The impeachment drama unfolding in the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives has not stopped President Donald Trump's fellow Republicans who control the Senate from helping him build on one of the biggest achievements of his presidency: making the federal judiciary more conservative.
Even as the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday heard crucial testimony from pivotal witness Gordon Sondland, the Senate voted to confirm Trump's latest appointee to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a regional appeals court handling cases from Georgia, Alabama and Florida.
The action represented a new milestone in Trump's dramatic reshaping of the federal judiciary, with Republican-appointed judges now in the majority in the 11th Circuit, whose majority before Trump took office in January 2017 had been Democratic appointees. Republican-appointed justices tend to be conservative, while Democratic-named judges tend to be liberal.