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SLUDGE

Former law professor Neomi Rao is facing headwinds in her judicial nomination, so Charles Koch’s Americans for Prosperity is stepping in.

:{:{Billionaire manufacturing magnate Charles Koch has for decades used his enormous wealth and political power to install elected officials (https://readsludge.com/2018/10/19/koch-and-adelson-come-to-the-rescue-of-trump-devotee-ron-desantis-in-florida/),}:

government administrators (https://www.salon.com/2016/06/19/big_men_on_campus_the_koch_brothers_university_donations_are_a_veiled_political_weapon/), and regulators (https://readsludge.com/2018/10/04/koch-backed-sec-commissioner-claims-corporate-law-is-in-the-public-interest/) who will keep the business interests of Koch Industries and other giant, heavily polluting companies in mind.}:

But Koch is also dipping into the judicial arena. One of his protegés has been nominated by President Trump and is poised to join the second-most powerful court in the United States, and Koch’s premier political spending group wants to make sure it happens.

In 2016, the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF) and a mystery donor combined to give $30 million to the George Mason University (GMU) law school, renaming it after the late, conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Koch’s foundation put in $10 million, and the remaining $20 million, it was later discovered, was administered by Federalist Society officials through a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, BH Fund.

:{:{The grant established 12 new law professorships—nearly all the hires had ties to the conservative Federalist Society (https://legacy.tyt.com/2018/05/18/after-donation-administered-by-federalist-society-leaders-gmu-hired-professors-tied-to-the-federalist-society/)—}:

and founded two ideological law school centers (https://ia601201.us.archive.org/24/items/GMUASSLawMOU2016/GMU%20ASSLaw%20MOU%202016.pdf#page=6),

the Center for Liberty and Law and the Center for the Study of the Administrative State. The founder and director of the latter center was Neomi Rao (https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/faculty/cv/rao.pdf), who had been a law professor at GMU since 2012. She previously clerked for the most conservative Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, and was associate counsel and special advisor to President George W. Bush. She has never been a judge.}:

Rao took a leave of absence from George Mason in 2017 when President Donald Trump appointed her as director of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Trump’s “regulation czar.”

:{:{The dean of the GMU law school told another donor to her center, corporate lobbyist and longtime Koch ally C. Boyden Gray (https://www.desmogblog.com/c-boyden-gray), that he hoped to lure her back to GMU with a $1.5-million professorship, funded by Gray, according to an email unearthed by GMU alumna Allison Pienta (}:

:{:{http://www.unkochmycampus.org/dec-20-2018-donor-control-at-gmu-update?rq=boyden%20gray).}:

“This chair would help me to entice Neomi to return home to Scalia Law after she dismantles the administrative state (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750669-Antonin-Scalia-Law-School-Grant-Agreement.html#document/p2/a484188)

while serving at OIRA,” he wrote in a May 2017 letter to Gray. Gray gave another $3 million to the center, and it was renamed in his honor.}:}:

Dismantling the administrative state (p. 2) (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750669-Antonin-Scalia-Law-School-Grant-Agreement.html#document/p2/a484234)

IFrame Content (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750669-Antonin-Scalia-Law-School-Grant-Agreement/annotations/484234.html?embed=true&maxheight=750&maxwidth=500)

View entire document on DocumentCloud (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750669-Antonin-Scalia-Law-School-Grant-Agreement.html#document/p2/a484234)

But instead of returning to the law school, Rao may be headed to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to fill the seat vacated by the newest Trump-appointed Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh. Rao’s GMU center hosted a conference (https://administrativestate.gmu.edu/rethinking-judicial-deference/) in 2016 that featured Kavanaugh, a fellow Federalist Society member, as keynote speaker.

Rao’s judgeship nomination is perhaps the crowning achievement of the Antonin Scalia Law School’s initiative to reshape the federal judiciary. In 2017, the law school’s Law and Economics Center, which CKF had been funding for years, drew up a funding proposal (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5751080-GMU-Law-and-Economics-Center-Federal-Judges-and.html) for the center’s “Federal Judges and Attorneys General Initiatives.”

‘Reshaping’ the Federal Bench

“The election of Donald Trump presents a historic opportunity for a new president to reshape the federal judiciary, reform the regulatory state, promote economic growth, and restore constitutional federalism,” reads the proposal.

The program educates newly appointed judges on economics and other issues so they will “be more likely to make sound decisions that support the rule of law and the free enterprise system.” The new Federal Judges Initiative will “cover topics expected to be highly relevant to the current presidential administration’s policy agenda, such as the economics of health care and health financing, financial services regulation, environmental and energy regulation, health and safety regulation, privacy, labor and employment law, and telecommunications regulation.”

As of 2017, over 5,000 judges and 700 state attorneys general had participated in at least one Law and Economics Center program. In the 2018 fiscal year, the Law and Economic Center requested over $1.7 million for its Judicial Education Budget.

“Rao’s transition from the Koch-funded Antonin Scalia School of Law to her nomination to the second-highest court in the country is exemplary of Koch’s successful strategy of leveraging George Mason University to exert influence on the judicial branch for decades to come,” Samantha Parsons, a GMU graduate and director of campaigns at the activist group UnKoch My Campus, told Sludge. “Her nomination should serve as a warning of the anti-democratic agenda we can expect throughout our nation’s judicial system should George Mason University succeed in its goals to facilitate the education and placement of hundreds of new federal judges under Trump’s presidency.”

:{:{In December, when Trump nominated Rao, Koch’s most prominent political advocacy organization, Americans for Prosperity, endorsed (https://americansforprosperity.org/afp-endorses-slate-of-highly-qualified-judicial-nominees/) her for the judgeship.}:

But Rao has since encountered some bumps in the road. Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said he has “deep concerns (https://www.axios.com/neomi-rao-dc-circuit-nominee-josh-hawley-concerns-228fe428-7944-430a-bc5c-71a50278ec38.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twsocialshare&utm_campaign=organic),” telling Axios that she may not be sufficiently anti-abortion.}:

At a recent Senate committee hearing, Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst expressed concerns over Rao’s 1994 essay on date rape (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/neomi-rao-pressed-on-past-writings-on-date-rape-at-hearing-on-her-judicial-nomination/2019/02/05/156b4784-28b4-11e9-b2fc-721718903bfc_story.html?utm_term=.e68dab1a1db9), which alleged that women who are raped while drunk are partially to blame for being raped. Rao’s OIRA has stalled issuing an employer guidance on sexual harassment for 15 months (https://theintercept.com/2019/02/04/neomi-rao-hearing-oira-brett-kavanaugh/), a process that normally takes no longer than 90 days, as David Dayen reported for The Intercept.

:{:{Americans for Prosperity will fund digital advertising and grassroots efforts (https://www.axios.com/neomi-rao-dc-circuit-nominee-josh-hawley-concerns-228fe428-7944-430a-bc5c-71a50278ec38.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twsocialshare&utm_campaign=organic)}:

in an attempt to sway public opinion in favor of Rao this week, according to Axios. On Tuesday morning, the Facebook ad archive (https://www.facebook.com/ads/archive/?active_status=all&ad_type=political_and_issue_ads&country=US&q=americans%20for%20prosperity) listed six AFP ads in favor of Rao, which began running on Monday. Each ad targets one Republican senator, including Ernst and Hawley, urgin Facebook users to tell their senator to vote for Rao’s D.C. Circuit Court nomination. Additional targeted senators are Ted Cruz (Texas), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), James Lankford (Okla.), and Ben Sasse (Neb.). The Google ad archive did not list any recent AFP purchases.}:

One of Americans for Prosperity’s Facebook ads supporting Neomi RaoFacebook Ad Archive

Americans for Prosperity did not reply to Sludge’s request for comment.

‘Regulatory Obstruction’

The American Constitution Society says OIRA, which is part of the Office of Management and Budget, “has embraced politicized regulatory obstruction (https://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/a-lesson-in-failure-oira-neomi-rao-and-deregulation-at-any-cost/) as its raison dêtre” under Rao. In OIRA’s 2018 report (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2018-Unified-Agenda-Cutting-the-Red-Tape.pdf), entitled “Cutting the Red Tape,” Rao writes, “we are working to push back the expansion of the administrative state, which has placed undue burdens on the public and impeded economic growth.”

Under Rao’s leadership, OIRA, has approved sweeping environmental deregulation by the EPA. Koch Industries, which Charles Koch runs, is a giant manufacturing conglomerate with subsidiaries that refine and transport oil, create paper products, and produce chemicals. The company is among the country’s biggest air and water polluters and has paid hundreds of millions of dollars for environmental violations. Koch and his brother David are lifelong libertarians who have fought taxes and regulations for decades.

“Rao has never seen a regulation she didn’t hate, and as a judge would dismantle 40 years of environmental and social progress,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/trump-nominates-neomi-rao-brett-kavanaugh-seat) in a statement to Buzzfeed News. “Her confirmation would be the most damaging and regressive yet by Trump after Kavanaugh and Gorsuch.”

GMU is by far the biggest recipient of grants from the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF), which gives tens of millions of dollars each year to free-market higher education programs. Since 2005, CKF and the Charles Koch Institute have donated nearly $129 million to GMU, including over $34 million for the free-market Mercatus Center, according to Sludge’s analysis. Another free-market-focused GMU center, the Institute for Human Studies, has received $8.7 million.

The university has come under fire for allowing the CKF to impact hiring decisions (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/01/koch-agreements-george-mason-gave-foundation-role-faculty-hiring-and-oversight). In the case of Florida State University, CKF was even allowed to control economics curricula (https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/koch-foundation-proposal-to-college-teach-our-curriculum-get-millions/).

AFP isn’t the only Koch-linked group to spend money to influence the judiciary. The Center for Media and Democracy reports that Donors Trust, a donor-advised fund that wealthy conservatives including Koch use to score tax deductions and potentially anonymize their donations to nonprofits, has bankrolled right-wing groups (https://www.prwatch.org/news/2019/02/13449/donorstrust-bankrolled-right-wing-judicial-appointments-trumps-acting-ag-and) such as the Judicial Crisis Network and its sister organization, the Judicial Education Project, which spent millions of dollars on ads supporting the Supreme Court confirmation of Neil Gorsuch. Donors Trust also funds the Federalist Society and, as Sludge recently reported, several Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate groups (https://readsludge.com/2019/02/19/americas-biggest-charities-are-funneling-millions-to-hate-groups-from-anonymous-donors/).

Related:

Charles Koch Is Funding Rightwing, Pro-Trump Media, New Disclosure Reveals (https://readsludge.com/2018/11/21/charles-koch-is-funding-rightwing-pro-trump-media-new-disclosure-reveals/)

Koch Brothers Continue to Influence Tax Policy After Huge Cuts Last Year (https://readsludge.com/2018/06/18/koch-brothers-continue-to-influence-tax-policy-after-huge-cuts-last-year/)

Koch-Backed SEC Commissioner Claims Corporate Law is in the Public Interest (https://readsludge.com/2018/10/04/koch-backed-sec-commissioner-claims-corporate-law-is-in-the-public-interest/)

Author profile](https://readsludge.com/author/alex/)

Alex Kotch (https://readsludge.com/author/alex/)

Alex is a reporter at Sludge and a contributor to The Young Turks. He was previously part of the award-winning investigative team at International Business Times, and his other work has appeared in T

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RWW

05/12/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

The president isn’t exactly locking in ahead of his high-stakes visit to China this week.

Trump has long lashed out when judges he nominated rule against his interests because he believes that his appointees are his to control. Now, Trump is publicly asserting that his expectation of fealty is, as he put it, “really OK.” Trump-appointed judges owe their positions to him, and Trump is signaling to judicial hopefuls that they should repay that debt with their court rulings.

If You Want Democracy in this Country You Have to Fight White Supremacy.

Representative Jen Kiggans, a Republican in a tough re-election fight, faced criticism after she agreed with comments by a local radio host that included a racist line about Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader.

Federal agents, alleged assassination plots, and a Fyre Festival-like disaster!

Conspiracy theorist and close Trump ally Laura Loomer had an over-the-top reaction to former President Barack Obama’s visit with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Trump pardoned a right-wing authoritarian convicted of cocaine trafficking, apparently to reinstate him to power in Honduras and undermine left-wing governments in Mexico and Colombia. So why isn’t America media covering it?

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an 5 26

Washington Monthly contributing editor Jonathan Alter saysyou can’t be surprised that the kind of judges a convicted felon nominates are not the cream of the crop. But you can be surprised how low the bar keeps sinking.

“If only President [Donald] Trump’s judicial nominees were merely mediocre, like most of those in his first term. Now, Trump is nominating candidates for federal judgeships who run away from the very Constitution they will, if confirmed, swear to apply and uphold,” said Alter.

Alter said watching Trump judicial nominee G.E. Marck flee the elementary school admission that yes, a president is indeed limited to two terms, was a punch in the gut.

“Is [Trump] eligible to run for a third term under our Constitution?” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) asked Marck directly during recent nomination hearings.

“I would have to review the actual wording of it,” Marck answered.

When a startled Coons asked other Trump nominees to confirm that the Constitution undeniably bars a third term for Trump, he got silence.

“The Orwellian obtuseness about basic facts is a defining feature of the Trump Administration,” said Alter, referring to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) asking Trump nominee, Michael Hendershot: “Was the Capitol attacked on January 6?”

Hendershot replied: “It’s a matter of significant political controversy,” despite videos revealing the full color of the attack.

“Like earlier Trump nominees to the federal bench and other posts, Marck, Hendershot and two other Trump nominees for the U.S. District Court — Arthur Jones, and Jeffrey Kuntz — all refused to say Joe Biden won the election,” said Alter. “Instead, they used the same stock phrase their White House handlers insisted upon: ‘President Biden was certified the winner.’”

Alter pointed out that even Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), thought their response was stupid, mumbling, “What would be wrong if they said Biden won?”

But Alter said Blumenthal told the “the cowering, gutless nominees” exactly why they couldn’t say the obvious:

“You’re unwilling to use that word [won] because you are afraid,’ said Blumenthal. “Afraid of what? President Trump? That is exactly what we do not need on the federal bench today. We need jurists who are fearless and strong, not weak and pathetic.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I) was even more direct:

“I hope you realize how ridiculous the four of you look spouting these preposterous, canned answers in a forum in which you’re supposed to tell the truth and you’re supposed to demonstrate the judicial capacity to make independent factual decisions in hard cases,” Whitehouse said.

