With a majority of Republicans in the Senate, Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, will most likely be confirmed, but not before facing major opposition from Democrats. Here’s what some of the most prominent members of the party are saying today:
“With this pick, the president is making good on his pledge to ‘punish’ women for their choices. Judge Kavanaugh got the nomination because he passed this litmus test, not because he’ll be an impartial judge on behalf of all Americans. If he were to be confirmed, women’s reproductive rights would be in the hands of five men on the Supreme Court.” (Watch what else Senator Schumer says above).
“The President’s selection is a clear and disrespectful assault on the fundamental rights of women and on the quality, affordable health care of the American people. Judge Kavanaugh’s long history of opposition to the full, fundamental right of every woman to make her own decisions about her body, family and health care poses a grave threat to women’s rights and to our Founders’ promise of liberty and justice for all. If he proves as eager an executor of the President’s bitter campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade and sabotage Americans’ health care as his record suggests, a woman’s right to choose will be repealed and the health coverage and economic security of 130 million Americans with pre-existing conditions will be in grave peril.
Once again, the President is using his nomination as a destructive tool on a generation of progress for workers, women, LGBTQ Americans, communities of color and families, and to radically reverse the course of American justice and democracy.”
“Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will be a rubber-stamp for an extreme, right-wing agenda pushed by corporations and billionaires. The coming Senate debate over the replacement of retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is about the future of Roe v. Wade, campaign finance reform, voting rights, workers’ rights, health care, climate change, environmental protection and gun safety.
Brett Kavanaugh, contrary to 200 years of Supreme Court precedent, believes a president ‘may decline to enforce a statute . . . when the president deems the statute unconstitutional.’ He ruled against a migrant teenager seeking to be released from custody in order to obtain an abortion. He believes a president can only be indicted after he leaves office and should not be subjected to civil suits while in office. He ruled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional. And he would not uphold the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate.”
“Brett Kavanaugh is a judge who consistently favors big business and undermines protections for consumers, workers, women, and the environment. Replacing Justice Kennedy’s swing vote with a far-right jurist like Judge Kavanaugh could change the rules in America. Just as troubling, in light of the ongoing Russia investigation, Judge Kavanaugh has expressed staunch opposition to criminal investigations of sitting Presidents.
With a subservient Republican Congress and a far-right Supreme Court, there is a real risk that the worst impulses of the Trump presidency will go unchecked. The stakes for this nomination are historic.“
“I know personally just how consequential this seat on the Supreme Court is. Almost two decades after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, I was part of only the second class to integrate the Berkeley, California public schools. If that Court had not issued that unanimous opinion led by Chief Justice Earl Warren in that case argued by Thurgood Marshall, I likely would not have become a lawyer, or a prosecutor, or a been elected district attorney, or the Attorney General of California. And I certainly would not have become a United States Senator.
That’s the power an individual Supreme Court Justice holds. Those are the stakes of this nomination. We must demand a mainstream jurist worthy of our great country.”
“President Trump is currently a subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, and any nomination of a Supreme Court justice while that investigation continues is unacceptable because of the clear conflict of interest inherent in the President installing someone who could be the deciding vote on a number of potential issues from that investigation that could come before the Court.
The fact that Judge Kavanaugh has a long-established view that a President should not be subject to civil litigation or criminal investigation while in office means that President Trump has just nominated a justice who has already reached conclusions on these serious questions. That should raise enormous red flags.”
Brett Kavanaugh's record as a judge and lawyer is clear: hostile to health care for millions, opposed to the CFPB & corporate accountability, thinks Presidents like Trump are above the law – and conservatives are confident that he would overturn Roe v. Wade. I'll be voting no.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 10, 2018
