U.S. SUPREME COURT - First Black Woman Justice Nomination

"Biden selects Ketanji Brown Jackson for the U.S. Supreme Court" PBS NewsHour 2/25/2022

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Biden on Friday delivered on his promise to nominate the first Black woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court.  After a month-long search to fill the seat of retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, Biden selected a former Breyer clerk and sitting federal judge, Ketanji Brown Jackson.  Geoff Bennett reports on how she was chosen to receive a nomination that was decades in the making.

 

 

"How Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson could reshape the nation’s highest court" PBS NewsHour 2/25/2022

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Biden's nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court is a landmark moment for Black women across the legal field, who throughout American history have made up less than 2 percent of the federal bench.  Margaret Russell of the Santa Clara University Law School, and Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal, join Lisa Desjardins to discuss Jackson's nomination.

OPINION - Brooks and Capehart 2/26/2021

"Brooks and Capehart on COVID relief, CPAC and President Biden’s nominees" PBS NewsHour 2/26/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including passing a COVID relief bill without a minimum wage increase, the prospects for President Biden’s Cabinet nominations, and the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Judy Woodruff (NewsHour):  And now to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart.  That's New York Times columnist David Brooks, and Jonathan Capehart, columnist for The Washington Post.

Hello to both of you.  So good to see you on this Friday night.

While President Biden is in Texas, David, he's got some problems back here at home emerging.  His COVID relief plan is moving through the House of Representatives, but, in the Senate, no Republicans seem to be on board.  And then you have the minimum wage part of it knocked out.

Where does that leave the whole thing?  Why have they had such a hard time getting Republicans on board?

David Brooks, New York Times:  Well, $1.9 trillion is a lot of money.  The Republican — 10 Republican Senators came in with an 800 — a 600-some-odd billion bill, and that was just too wide a gap.

So, the Democrats decided, we need to do this fast moving, we need to do this big.

(CROSSTALK)

Judy Woodruff:  I'm going to interrupt you.  David, I'm going to interrupt you because we're having a little difficulty with your camera.  You're not in focus.

(LAUGHTER)

David Brooks:  I see that.

Judy Woodruff:  We're going to give folks a chance to figure that out.

(LAUGHTER)

Judy Woodruff:  Apology.  We're going to go to Jonathan first.

So, Jonathan, you get to go first on this.  But with the President's COVID relief plan, where are we now?

Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post:  Well, right now, the big thing is that the minimum wage piece of it, the $15 minimum wage increase, was stripped out of the bill by the Senate Parliamentarian.

It is something, actually, that President Biden signaled was coming when he did that interview with Norah O'Donnell on CBS a few weeks back, where he mused that this probably isn't going to make it into the bill.

And, of course, he would think that and know that, given that he served more than three decades in the United States Senate.  He is a creature of the Senate.  He knows what the rules are.

And, so with the minimum wage piece out of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package, I think it makes it easier to get it passed out of the Senate.  Remember, both Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were against, said they were against raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

And so now I think it now puts the focus on all the other pieces within the COVID relief package.  That makes it easier, I think, for the Democrats to pass the bill with Democratic votes only.  That's assuming no other Republicans sign on to the bill.

Judy Woodruff:  All right, David, I think we have got this straightened out, sort of almost.  Yes, we can see you pretty clearly now, which is the way we like to see you.

Why do you think there have been problems getting Republicans on board with this COVID plan?

David Brooks:  Well, I thought all my thoughts were blurry.

(LAUGHTER)

David Brooks:  I think they — actually, can I just mention — Jonathan was talking about the minimum wage piece.

I think it has absolutely become a fascinating moment to see if — whether we can have compromise.  So, the Democrats want 15.  They're not going to get it.  They're not — as Jonathan said, there may be 48 votes.  They need 60.

And so Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton are for 10.  Joe Manchin is for 11.  So, can they cut a deal and get it to 12 or 13?  And would that be good enough?  And, to me, that would be good enough.

