Republicans hand federal judgeship to 36-year-old blogger who has never tried a case before

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a lifetime appointment of President Trump's Alabama federal judge nominee along party lines on Thursday despite the fact that 36-year-old Brett J. Talley has never tried a case in his life and has only practiced law for three years, the Los Angeles Times reports. While Talley has degrees from the University of Alabama and Harvard Law School and runs a blog, the American Bar Association deemed him "not qualified" for the job. Additionally, Talley has "displayed a degree of partisanship unusual for a judicial nominee, denouncing 'Hillary Rotten Clinton' and pledging support for the National Rifle Association," the Times reports.

President Trump has nominated 59 people to federal courts since taking office, including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. At the same point in former President Barack Obama's first term, he'd nominated 27 federal judges and one Supreme Court justice. Liberal critics have pointed to nominations like Talley in alarm: "So far, no one from [Trump's] party has been willing to stand up against him on the agenda of packing the courts," the vice president of People for the American Way, Marge Baker, told the Los Angeles Times.

Trump has directly praised Talley as being an "untold story" that "nobody wants to talk about."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"When you think of it, Mitch [McConnell] and I were saying, that has consequences 40 years out, depending on the age of the judge," Trump said in October. "But 40 years out."