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Why Is This Democratic Senator Voting to Confirm a Trump Judicial Nominee? - Balls and Strikes
https://ballsandstrikes.substack.com/p/why-is-this-democratic-senator-votingEarlier this week, Vermont Democrat Peter Welch took to the Senate floor to excoriate both President Donald Trump for his “dangerous” abuses of power, and also his colleagues in the Senate for obediently yielding to them. “This dynamic of executive overreach and U.S. Senate passivity has got to end, to protect the well-being of our democracy and the well-being of the people of the United States,” Welch said.
One lawmaker who would do well to heed Peter Welch’s call to action is Peter Welch, who roughly 24 hours earlier had voted to confirm Kyle Dudek, a Trump nominee for a district court judgeship in Florida. Depending on how you count, Welch is either the first or second Democratic senator to back a Trump judicial nominee: Back in July, Maine Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, voted for a particularly gross Missouri district court nominee at the urging of Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley. Two days later, King described taking Hawley’s advice as a “mistake,” which is a fair characterization both with respect to judicial nominations and also in literally any other context.
Welch’s explanation is no more insightful or less embarrassing. “I had a chance to vote for a qualified nominee, so I did,” he told Bloomberg Law shortly after the Dudek vote. Bloomberg reported that Welch did not elaborate on what, specifically, prompted him to draw this conclusion, but that he generally described Dudek as “a competent nominee by the Trump administration,” and thus a “needle in the haystack.” My guess is that within the Trump White House, a Democratic senator working a clichéd barb into a press quote is a price they will happily pay for the right to celebrate Dudek getting confirmed with “bipartisan support.”
It is true that relative to some of Trump’s other nominees, Dudek is not quite as experienced a fighter on the front lines of the right-wing culture wars: After clerking, he spent a few years practicing law at a Florida firm, where he apparently developed a niche practice defending cops accused of various forms of misconduct. In 2022, Dudek was appointed as a federal magistrate judge in the Middle District of Florida, the court he now joins as a full district court judge.
One lawmaker who would do well to heed Peter Welch’s call to action is Peter Welch, who roughly 24 hours earlier had voted to confirm Kyle Dudek, a Trump nominee for a district court judgeship in Florida. Depending on how you count, Welch is either the first or second Democratic senator to back a Trump judicial nominee: Back in July, Maine Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, voted for a particularly gross Missouri district court nominee at the urging of Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley. Two days later, King described taking Hawley’s advice as a “mistake,” which is a fair characterization both with respect to judicial nominations and also in literally any other context.
Welch’s explanation is no more insightful or less embarrassing. “I had a chance to vote for a qualified nominee, so I did,” he told Bloomberg Law shortly after the Dudek vote. Bloomberg reported that Welch did not elaborate on what, specifically, prompted him to draw this conclusion, but that he generally described Dudek as “a competent nominee by the Trump administration,” and thus a “needle in the haystack.” My guess is that within the Trump White House, a Democratic senator working a clichéd barb into a press quote is a price they will happily pay for the right to celebrate Dudek getting confirmed with “bipartisan support.”
It is true that relative to some of Trump’s other nominees, Dudek is not quite as experienced a fighter on the front lines of the right-wing culture wars: After clerking, he spent a few years practicing law at a Florida firm, where he apparently developed a niche practice defending cops accused of various forms of misconduct. In 2022, Dudek was appointed as a federal magistrate judge in the Middle District of Florida, the court he now joins as a full district court judge.
Six Democratic senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee (Durbin, Schiff, Whitehouse, Klobuchar, Coons, and Welch) voted yes on two Trump district court nominees this morning, and my question remains, why do senior members of this party keep voluntarily ceding political capital to Donald Trump
— Jay Willis (@jaywillis.net) 2025-10-01T19:41:32.782Z