I personally think 15 is fine in places like New York and California, where the wage structure is high.  But it's too high in a lot of other places.  And the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would eliminate 1.4 million jobs.  That's a lot of jobs.

So, a $12 to $13 minimum wage would make more sense in more places.  And — but we will see if the Democrats are in the mood to come down and if Republicans are in the mood to go up.  To me, it's a crucial test of whether there even can be bipartisanship, because this is a pretty simple issue where you can split the difference.

Judy Woodruff:  And, Jonathan, do you think they can?  Do you think they can come together on that?

Jonathan Capehart:  I would hope that they could come together on this.

Look, I actually think it is a good thing and for the best that the minimum wage was stripped out of the COVID relief bill, simply because the nation needs to have the conversation about the minimum wage, how much it should be, how — over how much time it should it should be phased in.

With it stripped out, we can actually have this conversation and have the compromise — potentially have the compromise that David is talking about there.

You know, and to his point about the minimum wage being — meaning something different in other areas, you know, we have seen states raise the minimum wage by popular vote.  We saw that happen in Florida in 2020, where the state went for President Trump.  He [Trump] won the state, but 60 percent of Floridians voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

I think it is a debate worth having in the country.

Judy Woodruff:  We shall see.

But, David, before I let you go on that, is it a problem for Joe Biden if this goes through, the COVID relief, on a party-line vote, without Republicans?

David Brooks:  It's not ideal.  He ran on — yes.  He ran on bipartisanship.

But this bill has 70 percent support, or nearly 70 percent support.  I'm really struck by how little Republicans are actually fighting this.  They'd rather talk about something else or Neera Tanden or something than talk about this.

And I think that's because they have lost some of the big fight or the debate on fiscal — government spending and fiscal health.  There used to be a strong — a large number of people who really did not like government spending programs.  And Republicans could win elections on that.

After Donald Trump, that kind of conservative is much less significant.  There are fewer of them.  And so Republicans have lost the overall debate on spending.  And they don't seem to be able to be even trying to defeat the COVID-19.  They will it go through on reconciliation.

Judy Woodruff:  And, Jonathan, David raises Neera Tanden, the one nominee of President Biden's Cabinet who does seem to be running into real problems.

What do her prospects look like to you?  She would be the director of Office of Management and Budget.

Jonathan Capehart:  I think she absolutely should be the director of Office — the Office of Management and Budget.  I think the fact that her nomination is still alive says a lot about her, but it says, I think, a lot more about President Biden and the Biden White House, and the fact that, when they put her up for nomination, it wasn't for show.

It wasn't as you know something to do.  It's because the President thought she was the best person for the job and that the President is going to stick by her, until which time it becomes clear, if it becomes clear, that she cannot get the votes in committee.

But, look, the only thing Republicans are talking about when it comes to Neera Tanden are her tweets.

And after four years of President Trump and his incendiary tweets against elected officials, and private citizens on Twitter, tweeting things and saying things about people that were just uncalled for and unbecoming of a President, to then focus on tweets from Neera Tanden, Republicans, who would be — reporters would come up to them and say, what's your reaction to this latest tweet from President Trump, and they would feign ignorance:  Oh, I have not seen it, I'm not paying attention to it.

Judy Woodruff:  Right.

Jonathan Capehart:  All of a sudden, they're paying attention to tweets from Neera Tanden?  It is not fair.

And I just have — I chuckle at now all the tender hearts out there and the tender feelings within the Republican Party about a strong — about a woman with a point of view and values and who was not afraid to defend them.

Judy Woodruff:  And I'm sure, David, you can explain that.

David Brooks:  Oh, yes, Republicans have had a come-to-Jesus moment where incivility is completely offensive to them all of a sudden.

No, I agree with Jonathan on that.  I do — I follow — I know Neera a bit and I follow her Twitter presence.  I thought, just as a think tank head, she was a little loose and raucous and inappropriate, frankly.  It's certainly not enough to get rid of — or to not nominate her as OMB Director.

