This Washington Post headline is truly chilling: Trump to inherit more than 100 court vacancies, plans to reshape judiciary.

In addition to the open Supreme Court position, Trump is going to have an opportunity to appoint an appalling number of federal judges.

Confirmation of Obama’s judicial nominees slowed to a crawl after Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015. Obama White House officials blame Senate Republicans for what they characterize as an unprecedented level of obstruction in blocking the Democratic president’s court picks.

The result is a multitude of openings throughout the federal circuit and district courts that will allow the new Republican president to quickly make a wide array of lifetime appointments.

State gun control laws, abortion restrictions, voter laws, anti-discrimination measures and immigrant issues are all matters that are increasingly heard by federal judges and will be influenced by the new composition of the courts. Trump has vowed to choose ideologues in the mold of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon — a prospect that has activists on the right giddy.

[…]

Russell Wheeler, an expert on judicial nominations at the Brookings Institution, said Trump has a great opportunity to change the partisan split in the federal courts. He predicted that by mid-2020, Republican appointees would hold about half of the 673 district judgeships, as opposed to the current 34 percent. And among the 179 circuit court judgeships, Democratic appointees now hold a slim majority, 51 percent, but that could fall to about 43 percent.

There is some hope that it might just be a disaster instead of an apocalyptic catastrophe, though.

But Wheeler warned that there are important limitations to Trump’s power. For one thing, many of the judges most likely to leave their appointments in the coming years were appointed by Republican presidents, meaning there will be fewer opportunities to shift the partisan makeup.

And perhaps more importantly, 28 of the 50 states will be represented by at least one Democratic senator, including large ones such as California, Florida and New York. Senate leaders have a tradition of considering nominees only if they are supported by both senators representing their state — and Democratic senators are expected to bargain hard with the Trump administration, just as Republican senators did with Obama’s.

We’re just beginning to appreciate the scope of what America has done to itself by electing this far right demagogue. It’s going to get worse.