Biden Vetoes Judicial Bill, Signs 50 Others Ahead of St. Croix Vacation

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden left the nation’s capital for a pre-New Year’s vacation in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands Thursday morning, but not before he engaged in a flurry of activity in the Oval Office.

On Monday, Biden vetoed a bill that would have created 66 new federal district judge positions.

The bill, which passed unanimously in the Senate last summer, but which the House delayed voting on until after the election, would have spread the new appointments over more than a decade.

This step was presumably intended to prevent either political party from gaining an advantage in shaping the court system.

But in his veto statement on Monday, Biden described the measure – S. 4199 – as a hasty attempt to “add judgeships with just a few weeks left in the 118th Congress.”

“The House of Representatives’ hurried action fails to resolve key questions in the legislation, especially regarding how the new judgeships are allocated, and neither the House … nor the Senate explored fully how the work of senior status judges and magistrate judges affects the need for new judgeships,” the president said. 

“The efficient and effective administration of justice requires that these questions about need and allocation be further studied and answered before we create permanent judgeships for life-tenured judges,” he continued.

Biden also noted that the measure would create new judgeships in states where senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies. 

“Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now,” he said.

As of Friday, the final meeting of the 118th Congress, Biden had 235 federal judges confirmed, surpassing President-elect Donald Trump’s 234 confirmations during his first term.

Also on Monday, Biden signed 50 other bills into law, including one that made the bald eagle the nation’s official bird, another creating the first federal anti-hazing standard to address violence and deaths occurring on college and university campuses, and one that will prevent members of Congress from collecting their pensions if they are convicted of a crime.

The president also signed bills expanding the Atchafalaya National Heritage Area in Louisiana, and setting accountability standards for treatment centers and care facilities serving young people.

He also signed the National Defense Authorization Act, greenlighting significant pay raises for junior enlisted service members, despite his objections and reservations about a number of its provisions.

“I am pleased to support the critical objections of the act,” he wrote, saying overall the bill sent to him by Congress “provides vital benefits for military personnel and their families, and includes critical authorities to support our countries national defense, foreign affairs and homeland security.”

That said, the president expressed concerns over provision that may, in certain circumstances, interfere with the exercise of a president’s constitutional authority, implicate executive branch confidentiality interests and “unduly impair” the executive branch’s ability to determine when and where to prosecute Guantánamo Bay detainees.

His most vociferous objection, however, was reserved for a provision of the bill stripping coverage of transgender medical treatments for children in military families.

“By prohibiting the use of appropriated funds, the Department of Defense will be compelled to contravene clinical practice guidelines and clinical recommendations” Biden said. “The provision targets a group based on that group’s gender identity and interferes with parents’ roles to determine the best care for their children. 

“This section undermines our all-volunteer military’s ability to recruit and retain the finest fighting force the world has ever known by denying health care coverage to thousands of our service members’ children. No service member should have to decide between their family’s health care access and their call to serve our nation,” the president wrote.

The president will follow his vacation with a trip to Rome, Italy, in early January, where he will meet separately with Pope Francis, and Sergio Marttarella, the president of Italy, and Giorgia Meloni, the nation’s prime minister.

“The president will have an audience with the pope to discuss efforts to advance peace around the world,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday.

“During his meetings with the Italian leaders, he will highlight the strength of the U.S.-Italy relationship, thank Prime Minister Meloni for her strong leadership of the G7 over the past year, and discuss important challenges facing the world,” Jean-Pierre added.

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