JUDICIAL CONFIRMATION COUNT REFLECTS MCCONNELL’S WINNING STRATEGY | Trump Administration Appeals Asylum Decision | What Did Ginni Thomas Do This Time
December 27, 2018
KEEPING SCORE
|Liz Zhou with Vox explains how MITCH MCCONNELL’S strategy with the judiciary has changed since Obama left office and Trump took the White House. The Senate Majority Leader went from doing everything he could to “slow-walk or straight-up block” Obama’s judicial nominees, to now jamming through as many nominees as he can. This past year, in the second year of PRESIDENT TRUMP’S term, 66 judicial nominees have been approved by the Senate, while only 49 were confirmed during the second year of PRESIDENT OBAMA’S presidential term.
NOT GIVING IN
|The Trump administration said yesterday that it plans to appeal a federal judge’s order blocking the administration from implementing asylum restrictions on our southern border. Friday, SCOTUS let stand the ruling that blocked the asylum restrictions, but justices could still hear arguments on the merits of those restrictions at a later date.
CAREENING TOWARD CATASTROPHE
|Mark Joseph Stern with Slate reports on an upcoming case involving “a promising program designed to remove big money from politics and increase the impact of small donors on elections.” But he says that program “may be careening toward catastrophe in the courts.” The Washington Supreme Court plans to hear a challenge to Seattle’s “democracy vouchers” which were designed to amplify the voices of nonwealthy Americans in city elections. They have already helped more minorities, young people and low-income voters contribute to their candidates of choice, but a challenge to this measure says it infringes upon the First Amendment. Stern explains the potential implications of this case’s outcome and notes why this one is worth tracking closely.
SAY WHAT
|Dan Zak with The Washington Post reports on the recent social media activity of GINNI THOMAS, wife of Supreme Court JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS. She’s been sharing propaganda-like Facebook posts such as one describing California as a war zone with illegal immigrants running afoul of the law, and another proclaiming the activist survivors of the Parkland shooting are “dangerous to the survival of our nation.” Zak writes, “Does it matter that the spouse of a Supreme Court justice is sharing such nakedly partisan, erroneous propaganda? Or have we hit the point at which this kind of rhetoric has been so normalized that, well, why wouldn’t a prominent party activist be doing this?”