TRUMP BRINGS IN A RINGER FOR SCOTUS NOMINEE FIGHT
January 26, 2017
HIP 2 DA GAME
|It’s game on for the Supreme Court, and PRESIDENT TRUMP is prepping for the fight with his new deputy White House counsel Makan Delrahim who is a veteran of the Republican judicial wars of the first years of the G.W. administration. Buzzfeed’s Zoe Tillman reports.
MURDER SHE WROTE
|CNN’s Joan Biskupic explains how to kill a Supreme Court nomination, looking back at past nominees who never made it to the high court on 1 First. It would be tough to do given the Democrats’ minority position in the Senate, but it isn’t entirely impossible.
C'MON BRO
|Ever unafraid of nepotism, PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP is apparently getting some advice from his sister about who should be his SCOTUS pick. JUDGE MARYANNE TRUMP BARRY is apparently a colleague and friend of JUDGE THOMAS HARDIMAN who is up for the job, and she’s putting in a good word for him with the big man in the White House.
PUT ME IN, COACH
|Tessa Berenson for TIME says DONALD TRUMP has another big Supreme Court decision that has nothing to do with the folks in the robes – deciding who will be his solicitor general. The two finalists are CHUCK COOPER and GEORGE CONWAY, making this a choice between a culture warrior and a corporate lawyer. “The outcome of the contest will matter. Long-called the ‘tenth Justice,’ the Solicitor General represents the federal government in Supreme Court cases, and has broad authority in picking which cases to fight and which sides to take.”
OR JUST A BRILLIANT DISGUISE
|For The Washington Post, Jonathan Adler considers just how Scalia-esque we can expect our next Supreme Court justice to be. He writes that a group of researchers recently sought to quantify “what it is that makes a judge like Scalia.” Adler: “While I am reluctant to place too much weight on the Scalia-ness study, it nonetheless provides an interesting way to think about the relative strengths of various candidates and highlights some aspects of judging that often get lost in discussions of judicial nominations.”
OTHER NEWS
Judge declares Ohio lethal injection process 'unconstitutional'
BBC NewsA federal court in Ohio has found the state’s three-drug lethal injection process is unconstitutional, putting three impending executions on hold.
OTHER NEWS
Obama's DOJ Fought Texas Voter ID Law. Trump's New Civil Rights Chief Offered Tips on Writing It.
The Huffington Post“Under President Barack Obama, the Justice Department spent the better part of a decade battling a strict voter ID law in Texas, which several federal judges found to be discriminatory. Now, in the Trump era, the acting head of the development’s Civil Rights Division is a Republican attorney who offered Texas officials guidance as they wrote the disputed law.”