United States District Court in Greensboro (Photo: Lynn Bonner)
President Donald Trump announced four judicial nominees for vacant posts on North Carolina’s district courts in Truth Social posts on Friday.
Trump said he is nominating Matthew Orso and Susan Courtwright Rodriguez to the Western District Court and David Bragdon and Lindsey Freeman to the Middle District Court. If all are confirmed, he would have twice as many appointees to North Carolina’s district courts as in his first term.
Despite friction with Trump in recent months, Sen. Thom Tillis recommended all four of the judicial nominees who were ultimately selected. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)Each of the four nominees has experience as in the federal courts. Rodriguez serves as a magistrate judge for the Western District while Orso clerked for Judge Robert J. Conrad, then the court’s chief judge. Bragdon and Freeman are both federal prosecutors, with the former currently the appellate chief at U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District and the latter an assistant U.S. attorney in the Middle District.
The announcement comes as Trump has renewed his focus on shaping the federal courts. Throughout July and August, he has hammered Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) over the Senate’s “blue slip” judicial nomination process, whereby senators must sign off on district court appointees in their states.
“I have a Constitutional Right to appoint Judges and U.S. Attorneys, but that RIGHT has been completely taken away from me in States that have just one Democrat United States Senator. This is because of an old and outdated “custom” known as a BLUE SLIP, that Senator Chuck Grassley, of the Great State of Iowa, refuses to overturn,” Trump posted Sunday. “Chuck Grassley should allow strong Republican candidates to ascend to these very vital and powerful roles, and tell the Democrats, as they often tell us, to go to HELL!”
That the four vacancies in North Carolina are available for Trump is itself a product of the blue slip rule. All of the seats were vacated under President Joe Biden while Democrats held a majority in the U.S. Senate — as did a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals seat — and the state’s senators declined to sign off on Biden’s proposed candidates. (The Fourth Circuit vacancy was eliminated when Judge James Wynn Jr. reversed his decision to retire following the election.)
All four of Trump’s picks were recommended by Sens. Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, despite the former’s break with the President over Medicaid cuts led him to announced his planned retirement from the Senate. Despite that clash, Tillis has continued to support Trump’s judicial nominees, even amid significant controversy. Tillis cast the deciding vote in favor of Third Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Emil Bove, whose fitness and character more than 80 former federal and state judges and roughly 900 former Department of Justice officials spoke out against.
Carl Tobias is a professor at the University of Richmond’s School of Law and an expert on the federal judiciary. (Courtesy of the University of Richmond.)“These four nominees are well-qualified to fill these important judicial vacancies in North Carolina, and I have confidence they will serve our great state with distinction,” Tillis said in a press release. “I want to thank the White House for their partnership in working to select these outstanding nominees and look forward to getting them through the Judiciary Committee and confirmed on the Senate floor.”
“Ensuring principled constitutionalist judges are confirmed to the federal courts is a privilege and responsibility I take very seriously,” Budd said. “I am grateful to President Trump for his inspired choices, and to Sen. Tillis for his partnership as we work to confirm these nominees in the Senate.”
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond and an observer of the federal courts, said the nominees appear similar to the types of judges Trump named in his first term, with relevant credentials and likely conservative judicial philosophies. He said he would expect them to be confirmed within the year, absent any red flags emerging.
“They look like they’ll be relatively easy to confirm, I would think, and don’t seem highly controversial,” Tobias said. “Those look like pretty typical picks in a Republican administration.”
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