The Enlightenment

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Welcome to The Judiciary at Noon! Take a break from work to get an update on the oft-neglected third branch of the United States government, the judicial branch.

The series covers any updates to the federal judiciary, including any new judges confirmed, any deaths, resignations, or retirements from the courts, and any new vacancies that have occurred. It includes political analysis at the very end. All information spans the previous week.

Confirmations

No judges were confirmed for the week spanning October 25 to 31, 2024.

Vacancies

Federal Courts

• Oct. 31, 2024: Judge William Joseph Kayatta Jr. of the First Circuit Court of Appeals assumed senior status, opening up a vacancy on the court.

District of Columbia Judiciary

• Oct. 29, 2024: Judge Anthony Charles Epstein of the District of Columbia Superior Court announced he will be retiring on January 11, 2025, creating a vacancy on the court.

67 vacancies remain on the federal judiciary, a number unchanged from a week ago.

Retirements, Deaths, and Resignations

• Oct. 27, 2024: Senior Judge John Fontaine Keenan of the Southern District of New York, a Reagan appointee, died at the age of 94.
• Oct. 27, 2024: Senior Judge Justin Lowe Quackenbush of the Eastern District of Washington, a Carter appointee, died at the age of 95.

Analysis

Normally I take this section to provide as objective of an analysis of the courts that I can, but I want to do something a little different today.

I am asking you to vote for Kamala Harris and any Democrat that you see on your ballot. I don’t care which state, I don’t care which district, please vote for Kamala Harris and your Democratic Representative in the Senate and House of Representatives.

You may not agree with everything Kamala Harris or your local Democrat says. That’s fine. God knows I don’t. But Donald Trump is a threat to our country’s flawed, but surviving 250-year-old constitutional democracy.

At a December 5, 2023 town hall, Trump said he would be a dictator, but “only on day one” of his presidency. He said on December 3rd, 2022 in a TruthSocial post that the nonexistent “fraud” of the 2020 election “allows” for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

In a rally in Durham, New Hampshire on December 16th, 2023, Trump said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country“. He talks about deporting tens of millions of people from the country and allegedly wishes for military generals like the ones Adolf Hitler had.

And then of course there was the October 27, 2024 Trump rally at Madison Square Garden where various speakers said Kamala Harris is being sexually trafficked by “pimp handlers”, Puerto Rico is an island of garbage, Latinos in general are overwhelming the racial demographics of the United States because they “love making babies” because they “can’t pull out”, Democrats need to be defeated so badly to the point of being “slaughtered” politically, and that Palestinians are taught to kill “us” at “two years old”.

What am I supposed to call this other than “Nazi sh!t”?

Trump is not the man you want appointing judges for the next four years. You do not want people who share Trump’s Nazi ideology wielding the full force of the law.

Head over to this US government website to find out how and where to vote: https://www.usa.gov/how-to-vote It will tell you your identification requirements and where you have to go to vote. Vote early if you can. You can find out where to vote early as well from the site.

I’m still a young man. I don’t want to grow up in a fascist country.

SIGN-OFF

That’s it for this week’s The Judiciary at Noon. This has been Anthony Myrlados.