Earlier this week, for the first time in Donald Trump’s second term in office, a sitting Democratic U.S. Senator voted for one of Trump’s nominees for the judiciary.

And in case the headline and image didn’t give away the surprise, yes, it was our very own Sen. Peter Welch, who voted in favor of Kyle Dudek for a seat on the U.S. District Court in Florida.

Democrats have occasionally supported the odd Trump nominee, but never have any of ’em broken ranks on a judicial appointment. There’s a reason for that; Trump’s executive branch officials will be turfed out as soon as their boss leaves office, while federal judges are appointed for life. Dudek was born in 1985, which means he’s likely to serve for at least three decades.

The good senator’s explanation? “[Dudek] is the needle in the haystack—a competent nominee by the Trump administration,’ Welch told Bloomberg Law. When asked what led him to that conclusion, Welch told Bloomberg that “there was nothing specific about Dudek’s record” that led to his “Yes” vote.

Well, I’m glad we cleared that up.

Dudek may not be a loud-and-proud ideologue or a Fox News nutcase, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to give him decades of opportunity to influence the course of justice. During his roughly six-year career as a practicing lawyer, according to the Alliance for Justice, “Dudek frequently represented law enforcement officers in civil rights lawsuits.” And according to the Balls & Strikes Substack,

Dudek declined in his written responses to senators’ questions to denounce the January 6 insurrection or Trump’s attacks on federal judges who rule against the administration. Dudek also refused to say that Trump lost the 2020 election, and answered a question about the constitutionality of Trump serving a potential third term as president in a way that conspicuously does not rule it out.

Doesn’t sound like the kind of guy I want on the federal bench until the year 2060 or thereabouts. But I guess he’s not as out-and-out horrible as your typical Trump nominee, and Welch appears comfortable with grading judicial nominees on a curve.

Anyone who’s seen Welch give a speech here in Vermont can’t help but beimpressed with his fiery delivery and impassioned advocacy for ideals both democratic and Democratic. The very same week he helped elevate Dudek, Welch took to the Senate floor to denounce Trump’s “dangerous” abuses of power, saying, “This dynamic of executive overreach and U.S. Senate passivity has got to end, to protect the well-being of our democracy and the well-being of the people of the United States.”

And then he turned right around and engaged in an act of passivity, helping Trump stuff the courts with youthful, far-right judges.

This is sadly not untypical for Welch. He loves him some bipartisan gestures. When he was in the House he was a proud member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group that tried to find common ground between rural Democrats and Republicans, despite the fact that most Republican members of Congress were not interested in actually solving problems.

And now we’re all frogs in a pot of authoritarianism that’s slowly getting hotter and hotter. Even if Welch truly believes that Dudek will be an asset to the judicial system, now is not the time to be making nice with the wannabe dictator in the White House.

If you see Welch at one of his many whistlestops around the state, you might want to remind him of that.

One more thing. Welch is the first Democrat to support a Trump judicial nominee, but Maine’s independent Senator Angus King, who caucuses with the Dems, did once vote “Yes” on a Trump nominee. And two days afterward, he described his vote as a “mistake.” That’s probably the most we can expect from our homeboy Peter Welch, a belated and plausibly sincere expression of regret. Fingers crossed.