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But if you’re looking for silver linings, it probably could have been worse. Given how slowly new vacancies have arisen since his re-election, Trump may not get many more than that before the 2026 midterm elections, when control of the Senate—and the power to confirm judges—will be up for grabs. How much damage did he do this time around?
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President Donald Trump's cabinet is taking shape, with nine of 22 nominees having received confirmation as of Monday.
Hearings are underway for multiple picks, while others are awaiting final confirmation by the Senate.
Despite all those vacancies in states with Republican senators, Trump has announced only three new nominees in the last month: Brian Lea to the Western District of Tennessee, Justin Olson to the Southern District of Indiana, and Megan Benton to the Western District of Missouri.
That’s less than half than the approximately 70 judges who left the bench during the same period during the Biden administration. A current state court judge, Benton was formerly the chair of the Platte County Republican Central Committee, which touts its support for the “right to life” on its website. 30 (88 percent) of the nominees are white, and 26 (77 percent) are male—both increases from Trump’s first term.
Gabbard has already broken barriers in her political career as the first Hindu member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the first American Samoan elected to Congress.
Leavitt, 27, will become the first Generation Z person to hold the position of White House press secretary, and the youngest ever to do so.
If confirmed by the Senate, she will also become the first Pacific Islander to serve as director of national intelligence.
Right now, Trump has fewer than 50 vacancies left to fill, and only one is an appeals court vacancy. In total, Trump announced 34 nominees this year.
Trump appointed 62-year-old Scott Bessent, a hedge fund manager and billionaire, to become the new Treasury secretary and advise the president on financial, economic and tax policy.
Despite his ties to Georgia and the existence of a district court vacancy in Atlanta, Trump nominated Lea to a district court seat in Tennessee, a state where Lea has almost no connections: According to his responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questionnaire, he doesn’t live there (Virginia), has never worked there (Atlanta and D.C.), didn’t go to law school there (Georgia), and didn’t clerk for any judges there (Alabama and D.C.).
The Partnership for Public Service and The Washington Post track nominees for roughly 800 critical leadership roles.
Launched in 2016, the political appointee tracker has been following roughly 800 of the more than 1,300 political appointed positions that require Senate confirmation, including Cabinet secretaries, chief financial officers, general counsels and ambassadors.
The tracker provides the most comprehensive data and analysis about the political appointments process and provides the public with up-to-date information about the nomination and confirmation status of nominees for critical roles in the federal government.
As it stands, there are 40 current vacancies, all of which are for district court seats, and 28 of which are in states with two Republican senators.
Trump tapped U.S. Senator Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, putting the Florida-born politician on track to be the first Latino to serve as the top U.S. diplomat.
If approved by his fellow Senate colleagues, the Cuban American would be the president’s chief foreign affairs adviser, including guidance to ongoing proxy wars between Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas.
He currently serves as vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
There are 22 Republican-appointed appeals court judges and 39 Republican-appointed district court judges currently eligible to retire, and most of them were already eligible when Trump took office.
In the last few weeks, just three district court judges have announced future retirement plans: Western District of Missouri Judge Douglas Harpool, Western District of Arkansas Judge Susan Hickey, and Eastern District of Tennessee Judge Thomas Varlan.
Technically, these nominees must be renominated, sent back to the Judiciary Committee, and voted out again.
Despite the problems with Benton and Lea, no one came off worse at this week’s hearing than Justin Olson, an Indianapolis lawyer who specializes in litigation seeking to exclude transgender athletes from college sports.
There are nine future vacancies, only one of which is for an appeals court seat.
Taken together, Trump’s 2025 record reflects a movement still intent on reshaping the courts in his embittered, grievance-fueled image—a movement constrained (for now) only by some combination of a lack of pressing vacancies and general executive branch incompetence.
Well, Tennessee has something Georgia doesn’t: two Republican senators.