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AN 5 26

One of President Donald Trump’s most outspoken supporters, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, is trying to get out of owing $5 million to an engineer who proved him wrong about his 2020 election conspiracy theories.

Robert “Bob” Zeidman, an engineer who in a 2021 contest successfully proved Lindell relied on junk science to claim China meddled in the 2020 election to steal it from Trump, filed a motion for a rehearing “by the original arbitration” panel that awarded him a $5 million settlement. Although those judges determined that Zeidman had proved Lindell wrong beyond a reasonable doubt and therefore Lindell owed him money, three Republican-appointed judges from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the settlement. The Supreme Court, also controlled by Republicans, refused to intervene.

Despite Zeidman wanting the settlement restored, Lindell’s attorneys are arguing that the decision to throw out his claims should remain final.

“In an April 30 filing, Lindell Management LLC attorney Barbara Podlucky Berens asked Senior U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim, a Bill Clinton appointee, to agree that Zeidman should get no such rehearing because he would have ‘no viable theory’ to collect the $5 million upon a ‘second bite of the apple’ before the arbitration panel,” Law and Crime’s Matt Naham reported on Wednesday.

The filing argued that "Zeidman's alleged successful demonstration regarding the data at issue was based solely on the absence of capture packet data. Thus, in order to succeed, this claim, like the breach of contract claim, is contingent on the validity of the extracontractual data-format requirement imposed by the Pane. And like the breach of contract claim, the Eighth Circuit's express reversal of the Panel's capture packet data requirement defeats this claim as a matter of law."

Lindell’s legal team concluded, "Any rehearing would thus be futile.”

Despite Trump, Lindell and others in the MAGA movement insisting the 2020 election was stolen, conservative columnist George F. Will recently noted that the Republicans’ claims have been thoroughly litigated and debunked.

“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will wrote. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

Will added, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

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an march 2026

Trump 'loyalty test' for judicial appointments inadvertently hamstrings courts - Alternet.org

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an 2 26

IFrame Content

Judge Aileen Cannon issued a ruling on Monday morning that declared no person will be allowed to release information about President Donald Trump's classified documents case. But at one point in her ruling, she made an absurd claim — and one legal expert is calling her out.

"All Rise News" reporter Adam Klasfeld noted that when Cannon blocked the release of Volume II of Smith's report, she said she "'strains to find' an example of a report released after 'initiating criminal charges that did not result in a finding of guilt.' Most of John Durham's [targets] were acquitted. He released a report."

One person in the Durham case pleaded guilty "to falsifying an email."

Durham was hired to "investigate the investigators" involved with the Robert Mueller probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. While Durham attempted to indict three people, two were acquitted, and the final one accepted the guilty plea and received probation. By contrast, Mueller prosecuted 34 people and earned 8 guilty pleas or convictions.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh helped write the report by special counsel Ken Starr, which also didn't have any prosecutions for a crime.

"Judge Cannon, who appears to have been born yesterday, ignores that the entire Mueller report, which was made public, was about the un-indicted president who appointed her — and against whom a finding of guilt was never reached," agreed legal reporter Christian Fairas.

//

23rd

Judge Aileen Cannon has blocked another effortto obtain part two of special counsel Jack Smith's report regarding the documents President Donald Trump stole from the White House upon leaving in 2021. Among the documents Trump took and refused to return were a number of highly classified pages.

While there have been other instances of documents being packed for officials like Vice President Mike Pence and then Vice President Joe Biden, all other officials have been willing to return any documents requested. Trump refused to return the information, the AP characterized in 2023.

In her ruling on Monday, Cannon said that everyone involved with the Justice Department is "enjoined from releasing" the report. It was scheduled to be released to the public on Tuesday.

Reporter Mona Burns wrote on BlueSky, "Fitting on this crazy snowy morning: The always reliable and very corrupt Judge Aileen Cannon has permanently blocked the release of Jack Smith's classified documents report. Cannon says the release would be 'unfair' to Trump and his former co-defendants."

Slate legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern pointed out that Cannon "also bars DOJ from sharing 'any information or conclusions' from the volume. A sweeping, perpetual gag order."

"Cannon scathingly suggests that Jack Smith violated her order dismissing the criminal case against Trump when he continued to prepare his report on the prosecution from transmission to DOJ. Calls it a 'brazen stratagem' meant to 'circumvent' her authority," Stern added.

"Absurd. Also, what is the 'spirit' of a dismissal order?" questioned lawyer and analyst David R. Lurie.

"Cannon apparently considers Smith’s preparation of his final report as a violation of her order dismissing the classified documents case," commented Politico Washington law and lobbying reporter Daniel Barnes on X.

Former federal prosecutor and MS NOW legal commentator Joyce Vance noted, "A higher court may well disagree with Canon’s ruling, however. It wouldn’t be the first time. And the case is already on appeal to the 11th Circuit. I wrote about the context last night."

"That deadline was set after the Eleventh Circuit chastised Judge Cannon for dragging her feet in the matter. But when she finally got around to setting the date, she noted that Trump could appeal, which he, of course, did. Delay. Delay. Delay. Earlier this month, journalists who had previously intervened in the matter to force the release of the report went to the Eleventh Circuit," wrote Vance for her Substack.

"That court has expedited the matter, which means Trump and his supporters have briefs due next month. His delay game is still holding up, but unless the Supreme Court weighs in on his side again in a criminal matter, there’s a limited shelf life on this one. ... Other events to watch for this week: On Tuesday, Secretaries of State who have decided to participate will meet with the FBI on unspecified issues. We discussed that meeting here," she added.

The watchdog group American Oversight posted on X last week, "Trump is trying to convince Judge Cannon to destroy all copies of Volume II of Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s handling of classified documents. We warned AG Pam Bondi and top officials at the National Archives that this would break the law."

“The destruction of Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report would be an extraordinary and unlawful erasure of a federal record documenting an investigation of profound public importance. The FRA imposes a clear and nondiscretionary duty on the DOJ and NARA to preserve federal records, regardless of pressure from the president and his co-conspirators or their pending motions before a court,” said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of the group, commented on matter in a statement.

“Special Counsel Smith testified under oath in Congress that the report documents powerful evidence that President Trump willfully retained highly classified information after leaving office, putting our national security at risk. Destroying the report would shield the president from public scrutiny and undermine the rule of law itself. Federal records belong to the American people, not to any president or administration seeking to bury the truth. If the DOJ or NARA permits the destruction of this report, they will be violating federal law," she added.

Former Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod said, "Man, if ever a judicial appointment paid off for Trump, it was this one! This classified documents case seemed like the most menacing to @realDonaldTrump . Judge Cannon blocked it on a technicality and now is permanently burying it from public view. SCOTUS here she comes!?!?"

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AN 12 25

After returning to the White House 11 months ago, President Donald Trump not only made a concerted effort to fill his administration, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI with MAGA loyalists — he also pushed for far-right judges to be confirmed for the lower federal courts.

But according to HuffPost reporter Jennnifer Bendery, Trump's push for MAGA-friendly federal judges is encountering a bump in the road: fewer retirements.

"President Donald Trump had a pretty good run in 2025 when it came to confirming judges," Bendery explains in an article published on December 29. "Republicans control the Senate and rubber-stamped most of his court picks, confirming a total of 25 lifetime federal judges. That's more than Trump got by this point in his first term (19), though not as many as former President Joe Biden (40). But the president was also hampered by a surprising new trend among sitting judges: They're not retiring when they're eligible to do so, and in effect, they've been denying Trump the ability to fill more vacancies with his picks."

Bendery notes that according to George Washington University law professor John Collins, only 30 court vacancies have been announced.

"Of those, 27 are on district courts and just three are on appeals courts — a more powerful tier of courts that often has the final say in federal lawsuits," Bendery observes. "Compare those numbers to the roughly 70 court vacancies that opened up during this same period in (former President Joe) Biden's first year in office — more than twice as many. Part of the reason there aren't as many vacancies to fill is because Trump and Biden both appointed huge numbers of judges over the last eight years, leaving a smaller pool of retirement-eligible judges."

Bendery adds, "But another reason is almost certainly that some judges simply don’t trust Trump to replace them with a qualified pick, given his record of putting far-right ideologues, loyalists and otherwise unqualified people onto the federal bench."

Collins told HuffPost that the judges deciding against retirement is "one of the biggest stories this year." And Russell Wheeler of the Brookings Institution told HuffPost, "It's really pretty striking: Judges, for one reason or another, aren't stepping away."

AN 11 25

Trump has appointed 27 judges to federal courts so far in his second term, and in addition to their right-wing interpretation of the law, an analysis of the judges’ comments to senators during the confirmation process reveals a key commonality between the president’s appointees: All were willing to evade direct questions about whether Trump lost the 2020 election and whether the US Capitol was attacked by a violent pro-Trump mob on January 6, 2021.

Demand Justice examined the Questions for the Record (QFRs) that were submitted by the Senate to the 27 judicial nominees regarding the election and January 6, and found that their answers to those two specific questions were nearly uniform in many cases—repeating certain phrases verbatim and “overall, using unusual and evasive language that’s almost entirely outside the normal, historical, and common lexicon used to describe such events.”

None of the 27 nominees affirmatively answered that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, as proven by numerous courts that rejected lawsuits claiming otherwise and by both Republican and Democratic election officials. Instead, the nominees said Biden was “certified” as the winner, and 16 of them said he “served” as president.

Some of the nominees, including Emil Bove of the US Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, Whitney Hermandorfer of the Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and Kyle Dudek of the Middle District of Florida, expanded on their answers, saying they would avoid “opining on the broader political or policy debate regarding the conduct of the 2020 presidential election.”

Demand Justice said those comments “strongly, and falsely,” suggested the 2020 election results are still a matter of legal dispute.

Josh Orton, president of the group, told MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday that the nominees’ answers preserved “their ability to say, ‘I did not contradict Donald Trump’ on what we know are the two most third-rail issues to Donald Trump.”

“If nominees don’t answer these two questions, I think it amounts to, essentially, a political loyalty test,” said Orton.

Regarding questions about whether the US Capitol was attacked on January 6 and whether the attack was an insurrection, said Demand Justice, “not one nominee was willing to speak to the events that occurred on that day.”

Twenty-one of them, including Bove, Hermandorfer, and Joshua Divine of District Courts for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri, characterized the attack—in which Trump supporters tried to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election results—as a matter of debate.

None of the nominees mentioned the law enforcement officers who died as a result of the attack, even though some mentioned violence against law enforcement broadly in their other QFR answers; the fact that the House and Senate chambers were broken into; or the death threats rioters directed at then-Vice President Mike Pence.

“It is unprecedented for lifetime nominees to the federal bench to provide dishonest and misleading answers about historical facts—and it is deeply concerning that Trump’s nominees are parroting such strikingly similar language, the president’s own language, to avoid telling the truth,” said Orton.

Orton added that “the kicker” of the report is that 15 members of the Democratic Caucus have voted for Trump’s judicial nominees despite their evasive and dishonest answers about January 6 and Trump’s 2020 loss.

“Excuse me? People died,” said Orton. “If you’re willing to appease Trump’s big lies, you have no business anywhere near a court, period.”

Democrats who have voted in favor of confirming Trump’s nominees include Sens. Chris Coons (Del.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.).

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rww

07/24/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

In resurfaced video testimony, Jeffrey Epstein was asked if he and Donald Trump ever spent time with young girls.

Is perpetrating heinous crimes against children too big a hurdle for a political alliance of convenience? Maybe not.

Candace Owens doubled down on her claim that French First Lady Brigitte Macron was born a man on Wednesday after French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife filed a defamation lawsuit against the right-wing commentator accusing her of spreading the conspiracy theory that Brigitte was born “Jean-Michel Trogneux.”

Trump appointed far-right loyalist Paul Ingrassia to head a Justice Department office responsible for keeping politics out of the civil service.

The GOP's Jan. 6 probe in the last Congress was an embarrassing dud. Rather than learn an obvious lesson, the party is going to give it a second try.

The conservative legal movement used Trump’s first term to seize control of the federal courts. Will it use his second term to rewrite the Constitution entirely?

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rww

06/03/2025

by

Peter Montgomery

The Conservative Action Project, an offshoot of the secretive and influential right-wing Council for National Policy, released a statement Monday signed by a rogues' gallery of right-wing figures demanding faster Senate confirmation of President Donald Trump’s nominees, claiming that his agenda, aka Project 2025, will suffer unless Senate Republicans step up the pace.

In 2020, the Conservative Action Project energetically promoted Trump’s false claims about the election and participated in his efforts to stay in power after losing the election. The group’s current chair, notorious voter suppression activist Kenneth Blackwell, was involved in behind-the-scenes lobbying to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to abuse his power and interfere with congressional affirmation of state-certified Electoral College votes.

The new statement is further evidence of how closely the right-wing movement is aligned with, or maybe in the pocket of, Trump and his inner circle. More than 100 MAGA and religious-right movement leaders signed the statement, including Christian nationalists, voting restriction activists, leaders of anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ political groups, right-wing gadfly/power player Ginni Thomas, MAGA judicial activist Mike Davis, and disgraced former southern Baptist leader Paige Patterson.

Also among the signers is Cleta Mitchell, who joined the infamous phone call on which Trump tried to bully Georgia’s Republican secretary of state into “finding” enough votes to overturn Trump’s loss in the state. Mitchell, who now runs right-wing so-called “election integrity” efforts at the Conservative Partnership Institute, recently appeared on dominionist Jim Garlow’s podcast, where she said House passage of the SAVE Act was a result of God telling her to work on the (largely imaginary) “threat” of non-citizen voting.

The Conservative Action Project is one of many right-wing coalitions formed in reaction to the election of former President Barack Obama, and now includes representatives of MAGA groups created in the wake of Trump’s 2020 loss, like the Center for Renewing America. In 2022 it mobilized an unsuccessful effort to defeat the Respect for Marriage Act, which offers legal protections to same-sex couples whose rights would be threatened if the Supreme Court overturns its 2015 marriage equality ruling.

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slate

no lnx

On Wednesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell announced that he will not seek another term as leader of the Senate Republicans, stepping down from the post (though not his seat) in January 2025. McConnell will leave a legacy of extreme obstruction, having pioneered new ways to paralyze the upper chamber in an effort to stymie Democratic legislation. He also regularly kowtowed to Donald Trump, even voting to acquit the former president following his impeachment trial over the Jan. 6 insurrection. But McConnell’s most indelible mark on history is likely to be his fixation on stacking the courts with far-right ideologues, thus fundamentally refashioning the federal judiciary in the image of the modern Republican Party.

