And, importantly, it's the nominee cue that matters. R senators affiliated with the FedSoc do not differ in their voting compared to non-affiliated R senators. Its a cue that isn't simple an in-group message.

Really excited to see this in print!

Specifically, we find it serves as an important partisan cues with D and R senators diverging in how they vote for these noms.

Further, these results are conditional on senator ideology -- including more moderate Dem senators more likely to vote for FedSoc affiliated noms.

Overall, we show that changes to norms and rules in one branch of government (the Senate) can fundamentally alter the process of staffing another branch (the federal judiciary).

Look out for it soon in APR!

Furthermore, in this "post-nuclear" era, we see implications that -- with the cloture mechanism being the main driver of confirmation success -- it is *essential* to have unified government. Under divided government, presidents may not get many (if any) of their nominations confirmed

This, in turn has led to successful nominations moving quicker than recent confirmations but with a key caveat -- nominations are being prioritized by their position in the judicial hierarchy.

That is, circuit court confirmations are being prioritized over district courts.

We demonstrate that the 2013 nuclear option -- where the Senate reduced the cloture threshold (or, ending a filibuster) to a simple majority dramatically changed how the confirmations process works.

Now, nominations are almost exclusively proceeding to confirmation via cloture