Biden poised to veto JUDGES Act to end term with most vetoes since Clinton

Biden has already vetoed 12 bills during his term in office, the same number former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush each logged during their time in the White House. Trump issued 10 vetoes during his first term and would likely pass Biden during his second. Meanwhile, Clinton vetoed 37 pieces of legislation during his presidency.

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The White House issued a threat for Biden’s 13th veto last week, days before the House passed the JUDGES Act with a final vote of 236-173. Based on that math, the House would fall short of the two-thirds majority necessary to override a presidential veto.

“Those efforts to hold open judicial vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now,” Biden White House officials wrote in a statement.

The bill itself would create 66 new federal judicial seats, which would begin being filled by the incoming president. The legislation passed the Senate with unanimous support in August and spaced out the creation of the new judicial seats across the next three presidential administrations so that, theoretically, no one party stood to benefit more.

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Democrats say the timing of the bill’s Senate passage, which came before the results of the 2024 election were known, was a critical part of the deal. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) did not bring the bill to the floor for a vote until December, more than a month after Trump’s election victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.

“There was an understanding that we would get it done at a time when it was unclear who would win, and that played an important role in my being able to get support for this,” claimed Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), a Democratic sponsor of the bill. “This is a really unfortunate outcome when, on the Senate side, we did our job and we did it well.”

“The magic of this undertaking was we were going to do it before the election, so no one knew who had the advantage or not,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said. “I think the magic of the moment’s been lost.”

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Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), a Republican sponsor of the Senate bill, said he hoped Biden would reconsider the veto threat.

“This is a common-sense solution to a long-standing challenge, and I hope that in the end, this solution finds its way into law,” Young added.