On a new episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the wrecking ball that McConnell took to the independent federal judiciary and its enduring impact on American democracy and civil rights. Their conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Dahlia Lithwick: Can we talk about Mitch McConnell for a minute? He announced that he’s stepping down as the leader of Senate Republicans in the near future.

Mark Joseph Stern: What was your first reaction when you heard the news?

My first reaction was that I hate this timeline so much. It’s the timeline where we have to miss Rep. Kevin McCarthy because the person who followed him was, as sure as night follows day, vastly crazier. That’s how I feel about McConnell. This is the person who singlehandedly did more to destroy Senate norms of comity and respect, to help Donald Trump evade accountability, and to steal and pack the Supreme Court with people who should not be sitting on the court. And still, in this moment, we’re going to have to thank him for respecting the vestigial norms that he did and not being an utter sociopath each and every day. Because the person who follows him will be worse.

I’ll add that, in my view, no one has done more to destroy the federal judiciary than Mitch McConnell. This is the guy who, under Obama, decided to block as many judicial nominations as possible, for no reason other than to leave the seats open so Trump could come in and fill them. This is the guy who violated every known norm to hold open Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat, ostensibly because it came open in an election year, only to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat when people were already voting in the 2020 election. I think he made a lot of Americans wake up and realize that this was all Calvinball, that he had no principles to begin with.

But even more than that, Mitch McConnell was the guy who realized you don’t need to win elections to enact Republican policy. You don’t need to change hearts and minds. You don’t need to push ballot initiatives or win over the views of the people. All you have to do is stack the courts. You only need 51 votes in the Senate to stack the courts with far-right partisan activists like Aileen Cannon and Matthew Kacsmaryk. And they will enact Republican policies under the guise of judicial review, policies that could never pass through the democratic process. And those policies will be bulletproof, because they will be called “law,” and Democrats will need at least a century to win back the courts.

Anyone who believes in an independent judiciary with any integrity should loathe McConnell to their bones.

I want to add that McConnell, for so many reasons, stands out as somebody who knew exactly who Donald Trump was, exactly what happened on Jan. 6, exactly what his responsibility was in that moment. And he didn’t do it. He normalized the idea that you can mumble stuff and do nothing. Then we all live with the consequences. He made it easier for whoever follows him to do even less. And now he’s being praised as some elder statesman? Really? He’s totally morally bankrupt. The only silver lining, Mark, is that whoever follows him will not be as good as him at this crap.

Related From Slate

Jim Newell

Why Mitch McConnell Is Really Stepping Down in November

Read More

I agree. Under Trump, McConnell built the most impressive and efficient judicial confirmation machine ever seen. He really helped to keep the broader Republican Party and conservative movement behind Trump by saying, “don’t worry, we’re still getting all the right judges!” He pushed them through at a record clip. Aileen Cannon, the judge thwarting Trump’s trial over the Mar-a-Lago documents, was confirmed after the 2020 election, when Trump had already lost! This went on right up until the end. And I don’t think his successor will match those heights, even if he or she isn’t quite as loony as we’re speculating. Think about how much Joe Biden and his team have struggled to match the number of confirmations that Trump and McConnell achieved. They can’t do it. We may have passed peak efficiency for judicial confirmations under any president.

But is that anything to celebrate? McConnell’s successor will still scrape and strive to get crazy people on the bench. And sure, they might get 20 percent fewer judges through, because they won’t have the same ruthless efficiency. But Republicans will take that deal, because it only takes one insane district court judge to thwart an entire presidency.

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LEVER

cmd

Billionaire Megadonors Push State Courts Rightward

by Juliana Broad | November 26th, 2024

Elon Musk, Richard Uihlein, and Jeff Yass are among the billionaire Republican megadonors who aimed extensive resources at this year’s state court races.

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record? 1 in 4 fed?!

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When President-elect Donald Trump begins his second term on January 20, 2025, Republicans will have control of both chambers of Congress.

The GOP will have a 53-47 majority in the U.S. Senate under Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota), and a small Republican majority will still control the U.S. House of Representatives — although it remains to be seen whether or not Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) will continue as House speaker next year.

Sen. Chuck Schumer's (D-New York) time as Senate majority leader is winding down. But according to Politico's Eugene Daniels, Schumer has been trying to prepare for 2025 by helping make the federal judiciary as Trump-proof as he can.

READ MORE:['Red meat for MAGA': Trump said to be prepping 'early shock-and-awe campaign' in new term

"Four years ago," Daniels reports in the Politico Playbook column, "Schumer launched a plan, along with President Joe Biden, to use the party's Senate majority to prioritize not just passing legislation, but also, pushing through as many judicial nominations as possible…. And now, those judges are likely to be the tip of the spear in protecting Democrats' legislative achievements over the last four years — as well as Republican attempts to remake or dismantle parts of the federal government."

Schumer told Politico, "When we started out, we knew it would be a very difficult job to do more than Trump had done. But we did: We got 235 — more than a quarter of the federal judiciary was appointed by our Senate and by the president…. We knew that getting more judges on the bench would help protect our legislative record."

The Senate majority leader added that legislative accomplishments and judicial appointments "go hand in hand."

Schumer told Politico, "If you asked me which one was more important, I wouldn’t want to pick among my children."

READ MORE:['Poor information ecosystem': How QAnon-style 'disinformation' made Trump victorious

According to Schumer, him and Biden have been very much in sync when it comes to getting federal judges confirmed."

"When I became majority leader," Schumer told Politico, "I said, 'This is something we have to work on, we have to focus on.' We would go to members and persuade them in two ways: Persuade some of them to vote for these judges because the Republicans threw all kinds of charges — mainly false — against them. And second, I had to persuade them that this was really important.

Schumer also told Politico, "I don't know exactly what (Trump will) do. But I can tell you this: The judiciary will be one of our strongest — if not our strongest — barrier against what he does."

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biden lame duck push

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In March, about 100 gathered in Judge James Wynn Jr.’s hometown of Robersonville to throw him a surprise retirement party.

Nine months later, Wynn revealed his own surprise: he’s not giving up his seat on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals after all.

In a letter Wynn, 70, wrote to President Joe Biden Friday that was released the following afternoon by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — who rebuked the judge’s decision — he rescinded his January announcement that he would assume senior status, a form of semi-retirement where federal judges hear a reduced caseload and vacate their permanent seat on the court.

“I write to advise that, after careful consideration, I have decided to continue in regular active service as a United States Circuit Judge for the Fourth Circuit,” Wynn wrote. “I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused.”

Wynn’s decision to remain in active service is the culmination of a monthslong drama over his seat on the bench. Biden named North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park as his choice to succeed Wynn, an Obama appointee, in July — and was immediately met with strident opposition from North Carolina Senators Tillis and Ted Budd.

“This nomination is a non-starter and the White House has already been informed they do not have the votes for confirmation,” the senators wrote in a joint statement at the time. “We still hope to work together to find a consensus nominee who can earn bipartisan support and be confirmed.”

The results in the Senate backed up that threat. In a deal to advance a slate of district court nominees, the Biden administration raised the white flag on his four remaining circuit court nominees, all of whom were said to lack the votes for confirmation. Park formally withdrew himself from consideration Thursday, and the following day, Wynn announced his reversal.

Tillis called Wynn’s decision “brazenly partisan” and a “slap in the face to the U.S. Senate” after the deal to hold the seat for Trump to fill. He urged the Senate Judiciary Committee — set to be controlled by Republicans beginning in January — to hold a hearing on the matter.

Carl Tobias, an expert on the federal judiciary who teaches at the University of Richmond, said he was not surprised by Wynn’s decision given the politicized process that prevented Park’s confirmation — Tobias had called Park an “extraordinary nominee” and a “consummate lawyer.”

“Judge Wynn certainly can retract his decision, and he’s done that, and I think partly due to what happened during the confirmation process for his successor,” Tobias said. “Article III judges are independent and they do whatever they need to do.”

The reversal denies Trump the opportunity to name what would have been his fourth appointee to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in a second term where he looks set to reshape the federal courts that cover North Carolina. The court has a roster of 15 active status judges, plus three who are on senior status. Wynn is the second federal judge from the state to “unretire” in the wake of the 2024 election, after Judge Max Cogburn Jr. for the Western District of North Carolina did the same in November.

Since that decision, Cogburn has been the subject of ethics complaints calling into question his integrity and impartiality. The conservative Article III Project submitted a letter to the Fourth Circuit alleging that Cogburn’s decision violated Canons 2 and 5 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges — which require upholding impartiality and avoiding political activity, respectively.

Such complaints are certain to follow for Wynn from judicial activists on the right. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said prior to his announcement that should any circuit judge go back on their decision to take senior status, that would warrant “significant ethics complaints.”

“Never before has a circuit judge unretired after a presidential election. It’s literally unprecedented,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “As I have repeatedly warned the judiciary in other matters, if you play political games, expect political prizes.”

Xiao Wang, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who has studied retirements in the federal judiciary, said the precedent Wynn has set could pose challenges to future deals like the one to advance several Biden district court nominees. He said it may also encourage conservative judges to take senior status decisions that appear political, particularly as Trump takes office and seeks to fill as many vacancies as possible.

Wynn is not the first circuit judge to go back on a planned retirement. Judge Robert King, a Clinton appointee who serves with Wynn on the Fourth Circuit, also rescinded his plans to take senior status after Biden opted not to name his preferred successor. Judge Michael Kanne, a Reagan appointee who served on the Seventh Circuit, did the same for similar reasons.

With Wynn choosing to remain on the bench, judicial observers are turning their attention to Judge Jane Branstetter Stranch, 71, who serves on the Sixth Circuit and like Wynn, announced plans to take senior status only to see her planned successor, a former clerk of hers, fail to get a vote in the Senate.

Wang said the backlash to Wynn’s decision, including the ethics complaints he is expected to receive, could serve as a deterrent to other judges considering the same.

“The first one certainly makes it possible that there could be a second one,” Wang said. “Just depending on what the reaction is and if there are any consequences for this.”

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The number of active criminal indictments that former President Donald Trump is facing decreased from four to three when Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed special counsel Jack Smith's classified documents case. Smith has appealed Cannon's decision, but both of the federal indictments he brought against Trump — the documents case and the election interference prosecution — will be doomed if Trump defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election.

First, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has a longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Second, Trump would be sure to nominate a loyalist for U.S. attorney general. And that loyalist, according to Newsweek reporter Sean O'Driscoll, could be Cannon if Trump wins.

Trump's critics are sounding the alarm, arguing that Cannon is the last person who should lead the DOJ.

READ MORE:[James Carville is 'certain' Harris will win — Here are 3 reasons why

In an October 22 post on X, formerly Twitter, political strategist Lindy Li wrote, "Judge Aileen Cannon delayed Trump's trial past the election and ran out the clock for him. She protected Trump every step of the way. She attacked Jack Smith and smeared his role as unconstitutional. Now Trump is considering making her Attorney General. Can you say QUID PRO QUO?!"

In response to Li's tweet, former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks posted, "It's insane."

Wine-Banks has been a scathing critic of Trump, who she considers way more dangerous than President Richard Nixon. Trump, according to Wine-Banks, has repeatedly crossed lines that Nixon wouldn't have dared to cross.

Attorney Tristan Snell tweeted, "BREAKING: Trump considering Judge Aileen Cannon and indicted former Deputy AG Jeffrey Clark for US Attorney General if he wins This should be grounds for IMMEDIATE investigation: - Cannon: is there a quid pro quo on Mar-a-Lago case? - Clark: blatant case of witness tampering."

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In his first term, former President Donald Trump leaned on the conservative establishment to help him vet federal judges. But in a potential second term, that job would likely go to a far-right media personality who would prioritize loyalty to the MAGA agenda.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that attorney-turned-pundit Mike Davis is positioning himself to be Trump's go-to authority on who to appoint to vacant Article III judgeships. That marks a sharply rightward shift from Trump's previous dependence on the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo, who helped elevate alumni like Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Davis — who once clerked for Gorsuch — is a regular on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast who has now become "a key adviser on legal issues and judicial selection," according to the Post. The former president has described Davis as "tough as hell" and promised he would serve "in a very high capacity" in a second Trump White House.

READ MORE:**'Push the envelope': How Trump plans to confirm hundreds of far-right judges in 2nd term**

As a lawyer who worked for former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Davis helped move hundreds of Trump's hand-picked federal judges through the U.S. Senate to various district and circuit-level positions. And after Leo and the Federalist Society put Trump at arms' length in the wake of the January 6, 2021 insurrection, Davis has positioned himself at the head of the ex-president's judicial vetting operation.

“A broad spectrum of conservatives were pleased with judicial selection in Trump’s first term, but I don’t think we can have faith that his nominees in a second term will live up to that standard, especially if he’s more likely to listen to a faction that wants a more aggressively right-wing judiciary,” Gregg Nunziata, executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law, told the Post. “I do worry that in a second administration, Trump and his allies will be more willing to apply personal or political loyalty tests.”

Davis' most high-profile role was being the lead counsel to oversee Kavanaugh's controversial nomination in 2018. The conservative jurist's appointment was nearly derailed after Christine Blasey Ford went under oath before the committee to describe her sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh (the Post recently reported that the Trump White House made sure the FBI investigation he authorized into the allegations went nowhere). Davis told the Post that he was undeterred by Blasey Ford's testimony.

"There was no way in hell I was going to let Kavanaugh fail, even if the allegations were true," he said.

READ MORE:**Why the conservative activist behind SCOTUS' right-wing supermajority set his sights on Maine**

Michael Zona, who served as Grassley's communications director during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, said Davis "simply didn't sleep" as he battled to get Kavanaugh across the finish line.

"He would update allies, reporters, and other offices so many times a day with everything from talking points to data and analysis that it was tough to keep up — or manage," he said. "By the end of the Kavanaugh confirmation, there was no china left for Mike to break."

If he wins the November election, Trump may get to appoint two new Supreme Court justices in a second term, as both Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are well into their seventies. If Trump replaces them, he would have appointed five of nine justices on the High Court.

Click here to read the Post's full article (subscription required).

READ MORE:['The real villain': How the Supreme Court is quietly working to keep Trump out of jail

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Critics of former President Donald Trump have been debating the shape that authoritarianism would take in the United States if Trump defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in November and the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 agenda is carried out.

