast in their attention to the courts and the issues of the nomination. Contributing to the Research Effort and im also deeply grateful to the entire chapter and in particular susan for hosting this exciting conversation this evening. And a special thank you to christine and the entire Leadership Conference on the human rights for hosting us here tonight and theyre beautiful space. The importance of the courts and judges cannot be overstated. The judges on the front line of defending the rule of law and they decide cases every single day on issues that we all care about from immigration to who can enter the country to Reproductive Healthcare access to Voting Rights to Consumer Protection to clean water. While much attention has been focused on the Supreme Court, there are nearly 900 judges that serve on the u. S. District and Circuit Court of appeals and they decided the vast majority of cases. Its also important to consider closely whos been nominated because quite often these are the judges who are considered fowere consideredfor the futuret vacancies for example, the justice elevated to the Supreme Court last year had previously served on the tenth Circuit Court of appeals. We have a president who regularly denigrates the judiciary and individual judges and we have a Senate Minority leader and Judiciary Committee chair rushing their consideration of the president s nominee. Right now there are more than 150 current and known future vacancies on the federal court which represents nearly 20 of the federal judiciary. This is by design after they took the step of holding the Supreme Court seat they also kept open more than 10 100 of tl work for vacancies and hope that they could confirm nominees they were confident in to fill their agenda and recently thereve been proposals on calling on congress to dramatically expand the number so that this administration could kill more of them to reverse the judicial legacy of president obama. At the white house and Senate Majority have been interrupted to staff the courts and today the senate has confirmed 23 lifetime judicial appointments one as we know to the Supreme Court and 12 to the Circuit Court of appeals and by comparison in the first year in office the senate only confirmed 13 charges, three of them to the Circuit Court. This administration has been aggressive naming nominees often without competition from senators and theyve been endorsed by some three incredibly troubling nominees. However the concerning trends weve seen remain in some of the others. Nominees for example who lack the legal experience or in the jurisdiction they had been nominated and come from strong ideological backgrounds and made deeply troubling public and sometimes anonymous statements and they may not have received a qualified earning from the Standing Committee on federal judiciary or they were not fully forthcoming in their questionnaire were hearing. Many senators tried to be a check on the administration and asserted responsibility to provide advice and consent by withholding their pink slips. He would be the sole arbiter of whether the nominee moves forward. Here to talk about this and more as the panel of amazing women working with them in many of our incredible partners and many that are in the room tonight is a true honor. They are all relentless, fiercely smart, funny and true experts on this topic. So to introduce the panel is jennifer, the White House Correspondent and congressional reporter for the huffingtonpost, one of the most astute reporters whose only covered the judicial nomination process and is able to seemingly be really funny about the delving into a lot of the various aspects of this otherwise sometimes mundane process with incredible perspective and so we are so thankful for chen and the panel for being here. Thank you. Hello. Welcome to the judicial nominations. Make the title with the wealth. I will introduce the panelists. Seated next to me is kristin clark, th the president and executive director of the Lawyers Committee for civil rights under law and sitting next to her is christine executive vp for policy at the Leadership Conference on civil and human rights and on the end is the director of strategy. So, to jump right in, between all of your backgrounds and wealth of knowledge on judges and the wall and years of experience combined covering the judicial branch, how would you summarize the last year in one word in terms of the judicial nominations . One word. Earth shattering. I guess that is one word. Hyphenated. [laughter] i gave you these questions in advance. You can tell the people that have tried this. My one word i would use is revealing. Have you been surprised at all by the last year on the style of nominating and rushing people through the process and i guess by style hes been very fast, sloppy in his judicial picks have been heavily shaped by the groups with federalist society. Is this what you expected a year or so ago . As a civil rights lawyer, the courts matter and i think that the courts matter for all americans. They play an incredibly Important Role in American Life. There tends to be able to focus on the united Supreme Court that the reality is theres just a few cases that get hurt an heard resolved by the Supreme Court. There are tens of thousands of cases that move through the Federal District and Circuit Courts that touch every aspect of our lives and i think that historically we have seen the president respect the integrity of the courts and sometimes they invite and debate nominees who sometimes are polarizing that historically weve seen president s but with nominees who can garner some degree of bipartisan support and that hasnt been the case with President Trumps nominees, and i think that is because he has been so focused on putting forth radical ideologues who call far from outside th of the mainstre. There are people of low caliber we saw with Matthew Peterson and hes been relentless in putting forth young white men for vacancies that exist across the federal court and i think that is a shame. White men make up about 31 of the u. S. Population but have represented the lions share more than 80 of the president s nominations. So i think that sends a really dangerous message to americans, latinos, the lg bt community. People that represent the highest levels of their profession and could occupy the courts, so what we are seeing from President Trump i think is different from anything we have seen from a president in modern times. So is this what you expected heading into the Trump Administration tax i knew things would be bad but i didnt think they would be that extreme and that is what we have seen from this president , just nominees who are incredible outliers who hold these views on civil rights issues and about lg bt people and who have dedicated their lives to opposing civil rights. These are the kind of people shes focused on with laser position on putting into these lifetime positions on the court. I probably shouldnt surprise us that hes moved as quickly or that they are as extreme because during the campaign when he was trying to convince republicans to choose him as their nominee, he used judges and judicial nominations as a way to prove his ideology and that he was worthy of their support and during that process, he bragged about and got applause on litmus tests about judges he would nominate if he became president and he also outsourced the election process to the rightwing Interest Groups and when i think we have seen already that they are not very good at getting. Or maybe they are good at it and it depends on whether you think there is a bug or a future of his judicial nomination. But during the campaign, then candidate trump made the judicial nominations and he wanted to remain in court and having that this test on reproductive freedom and guns. He