TRUMP’S PERFECT TEN | Travel Ban 2.0 Likely DOA | Kennedy, You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
May 9, 2017
PERFECT TEN
|Yesterday, PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP announced plans to nominate ten federal court judges — almost 16 years to the day that PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH announced a very similar plan. The mass nomination of judges is said to be something of an “opening salvo” (h/t Richard Wolf) to four years of fighting over the federal judiciary. Some of the folks Trump will be tapping are from his original list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees. And thanks to an unusually large number of vacancies on the federal bench, there are likely many more nominations still to come.
YOU'RE THE TARGET THAT I'M AIMING AT
|“With his nomination Monday of 10 conservative judges to the federal courts, PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP is reviving the long-running judicial wars with Democrats. And the two picks likely to rankle Democrats the most are the ones they have the most leverage to block.” POLITICO’s Seung Min Kim reports that Dems have a chance to fight back against Trump reshaping the judiciary and could possibly wage “a silent filibuster of sorts against nominees from their home states through the so-called blue-slip process.”
AND I WILL TRY TO FIX YOU
|Yesterday, a 13-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond heard the first appellate test to PRESIDENT TRUMP’S revised executive order limiting travel from six predominantly Muslim countries. This is the second proposed travel ban that the Trump administration has put forward — a newer version of the original EO that is meant to fix some of the problems that led to appeals courts blocking and ultimately killing the first EO. The judges appeared unconvinced that they should ignore the now-president’s repeated campaign promises to ban Muslims from entering the country — comments that seem to jeopardize the administration’s assertion that the new EO is religiously neutral. By the end of the two-hour argument, the judges seemed ready to rule against Trump, though a ruling could take weeks to finalize.
DO YOU WANNA BE A DISTRACTION BABY
|Fix the Court released a statement yesterday noting that live audio of the Fourth Circuit hearing on TRUMP’S travel ban wasn’t the distraction opponents to court transparency measures might claim it would be. Executive Director of Fix the Court, GABE ROTH: “It’s a shame that the technology used for today’s hearing—which treated Americans to a serious, live discussion of the constitutional questions raised by the President’s travel ban—is only rolled out for special occasions. Every circuit court—and even the Supreme Court—has the ability to provide real-time audio, and we know from experience that live audio in appellate proceedings, far from being a disturbance, instead highlights the important role that our courts play in our democracy.”
TOP-ED
|Elizabeth Wydra, President of the Constitutional Accountability Center, opines for CNN that JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY should not retire from the Supreme Court “at this momentous point in our nation’s history.” She notes that among the many reasons why Kennedy shouldn’t plan on leaving SCOTUS anytime soon “is the utterly broken process of Supreme Court nominations under PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP and Senate Republican Leader MITCH MCCONNELL, which leaves little doubt that any nominee to replace Justice Kennedy would be intent on demolishing the key pillars of his legacy.”
OTHER NEWS
SCOTUS Case Will Test Justice Gorsuch's Appetite For Class Action Limits
Reuters“Both friends and foes of the newest justice consider Gorsuch to be pro-business, but the truth is that we don’t know yet if he will prod his fellow justices to revive Justice Antonin Scalia’s years-long campaign to rein in class actions.”
Trump Has Just Begun Massively Reshaping American Appeals Courts
Vox“President Trump is reportedly naming 10 nominees to federal courts on Monday — and, intriguingly, at least two of the people he’s appointing are likely contenders for the Supreme Court in the future.”