Some critics have predicted that Trump would embrace the fascist model favored by Gen. Francisco Franco in Spain, Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Alberto Stroessner in Paraguay. But other critics have argued that Trump 2.0 would favor a more subtle brand of authoritarianism along the lines of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's so-called "illiberal democracy" in Hungary — where checks and balances have been greatly eroded but technically, voting rights still exist.

In a podcast discussion for The Atlantic's "Autocracy in America" series, hosts Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev stress that capturing the courts is one of the ways in which authoritarians undermine democracy and advance their agenda.

READ MORE:'Nothing is off the table': Trump plans for 'bureaucratic bullying' of enemies if he wins

"In a democracy," Applebaum explains, "we have something called rule of law, and that means that the law exists independent of politics. There are lawyers. There are courts. There are prosecutors, who at least, in theory — they are trying to legitimately find out who's broken the law, who's guilty, who's not guilty…. whereas in a dictatorship, that’s not what the law is for. The law is not to find out what happened. It’s not to establish the truth. It's not to find out who's guilty and who's not guilty. The law is to pursue politics by a different means."

Applebaum warned thatdemocracy can be eroded by "the politicization of the courts." And Pomerantsev agreed, telling her, "What I find so worrying in America is that people actually feel, already, that the justice system is politicized."

Pomerantsev continued, "They already feel that there's a red justice system in one place and a blue justice system in the other. And when people talk about the dangers of democracy being eroded in America — when I hear that from so many Americans — that's when I get really worried because if you can't get anything above politics, that's a very, very dangerous place."

Applebaum added that in "nondemocratic systems," the law "is about punishing political enemies with absurd cases" and "about justices not thinking about themselves as justices but as bureaucrats trying to climb a greasy pole."

READ MORE:'Hell isn't hot enough': Fury at Trump as more school evacuations follow lies

*Listen to The Atlantic's full podcast at this link.

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3 24 msnbc judge ho wife/ho took money from ADF while he was ruling on them

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Earlier this week, CNN reported that the Judicial Conference of the United States announced a new rule that would that would shut down "judge shopping" — a tactic conservative attorneys general and conservative litigants have used to file challenges against liberal policies and laws.

The new policy requires federal district courts to "randomly assign a judge to a lawsuit if the suit aims to block any federal or state law, executive order or regulation," the Hill reports.

"I’m really proud that we did this," 6th Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton said in response to the announcement.

READ MORE:**Judiciary enforces new policy restricting GOP from using 'judge shopping' to block Dem policies**

However, according to the Associated Press, two days later, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) condemned the move "on the Senate floor and joined with two other GOP senators to send letters to a dozen chief judges around the country suggesting they" ignore it.

In a Sunday, March 17 op-ed published by MSNBC, University of Texas School of Law professor Steve Vladeck points out the hypocrisy in not only McConnell's — but US Senator John Cornyn's (R-TX) and Thom Tillis' (R-NC) — opposition to the rule, too.

"So why are these three Republican senators so upset by the proposed reform?" Vladeck asks. "The answer is obvious: because it will make it harder to guarantee that specific judges will hear specific lawsuits — whether individual Republican appointees hearing challenges to Democratic policies, or vice versa."

Vladeck writes:

Plaintiffs have increasingly taken advantage of these 'single-judge' divisions to steer nationwide federal policy challenges to specific, ideologically sympathetic judges. For example, the nationwide challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone (one of two drugs used in the most common and safest abortion procedure) was filed in Amarillo, Texas — not a courthouse with any specific connection to mifepristone, but one in which it had a 100% chance of being assigned to a certain Trump-appointed district judge, former anti-abortion advocate Matthew Kacsmaryk. Kacsmaryk remarkably, if predictably, ruled against the FDA’s approval of the drug — an approval that occurred 23 years ago.

READ MORE:**Study cited by Texas judge in abortion pill case retracted**

Another example the Just Security blog co-founder notes:

A nationwide challenge to Biden administration efforts to combat social media disinformation was filed in Monroe, Louisiana — where it had a 100% chance of being assigned to Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty. And the state of Texas, which has filed 37 different lawsuits in Texas district courts challenging Biden administration policies*, has filed a majority of them in single-judge divisions — and none in Austin (where the Texas government is actually located) or Houston or Dallas or … you get the point.

Vladeck emphasizes, "The charge from McConnell, Cornyn and Tillis that the Judicial Conference is engaged in 'partisan' behavior rings more than a little hypocritical. The whole point of the proposal is to reduce the appearance of partisanship on the part of the federal courts."

READ MORE:[GOP represents 'most significant threat to basic constitutionalism since Civil War': historian

*Vladeck's full op-ed is available [at this link.]

thom an 12 23

...— Morbidly rich billionaires in America haven’t just been buying Supreme Court justices — they’ve also purchased over 100 federal judges... Lever News is reporting on research that discovered over 100 federal judges have been getting lavish vacations and trips around the world, fully paid for by some of America’s most politically aggressive billionaires and their companies and foundations. We thought the corruption was limited to Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett but now it appears the rot is much deeper.

The story is truly grotesque and explains why so many Americans are losing faith in our nation’s institutions. When five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery with Citizens United in 2010, they apparently also legalized the bribery of judges up and down the line, including themselves.

Never ones to miss an opportunity, several billionaires and their foundations have stepped forward to pick up their very own federal judges while they’re still going for cheap. Invest a few million in luxury vacations, make billions when the regulatory or tax laws are struck down or changed by the judges who took the vacations: buying judges and politicians is the best investment available in America today....

OMG

an 6 23

no lnx

for decades, Florida had a reputation for being an incredibly volatile swing state. Floridians often split their tickets, and President George W. Bush won the state twice before it went to President Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012. Democrats and Republicans had to work extra hard with Florida voters because the Sunshine State was neither ultra-Democratic Massachusetts nor ultra-Republican Alabama.

But that was before the Ron DeSantis era, which has found Florida moving way to the right. Republicans now dominate all three branches of Florida's state government: executive, legislative and judicial.

In a report published on June 20, Washington Post reporters Beth Reinhard and Josh Dawsey describe DeSantis and his allies' campaign to push the Florida Supreme Court way to the right.

READ MORE: Ron DeSantis accuses teachers of 'forcing' students to pick pronouns

"For decades, the ambitions of Florida's Republican governors were stymied by the liberal-leaning (Florida) Supreme Court," Reinhard and Dawsey explain. "That is, until Ron DeSantis was elected. The Court let him erase a congressional district with a large Black population. It opened the door to a law making it easier to impose the death penalty. Now, it's poised to rule on the governor's plan to outlaw most abortions in the third-most-populous state."

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The reporters emphasize that theFlorida Supreme Court's "hard-right turn" was "by design" —and encouraged by the right-wing Federalist Society.

"DeSantis seized on the unusual retirement of three liberal justices at once to quickly remake the court," according to Reinhard and Dawsey. "He did so with the help of a secretive panel led by Leonard Leo — the key architect of the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority — that quietly vetted judicial nominees in an Orlando conference room three weeks before the governor's inauguration."

Leo, known for his many years as vice president of the Federalist Society, played a major role in the demise of Roe v. Wade. And Reinhard and Dawsey stress that Leo helped give Florida "one of the most conservative state supreme courts in the country."

READ MORE: Ron DeSantis vows to 'destroy leftism' and 'woke ideology' if elected president

"(DeSantis) repeatedly points to his overhaul of the state court as a sign of how he would approach the (federal) judiciary if elected (president)," the reporters note. "He has called Justice Clarence Thomas 'our greatest living justice' and pledged to move the U.S. Supreme Court even further to the right than President Donald Trump did."

READ MORE: 'Boxed in': Why Trump’s 2020 fixation is a 'fundamental problem' for Ron DeSantis

Read The Washington Post's full report at this link (subscription required).

https://newrepublic.com/article/172480/barre-seid-leonard-leo-dark-money-king

...The amicus curiae brief is one of the network’s favored weapons. ProPublica has identified at least six groups funded by Leo’s network that have filed amicus briefs supporting a Colorado web designer, Lorie Smith, who wants to refuse to work for gay people, and whose lawsuit, now at the Supreme Court, would overturn Colorado’s anti-discrimination law. Twenty Republican attorneys general have also filed an amicus brief in support of the case through the Republican Attorneys General Association. RAGA has received huge tranches of Leo’s largesse for years. In 2022, a Leo-connected group donated $6.5 million to RAGA, according to ProPublica. RAGA money went into PACs targeting Democrats in the midterms. RAGA coordinates Republican attorneys general in pro-corporate, anti-progressive legal action. Those include 19 attorneys general who are pressuring investors like BlackRock to abandon environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, investments aimed at curtailing climate pollution. RAGA money has also been traced to organizations involved in the January 6 insurrection, and the group filed anamicus brief in support of dismissing federal criminal charges against Michael Flynn,the Trump administration’s former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Other organizations linked to Leo, including the Judicial Crisis Network and the Republican State Leadership Committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative, are pouring money into state judge races. A Grid News investigation found that Leo-connected groups have put “$31 million in campaign funds into at least 42 races for seats on state Supreme Courts or other high-level state judgeships in 15 states since 2010.” These obscure, low-interest races are increasingly critical as the Supreme Court tosses decisions about everything from abortion to elections down to the states.

Senator Whitehouse has devoted himself to tracking dark money, especially money aimed at reshaping the law and court-packing. He has given much thought to what motivates a man to leave his entire fortune to a regressive, dark money funnel. “Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king,” Whitehouse said, quoting Bruce Springsteen. “That’s the song. If you are a creepy right-wing billionaire and you know the public hates your view of the world, the only way to be king is to work your way around democratic processes, go clandestine, and find a scamp like Leonard Leo who knows how to move levers secretly.”

What $1.6 Billion Means

Seid’s bequest is believed to be the largest dark money donation in U.S. history. Charitable nonprofits are required to disclose their major donors, but the IRS class of political recipients defined as “social welfare” groups like Leo’s Marble trust are not. “Seid’s donation seems to be one of the largest, if not the largest, single political donation ever given,” said Kathleen Enright, president of the Council on Foundations, a nonprofit association of philanthropic entities. “But to be clear, this is not a charitable contribution by any means. It is a political contribution made to support a political agenda.”

How it works is: If Warren Buffett sets up a charitable foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization under IRS rules, it must spend transparently. Political action committees engaging in candidate support also must disclose donors. But when a billionaire throws a fortune at a “social welfare,” 501(c)(4) status organization, the IRS doesn’t require donor disclosure. Beyond Leo and his coterie, nobody knows how the money is being spent, or whether Seid put any restrictions on it. If Leo’s past is precedent, the money will support cherished right-wing goals: expanded gun rights, further erasure of the wall between church and state, rollbacks of civil rights on various fronts, and federal and state judges who will rule favorably on those issues.

Some of the money might wind up in the pockets of Leo and his pals. In March, Politico published an investigation finding that Leo-controlled nonprofits moved $43 million into his for-profit political consultancy, CRC Advisors, which he has been running since around the time of the Seid donation. The investigation dated the start of Leo’s “lifestyle upgrade,” with real estate and other perks, to 2016, the year he became Trump’s judge-picker.

In the wake of the Politico report, Senator Whitehouse and others are calling for an IRS investigation. “Leonard Leo’s new lavish lifestyle appears to be his reward for helping anonymous right-wing billionaires capture our Supreme Court,” Whitehouse said in a statement to The New Republic. “But questions remain about how he is getting paid and by whom, and who is behind the front groups communicating instructions to the justices through amicus briefs. People need to understand the level of coordination among dozens of supposedly independent groups that are played like piano keys by a manipulative donor elite. It’s an operation, not a coincidence.”

Whitehouse cited “Republican political battering of a previous IRS Commissioner” for the agency’s oversight “ineffectuality.” Kathleen Enright concurred. “The charitable sector has always valued and supported fair oversight,” she said. “However, the IRS division that regulates these organizations has been hollowed out in recent years, so the mechanisms to ensure the checks and balances that preserve the credibility of nonprofits, and the people and organizations that fund them, is woefully inadequate. Rebuilding that accountability and enforcement capacity is an important first step to rebuilding trust in the sector.”

Besides the question of what to spend Seid’s pile on, Leo can also decide how long to hold on to the money. He could spend Seid’s money all at once, essentially dropping a billion on a candidate or cause on one or a few cycles. Or he could treat it more like an endowment, invest it, and spend the income. That choice is not available to most charitable entities, since they rarely receive such large gifts, Enright said. “An operating nonprofit that received a gift of this size would be wise to put some portion into an endowment for future needs, given that it’s unlikely they will receive similar gifts in the future.”

Gara LaMarche is a past president of Democracy Alliance, a group of liberal donors, and no stranger to allocating big money. In his previous position as president of Atlantic Philanthropies, LaMarche spent half a billion dollars a year in the process of doling out a $4 billion fund according to the wishes of billionaire Chuck Feeney, who made his fortune in duty-free shops. Feeney had mandated that the money be spent over a short time on four program areas: population health, aging, disadvantaged youth, and human rights and reconciliation. Atlantic laid a great deal of grassroots groundwork for the passage of Obamacare.

Still, LaMarche is impressed by the Seid donation, which he compared to the endowment of a very significant charitable foundation. The Democracy Alliance has never spent more than $100 million a year, he said. He wouldn’t hazard a guess as to what Leo plans to spend it on, but LaMarche suggested several possible spending styles. Leo could spend it fast—say, $400 million over four election cycles. “Shorter time, bigger impact,” said LaMarche. “Or he could save it and spend it as an endowment. It’s enough money so you could have a very significant program just off the interest of the endowment—hundreds of millions of dollars without touching the nut. My guess is it will be a combination.”

Besides legally saving him hundreds of millions in taxes, Seid’s structuring the gift as a stock transfer increased the size of the gift by 20 to 25 percent over what it would have been if Seid first sold his shares and then made the donation. “Under current law, that approach just makes sense,” Enright said. “However, the broader questions remain of whether this scale of influence on our elections is good for our democratic system, and whether donors to political causes should be able to reap tax benefits by structuring gifts in this way. If you believe unchecked political giving is unhealthy, as we do, that requires changes to the law.”