bragged about it and got applause lines on it and indicated he was going to do this outsourcing that he has done. I dont think tha so when we sat he expected that there would be people blogging or that they would be so extremely heartfelt individuals. I think the courts matter enormously that we are surprised at how hostile to civil rights have been. I think that the expected given the Campaign Promises that they would be extreme but im not sure that we expected those dimensions. My choice for on of the one d which was a oneword answer, goldstar thank you is in terms of revealing i think in many ways theyve revealed much about itself and in many ways republicans have revealed about themselves how they conducted themselves and i think i completely agree that many people have their merits of whether you agree or not they were willing to hold their nose and vote for trump because of the court and to see what Mitch Mcconnell was willing to do with respect when president obama was in office, weve always talked about the fact that there has been an intensity gap between our view of the world into those on the other side and understanding they have been lighting and waiting for this moment. This is the payoff and so in some ways i am not surprised by the caliber of the nominee in part because certainly the community knew what they were getting and frankly i somehow suspect President Trump isnt reviewing these nominees carefully when deciding that there are individuals who absolutely knew this is part of what they would get by signing onto this agenda and so to the extent is this a function of no vetting or very careful vetting and they will kee would keep tht nominees like this which makes this story so interesting and i am sure we will get to that in terms of whether or not again what is the exception and what is the new norm, but i think that it does demonstrate there is an unwillingness to serve in that role of the check and balance and i think that in some ways is the most troubling revelation over the last year and weve seen some unlikely defenders of the court but i dont know if i would have put senator kenzie from louisiana on my list and making at least some defense debate could attempt to defend the liberty of the court. I wish the lists were more of course but i do think that this is a snowball thats picked up momentum as its rolled down the hill. How has trump already changed the federal bench when obviously he got to Supreme Court nominee confirmed which is what a lot of people focus on the most, but hes got and how many district and Supreme Court nominations . 12 Circuit Court nominees which is a record in fact i have to say that its more than any president has gotten confirmed in their first year since the courts were created in 1891, 12 nominees in one year. That is amazing. But what do you think the biggest impact is coming is at the Supreme Court or some of these Circuit Court judges, do you have any thoughts on that . I think that we have to look at the full picture. The inabilitthe ability to appoy so early on in his tenure was significant and now we are already seeing that he is closely aligned with Justice Thomas on a number of cases and is proving to be a justice who matches the ideological litmus test that the president has been using for nominees across the board, if a test case t test shy the foundation and federalist society. This is a president all about identifying those who are going to bring with them a goal of very narrowly reading the constitution and rolling back a lot of the protections that we see emerge from the courts in the past decade. So the Supreme Court is just the tip of the iceberg and i think that hes moved forward at a lightning pace confirming a Record Number of charges to the district and Circuit Courts and youyear number one. The former charge of the Southern District of new york offered a lot of commentary about what President Trump is doing with respect to the judicial nominations and i think that shes right when shes identified this as perhaps his Lasting Legacy because these are younger judges that will be there for decades issuing rulings on issues that impact all aspects of American Life and not just on Voting Rights in the criminal justice and discrimination and fair housing and corporations and issues that touch all aspects of our lives, so i think we are already seeing and feeling the impact and this president has been really racing forward and moving nominees that have exceeded any other president in recent time. I agree with everything sad. I will go to the earlier point about making the courts whiter and more mail and reversing that trend that we have been seeing on diversifying the judges who serve in communities that should reflect those that they serve i thinthink there will be a lastig legacy as well tha but the other thing i would say is nominating a seat held hostage and then lowering the threshold for the votes so when they changed the rule instead of having the 60 vote threshold down to 50 even though it was made by the senators, it was neat because President Trump chose some of the divisive. There wasnt an interest in nominating someone who would get strong bipartisan support so i think one of the lasting legacies is that from now on a simple majority will confirm future Supreme Court justices so as impactful as i think that he would be, i also think that its a longterm legacy at that. I think one of the other way as we are seeing the change already felt is for example when he was at a confirmation hearing and gave his lipservice to the rule of law and at the first opportunity that it was made available to him, then he decided the Marriage Equality decision didnt in fact answer the question of whether or not marriage should samesex couples were entitled to be on their same birth certificate notwithstanding the language itself that talks about birth and death certificates. Im not sure how about missed his attention but one of the things i think we see him doing and that is going to ripple down with the kind of nominees dc getting confirmed to the court of appeals is basically sending up a flare saying try it and see if you can get away with it. It is an emboldening of individuals who again will go through the confirmation process and feel sympathetic to the frustration that has been expressed perhaps more colorfully than i can on television by senator white house, although he usually keeps it clean, but this notion that we have individuals who we know exactly why they have been nominated. And as noted, one in three has explicitly blatantly anticredentials that have been nominated not in spite of but because of that and on any of this wouldve matrix you can look at individuals and find out about the nomination of far in North Carolina of the outrage of the nomination and yet instead that is part of how he jumped ahead, so i do think there is an attempt to sort of signal a new day and we will see the arguments become more outlandish and potentially positions from lower courts becoming more outlandish because theres been this sort of signaling of things that were considered settled may not be any more. So lets talk about the diversity of the nominees. I know as of late november, he nominated 54 white judges, three American Indian judges, one latino judge and one black judge. That is in a year. Only 19 of them are women, so as the panelists noted that leaves a whole bunch of straight white guys in line to become judges, so my question is obviously that looks bad from a diversity standpoint, but i want you to dig in a little bit and tell me what that means to regular people what effect does that have on the cases that are decided all across the country by federal judges who are consistently straight white men what does that mean . On a basic level, they are basic chords that serve