The Senate confirmed
three new U.S. District Judges Tuesday morning: Salvador Mendoza for the Eastern District of Washington on a 92-4 vote; Staci Yandle for the Southern District of Illinois on a 52-44 vote, and Darrin Gayles for the Southern District of Florida on a 98-0 vote. The Alliance for Justice notes in an emailed press release that these are groundbreaking votes.
Today, Judge Darrin Gayles became the first openly gay African-American man to serve on the federal bench. In addition, Judge Staci Michelle Yandle, an openly gay African-American woman, and Judge Salvador Mendoza have dedicated their careers to fighting for the rights of individual plaintiffs and indigent criminal defendants.
These votes—one of which was unanimous and one that only had four in opposition—were also dragged out by Republicans as long as possible, with forced cloture votes on all of them. This is the
latest Republican tactic for making sure the Democratic leadership gets as little accomplished as possible.
In spite of that, and thanks to the filibuster reform Senate Democrats finally adopted, the Senate has started eating into the huge number of vacancies on the federal bench, shrinking them "to their lowest level since days after Obama took office."