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Conservative faction pushes judge nominees who are ‘even more bold and more conservative’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 15, 2024, 10:02 am CDT

Former President Donald Trump has broken with leaders of the conservative Federalist Society, who failed to voice their support when he tried to overturn the 2020 election and when prosecutors charged him with crimes.

Instead, the Wall Street Journal reports, Trump “has gravitated to more-combative lawyers outside the conservative legal establishment who have said they want to hobble regulatory agencies and concentrate power in the White House.”

These lawyers are part of a rising conservative faction that includes America First Legal, a conservative legal group founded by nonlawyer and former Trump adviser Stephen Miller to combat “the left’s radical and lawless agenda.”

One Republican legal activist pushing for pro-Trump judicial nominees is Mike Davis, according to the Wall Street Journal. Future nominees must be “even more bold and more conservative and more fearless” than those appointed in Trump’s first term, Davis said.

Davis likes judges following the model of conservatives on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans. The Wall Street Journal described the appeals court as “a hothouse of conservative jurisprudence under the influence of some of the brashest and most aggressive first-term Trump appointees.”

The up-and-coming conservative faction wants to see Trump appoint more judges like U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida, who dismissed the classified documents case against Trump, according to the article. She was mentioned as one of the “up-and-comers to watch” by former White House counsel Donald McGahn during a September conference.

Hat tip to the Volokh Conspiracy.