Well, tonight is when Donald “Being the President doesn’t make your hands any bigger” Trump announces his pick for the Kennedy’s seat on the Supreme court. I think we all know its gonna be awful, so to help soften the blow, i got some SCOTUS themed Good news articles for you all.
he Washington Post reported Thursday that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked President Trump to nominate Merrick Garland to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court:
Trump had called Schumer on Tuesday afternoon for a Supreme Court-centered conversation that lasted less than five minutes, according to a person familiar with the call. Schumer, the person said, pressed the president to name Garland to succeed Kennedy, arguing doing so would help unite the country.
Schumer also warned the president that nominating a jurist who would be hostile to Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion, and to Obama’s signature health-care law, would be “cataclysmic” and damage Trump’s legacy, the person added, requesting anonymity since they were not authorized to speak publicly.
As many have already said this afternoon, the idea that Trump would agree to this is laughable – so preposterous, in fact, that Schumer’s move was almost certainly intended only as a signal to the constituency of Democrats and independents sore about, or at least troubled by, what happened to Merrick Garland and the GOP’s erosion of political norms over the past several years. The trouble with this as a political ploy is that asking Trump politely over the phone to give up a court nomination isn’t actually going to rally anyone. Schumer’s move additionally makes him look even weaker and more naive to Democrats and activists who already believe the party isn’t doing enough to fight back against Trump.
A bit of masterful trolling from the Senate Minority leader, my Senator Chuck Schumer. I know it wont matter in the long run, but nice to see Schumer get his jabs in, and never let anyone forget they STOLE THAT SHIT.
Justice Anthony Kennedy is retiring, and liberal panic has set in. “You are going to see 20 states pass laws banning abortion outright—just banning abortion—because they know that there are now going to be five votes on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade,” CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin declared last week. “Abortion will be illegal in a significant part of the United States in 18 months. There is just no doubt about that.”
Let me introduce some doubt. We’ve been here before. In 1986 and 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed two critics of Roe to the court. One was Antonin Scalia; the other was Kennedy. In July 1989, these two joined the majority opinion in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, which rolled back Roe’s trimester framework and signaled that the court was open to previously forbidden restrictions. Pundits, activists and even Roe’s author issued the same forecasts we hear today: Roe would be overturned, and abortion would be banned in much of the country.
It didn’t happen. Why? Because Roe is a singularity. As you approach it, the laws of abortion politics bend.
Most Americans are conflicted about abortion. They don’t like it, but they also don’t like the idea of banning it. In normal elections, these people focus on other issues. But when the court gets close to dismantling Roe, and when lawmakers start to look serious about banning abortion, ambivalent voters wake up. They start to notice, with concern, which candidates are pro-life. Some pro-life politicians end up losing their elections. Others hide or flee. The predicted frenzy of abortion bans turns into a frenzy of retreat.
An interesting read, and a good explanation why the GOP has never gotten rid of Roe Vs. Wade despite having a SCOTUS majority for longer than I’ve been alive. Its not a guarantee of course, but its food for thought.
Mitch McConnell is trying to talk President Trump out of nominating Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court because he’s worried that the judge’s long tenure and ties to the Bush administration would run afoul of Rand Paul and derail the nomination, the New York Times reports.
Because Kavanaugh has been on the federal bench for over a decade he may have produced as many as a million documents which Democrats could request time to review. That, plus his time as a White House staff secretary under President George W. Bush, and his time helping Ken Starr investigate President Bill Clinton, may mean Kavanaugh is passed over.
The issue is that with Senator John McCain out because of his brain cancer, the Republicans cannot lose any votes and still get confirmation. McConnell is said to be worried that Kavanaugh’s work for Bush may lead him to lose support of Senator Rand Paul.
McConnell also reportedly warned Trump that nominating Amy Coney Barrett, an extremist social conservative who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, could lose the votes of Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.
The Times reports that Trump is undecided and has gone “back and forth every few hours between the four options in front of him.”
And for story number three, it looks like McConnell is having trouble finding a pick that everyone can agree on. Or rather that Trumps top picks may not sit well with anyone. Hey, Trump, there’s always Merrick Garland.
Sadly that’s the last of my SCOTUS themed news picks, so for the last two…
The organizers behind the blimp depicting President Trump as a baby that will fly over London next week during Trump's trip to the city announced that they will now take the blimp on a world tour.
The organizers wrote on a crowdfunding site for the 20-foot-tall balloon that "people have have been SO generous and supportive that we now have WAY more money than we can sensibly spend just on Trump's UK visit in July!"
"So - Trump Baby is going on World Tour!" the organizers wrote. "All the details are still TBC but once little Donald has been run out of Britain in July, we will start to put together an itinerary - so if your community is unlucky enough to be expecting a visit from the orange sex pest, please get in touch after the 14th."
I think people like that blimp more than the real Trump (which would not be hard. Like at all).
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., responded Sunday to President Donald Trump's taunting attacks on her last week, calling him a "bully" who is targeting "every woman who speaks up."
"He tries to bully me to shut me up, and he's also trying to bully women all across this country. He talks about MeToo. It isn't just me he is going after," Warren said after an event at Lookout Farm in this Boston suburb that her campaign said was attended by more than 1,400 people. "It's every woman who speaks up. He thinks we should sit down and shut up. It's just not going to happen."
The response fit a pattern of tit-for-tat attacks between Warren and Trump that began in March 2016, when Warren published a series of tweets and a Facebook post calling him a "loser." In more recent tiffs, she has tried to use the exchanges to pivot to policy issues and scandals in the Trump administration.
"The best way to deal with a bully is to be strong, resolute, keep doing what you are doing," she said Sunday. "But don't take any guff."
Good for Senator Warren, show that big cretin what’s what.
Anyways, that’s the Good news this week. See you next week.