ANOTHER ACCUSER, ANOTHER STANDOFF | Kavanaugh To Share His Calendars | Women Plan Walkout In Protest
September 24, 2018
TODAY IN HISTORY
|On this day in 1789, Congress enacted the Judiciary Act and sent it to PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON for his signature to establish the United States Supreme Court. The high court was to be comprised of six justices who would have lifetime appointments — allowed to serve until they chose to step down or died. Andrew Glass with POLITICO reports on this moment in our history.
AND IT ALL FALLS DOWN
|“The BRETT KAVANAUGH Supreme Court nomination has become a crisis of conscience for America: a test of whether sexual assault allegations against a powerful man are taken seriously by the Senate, of just how real the broader post-#MeToo awakening is. But for the Supreme Court, it’s a sign of a different kind of crisis on the horizon: a crisis of legitimacy.” For Vox, Zack Beauchamp argues the growing trend of losing confidence in the Supreme Court could turn into a “full-blown crisis” thanks to the “political firestorm” surrounding Kavanaugh’s nomination.
ANOTHER ACCUSER
|Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer reported yesterday that another woman has come forward to accuse BRETT KAVANAUGH of sexual assault. Deborah Ramirez, a former classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, describes a dorm party in which the now-nominee drunkenly exposed himself and forced her to touch him sexually and without her consent. Kavanaugh denied the latest allegations in a written statement and called it “a smear campaign, plain and simple.” Read the full story.
ANOTHER STANDOFF
|The new allegation came hours after the Senate Judiciary Committee had agreed to allow CHRISTINE BLASEY FORD to testify Thursday about her own claims of sexual assault about JUDGE KAVANAUGH. But now Democrats are calling for a delay of those proceedings. Top Democrat SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN said in a letter to SENATOR CHUCK GRASSLEY that the newest allegations should be referred to the FBI for investigation.
DEAR DIARY
|The SCOTUS nominee says he plans to hand over calendars from the summer of 1982 that provide no corroboration for DR. CHRISTINE BLASEY FORD’S allegations of Kavanaugh assaulting her at a party. His team acknowledges that these calendars don’t disprove Blasey Ford’s account, but they do offer some rebuttal to her story which does not provide a specific date or location of the house where the alleged incident took place.
TWEETS DU JOUR
|And if the current number of allegations swirling around JUDGE KAVANAUGH aren’t enough, MICHAEL AVENATTI is claiming on Twitter that he has a client “with credible information regarding Judge Kavanaugh and Mark Judge.” He says he wants the opportunity to present testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee and he also shared on his feed emails he sent to the Chief Counsel of the committee.
MEANWHILE ON THE SIDELINES
|Julie Hirschfeld Davis with The New York Times reports on where PRESIDENT TRUMP fits into the current state of his own Supreme Court nomination. She covers how the White House has responded to every twist and turn of the last couple of weeks and notes Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony Thursday “illustrates the degree to which a confirmation effort that was once seen as an island of functionality in a tumultuous White House has become the latest messy episode in a presidency full of them.”
NOW WALK IT OUT
|People in support of the women who have publicly accused BRETT KAVANAUGH are being urged by women’s rights organizations to take part in a national walkout today at 1 PM Eastern. Groups such as NARAL and Time’s Up are asking allies to wear black and walk out in a moment of solidarity for survivors who aren’t being heard.
SCOTUS VIEWS
Another Female Accuser Just Stepped Forward. So Why Won't Republicans Call In The FBI?
The Washington Post“It should be stated up front that the new allegations have not been publicly corroborated by anyone. Kavanaugh’s defenders may argue that if the FBI were called in (which President Trump would have to do), this means anyone can far too easily make that happen by concocting a charge against a nominee on his or her own, thus baselessly casting further suspicion over that nominee. This is not an unreasonable objection. I’ll try to address it below.”
Thomas, Kavanaugh And Race
The New York Times“This time, that racial element is absent. The Republicans on the committee, those likely to be hostile to Ford, are all still white men. Ford and Kavanaugh are both white. This is a much more focused battle of testimonies. Either a boy assaulted a girl or he didn’t. Either an older child took advantage of a younger one, or he didn’t. One of these people is lying and in this collision of gender narratives, women will not have to struggle with the choice that black people did. If they believe Ford, they can simply say #metoo.”
Will Democrats Regret Weaponizing The Judiciary?
POLITICO“Roosevelt’s initiative never made it into law, but that was anything but a foregone conclusion, and the lessons from the entire episode remain critically relevant today. The election of Donald Trump has engendered a paroxysm of court activity unparalleled in recent memory. Some of this results from Trump pushing the boundaries on executive power and is surely legitimate. But much of it is of a different character.”