The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines Wednesday to approve two of President Donald Trump’s nominees for federal appeals courts that are playing key roles in lawsuits seeking to blunt the administration’s energy and environmental rollbacks.
The committee advanced the nomination of Joshua Dunlap for the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Eric Tung for the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called the pair well-qualified, but Democrats charged that Republicans had failed to work with their home-state senators to find suitable nominees.
Dunlap, a partner at the Maine law firm Pierce Atwood, would be the only active judge on the 1st Circuit appointed by a Republican president.
