Trump aims to build a MAGA judiciary, breaking with traditional conservatives

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is signaling a new approach to selecting judges in his second term, departing from his first-term formula of younger up-and-comers, elite credentials and pedigrees in traditional conservative ideology and instead leaning toward unapologetically combative, MAGA-friendly nominees.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is signaling a new approach to selecting judges in his second term, departing from his first-term formula of younger up-and-comers, elite credentials and pedigrees in traditional conservative ideology and instead leaning toward unapologetically combative, MAGA-friendly nominees.

The president turned heads last week by launching a searing attack on Leonard Leo and the conservative legal network known as the Federalist Society, which played a major role in selecting and steering 234 Trump-nominated judges, including three Supreme Court justices, through Senate confirmation during his first term.

Trump's transformation of the federal courts and the creation of 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority, which led to the overturning of the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade in 2022, was possibly his biggest achievement in his first term.

But Trump slammed Leo as a “sleazebag” in late May after a panel of judges, including one he appointed, blocked some of his tariffs.

“I am so disappointed in the Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous judicial nominations,” he wrote on Truth Social.