Finally, some backbone from Democratic leadership! For not only did Republicans never give Merrick Garland a hearing let alone a vote, they did it with a year left in President Obama’s term. Pitiful partisan politics.
Schumer lays out in particular why Trump’s nominee, Neil Gorsuch, needs 60 votes to be confirmed, not just for pure obstructionist reasons:
www.politico.com/…
In a little more than two weeks, President Donald Trump has put an unprecedented strain on the Constitution. He’s unleashed a flurry of legally dubious executive orders, including his travel ban designed to keep people from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering our country. This violation of America’s laws—and values—has already been stayed by several courts. In response, President Trump has engaged in attacks on the independence of our nation’s judiciary. Just this weekend, he impugned the “so-called judge” who struck down the president’s travel ban.
These actions show a lack of respect for the separation of powers—and that’s why Senate Democrats will do everything we can to make sure that the next Supreme Court justice will be an independent check on an out-of-control executive.
Personally, I’m all for Democrats holding up any Trump nominee. Republicans can cry foul all they want to. But after denying Obama’s rightful nominee the courtesy of even a committee hearing, it’s time to play ball by the GOP’s rules. However, Schumer points out that even conservatives are leery of Trump’s power grabs.
Yesterday, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell claimed that Senate Democrats are threatening to hold up a Supreme Court nominee just to hurt President Trump. That flies in the face of the facts. We are working to protect the American people from President Trump’s dangerous disregard for the separation of powers. Conservatives understand what is at stake here. John Yoo, the Bush administration attorney who advocated expansive executive authority said this weekend: “[E]ven I have grave concerns about Mr. Trump’s uses of presidential power.” And the conservative legal scholar Eric Posner opined that the president’s assault on the independent judiciary poses such peril for our constitutional democracy that Judge Gorsuch “must publicly condemn the president’s attack on the judge who blocked his immigration order.”
Resist!