I think there's a subtle thing going on here.  For — since I have been covering politics, since David Stockman's days, if people remember as Reagan's budget director, there's been a certain sort of person who has been the budget — OMB Director, and that person is a super wonky, dry personality, white male.

And Neera Tanden fits none of those categories.  And so I think she just doesn't — people look at her and they don't see the normal OMB Director.  And that's part of the unconscious undertone of this whole thing.

But Republicans are certainly hyped up about it.  I think it's the only battle they think they can win.  I think they probably will.  I think, once Joe Manchin said he was against her, I think it's very hard for any Republican suddenly to be for her.

So I think, hopefully, they will find another spot in the administration for her.  She's a very talented version.  And they will probably have to find somebody else for that job.

Judy Woodruff:  And, Jonathan, in the last minutes that we have, I want to ask you both about the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), taking place here near Washington.

The lineup of speakers, the messages coming through, what do you make of it?  And President Trump will be there Sunday.

Jonathan Capehart:  Right.  President Trump will be…

Judy Woodruff:  Former President Trump.

Jonathan Capehart:  Yes, former President Trump will be there Sunday.

The speakers, from what I have been able to see so far, are hewing to the conservative line — conservative line, as it has been expressed during the four years of President Trump.

Clearly, the — at least at CPAC, the far right of the Republican Party is in the hands of Donald Trump.  We're going to know and find out for sure when he speaks on Sunday.  But any thinking that, because they lost the Senate and because they lost the White House, that the Republican Party and the and the right wing of the Republican Party is going to somehow moderate itself and try to become a bigger tent, I mean, just disabuse yourself of that notion.

Judy Woodruff:  And what we saw today at the conference, among others, was Ted Cruz, who — as we mentioned earlier, senator from Texas, who flew off to Mexico during that terrible winter storm last week, he had some comments today.

He joked about the Texas trip, and then basically mocked the wearing of masks.  Here's a little of what Ted Cruz had to say.

Sen. Ted Cruz:  Now they're saying, everybody can get immunized, we can have herd immunity everywhere, and we're going to wear masks for the next 300 years.

(LAUGHTER)

Sen. Ted Cruz:  And, by the way, not just one mask, two, three, four.  You can't have too many masks.

How much virtue do you want to signal?  This is just dumb.

Judy Woodruff:  So, David, how winning an argument is that?

David Brooks:  What really strikes me about CPAC is that it's not about government anymore.  It's not even about politics anymore.

It's culture war issues.  It's either the cancel culture they're against.  They're against wokism.  And I guess they're against mask-wearing.

And this is not about a normal political party that wants to pass an agenda.  The agenda, political agenda, is off the table.  And then, as far as the mask-wearing, they have made a hero of Governor DeSantis of Florida, maybe — making — maybe he will be the next Republican presidential nominee.

But when you actually look at the states and where they rank on effectiveness in preventing COVID infections, there's almost no correlation between the politics of the state and the infection rate of the state.

Florida's like 28th, which is pretty decent for a state with a lot of seniors.  But it's right next to California.  So, progressive and conservative states seem to be doing — it's just kind of random.

So, to turn this into an ideological issue, and to be anti-science about it, strikes me as kind of bizarre.

Judy Woodruff:  And just in a few seconds, Jonathan, we will see how far that takes Senator Cruz.

Jonathan Capehart:  Yes.

I found it interesting that he's railing against masks, when we spent all week watching him wheel his roller bag through an airport wearing a mask with the flag of Texas on it.

I agree with David.  CPAC is no longer about policies and issues.  It's culture wars.  And the clip you just showed of Senator Cruz, it's as if they're all doing stand-up.  There's no real vision for the country in anything that he said in that clip you showed us.

Judy Woodruff:  On that note, we will leave both of you.  Thank you.

Jonathan Capehart, David Brooks, thank you.

David Brooks:  Thank you.

Jonathan Capehart:  Thanks, Judy.

