In the final weeks of this Congress, Democrats are making a last-minute push to confirm a number of President Biden's judicial nominees.

Our White House correspondent Laura Barone Lopez has more.

President Joe Biden has appointed 221 federal judges during his time in office.

But with several outstanding appointments, Democratic

party leaders are racing against the clock to secure confirmations that could shape the judiciary

for decades. To understand the impact of these appointments, I'm joined by Stephen Vladik,

law professor at Georgetown University. Professor Vladik, thank you so much for joining us.

Senate Democrats are trying to

confirm as many of President Biden's judicial nominees as possible before the end of this year,

before the end of the 118th Congress. Where do things stand right now? Where we are right now,

basically, is that Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans have basically

entered into a deal where the Senate Republicans have largely acquiesced in at least procedural

maneuvers that will allow for President Biden to fill most of the outstanding district court

vacancies that are still out there. So this is the lowest level in the federal court system,

in exchange for which Senate Democrats have been agreed to drop four circuit court nominees,

so four judges who would have served on the intermediate federal courts. And the idea here was

that, you know, at least two of those four circuit court nominees might not have had majority support from

the Democrats in the first place. The other two would have taken up a lot of procedural time

that might have gotten in the way of confirming the rest of President Biden's nominees to the trial

courts. How could giving up those four nominees that you just mentioned have an impact on the

federal judicial system overall,

especially at the appellate level?

...