Power

Trump Announces First Judicial Pick of Term

The seasoned conservative litigator has hawked the right’s legal arguments in some of the biggest cases making their way through the federal courts.

Photograph of the outside of the Potter Stewart United States Courthouse in Cincinnati, Ohio. The court is home to the U.S. Sixth District Court of Appeals.
If confirmed by the Senate, Hermandorfer will fill a vacant seat on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Cory Woodruff/Shutterstock

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President Donald Trump announced the first judicial pick of his second term late last week in the chaotic disregarding of processes and norms that’s come to define Trump’s first 100 days in office.

In a near-midnight post on Truth Social, Trump declared that he was nominating attorney Whitney Hermandorfer to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

Hermandorfer, a 2015 graduate of the George Washington University Law School, clerked for both Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett at the Supreme Court. She also clerked for Justice Brett Kavanaugh while he was on D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Hermandorfer later became the director of the strategic litigation unit in the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office.

Though clerking for Alito, Barrett, and Kavanaugh are clear signs of Hermandorfer’s conservative, Federalist Society credentials, it’s Hermandorfer’s role in the Tennessee AG’s office that offers the most insight into why Trump tapped her to fill the vacant bench seat. While heading strategic litigation for the office, Hermandorfer was one of the authors for Tennessee in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court supporting Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship. The Court will hear arguments in that case next week. The litigator also argued against a Biden-era policy that included transgender students in anti-discrimination regulations, and opposed the enforcement of a federal rule under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act that would require states to provide government employees coverage for abortions.

“As a direct result of Trump’s judicial appointments from his first term, our country has become less safe and critical freedoms have been ripped from us,” said Maggie Jo Buchanan, the interim executive director Demand Justice, in a press release. “The Administration and its allies are actively circumventing the rule of law while threatening judges who rule against them—it should be clear to all that Trump will continue to prioritize judicial nominees willing to put personal loyalty over the law.”

Despite the announcement on Truth Social, Courthouse News reported that no official statement regarding Hermandorfer’s nomination has been relayed to the Senate—action that would need to be taken in order for the chamber to begin the process of vetting and voting on the nomination. That would be unusual in any other administration. But in Trump 2.0, flagrantly ignoring norms, overstepping boundaries, and governing by chaos are now routine. So if the Senate takes up Hermandorfer’s nomination—and when—is really anyone’s guess at this point.