All Male: Of Trump’s 13 New Judicial Nominees, None Are Women

Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.

The White House nominated 13 new judicial nominees for lifetime appointments to the federal court, and none of them are women.

Coming after male leaders of the GOP helped cram through the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, despite credible allegations of sexual assault, this week’s judicial announcement continues Trump’s long tradition of overlooking women in the legal field.

According to one summertime tabulation, Trump had nominated 135 people to federal courts, just 35 of them were women. And of Trump’s confirmed nominees who received lifetime appointment, just 23 percent were women.

That compares to 42 percent of women who landed lifetime judicial appointments during President Barack Obama’s eight years in office.

Obama nominated and confirmed two women to the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump has nominated and confirmed two men.

Additionally, when Trump first put forward his list of 42 U.S. attorneys last year, 41 were men. (Of Obama’s first 42 nominees for that position, 12 were women.)

“It’s a slap in the face,” Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama who was one of Obama’s early nominees, said at the time.

U.S. attorney positions are highly coveted and often lead to careers at elite law firms or nominations to the federal bench.

There seems to be a gaping disconnect when it comes to Republicans, women, and the law.

During Kavanaugh’s controversial confirmation hearing, after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford vividly detailed her allegations that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in high school,  Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were forced to hire an outside prosecutor to ask questions because they didn’t want the GOP’s all-male panel to be involved. (Eventually, they were involved with Republican men casting doubt on Ford’s testimony.)

No Republican woman has ever served on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Today, of the 23 women in the Senate, only 6 are Republicans.

Last week, the committee’s chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), suggested the committee is just too much work for women.

Trump’s snubbing of women extends far beyond the legal profession.

Last year it was revealed that women working at the White House face an enormous pay gap, the type that would have been more common in the early 1980s, when American women were paid 35 percent less than men.

Trump doesn’t seem to view women as equals.

Published with permission of The American Independent.