Philip Hackney is associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh, specializing in nonprofits and their tax exemptions. Hackney explained that the IRS has been battered from the right, first in 2014, after a manufactured scandal alleging that the Obama IRS targeted conservatives, and further with a Trump-era IRS decision to stop requiring recipients of political dark money to reveal the names of donors. “The system is allowing people to completely avoid wealth tax on future generations and accomplish political goals,” Hackney said. “Then the IRS moves in 2019–2020 made it very hard to see these wealth games happening. We are ensconcing dynasties and giving federal money to accomplish that. Why would you allow a billionaire to use this system to get more money from government to accomplish their goals?” Hackney offered an answer to his own question: “There is a part of our institutional structure that believes wealthy people are brilliant and deserve the right to ample political speech.”

The Barre Seid bequest should alert all Americans to the extent of the damage Citizens United does to democracy. So far, it has only caused ripples of fear through the political junkie class on the progressive side. But it should freak you out, and here’s why.

The Federalist Society, with an annual expenditure of around $20 million, remade the Supreme Court and seeded the federal bench with enough extremists to overturn gun control laws in places like New York and Chicago, chip away at the Affordable Care Act, and overturn the Food and Drug Administration when it comes to approval of an abortion pill. Leo’s people spent a mere $6.5 million to gin up an amicus curiae machine that, for example, aims to ensure that discriminating against gay people is federally protected.

...

an 4 23

https://www.alternet.org/dick-durbin-2659762876/

no lnx

Dick Durbin under fire for letting GOP Senate minority veto Biden judges

Jake Johnson and Common Dreams April 10, 2023

With the disastrous consequences of the far-right's takeover of the federal court system becoming clearer by the day, the Democratic chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee is facing intense criticism for preserving a tradition that is allowing Republicans to veto judges nominated by President Joe Biden.

The so-called "blue slip courtesy" is a nonbinding Senate norm that allows lawmakers to reject nominees for court seats in their home states.

While Republicans didn't hesitate to dispense with the informal rule when they were ramming through far-right judges at a torrid pace during former President Donald Trump's four years in office, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has chosen to adhere to the blue slip norm for district court nominees.

That decision garnered fresh anger last week when Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) announced she would not return a blue slip for Scott Colom, a Biden nominee for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. Collum had already received approval from Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, also a Republican.

CNN noted Monday that "Durbin's office blasted Hyde-Smith's opposition to Colom in a statement that did not indicate whether he was rethinking the blue slip rule."

"The rule has not been respected consistently through the modern history of the Senate, and Republicans nixed the requirement for U.S. circuit court vacancies under Trump. Democrats, now in control, have refused to bring it back for appellate nominees, but Durbin has said he'd like to keep it in place for district courts," the outlet reported. "Durbin didn't waver on that position when Sen. Ron Johnson [R-Wis.] flip-flopped last year on his support of a district court nominee in his home state, state Judge William Pocan, effectively torpedoing Pocan's nomination."

Progressive advocacy groups said Monday that Durbin's refusal to ditch the blue slip tradition was made even more outrageous by a Friday ruling from Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Texas, who deemed the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of the abortion medication mifepristone invalid. The U.S. Justice Department is appealing the ruling.

Shortly after Kacsmaryk handed down his ruling, which parroted anti-abortion talking points, U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice of Washington State—an Obama appointee—issued a conflicting decision ordering the FDA to maintain access to the pill.

"If last week's appalling ruling from a MAGA judge attempting to ban abortion medication has taught us anything, it's that judges matter. Senate Dems must do everything in their power to confirm [Biden's] nominees, including eliminating the blue slip ASAP."

Hyde-Smith praised the Kacsmaryk ruling, calling it a "victory for pregnant mothers and their unborn children."

Durbin's adherence to the blue slip norm has also drawn frustration and backlash from fellow Democrats.

"If it's a blue slip problem and the Republicans aren't turning in their blue slips and they're being obstructionist, then we need to think about changing the rules," Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told CNN.

In a tweet late Friday, former Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) faulted Durbin for "allowing the blue slip process to prevent confirmation of Democratic judges in red states" as right-wing judges attempt to further weaken abortion rights.

The Senate approved 96 federal judges during Biden's first two years in office, outpacing all of his recent predecessors.

But the upper chamber confirmed just 34% more Biden judges in 2022 compared to the previous year, whereas the Senate under Trump approved 177% more judicial nominees in the former president's second year in the White House than in his first.

The Senate greenlit a record 231 federal judges—not including Supreme Court justices—during Trump's four-year tenure, filling vacancies across the country with young, often unqualified right-wing judges who will have significant power over U.S. law for decades to come.

In addition to further imperiling abortion rights, Trump-appointed judges have recently issued rulings against student debt cancellation, LGBTQ+ protections, and efforts to revoke anti-immigrant policies implemented by the former president.

According to the American Constitution Society, 18 Biden judicial nominees are awaiting floor votes, 12 still must be reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and six are still waiting for hearings.

The Biden administration has thus far refused to pressure Durbin to drop the blue-slip rule entirely, even after Hyde-Smith made clear that she would try to tank Colom's nomination.

Durbin has said the recent and indefinite absence of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.)—a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee—has had an impact on the panel's ability to advance judges.

CNN observed that since Feinstein's office announced in early March that the senator was hospitalized with shingles, "the committee has only approved one nominee, Judge Matthew Brookman, the GOP-supported appointee for the Indiana district court seat."

But The American Prospect's David Dayen stressed Monday that the Senate GOP only has effective veto power over Biden judges "because Durbin refuses to revoke the blue-slip tradition that willingly grants Republicans the ability to obstruct."

A legal analyst recently explained why Americans should not expect muchlegal persuading from judges currently on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that were appointed by former President Donald Trump.

On Saturday, September 17, attorney and legal analyst Elie Mystal appeared on MSNBC News' "The Cross Connection" where she weighed in on the U.S. Department of Justice's investigation into Trump and the documents confiscated from his Mar-a-Lago estate by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

Since Florida Judge Aileen Cannon's appointment of a special master to review the confiscated documents, Myskal insists the possible outcome still appears to be a mystery due to six of the judges being appointed by the former president.

READ MORE: Political analysts explain why Trump may believe a 2024 presidential run could quell his legal woes

During the interview, Myskal spoke with MSNBC's Tiffany Cross, Trump may have the advantage of achieving favorable outcomes in each case being overseen by judges he appointed.

"The DOJ is no longer appealing fighting a special master and they are only asking for a small stay for part of the order. What do you think the DOJ's play is here? What is the reasoning behind that?," host Cross asked.

"They're realizing that the 11th circuit is also infected with Trump judges, right?" Mystal exclaimed. "Aileen Cannon, this district judge was making these horrible, biased corrupt decisions, she was appointed by Trump and confirmed nine days after he lost the election."

He went on to explain why the sitting judges are problematic. "The six judges on the 11th Circuit are Trump judges," he continued. "That is a huge problem. A third of the Supreme Court was appointed by Donald Trump. Every one of the 234 or so judges that Trump appointed is suspect."

READ MORE: Unsealed Mar-a-Lago affidavit shows Donald Trump 'did play a role' in hiding documents: legal analyst

According to Myskal, the judicial makeup Trump left behind serves as a threat to the United States' democracy.

"We have to start understanding that these are 234 land mines that Trump left behind in order to potentially blow up our democracy down the road," he explained. "These people serve for life. I have said on this program and many programs that one of the key reasons that Trump is not already in jail is that he keeps finding people who are willing to lie, cheat, and debase themselves for him."

"Aileen Cannon is just the latest person who is willing to debase herself, her profession, and her office in service of Donald Trump," Mystal insisted. "So he found another one. And he might find some more on the 11th Circuit. he might find some more on the Supreme Court."

"The DOJis trying to navigate that reality and all I'm trying to say is to get people to understand that reality; that is not new. People who now say the 11th Circuit may be more reasonable, again, you can't count on that. You have to treat every single Trump appointee as suspect until proven otherwise."

Watch the full discussion below or at this link.

an me 8 22

A new analysis is breaking down how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) contributed to the slow and strategic erosion GUK of United States democracy.

In an op-ed published by The Guardian, Gary Gerstle began with a brief overview of Republicans' brazen actions which he described as a "deadly serious attempt to upend American democracy." But while they only attempted a coup to overturn the last presidential election, Gerstle explains how McConnell managed to carry out his attack on democracy.

"Another brazen GOP action, however, has succeeded — this one engineered by the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, whose chess-like skills of political strategizing put to shame Trump’s powerful but limited game of bluster and bullying," Gerstle explained.

READ MORE: Mitch McConnell floats federal abortion ban if right-wing Supreme Court overturns Roe

He went on to recall what occurred ahead of the 2016 presidential election:

"The act to which I refer is McConnell’s theft of Barack Obama’s 2016 appointment to the supreme court, a radical deed that has dimmed somewhat in public consciousness even as it proved crucial to fashioning a rightwing supreme court willing to overturn Roe v Wade and to destabilize American politics and American democracy in the process."

He later added: "The tale of McConnell’s steal begins in February 2016, when Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, the lion of the judicial right, suddenly and unexpectedly died. Obama had just begun the last year of his presidency, and McConnell was entering his second year as Senate majority leader. McConnell immediately declared that he would hold no hearings on a new supreme court justice, regardless of whom Obama nominated. McConnell’s ostensible justification: it was inappropriate, he declared, for a president on his way out of office to exercise so profound an influence on America’s political future. Let the next president, to be elected in November 2016, decide who the nominee should be. That way forward would, McConnell argued, be a way of letting “the people”, through their choice of president, shape the supreme court’s future."

According to Gerstle, McConnell's actions are far more subtle and strategic as he took a route that differs from former President Donald Trump's public antics. "McConnell is widely considered to be a cynic about politics, more interested in maintaining and holding power than in advancing a particular agenda," Gerstle wrote.

READ MORE: :{How Mitch McConnell made the Senate a ‘hyperpartisan battle zone’::(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{ former Clinton official:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:

"This is true up to a point," he acknowledged, adding, "But it is equally true that McConnell has believed, for decades, that the federal government had grown too large and too strong, that power had to be returned to private enterprise on the one hand and the individual states on the other, and that the legislative process in Washington could not be trusted to accomplish those aims."

He wrote, "Hence the critical role of the federal courts: the federal judiciary, if sufficiently populated by conservative jurists, could constrain and dismantle the power of the federal government in ways in which Congress never would."

READ MORE: [How Mitch McConnell’s blatant hypocrisy tarnished Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination for this Ohio voter

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/progressives-blueprint-unpack-mcconnells-court/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/clarence-thomas-trump/593596/

no lnx

The Clarence Thomas Effect

The notoriously quiet Supreme Court justice has had a far-reaching influence on the personnel of the Trump administration, which may be his most lasting legacy.

By Emma Green

JULY 10, 2019

Clarence Thomas is the longest-serving justice currently sitting on the Supreme Court. For much of his tenure, court watchers and critics have dismissed his jurisprudence as largely irrelevant, demoting him to the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s judicial sidekick. In the public imagination, he is most remembered for his worst moment. Last fall’s confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh resurrected the debate over Anita Hill, the woman who famously accused Thomas of sexual harassment during his 1991 confirmation hearings.

And yet, during his time on the Court, Thomas has written prolifically and introduced ideas that have gradually gained influence among other justices. Of all the Supreme Court justices, Thomas takes an approach to the law that is arguably the purest embodiment of the conservative judicial philosophies known astextualism, which holds that the plain meaning of the text of a law is all that matters in judicial interpretation, and originalism, which holds that the Constitution should be interpreted only as its authors intended.

The most significant part of Thomas’s legacy, however, may take shape long after he has stopped writing opinions.Personnel is policy. Thomas’s vast network, more than that of any other justice, has defined President Donald Trump’s administration and the federal judiciary Trump has built. Through his clerks and mentees, the notoriously silent justice may end up with an outsize voice in the legal system for years to come.

Numbers are the first evidence of the sizable Thomas effect. He has had more of his former clerks nominated to federal judgeships under Trump than any other justice, past or present: 10, compared with Anthony Kennedy’s seven and Scalia’s five. Roughly one-fifth of Thomas’s former clerks either are in the Trump administration or have been nominated to the federal bench by the president. The clerks whom Thomas trained, has mentored, and actively stays in touch with are taking up lifetime appointments, and on the whole, they are quite young: Allison Jones Rushing, who now sits on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, is just in her mid-30s.

[Read: Conservative women are leading the defense of Kavanaugh]

These relatively small numbers offer insight into the broad influence Thomas has had on the Trump-era legal establishment. Even clerks who aren’t in formal positions of public service have gained prominence under Trump: Laura Ingraham, the conservative commentator who clerked for Thomas during his early years on the bench, has hosted one of the top-rated programs on Fox News since October 2017 and is an outspoken supporter of the president. Another former clerk, Carrie Severino, the chief counsel and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network, has been one of the most vocal advocates for Trump’s judicial nominees, including Kavanaugh.

The Thomas effect started taking shape early on in the Trump administration. As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern noted as early as mid-2017, when the pattern was still nascent, “Everywhere you turn in Trumpland, you’ll find a slew of Thomas’ former clerks in high places.” In part, this effect may have been driven by the people making the hires. Gregory Katsas, who clerked for Thomas on the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court, joined the Trump administration right after the inauguration as a deputy assistant to the president and deputy counsel. Later, when Katsas was nominated to his own judgeship on the D.C. Circuit Court, he told U.S. senators that he had been involved in “interviewing and recommending candidates for various executive and judicial appointments.”

At least three other people who have worked in Trump’s White House counsel’s office are also former Thomas clerks: John Eisenberg, David Morrell, and Kate Todd. When the Trump administration released its list of potential Supreme Court nominees in November 2017, four former Thomas clerks were included: Thomas Lee, Margaret Ryan, David Stras, and Allison Eid.

Any new administration has a huge number of positions to fill across the executive branch. When Trump took office, he also faced significant judicial vacancies—142 empty seats, according to data from the American Bar Association. By comparison, when Barack Obama took office in 2008, there were only 53 federal judicial vacancies. These jobs are filled like any other: through personal networks and recommendations. Under Trump, the most influential source of potential candidates for these vacancies has been the Federalist Society,a professional network for conservative and libertarian lawyers. “It happens that a lot of the people in the White House counsel’s office are Federalist Society members, and as a result of having been Federalist Society members, they have their own set of contacts,” said John Malcolm, who works on judicial issues at the Heritage Foundation and is chairman of the Federalist Society’s criminal-law practice group. The organization’s executive vice president, Leonard Leo, has had an influential role in advising the Trump administration on possible nominees.

