Donald Trump has weeks left to fill the federal courts before Democrats take the Senate.
Tom Cotton just made it worse.
What Cotton did to Trump's last circuit court nominee is what Mike Davis called an unforgivable sin.
Trump Had 23 Lame Duck Judicial Nominees and Eight Weeks to Confirm Them
Republicans control the Senate for eight more weeks, and Democrats have signaled they will block every Trump nominee the moment they take the majority in January.
Trump has 23 judicial nominees waiting for confirmation – circuit court picks most of all, because those judges serve for life and their rulings shape federal law across multiple states for decades.
Trump pushed the Senate this week to confirm all remaining nominees before the gavel changes hands.
That is the race Senator Tom Cotton just sabotaged.
Trump nominated Lee Rudofsky to the Eighth Circuit in August 2026 – a judge he had appointed to the Eastern District of Arkansas in 2019, one confirmation vote away from making history.
Confirming Rudofsky would have made the Eighth Circuit the first federal appeals court in America with a majority of Trump-appointed judges – a court covering Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
Rudofsky had already earned his credentials on the bench. He ruled that private citizens have no right to sue to enforce the Voting Rights Act, a decision the Eighth Circuit upheld and one Democrats spent his September hearing trying to destroy him over.
Cotton blocked him anyway.
Trump withdrew the nomination with no explanation from the White House.
Cotton and John Boozman – Arkansas' other Republican senator – had a different candidate in mind: Cody Hiland, an Arkansas Supreme Court justice they backed for US Attorney of the Eastern District of Arkansas in 2017.
When Trump picked Rudofsky for the Eighth Circuit this year, Hiland apparently expected to be the one getting the call.
In a video recorded at an Arkansas law school in August, he said as much – and added that he had been offered a trial court seat and turned it down.
Cotton and Boozman didn't introduce Rudofsky at his September confirmation hearing – a standard gesture every home-state senator extends to their own party's nominees.
The Senatorial Courtesy Play That Could Cost Trump the Eighth Circuit
Robert Luther – who handled judicial nominations in the White House Counsel's Office during Trump's first term – called out Boozman directly.
"Senator Boozman is standing in the way of the first Trump-majority circuit court," Luther said.
Mike Davis – former Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a former Gorsuch clerk – called it an "unforgivable sin for Boozman and Cotton."
Davis said John Cornyn and Thom Tillis – departing Republicans who have clashed with Trump in recent months – were doing their bidding on the Judiciary Committee, positioned to block Rudofsky's committee vote before Trump pulled the nomination entirely.
Senator Mike Lee posted on X that the Senate had to act now or lose the seats permanently. "If the Senate doesn't do this now," Lee wrote, "it's unlikely President Trump will be able to fill these positions in the next Congress."
Today proved Lee right. Trump pulled Rudofsky and nominated Hiland in his place, forcing the full confirmation process – hearing, committee vote, floor vote – to restart from scratch with Democrats set to take the Senate in January.
The seat that was days from locking in the first-ever conservative majority on the Eighth Circuit is now a race against a deadline Cotton created.
Tom Cotton wants to be president. He also just demonstrated that his political operation runs on its own schedule – willing to blow up a historic judicial milestone to get his preferred judge on the bench instead of the president's.
A Trump majority on the Eighth Circuit would have shaped rulings on immigration, election law, and religious liberty across seven states for the next generation.
One confirmation vote separated Trump from that outcome.
Cotton invoked a Senate tradition called senatorial courtesy – the same power two Georgia senators used in 1789 to block George Washington's nominee for the naval officer post at the Port of Savannah and install their preferred candidate.
It is a legitimate tool. Using it against a president of your own party in the final weeks of a lame duck session, to erase the most significant judicial milestone of his second term, is what Mike Davis called an unforgivable sin.
Sources:
- Kaelan Deese, "Trump drops appeals court nominee opposed by Arkansas senators," Washington Examiner, November 10, 2026.
- Bench Memos, "Eighth Circuit Considerations," National Review, 2026.
- "Trump-aligned attorneys say Arkansas senators trying to block judicial appointment," KATV, November 9, 2026.
- "President Trump withdraws Rudofsky nomination, taps Cody Hiland for role," KATV, November 10, 2026.