Senate Democrats struck a deal last week with Republicans that saw the quick confirmation of 15 more conservative judges in exchange for a rapid flight to the campaign trail. Liberal activists were infuriated, but after the brutally divisive fight to confirm Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the agreement held out a promise of peace, The New York Times writes.
For Republicans, there’s nothing that matters more, as they aren’t pitching a big visionary agenda to persuade voters to return them to power next year – there’s only passing mention in the midterms of repealing Obamacare, and little talk of making Trump’s border wall a reality. For them, it’s all about the judiciary, Politico notes.
“I would like to have the future mending things,” declared the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. On Wednesday, however, at Grassley’s instruction, the armistice collapsed.
Republicans on the Judiciary Committee convened yet another hearing to consider still more conservative federal court nominees – while the Senate was technically in recess. Incensed Democrats boycotted the proceedings, but their empty chairs did not prevent candidates for the bench, such as Allison Rushing, 36, a social conservative nominated by President Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, from taking a crucial step toward confirmation.
“If there was ever any hope that after the Kavanaugh experience we could return to bipartisanship on the Senate Judiciary Committee, it was shaken this morning,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, in a telephone interview.
The hearing demonstrated the lengths to which Republicans will go to put conservatives on the federal judiciary, a signature initiative of Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader. Only a handful of Republicans attended the Wednesday hearing, but it checked a box to move more judges to the floor during the lame-duck session after Election Day.
Rushing is drawing protests from liberal advocacy groups who say her résumé is too thin for an appeals court nominee. She clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, before he became a Supreme Court justice, but is only 11 years out of law school and has never been a judge. If confirmed, she would become the youngest nominee to take the federal bench in more than 15 years.
Even Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, pressed Rushing about her youth and inexperience. For their part, Democrats are facing some serious blowback from progressives, who were already up in arms over last week’s deal, the Times adds.
Be the first to comment