Although stories about the Federalist Society often focus on the intellectual role and legacy of the late Justice Scalia, who was an early faculty adviser to the group at the University of Chicago, Thomas is a central figure in the Federalist Society universe.William Eskridge, a law professor at Yale known for his work on LGBTQ legal issues, told me the Federalist Society is “a social circle. It’s a professional circle. It’s a circle that gives [the justices] law clerks. It’s a circle that gives them positive publicity.” And, he added, “Thomas is at the center of that.”

[Read: The Supreme Court hands a victory to the pro-life movement]

Scalia famously described himself as a “fainthearted originalist,” although he later repudiated that label. By contrast, Thomas’s originalism has been “unflinching,” as one conservative law professor wrote in a recent column for The New York Times.Scalia himself told a Thomas biographer that Thomas does not believe in the legal principle of generally following settled precedent. “Among Federalist Society members, he probably would be their No. 1 favorite justice of anyone on the Court,” Severino told me. “As wonderful as Justice Scalia is, Thomas is someone who has inspired a lot of young lawyers.”

The Thomas effect may be due to more than just the power of networks, however. Thomas has been on the Supreme Court bench since 1991, and his clerks are entering their professional peaks during a Republican administration. Several former clerks told me Thomas goes out of his way to stay in touch with his clerks and cultivate their careers; they have monthly lunches and regularly get together for intergenerational reunions. Each year, Thomas takes his clerks on a field trip to the site of the deadliest battle in the Civil War. “I want them to go to Gettysburgand to think about … the price that was paid for this country to exist,” he said in an interview with the appeals-court judge Diane Sykes at a Federalist Society event in 2013. “I love my law clerks,” Thomas added. “These kids are my family.”

Thomas’s clerks tend to fit a particular profile. They come from all over the country, including law schools outside the Ivy League, which makes them particularly suitable candidates for federal judgeships. “Judges have to have ties to the local area typically,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a former Thomas clerk and professor of law at the University of Virginia. “The Thomas clerks, because they come from more regions in the country, and certainly go to law schools all over the country, are more apt to go outside of the I-95 corridor.” After their clerkships, these lawyers often go into public service, taking up positions in U.S. attorneys’ offices or as professors, which means they don’t mind the pay cut that often comes with a move to the federal bench. (A federal district-court judge can expect to make slightly more than $200,000 a year; by comparison, partners at top-tier law firms can earn multimillion-dollar salaries.)And, like Thomas, they tend to be very conservative, committed originalists and textualists. As Eskridge put it, they are true believers.

The Trump administration’s most marked achievement in terms of shifting the federal judiciary has come through Circuit Courts of Appeals.Trump has far outpaced his recent predecessors, with 42 confirmed appointments to these courts over the past two and a half years; by comparison, Obama had gotten less than half as many appeals-court judges confirmed by this point in his first term. These seats are where Thomas clerks will have the most influence—and are outpacing the former clerks for conservative justices. Former Thomas clerks have now been confirmed to the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits, along with two judges confirmed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals—Katsas and Neomi Rao, the former head of Trump’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The D.C. Circuit is particularly influential, because it is responsible for reviewing the actions of federal agencies; in recent years, it has issued important decisions on topics ranging from Obamacare to gun rights.

Thomas is famously silent during oral arguments. But as a writer, he has been prolific:He wrote the most concurrences, dissents, and opinions of any justice during each of the past five terms, according to data from SCOTUSblog. Over time, his work has significantly shifted the window of acceptable legal opinions on various issues, said John Yoo, a former Thomas clerk and law professor at UC Berkeley who is best known for his work on the George W. Bush administration’s torture memos. “When I clerked for him, he published some opinions I thought were really radical, and the legal profession would never be interested,” Yoo told me. “Now those opinions are heavily debated in law schools and are very influential.” He specifically mentioned Thomas’s concurrence in a 1995 case on affirmative action, Adarand v. Peña, and another concurrence in a case on the Constitution’s commerce clause, United States v. Lopez.

On the Court, Thomas’s purist approach may cost him the ability to convince his fellow justices on controversial cases. “He’s less of a traditional politician,” Yoo told me. “I think he’s more interested in saying, ‘This is the correct view of the Constitution,’ rather than assembling five votes. And that’s a trade-off.” Thomas’s views often come out in dissents or concurrences, offered solo or joined by just one or two other justices.“He has not, until recently, written any of the blockbuster majority opinions,” Yoo said, “because to do that, you have to horse-trade to get votes.” (Notable majority opinions by Thomas include a 2001 case concerning the rights of a religious student group, Good News Club v. Milford Central School, and a 2018 First Amendment case involving a crisis-pregnancy center, NIFLA v. Becerra.)

This is all the more reason the rise of Thomas’s former clerks is important. His approach to controversial legal questions—generally opposing affirmative action, favoring limited power for federal agencies, defending gun rights, and more—has been developed and popularized over his decades on the bench, and will be carried forward by a new generation of judges. He openly defies what he sees as bad precedent—just last month, Thomas wrote in a concurrence that “the Constitution itself is silent on abortion.”

[Adam Cohen: Clarence Thomas knows nothing of my work]

Other conservative justices’ clerks have had a significant footprint in the Trump administration. Two of former Justice Anthony Kennedy’s clerks, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, now sit on the Supreme Court. Trump’s secretary of health and human services, Alex Azar, and his solicitor general, Noel Francisco, both clerked for Scalia, as did the White House counselor Emmet Flood and the recently confirmed Seventh Circuit judge, Amy Coney Barrett, who is widely thought to be on Trump’s short list for any potential future Supreme Court slots.

Thomas’s influence, however, is particularly broad, reaching from the Department of Justice to the White House to the federal bench. Thomas is now 71 years old. If he follows the path of his colleagues Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who are both in their 80s, he could easily have a decade or more to go on the Supreme Court. His greatest legacy, however, may be in the intellectual seeds he has planted in the generation of lawyers who came up studying his work.

Olivia Paschal contributed reporting to this article.

Emma Green is a former staff writer at ​The Atlantic.

sad!

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/cawthorn-2656854718/

salon78

A federal judge on Friday struck down a legal challenge against Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., who a group of North Carolina voters argued was ineligible for re-election due to his apparent role in fomenting the January 6 Capitol riot.

The decision was handed down by Judge Richard Myers, a Trump-appointee in the eastern district of North Carolina, who rubber stamped Cawthorn's request for a preliminary injunction against the petitioners.

Myers is a member of two conservative advocacy groups, including the Federalist Society and the National Rifle Association. He also serves as a faculty advisor for the Christian Legal Society, whose members profess to be "dedicated to serving Jesus Christ through the practice and study of law."

The case originally stems from a lawsuit filed by a group of voters and advocacy groups back in January, alleging that Cawthorn should be disqualified from re-election over his conduct before and during the Capitol insurrection

In the leadup to the insurrection, Cawthorn encouraged his followers to "lightly threaten" their representatives if they didn't validate Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud. The conservative firebrand also made an appearance at the "Stop the Steal" rally, held just hours before the riot, where he blasted Republicans for "not fighting" hard enough. When the rioters had finally made their way inside the House chamber, Cawthorn appeared to be brimming with pride over Twitter, writing gleefully that "the battle is on the house floor."

The lawsuit, now all but dead, hangs its hat on the 14th Amendment's "disqualification clause," which prohibits any officeholders who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same" from holding a seat in government.

[twt]

but in a countersuit filed in February, Cawthorn's lawyers argued that the Amnesty Act of 1872 – which allowed ex-Confederates to serve in office after the Civil War – effectively validates Cawthorn's re-election bid. In fact, that law only applied to ex-Confederates – not future insurrectionists, Slate's Mark Joseph Stern noted.

Still, Myers sided with Cawthorn's abstruse logic, claiming that "we are at a moment in which interest in free and fair elections is at its peak." The judge added that he felt too responsible for protecting "the soapbox … the ballot box … and the jury box … And when those fail, that's when people proceed to the ammunition box."

Rob Fein, the legal director of Free Speech For People, which is representing the voters who filed the suit against Cawthorn, has called for the decision to be appealed.

"This ruling, by Chief Judge Richard Myers II, a Trump appointee, is wrong on the law and would block the State Board of Elections from determining whether Cawthorn is ineligible under the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause of the US Constitution," he said in a statement. "The ruling must be reversed on appeal, and the right of voters to bring this challenge to Cawthorn's eligibility must be preserved.

2 22 an just missed some bad ruling]

no lnx twt

Right-wing federal judges have grown increasingly hostile to voting rights: report

Alex Henderson February 25, 2022

Although considerable animosity now exists between former President Donald Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, both of them helped bring an abundance of right-wing judges to the federal judiciary — not only the three U.S. Supreme Court justices that Trump nominated and appointed (Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett), but also, lower federal court judges. Trump nominated them; McConnell signed off on them.

Now, with voting rights under attack by far-right MAGA Republicans all over the United States, voter suppression has plenty of allies in the federal judiciary. National Public Radio reporter Carrie Johnson takes a look at their actions in an article published by NPR’s website on February 25.

“The nation's premier tool to protect voting rights is in mortal danger, threatened on multiple fronts by the Supreme Court and lower-ranking federal judges, scholars and civil rights advocates say,” Johnson reports. “The latest blow to the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 came this week in Arkansas, where a federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump dismissed a case over new statehouse maps. The NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the maps diluted the power of Black voters. But thejudge, (Lee Rudofsky), said he found no way for the outside advocates to proceed.”

The ACLU has vowed to appeal Rudofsky’s ruling.

Sophia Lin Lakin, deputy director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, told NPR, “This ruling was so radical that there was no choice but to appeal. Private individuals have brought cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to protect their right to vote for generations.”

Johnson notes that Gorsuch, in a different case, “expressed doubts about private rights to sue” under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And Guy-Uriel Charles, a Harvard Law School professor, told NPR, “They are teeing up statutory and constitutional questions for the Court with the justifiable belief that the Court will welcome the narrow interpretation and the opportunity to further narrow the statute.”

Charles isn’t optimistic where the Supreme Court and voting rights are concerned.

The Harvard professor told NPR, “I would be very surprised if the Court does not interpret the statute in such a way as to take away the authority of states to draw majority-minority districts under the (Voting Rights) Act, except in cases in which the states have engaged in blatantly clear racial discrimination.”

yikes: if trump wins 2020 he gets to fill N RBG seat?!

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/donald-trump-says-ted-cruz-yes-that-ted-cruz-is-on-his-list-of-potential-second-term-supreme-court-picks

Patrick Svitek, The Texas Tribune

Sept. 9, 2020

“Donald Trump says Ted Cruz is on his list of potential second-term Supreme Court picks” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

p Donald Trump on Wednesday named U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, as a potential nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump included Cruz among 20 possible picks for the high court if Trump wins a second term in November and a seat later becomes open. The 20 new names come in addition to a group of prospective justices that Trump named during the 2016 campaign — and has since drawn from to fill two vacancies on the court.

Cruz’s name has come up before as a potential Supreme Court appointee, and he has said he isn’t interested. In a statement released moments after Trump’s announcement, Cruz was noncommittal and seemed to suggest he was satisfied with serving in the Senate.

“It’s humbling and an immense honor to be considered for the Supreme Court,” Cruz said. “In the Senate, I have been blessed to lead the fight to preserve our constitutional liberties —every day, to defend the rights of 29 million Texans — and I look forward to continuing to do so for many years to come.”

Trump also added a second Texan, James Ho, to his list of potential Supreme Court picks. Ho is a judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and former Texas solicitor general.

Since Trump locked down the GOP nomination in 2016, Cruz has occasionally fielded questions about the possibility of serving on the Supreme Court, given his background in constitutional law. He usually denies interest and says he is more interested in shaping the court as a U.S. senator and politician.

Four years ago, Trump’s commitment to naming the justices he could appoint to the court was one of the reasons that Cruz endorsed him after their bitter primary battle.

Ho, who succeeded Cruz as Texas solicitor general, has earned a reputation as one of Trump’s most hard-line picks for the federal appellate courts.

Ho has been pivotal in inching the 5th Circuit, already one of the country’s most conservative federal appellate courts, further right. He wrote that the Second Amendment has been treated as a “‘second-class’ right.”

In his very first writing for the court, Ho panned campaign donation limits, writing, “if there is too much money in politics, it’s because there’s too much government.” He suggested a long-serving federal judge had shown bias in allowing a subpoena of a religious group in a lawsuit over the handling fetal remains, decrying “the moral tragedy of abortion.” In March 2019, he misgendered a transgender plaintiff.

Another 5th Circuit judge with Texas ties, Kyle Duncan, is also on the list. Duncan, who is from Louisiana, is a former assistant Texas solicitor general.

Emma Platoff contributed reporting.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/09/ted-cruz-supreme-court-donald-trump/.

1020 election ROI:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/this-single-sentence-from-a-federal-courts-ruling-exposes-the-dark-conservative-plot-against-voting/

cody f

Three judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday stayed an injunction by a lower district court that sought to protect the voting rights of Texans voting by mail.

The majority decision, written by Judge Jerry E. Smith, blocked the lower court's orders to Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs that would have required officials to notify Texans whose mail ballots were rejected because of an apparent signature mismatch and give them an opportunity to address the issue. Under current law, election officials can reject a mail ballot if they determine that the signature does not match the voter's signature on file; officials must notify the voter of the rejection within 10 days. But even then, the voter may not be given an opportunity to fix the problem.

As the result of an ongoing lawsuit, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas ordered Hughs to adopt procedures that would allow voters to address a signature mismatch, or to stop rejecting ballots based on signature issues altogether. Judge Orlando Garcia said the existing policy "plainly violates certain voters' constitutional rights." But the Fifth Circuit rejected this injunction, saying Hughs should follow the law as written — rejecting ballots without necessarily giving voters any due process.

In a remarkable sentence encapsulating the emerging right-wing view of voting rights, the decision explained:

Because Texas's strong interest in safeguarding the integrity of its elections from voter fraud far outweighs any burden the state's voting procedures place on the right to vote, we stay the injunction pending appeal.

While this may sound like dry legalese, it's a dramatically bold and unambiguously dangerous idea. The court's claim is that "any burden" on the right to vote can be justified if it is meant to restrict the opportunity for voter fraud.

