With the nation’s eyes largely elsewhere in a sea of distraction on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee quietly advanced 44 of President Donald Trump’s federal judicial nominees in what civil rights defenders denounced as a “monster markup” that threatens to leave the president’s dangerous ideological footprint on the nation’s courts for generations to come.

“They want to see Roe v. Wade overturned or narrowed into oblivion, LGBT people permanently consigned to the margins of American life, and constitutional and civil right encroached on by the religious preference of a vocal few.”
—Sen. Mazie Hirono

Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the move “disturbingly exemplifies the joint Senate Republican-Trump administration effort to distort our federal judiciary and roll back our civil and human rights.”

Gupta also accused Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee’s chairman, of defying “the committee rules and basic fairness in jamming through more than 40 nominees for lifetime appointments, many of whom have a demonstrated hostility to our rights.”

Warning that the flurry of judges was a “clear look into the future,” Esquire‘s Charles Pierce explained that the federal judiciary Trump and his Republican allies in the Senate are creating “will play an outsized role in judging any policies put in place by any Democratic president to repair the vandalism and neglect brought onto the institutions of government by this administration*. In this case, Donald Trump is forever.”

During the committee hearing on Thursday, Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) declared that “too many of these nominees have spent their careers opposing the rights of women, minorities, the LGBTQ community, and Americans who need affordable healthcare.” Highlighting a few nominees’ records, she read some of their public comments and rulings to demonstrate their strongly held far-right views.

The senator also drew attention to the right-wing groups tied to many of the current nominees, adding: “Who gets on the federal court for life is high stakes. Just ask the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation who have spent decades and lots of money placing people who are on their ideological page on our federal courts.”

“Month after month, we have seen a parade of these so-called conservative activists nominated to the federal courts,” she said. “They have been groomed by conservative political ideologues. They want to see Roe v. Wade overturned or narrowed into oblivion, LGBT people permanently consigned to the margins of American life, and constitutional and civil right encroached on by the religious preference of a vocal few.”

Reporting for HuffPost, Jennifer Bendery said her story would be “pages long if we spelled out the records of all of the controversial nominees who just advanced,” but offered “a sampling of the people drawing some of the fiercest criticism from civil and women’s rights groups.”

The advancement of the 44 nominees, who are expected to be confirmed in floor votes by the Republican-controlled Senate, follows the release of a study that, as Common Dreams reported last month, outlined Trump’s ongoing effort to stack the federal courts with far-right judges.