Eric Tung’s confirmation to the 9th Circuit is more than a routine judicial appointment; it is a strategic strike at the heart of a court long viewed as the left’s last appellate stronghold. With 16 Democratic appointees and 13 Republicans now on the bench, the ideological balance is tightening, case by case, decade by decade. Tung’s pedigree — clerkships with Antonin Scalia and Neil Gorsuch, a career at Jones Day, and a prosecutorial background — signals a jurist steeped in originalism and conservative legal theory. Democrats’ efforts to paint him as a culture-war ideologue during hearings only underscored how much this seat mattered.

At the same time, the Senate’s confirmation of Lt. Gen. John L. Rafferty, Jr. to lead the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command quietly reshapes America’s military posture. With more than three decades of operational and technical experience, Rafferty inherits responsibility for defending the nation in an era when space and missile threats define strategic vulnerability. Layered on top of this, Senate Republicans’ rapid confirmation of nearly 100 Trump nominees — 417 in total since the nuclear option reset the rules — reveals a disciplined march to lock in influence across the federal government. Judges, generals, sub-Cabinet officials: each confirmation is a brick in an architecture of power designed to outlast any single election, and perhaps, to redefine the boundaries of American governance itself.