This notion sounds like a farcical caricature of Republicans' views on voting, but it's an actual statement from right-wing judges defending a right-wing administration. It falls apart under even the mildest scrutiny though. While preventing voter fraud is surely a legitimate interest of the state, there must be some reasonable limits on how far the government can go in trying to prevent it. Is it reasonable to, say, create so many obstacles to voting that 10,000 fewer ballots will be cast in an election if doing so will also stop a handful of fraudulent ballots?...

salon pack w 6

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/how-to-reduce-the-destructive-political-power-of-the-supreme-court-and-save-democracy/

OMFG

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/mcconnell-quietly-rams-through-more-lifetime-trump-judges-while-blocking-19-relief-everyone-in-america-should-be-outraged/

no lnx twt ari berman jake j

as Covid-19 relief for jobless and hungry Americans, collapsing small businesses, and state and local governments languishes in the Senate GOP’s legislative graveyard, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday further advanced his years-long project of dragging U.S. federal courts to the right by ramming through three more of President Donald Trump’s lifetime judicial nominees and teed up votes on several others.

Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, noted on Twitter that the latest confirmations came four months to the day after the Democrat-controlled House passed the Heroes Act, a $3 trillion coronavirus relief package that McConnell dismissed as an “unserious liberal wish list” and blocked from receiving a vote in the Senate.

“Everyone in America should be outraged that this is how Mitch McConnell is spending the Senate’s time amid a pandemic,” tweeted Gupta.

In a separate tweet Wednesday morning, Gupta urged the U.S. public to “pay attention” as McConnell and Trump’s court takeover proceeds apace amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis and resulting economic collapse—to which Senate Republicans have responded by putting forth legislation decried as piecemeal and wholly inadequate.

"As McConnell blocks the Heroes Act, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, election funding, and dozens of civil rights bills, his priority today (amid the pandemic) will be confirming three more Trump judges after confirming three yesterday,” said Gupta. “It’s an outrage.”

While Senate Democrats don’t have the numbers to block Trump’s judicial nominees, few even bothered to object Wednesday to the confirmations of John Holcomb, Stanley Blumenfeld, and Mark Scarsi to lifetime positions on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Just 12 Democratic senators voted against Holcomb and Scarsi, and only four voted against Blumenfeld.

The confirmations came days after major court decisions laid bare the real-world consequences of Trump and McConnell’s takeover of the U.S. judiciary, which will impact key areas of American society—from climate policy to voting rights—for decades to come.

Last Friday, as Common Dreams reported, the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld a Florida requirement that state residents with past felony convictions pay off all court fines and fees before they are allowed to register to vote—a ruling made possible by Trump’s appointees.

:{

}:

“The only reason it was upheld was because Donald Trump flipped the 11th Circuit with five Trump judges,” Mother Jones journalist Ari Berman told Democracy Now! on Tuesday. “And this is why Mitch McConnell in the Republican Senate is so intent on confirming judges and doing nothing else. This week, McConnell is going to confirmeight more judges to the federal bench, but they’re not doing anything else to help the American people.”

Late Sunday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit—which Trump also flipped with right-wing judges—upheld the White House’s push to end “temporary protected status” (TPS)for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan.

“Without Congressional action, this will lead to devastating moral and economic consequences not just for TPS holders but for their families, communities, and for the entire country,” Peniel Ibe, policy engagement coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, warned in response to the ruling.

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a bunch of recent ag-gag wins but wonder if cd be possible in near future w/ mcconn stacking

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/judges-strike-down-ag-gag-laws-for-violating-the-first-amendment/

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520

THIS WEEK, Mitch McConnell is bringing the Senate back in session ... no, it's not to pass emergency coronavirus relief ... it's to ram through the confirmation of some of Trump's most unfit judicial nominees yet!

Justin Walker -- a Brett Kavanaugh protégé who not only is a right-wing extremist, but also severely lacks experience and has been rated "not qualified" by the American Bar Association (ABA) -- will be considered by the Judiciary Committee in a matter of days for his nomination to the powerful DC Circuit Court of Appeals. ALL senators need to know that Americans are paying attention and we REJECT Trump and McConnell's efforts to rubber-stamp unfit judges, especially during the current crisis.

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https://lawandcrime.com/judiciary/mitch-mcconnell-declares-2020-the-year-of-leave-no-judicial-vacancy-behind/

while discussing judicial appointments Wednesday morning on a conservative radio show, Senate Majority LeaderMitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that his motto for 2020 is “leave no vacancy behind.”

McConnell joined *The Hugh Hewitt Show* for an interview on a variety of subjects, one day after Attorney General William Barr made some news doing the same.

The Senate Majority Leader revealed that when the Senate returns from its recess on May 4, the Senate will “start confirming judges again.” McConnell said that the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic will not stop the Senate from leaving no vacancy behind.

“Well, the current plan is to go back in session on May the 4th. I haven’t seen anything that would discourage me from doing that. And as soon as we get back in session, we’ll start confirming judges again. We need to have hearings, and we need to confirm judge,” McConnell said, according to a transcript of the interview. “Hugh, you and I have discussed this before. My motto for the year is leave no vacancy behind. That hasn’t changed. The pandemic will not prevent us from achieving that goal.”

“That is music to my ears,” Hewitt said.

The comments from McConnell come exactly one week after President Donald Trump discussed judicial appointments at length during a Coronavirus Task Force briefing. The president went so far as to suggest that the Senate could and maybe should confirm nominees for lifetime positions in a hour’s time.

The above was not the only question Hewitt had for McConnell on judges. The radio host asked if McConnell was comfortable with the idea of federal judges revoking their retirements if their replacement was not confirmed.

McConnell was not as shy as Attorney General Barr was about answering this question:

Hewitt: Now I want to close, Senator McConnell, by talking about judges again. I raised a hypothetical with Attorney General Barr yesterday which he was not comfortable with, but I need an answer to, and I think a lot of federal judges who could retire need an answer to it. They would retire if they knew they could revoke their retirement if their replacement wasn’t confirmed. Do you believe it’s Constitutional for a federal judge at any level to turn in a resignation letter saying I will retire provided a successor is confirmed by December 31st, and if not, I am not retiring? Do you think that’s Constitutional?

McConnell: Good, I could be wrong, but I think that’s been done before, that retirements have been announced contingent upon replacement. I’m not certain about that, but that’s a good way to, that’s something worth taking a look at

420

20,000 PFAW members have signed our petition urging the Senate to reject far right judicial nominee, Cory Wilson who has been nominated for a lifetime seat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Yet another judicial nominee who would jeopardize the health care of millions of across the country, it's egregious that Republicans are STILL trying to fill the courts with completely unqualified, partisan nominees who would rubberstamp their extreme agenda.

https://lawandcrime.com/judiciary/senate-dems-investigating-former-federalist-society-leaders-influence-over-trump-admins-judicial-nominees/

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats are seeking information on the role former Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo played in in choosing the jurists President Donald Trump has nominated to lifetime appointments as federal judges. In letters sent to Attorney General William Barr and White House counsel Pat Cipollone on Wednesday, the senators said they were specifically looking into the potential conflicts of interest presented by Leo’s advising the president on judicial selections while leading a group that is anonymously funded, “likely from entities that have interests before the federal courts.”

“Mr. Leo’s prominent role in the Trump Administration’s judicial selection and nominations process while maintaining a financial interest in advocacy efforts related to this process has raised questions regarding his potential status as a federal employee and compliance with accompanying laws and regulations,” the letter to Barr stated.

The senators emphasized that by advising the Trump administration on its selection of federal judges, Leo’s conduct raised significant questions as to whether he was performing the duties of a federal government employee without proper authority, thereby violating federal ethics law.

“By outward appearances, Mr. Leo may have engaged in the performance of a federal function that must be conducted by government employees authorized to act on behalf of the United States by leading the Administration’s efforts to identify and select judicial nominees, and press for their confirmation,” they wrote. “As a federal employee, Mr. Leo would have been responsible for complying with federal records retention and financial disclosure requirements, as well as the criminal financial conflict of interest statute.”

Led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Democratic senators who signed the letters were attempting to shed light on the process that has allowed the Trump White House and GOP-led Senate to confirm an unprecedented number of judges (nearly 200) in just over three years.

The senators assert that knowing the specifics of Leo’s involvement in the selection process is vital to ensuring the process remains untainted.

“Mr. Leo’s personal financial interest in advocacy efforts related to the judicial selection and nominations process raises serious concerns regarding potential conflicts of interest and the independence of the federal judiciary, given Mr. Leo’s leadership role in the Trump Administration’s work on the issue,” they wrote, before listing a number of questions relating to Leo’s role in the selection process.

As previously reported by Law&Crime, Leo stepped away from the Federalist Society earlier this year to helm a massive effort aimed at securing Trump’s re-election by highlighting the 45th president’s record on appointing conservative judges.

See below for the full letter sent to AG Barr:

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-latest-judicial-nominee-wants-to-abolish-social-security/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-has-laid-waste-to-the-federal-courts-can-any-of-the-democratic-candidates-fix-it/

texas 5th hoyt ruled d wilson pvc?

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-and-mcconnell-just-took-over-the-nations-most-liberal-court-report/

no lnx omfg

Trump and McConnell just took over the nation’s most liberal court: report

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story December 22, 2019

Lost in all of the attention being paid to the impeachment of Donald Trump has been the packing the courts with conservative justices by the president with the full support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Worst of all, reports Politico, the Republican majority has taken over the traditionally liberal 9th Circuit, long a bastion of fending off conservative initiatives

The report states, “The Senate confirmation of Lawrence VanDyke and Patrick Bumatay to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this month brought to nine the number of appointments President Donald Trump has made to the 29-member bench that serves as the last stop for nearly all legal complaints lodged in nine Western states. Democratic-appointed judges now hold a three-seat majority, compared with 11 at the start of Trump’s presidency.”

According to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the transition to a conservative majority court could have devastating consequences for liberal initiatives — including health care reform.

“The 9th Circuit is a very important circuit, and the presence of more conservative judges puts in peril all of American health care reform,” the state attorney general explained.

“If the trend continues, it represents a major shift in the liberal wing of the judiciary, meaning lawsuits for progressive causes won’t find a friendly ear as easily as they have. The circuit has been the go-to venue for activist state attorneys eager to freeze Trump policies on health care, immigration and other social issues. It ruled against Trump’s weakening of Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate, as well as multiple versions of his travel ban,” Politico reports before adding, “Trump has called the 9th Circuit ‘a complete and total disaster’ and a ‘big thorn in our side,’ and some congressional Republicans still threaten to break up its jurisdiction. But its changing ideological makeup could wind up giving states like California less legal elbow room to challenge Trump policies and go their own way in areas like reproductive rights and LGBTQ issues.”

The report also notes, “The 9th Circuit isn’t the only court whose makeup has changed through Trump’s conservative nominees and McConnell’s singular focus on confirming judges. The 1st Circuit in Boston and 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia now have Republican-appointed majorities. But the 9th has outside importance as the biggest circuit in the country and a jurisdiction with more than 60 million people.”

You can read more here.

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dn 1219

McConnell Pushes Through 11 Federal Judge Nominations

Cable news outlets MSNBC and CNN largely let Fox News shape the narrative around the most recent anti-LGBTQ judicial nominee, Lawrence VanDyke, who was confirmed on December 11. Fox covered the nomination more than twice as much as major broadcast and cable TV news networks combined and whitewashed his extreme record.

VanDyke has been identified as an allied attorney with extreme anti-LGBTQ group Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF), and has attacked the rights of LGBTQ people for years. He is the eighth federal judicial nominee with ties to ADF, and the extreme anti-LGBTQ group Family Research Council strongly supported his nomination. Further, in advance of his nomination hearing, the American Bar Association (ABA) issued a rare "Not Qualified" rating, in part due to his anti-LGBTQ positions.

The many anti-LGBTQ judges that have been confirmed by this Senate may hurt queer and trans people for decades to come. It is crucial that the media vigorously and meticulously report on Trump judicial nominees' extreme positions and not allow Fox News to continue to shape public opinion around their nominations.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/11/5/1897399/-Moscow-Mitch-and-Trump-campaign-on-packing-the-judiciary-with-unqualified-ideologues

Election Day in Kentucky, where Moscow Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump teamed up to help a guy they both loathe and call a "pain in the ass," Matt Bevin, retain the governorship. But it was as much about McConnell's reelection as Bevin's, since this election is going to bleed straight into the next one, when it's McConnell's Senate seat on the line. Trump made sure to do some stumping for McConnell during the Bevin rally they appeared at Monday, telling the crowd McConnell "works smarter" than others in Washington, while detailing all of McConnell’s supposed accomplishments during Trump's administration. (That would be the massive tax cut scam and appointing unqualified, partisan judges, as well as obstructing the House Democrats' agenda to actually accomplish things that help people.)

In that vein, McConnell stumped for himself, touting having gotten so many Trump judges into office. "My motto is 'leave no vacancy behind,'" he bragged. Never mind that the nominees he's been pushing through have less than stellar qualifications. In fact, since 1989 only 21 judicial nominees have been rated unqualified by the American Bar Association. More than one-quarter of them were nominated by Trump in the last three years—eight of them, in fact. Just ponder that for a bit. President Obama didn't nominate a single unqualified judge, but Trump has had eight in just three years. It took George W. Bush two terms to pick the nine unqualified candidates he racked up.

McConnell has pushed through five of them so far, and there are another two on deck—the "arrogant, lazy ideologue" Lawrence VanDyke, who cried crocodile tears over his ABA rating, and anti-abortion zealot Sarah Pitlyk, who "has never tried a case as lead or co-counsel, whether civil or criminal [and] has never examined a witness," as the ABA's committee unanimously pointed out in rating her unqualified.

The Senate Majority Leader is infesting the federal judiciary with unqualified, bigoted judges. And he’s doing it for Trump, a bigoted, unqualified president. Because it wasn't enough to destroy the Senate.

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1219

...to mention the literally hundreds of bills the House has passed that McConnell has refused to bring to the Senate floor. That includes gun safety legislation. It includes legislation to protect the next election from malign foreign interference. It includes legislation to protect insurance coverage for people with pre-existing health conditions. It includes legislation to try to stem the acceleration of climate change. The House has been passing literally life-and-death issue bills. The Post counted up: The House has passed 542 total measures, 389 of which are bills as opposed to resolutions (such as naming post offices). The Senate in total has only passed 384 measures—bills and resolutions—and just 91 bills.

