WHAT GOES UP, MUST COME DOWN | The Unraveling Of Trump’s Judicial Successes
December 20, 2017
WHAT GOES UP
|“The collapse of three of PRESIDENT TRUMP’S judicial nominations in the span of a week has embarrassed the White House, revealed weaknesses in its vetting process and threatened to cause Senate Republicans to apply more scrutiny to the president’s picks. In their push to fill scores of vacancies on federal circuit and district courts at the historic pace demanded by Trump, White House officials have overlooked vulnerabilities in the backgrounds of some nominees. Critics allege that White House counsel DONALD MCGAHN, who is overseeing the process, has sacrificed traditional qualifications for ideological purity and youth.” In The Washington Post, Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey and Ashley Parker report on the quick unraveling of the president’s judicial agenda after three nominees withdrew from consideration. However unfortunate these developments have been for the administration, WaPo also notes that these are mere “aberrations in what has been a quiet yet undeniable success for Trump.”
MUST COME DOWN
|NPR’s Nina Totenberg notes this week’s withdrawal of judicial nominee, MATTHEW PETERSON, was the third such withdrawal in only ten days’ time. She explains that these failures could be signs that the vetting process has gone awry. Right now, the blue-slip system exists mainly in name only, she says. “It has become like Swiss cheese, as much holes as cheese. And senators, particularly Democratic senators, are often not consulted about judicial nominations.”
KISS THE RING
|CNN’s Chris Cillizza reports today that JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH just joined a long list of people not loyal enough to DONALD TRUMP. Cillizza writes, “His personality – volcanic, unpredictable, bullying – was the single most important factor in Trump getting elected to the White House. It’s also been the biggest impediment to him succeeding as he would have liked in his first year in office.” The piece comes as a follow-up to the report in The Washington Post which said Trump had considered rescinding Gorsuch’s SCOTUS nomination — a report that Trump quickly called “FAKE NEWS” on Twitter. Cillizza points out that the WaPo story is based on 11(!) sources — the exclamation point his, not mine. “So, while I think it’s worth noting the president’s denial, his past casual relationship with the truth and the deep sourcing on the Post story suggest – at least to me – that the reporting is accurate.”
THE CONSERVATIVE DARLING
|Although the WaPo report suggests there was a time in which Gorsuch maybe wasn’t going to get on the high court’s bench, it seems a very good thing for the conservative agenda that he did. Lawrence Hurley with Reuters reports that only eight months into his lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court and JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH “has given every indication through his votes in key cases and remarks from the bench he will be a stalwart of the conservative legal agenda, as PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP promised.”
TOP-ED – THE GOLDILOCKS PROBLEM
|In the Los Angeles Times, Michael McGough opines that while Democrats are up in arms over Trump’s unqualified judicial candidates, they are also in opposition to his well-credentialed ones too. “Listening to Democrats, you might get the impression that TRUMP is flooding the Judiciary Committee with judicial nominees who are incompetents or nut jobs. In fact (thanks largely to advice from those ‘conservative outside groups’ FEINSTEIN deplored), many if not most of Trump’s nominees are competent conservatives of the sort likely to be advanced by any Republican president.”
THE NET NET
|“The ink isn’t dry yet on the federal government’s decision to repeal its net neutrality rules, and yet many are already gearing up for what they say is an inevitable legal battle (once again) over the future of the Web.” That’s Brian Fung with The Washington Post reporting on what we can expect from incoming lawsuits over the FCC’s decision to repeal the Obama-era rules for Internet providers. (h/t Jackson Barrett)