Kavanaugh Hearings Vs. Trump Impeachment Trial | Not Exactly A Clean Comparison
February 4, 2020
NOT THE SAME THING
|Sarah Ferris, Heather Caygle and Jesse Naranjo with POLITICO note that while some senators have compared the impeachment trial to the confirmation hearings of BRETT KAVANAUGH, it’s not exactly a clean comparison. “Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault in the middle of America’s reckoning with sexual harassment and abuse, and his confirmation was in doubt. Trump’s impeachment, however, involves more complicated accusations of attempting to influence a foreign country to investigate his political rivals in exchange for millions in military aid. And his removal was never seriously considered.”
HOLD PLEASE
|On Monday, the Trump administration and a coalition of conservative-led states asked the Supreme Court to hold off on stepping in to consider the fate of the Affordable Care Act. At the end of last year, a federal appeals court held that the law’s individual mandate is unconstitutional but did not invalidate the entire law. Ariane de Vogue with CNN reports, “Supporters of Obamacare want the justices to step in — before the 2020 election — to hear the case, arguing the lower court opinion would result in a ‘profound destabilization of the health care system.’ The Supreme Court last month rejected one attempt to fast track the issue but could meet by the end of February for further discussions. Critics of the law argue that it should eventually be struck entirely, but they do not want the hot-button issue impacting millions of Americans to come before the justices until after the election.”
THE GLUE THAT HOLDS IT ALL TOGETHER
|“In the days leading up to the Senate’s impeachment trial, some people hoped that CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS, presiding over the trial, would use his position to send a strong message to the senators on what the Constitution requires of them. He had, in fact, already sent such a message, just weeks earlier, on what the Constitution requires of all Americans. On December 31, in a letter accompanying his annual report on the work of the federal courts, Roberts called on federal judges—and everyone else—to invest themselves in the preservation of constitutional democracy.” That’s Adam White writing in The Atlantic that America needs virtue from its public and its leaders to keep democracy intact.
SCOTUS VIEWS
On Immigration, Supreme Court Wrong To Allow 'Public Charge' Rule
The Hill“To be clear, this is an assault on lawful immigration. The public charge rule has nothing to do with illegal immigration or undocumented migrants. It does not affect DACA recipients or asylum-seekers. This rule only applies to legal immigrants seeking green cards.”
The Road That Led To Rosa Parks
The Wall Street Journal“You’ve heard of Rosa Parks, but you probably don’t know the name Irene Morgan. On July 16, 1944, Mrs. Morgan, 27, boarded a Greyhound bus at Hayes Store in Gloucester County, Va. She had been visiting her mother and was returning to Baltimore. The bus had few passengers when she got on, but 25 miles later, when it arrived in Saluda, a long line of people were waiting to board. As they filled seats, the driver asked Morgan to relinquish hers to a white passenger.”
Mitch McConnell Is Terrible But John Roberts Is Actually The Worst
The Hill“His critics cast Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as a great evil corrupting President Trump’s impeachment trial, perverting the historic assembly into a ‘sham.’ Yet Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, the presiding judge at the trial, has escaped public attention — and that’s just how he likes it. He’s famously private and once claimed that judges should stay out of politics. His take: Their job is to be an unbiased umpire, and ‘nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.’ To understand how we got here — a place where McConnell ignores public will and does whatever he wants, unafraid that he and his fellow Republican senators will lose reelection — we must give Roberts a much harder look.”