What McConnell has been doing is pushing through judges, including a record number of judges deemed not qualified by the American Bar Association. Trump has nominated eight unqualified judges in three years, and six of them have been confirmed by McConnell’s Republicans. One of them, who is so extreme in her anti-abortion zeal that she opposes surrogacy and in vitro fertilization, was confirmed this week, along with seven others.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/one-in-five-federal-judges-now-a-trump-appointee-imperiling-progressive-change-for-as-long-as-we-live/

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/paula-whites-one-voice-prayer-movement-praises-god-for-trump-judges-republican-courts/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/mitch-mcconnell-brags-he-and-trump-are-changing-the-federal-courts-forever-with-extreme-right-wing-judges/

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https://www.mediamatters.org/msnbc/media-are-ignoring-far-right-white-house-lawyer-steven-menashis-judicial-nomination

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Petersen has served as FEC commissioner since President George W. Bush appointed him in 2008, beyond his six-year tenure. After serving as chairman in 2010 and 2016, he almost left the panel when Trump nominated him to the federal judiciary in 2017.

But he withdrew from consideration after struggling to answer questions about legal procedure during his confirmation hearing.before the Senate Judiciary Committee

Without Petersen, the six-member panel is left with just three commissioners — one Republican, one Democrat and one independent — who are all serving expired terms. The seats formerly held by Democratic appointee Ann Ravel and Republican appointee Lee Goodman have remained vacant for years. 

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1019 an common dreams

...Return on Investment: Business Friendly Courts

It is very important to understand that for big business, campaign and lobbying expenditures are investments. Big business expects—and receives—a very good return on these investments. One important return is stacking the court system with pro-business justices who will likely uphold the big business policies passed by Congress and signed by the president. Since big business is closely tied to the Republican Party and has a number of corporate Democratic friends, it plays a critical roll in the choice and appointment of federal court judges. For example, the current Supreme Court is famously divided along party and ideological lines with five justices nominated by Republican and four by Democratic presidents. Many cases are decided along ideological lines—however, this is not the norm for cases involving big business interests. Tellingly, the Chamber of Commerce endorsed eight of the nine current justices. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that Supreme Court justices often put aside their ideological differences to unite in favor of big business interests. For example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (the largest big business lobby) filed 14 briefs during the 2017 term and won 11 while losing three. During the 2018 term, the Chamber filed 10 briefs and won nine of them—six of the nine Chamber wins were decided by margins of 9-0 and 7-2. The following chart illustrates how the Supreme Court has increasingly tilted in favor of big business.

One of the biggest wins by big business over the last decade was the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case decided in 2010 by an ideologically divided court. In this case the Supreme Court majority not only re-enforced the counterintuitive theory that corporations are people but also further institutionalized the contention that corporations have many of the same rights as actual human citizens. For example, in Citizens United, the Supreme Court majority reinforced and strengthened previous decisions (based on the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision) contending that spending money on political campaigns is a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment. The Citizens United decision specifically prohibited the government from restricting independent expenditures for political communications by corporations, nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations. Basically, the Supreme Court ruled that money spent on politics is an expression of free speech and cannot be limited by Congress. Since big business and the wealthy spend much more money on politics, they have much more free speech than the rest of us.

Return on Investment: Massive Transfer of Income and Wealth...

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-appointed-a-judicial-nominee-whos-so-bad-even-republicans-hate-him/

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Trump has nominated Steven Menashi for a lifetime seat on the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.Despite already having a deeply troubling record, during Senate questioning Menashi refused to provide answers to basic questions regarding his involvement in helping to shape policy in the Trump administration.

Perhaps most troubling, Menashi is now also refusing to answer questions regarding any involvement he may have had in the events around Trump's attempts to pressure Ukraine (and other governments) into investigating his political opponents.

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bit belated

imperial prez need ctr-bal by congress and increasingly courts?

see Courts 2 on saving our asses, and trump almost always losing eg Muslim ban, also on environment?

But Rove went after state level courts hard, staring in Texas, and recently big fights/losses in state scotus, eg WI, that affect gerry and voting.

at start of djt all sorts of obviously unqual brown nosing bloogers got screened out by ABA? but them more serious fedsoc leo l phase?

Now McConnell on jihad with window closing? it's the only action he can take, but also in wake of SCOTUS wins on gorsuch and brett k, placed there seemingly as abortion culture warriors, but will deliver big for true patrons oligarch/corps.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/here-are-the-most-extreme-far-right-judges-pushed-through-by-the-trump-administration/

no lnx

Here are the most extreme far-right judges pushed through by the Trump administration

Written by Alex Henderson September 18, 2019

President Donald Trump has not only appointed two justices to the U.S. Supreme Court — Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 — he has also appointed a long list of federal appeals court and district court judges. And Jennifer Bendery, in an in-depth report for HuffPost, outlines who some of the worst ones are.

In addition to his U.S. Supreme Court appointments, Bendery notes, Trump has nominated“a record-breaking 43 appeals court judges and 99 district court judges” — and he clearly has a preference for those on the far right.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, explained to HuffPost why these nominations are so consequential: “It is important for the public to appreciate that appeals court appointees serve on courts that are the courts of last resort for 99.9% of cases in their regions of the U.S. on issues like capital punishment, abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration, etc. The key is: they resolve 50,000 cases per year, and the Supreme Court resolves 100.”

In her article, Bendery cites some Trump-appointed judges who “have records of being anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion” or “anti-voting rights.” One of them is Judge Leonard Steven Grasz, who thanks to Trump, now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit and has a “record of opposing LGBTQ and abortion rights.” Other Trump-appointed extremists Bendery discusses in her piece include, among many others, Judge Jonathan Kobes on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, Judge Neomi Rao on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, Judge Eric Murphy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and Judge John Bush on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

Bush, Bendery notes, has compared abortion to slavery, while Rao has criticized “special treatment for minority students.” Barrett, who was mentioned as a possible U.S. Supreme Court nominee in 2018 before Trump decided to nominate Kavanaugh, has been with an extreme Christianist group called People of Praise and described the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit as an “attack on religious liberty.”

Another extremist Bendery discusses is Judge Kyle Duncan on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. Duncan, she observes, has been avigorous defender of voter suppression.And Judge Kenneth Lee, a Trump nominee who now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, has described multiculturalism as a “malodorous sickness” and asserted that gays are more promiscuous than heterosexuals.

Bendery’s article not only makes a strong case for voting Trump out of office in 2020 but also, for Democrats retaking the U.S. Senate: she stresses that Senate Republicans voted in lockstep to confirm the extremist judges Trump nominated.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-administration-promotes-judge-who-once-threatened-to-turn-an-attack-dog-loose-on-a-2-year-old-guatemalan-boy/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/heres-the-staggering-reality-of-mcconnells-massively-successful-effort-to-stack-federal-courts-with-conservative-judges/

no lnx

If there is any Republican who, next to President Donald Trump, Democrats would most like to see voted out office in 2020, it is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. But unfortunately for Democrats, McConnell is up for reelection in a very Republican state: Kentucky. And one of the main reasons Democrats would love to see McConnell unseated is his effect on the federal judiciary. McConnell has been stacking the federal courts with hard-right judges, and as Laura Litvan reports in Bloomberg News, he’s very good at it.

Litvan notes that when President Barack Obama was still in office, McConnell held up Obama’s court nominees and left “86 district court vacancies and 17 circuit court vacancies for Trump to fill when he took office in January 2017.” And McConnell’s most infamous move of all came in 2016, when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died and Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland for the seat; McConnell wouldn’t even bring the nomination up for a vote in the Senate, but he did everything he could to ram through the nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017 after Trump was sworn in as president.

One of the reasons why McConnell has been so effective in getting right-wing judges confirmed by the Senate, Litvan observes, is “a rule change under former Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, who unilaterally reduced the number of votes needed to advance appellate and district court nominees to 51 votes instead of 60.” And in 2017, Litvan adds, Republicans “lowered the threshold for Supreme Court nominees to 51— and in April, they cut debate time for district court judges from 30 hours to just two.”

During Obama’s eight years in office, Litvan points out, a total of 55 appellate court judges were confirmed; 43 have been confirmed under Trump thanks, in part, to McConnell. “Trump-appointed judges,” according to Litvan, “now make up almost a quarter of the 179 full-time federal appeals court slots.”

According to Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution scholar, McConnell has also helped to make the federal judiciary whiter. Litvan, citing data from Wheeler, notes that  “fewer than half of the judges confirmed under Obama were white males” — whereas “about 70% of” Trump’s circuit court nominees have been white males.

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ag firing scandal? back in the day, but also djt preet B?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/grave-warnings-as-mitch-mcconnell-accelerates-right-wing-takeover-of-us-court

no lnx

Grave warnings as Mitch McConnell accelerates right-wing takeover of US courts

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams August 1, 2019

The Republican-controlled Senate confirmed 13 of President Donald Trump’s lifetime judicial nominees this week, a major victory in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s years-long effort to reshape the nation’s courts and drag them further to the right for decades to come.

The breakneck speed with which McConnell has ushered young—and often unqualified—right-wing judges through the Senate confirmation process “should send shockwaves across the nation,” the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights tweeted Wednesday.

But the rapid confirmation of Trump’s judicial picks this week has largely flown under the radar as America’s cable networks and newspapers have been dominated by coverage of the 2020 Democratic presidential debates.

Kristine Lucius, executive vice president for policy and government affairs at the Leadership Conference, issued a statement singling out Texas district court nominees Jeffrey Brown and Brantley Starr, who she said are “hostile to voting rights, LGBTQ equality, reproductive rights, and immigrant rights.”

“Additionally, neither one would even state that the bedrock civil rights decision Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided,” said Lucius, referring to the 1954 Supreme Court decision that ruled racial segregation of public schools unconstitutional.

Brown and Starr were just two of seven Trump judicial picks confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday.

“Senate Republicans will stop at nothing to stack the courts with partisan judges who will push their radical agenda through at any cost,” Lucius said. “In doing so, they are not only degrading our courts, but also endangering our democracy.”

It is unclear whether McConnell will succeed in pushing through all 19 of the judges he set out to confirm before the Senate breaks for recess at the end of the week, but progressives said the Kentucky Republican nevertheless did a lot of damage in just a few days—without much resistance from the Democratic Party.

Christopher Kang

@cdkang76

Yesterday, the Senate confirmed one of these lifetime judicial picks who wouldn't say #BrownvBoard was correctly decided 87-1. (Thanks @SenBlumenthal!)

Today, Democrats let another be confirmed by voice vote--not even bothering to insist on a roll-call vote.

Where is the floor? https://twitter.com/NAACP_LDF/status/1156307354608111617 …

Legal Defense Fund

?

@NAACP_LDF

Replying to @NAACP_LDF

Disturbingly, 11 of the nominees being advanced failed to acknowledge the landmark Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision. Read our letter: http://bit.ly/2K6wO8Y

Marge Baker, executive vice president of progressive advocacy group People for the American Way, said in a statement Thursday that the “judges confirmed by the Senate this week include a number of alarming, narrow-minded elitists—including but not limited to nine nominees who would not say that they agreed with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.”

“Republicans are counting on these judges to dismantle reproductive rights, marriage equality, and the separation of church and state,” said Baker, “and also to shred the New Deal and regulations that protect people from corporate power.”

McConnell and Trump’s ongoing transformation of the nation’s judiciary received very little attention during the two Democratic presidential debates this week.

In an interview on MSNBC Thursday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who was on the debate stage in Detroit Wednesday night, accused Senate Democrats of not doing everything in their power to stop Trump’s judicial picks because they want to leave town for August recess.

“They’ve approved his judge selections so they can go on recess,” said Inslee.

“These are lifetime appointments,” Inslee added. “Stopping Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump from putting these conservative judges on the bench is more important than their vacation, frankly.”

Demand Justice

@WeDemandJustice

Gov. Inslee hits Senate Dems for supporting Trump judges: "We have to stop giving him a pass. They've approved his judge selections so they can go on recess. These are lifetime appointments ... It's more important than their vacation, frankly."

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/heres-why-mitch-mcconnells-mark-on-the-federal-judiciary-could-last-for-generations/

In either January 2021 or January 2025—depending on whether he serves one or two terms—Donald Trump’s presidency will become a memory. But his mark on the federal judiciary could last for generations. The Republican who is doing the most to help Trump achieve that is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and in an April 10 report for the Daily Beast, journalist Eleanor Clift explains why the Kentucky senator has been so helpful to Trump when it comes to moving the federal judiciary to the far right.

Clift opens her piece by observing, “What Mitch McConnell lacks in charisma, he more than makes up for with steely discipline”—and McConnell, to be sure, has been amazingly disciplined since becoming Senate majority leader in January 2015.

Clift outlines how much McConnell has done to advance the Republican agenda, writing, “McConnell’s goal is not fairness. He envisions a federal bench firmly on the right to steer the country for generations to come. His record so far: two Supreme Court judges, 37 Court of Appeals judges, and 57 District Court judges, including two confirmed Tuesday.”

The journalist elaborates, “He took extraordinary means to deny President Obama’s Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland. And in the last two years, he’s taken numerous actions to override the Senate’s role of advise and consent.”

Clift notes that just last week, McConnell “pushed through a change in Senate rules…. to reduce the time for debate on certain judicial nominees and executive branch appointees from 30 hours to just two hours.” And she points to Patrick Wyrick, a 38-year-old District Court nominee from Oklahoma, as a beneficiary: under the new rules, Wyrick was confirmed by the Senate in a 53-47 vote on Tuesday, April 9. The far-right Wyrick is an ally of Scott Pruitt, Trump’s former administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Wyrick, Clift points out, “has only been on the Oklahoma Supreme Court for two years—and now, he’s on his way to a lifetime federal appointment. No wonder McConnell didn’t want anybody talking about Wyrick for 30 hours.”

Clift goes on to explain, “Republicans are now putting nominees forward in groups of four, which restricts senators in their ability to probe any one nominee. Wyrick was part of such a panel, which meant that each senator had just five minutes for questioning.”

McConnell (who was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984) is up for reelection in 2020. And given how much of a red state Kentucky is, his chances of winning another term and staying on as Senate majority leader are quite good.

Clift concludes her report by stressing that McConnell has made it more difficult for Democrats in the Senate to vet GOP judicial nominees.

“Progressives need government to work to enact their agenda—Republicans not so much,” Clift observes. “They’ve kept their eye on the prize: the federal judiciary. And with McConnell in place, it’s paid off.”

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