Vermont Supreme Court appointees Christina Nolan and Michael Drescher speak before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Jan. 13, 2026. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger MONTPELIER — After receiving hundreds of emails about the governor’s two latest appointees for t he Vermont Supreme Court, senators in the Judiciary Committee on Thursday failed to vote in favor of supporting Michael Drescher and voted unanimously to recommend Christina Nolan. The two nominees will face a confirmation vote from the full Senate Tuesday. Both candidates formerly served as the top federal prosecutor for Vermont under President Donald Trump and were tapped by Gov. Phil Scott this month to sit on the state’s highest court. But under the microscope of senators, Drescher has faced criticism for representing the federal government in historic immigration cases, like those challenging the detentions of Mohsen Mahdawi and Rümeysa Öztürk.  Senators who opposed endorsing Drescher cited his history of arguing in court on behalf of the Trump administration — especially amid mounting public pressure.  READ MORE “I want people to be able to trust government,” said Sen. Nader Hashim, D-Windham, who chairs the committee. He feared that if he voted in favor of Drescher, he might undermine public trust in the state’s highest court and in the Legislature.  Hashim’s no vote was the last in the room — and it broke a 2-2 tie on a motion to recommend Drescher. He just couldn’t ignore the chorus of constituents calling on him to vote no, he said.  The two Republican senators on the committee, Sen. Chris Mattos, of Chittenden North, and Sen. Robert Norris, of Franklin, were the only ones to vote in Drescher’s favor. Both agreed that Drescher was a qualified candidate and said they no longer had concerns about Drescher after talking to him. In a vote to recommend Drescher, the motion failed 2-3.  Before hashing out their opinions on Drescher, all five committee members voted unanimously in favor of Nolan. Though Nolan raised eyebrows for carrying a firearm into a gun-free county courthouse, senators agreed that Nolan owned up to her mistake and learned from it.  Senators also said they trusted Nolan’s ability to uphold the rule of law, protect the rights of Vermonters and to put her political past, as a onetime Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, behind her.  The fate of the candidates is expected to be decided on the Senate floor Tuesday, where Hashim will report the committee’s recommendations on each candidate. Then senators can choose whether or not they vote in line with the committee.  The committee will be recommending Nolan, but on Drescher it will not issue a recommendation — which is different than not recommending him.  The distinction is something Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, motioned for and the majority of the committee agreed to. He hoped that declining to issue a recommendation would speak for itself and might stop the committee from having too much say in the matter, he said.  Both Supreme Court hopefuls were selected by Scott after a board of lawmakers and lawyers presented him with a pool to choose from. Sens. Hashim and Norris also sit on that board.  At his regularly scheduled press conference Wednesday, Scott defended both nominees.  “I interviewed both of those candidates, and I think they are exactly what we need on the Supreme Court,” he said.  Deliberating on Drescher  Before senators in the committee moved to vote on Drescher, they took the public’s temperature.  The elephant in the room, and what senators tried to parse, is that Drescher represented the federal government in Mahdawi’s case. Mahdawi, a Palestinian student activist at Columbia University, vocally opposed Israel’s war in Gaza. He was arrested in Colchester in April during an immigration meeting.  While Mahdawi was detained in Vermont, his lawyers filed a writ of habeas corpus, a civil lawsuit filed against the federal government disputing legality of Mahdawi’s detention. In that case, Drescher represented the federal government and argued that Mahdawi should remain detained.  Last year, Vermont senators passed a resolution, with overwhelming support, to demand Mahdawi’s immediate release from detention. Baruth helped lead a pressure campaign urging Scott to end the state’s agreement to detain people in the custody of federal immigration authorities.  Former attorneys and judges who testified in support of Drescher emphasized an important legal distinction in Mahdawi’s case.  Drescher did not press charges against Mahdawi, but rather he was responding to a civil lawsuit that Mahdawi’s lawyers filed. Those who testified in favor of Drescher pointed out that someone in Drescher’s office had to represent the federal government in the case.  The state’s top health care regulator, Owen Foster, a former assistant U.S. attorney, testified in support of Drescher and said Drescher “has immense integrity and is incredibly upstanding.” He said Drescher didn’t support Trump but was rather trying to protect his office. Others testifying in Drescher’s support, like former federal prosecutor Joseph Perrella, sang similar praises.  But others in the legal community spoke out against his appointment. Kate Hayes, a retired Superior Court judge, wrote a letter to the committee:  “Mr. Drescher could have chosen to resign rather than to defend patently unlawful detentions of both Mr. Madawi and Ms. Ozturk, as many other U.S. Attorneys have done around the country. He chose to stay. What similar cowardly choices will he make as a Supreme Court Justice?” she wrote.  Hashim said that he understood Drescher’s role in Mahdawi’s case better after hearing from Drescher’s supporters. But he still had to put the overwhelming calls from his constituents first, he said.  For Baruth, weighing both sides proved burdensome. “I have wrestled a lot with this and lost a lot of sleep over it,” he said.  People who support Drescher, Baruth said, asked senators to draw the line — but they asked them to draw the line around Drescher. “I just don’t feel that I can do that,” he said.  “The time to draw the line has come, and I can’t make myself draw it after him,” Baruth said.  Read the story on VTDigger here: Senate panel won’t recommend Michael Drescher for Vermont Supreme Court . ...read more read less