WASHINGTON _ After months of negotiations and delays, the White House is moving to fill California's three vacancies on the influential 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals _ over the strenuous objections of the state's two Democratic senators.
White House officials had been negotiating with Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, earlier in the year about filling these and other federal court vacancies in the state. But that dialogue collapsed this past summer, Senate aides said.
On Wednesday night, the Trump administration announced it was nominating three attorneys to the 9th Circuit, the largest and busiest federal appeals court in the country. Among the thorny issues the court has tackled or could decide on are the legality of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program for undocumented young people brought to the country as children, the president's travel ban on people from several Muslim-majority countries, and a lawsuit challenging the White House's attempts to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities.