U.S. SENATE - Push to Confirm Trump's SCOTUS Nominee

aka "Saving Trump's Presidency"

 

"Sen. Hassan: GOP ‘changed the rules’ about SCOTUS hearings in 2016" "The Senate’s tight timeline to confirm Trump’s SCOTUS nominee" PBS NewsHour 09/21/2020 Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death leaving an opening on the U.S. Supreme Court mere weeks from the presidential election, a political battle is escalating over whether President Trump and Senate Republicans should push through a nominee before the country votes.  Can Democrats stop them?  New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan joins Judy Woodruff to discuss Ginsburg's legacy and what comes next..

 

 

 

 

"The Senate’s tight timeline to confirm Trump’s SCOTUS nominee" PBS NewsHour 09/22/2020 Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Trump has said he will announce his choice to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court this Saturday.  And although it appears the Republican-led Senate will have enough votes to move forward with confirmation hearings for the nominee, the timeline for them to approve the appointee before Election Day is tight.  Lisa Desjardins joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.

 

 

 

 

"Barrasso: Why this Supreme Court battle is different from that of 2016" PBS NewsHour 09/22/2020 Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death has left an opening on the Supreme Court only weeks before Election Day.  President Trump and the Senate GOP say they plan to fill the vacancy before the country votes.  Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the Senate’s third-highest ranking Republican, joins Judy Woodruff to discuss why he supports moving forward with confirmation hearings for Trump’s choice of successor.

 

 

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION - Nominee for U.S. Attorney General

The question, is William Barr really a Trump stooge?

"William Barr Has a Long History of Abusing Civil Rights and Liberties in the Name of ‘National Security’" by Manar Waheed and Brian Tashman, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 1/14/2019

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin hearings on William Barr’s nomination to be the next attorney general of the United States, offering senators an opportunity to scrutinize his record and views.

Such scrutiny is especially crucial in the Trump era.  As we’ve seen throughout his time in office, from imposing the Muslim ban to the recent shutdown fight over border wall funding, President Trump has tried to use “national security” as a pretext to justify discriminatory or otherwise illegal policies.

That’s why his nomination of William Barr should concern everyone — because Barr has a long record of doing the same thing during the George H.W. Bush administration.  If confirmed to be Trump’s attorney general, Barr could enable the President to act on many of his worst instincts.

Defending discriminatory profiling

In the lead up to the Persian Gulf War, the FBI questioned hundreds of Arab-Americans.  It claimed these interviews were to solicit information about terrorism.  Barr, who served as deputy attorney general at the time, defended the FBI’s actions, insisting that they were needed “to solicit information about potential terrorist activity and to request the future assistance of these individuals.”

Community activists said that the FBI was singling them out and questioning their loyalty because of their identity.  Many of the people who were questioned said that they were interrogated about their political views and travel plans and if they personally knew terrorists — based not on actual evidence, but on national origin.  As an official charged with upholding the law, Barr should know not only are such practices offensive, ineffective, and a waste of limited resources, but they also undermine the very constitutional rights he swore to protect.

Supporting secret military trials

And Barr’s history doesn’t stop there.

Following the 1988 Lockerbie Bombings, Barr floated the idea of the President convening secret military tribunals to try people accused of involvement with suspected terrorist activities.  Barr revived the idea of secret military trials after the 9/11 attacks and testified in support of President George W. Bush’s decision to order them without congressional authorization.

Barr told the Senate that the President has the power to order such trials as long as he cites “national defense” interests.  Barr said that “no war need be declared for this power to come into being,” and that there is “no geographical limit” for the President to exercise such powers.  Anyone declared a foreign adversary, he said, “is not entitled to constitutional protections.”

More recently, Barr’s belief that the President has virtually unchecked security powers is also seen in his defense of the first version of Trump’s Muslim ban.

Such beliefs are in keeping with his sweeping views of executive power.  Indeed, Barr has said that “the real threat to domestic liberties is the artificial restriction of our powers of national defense by gratuitously expanding constitutional guarantees beyond their intended office.”

Endorsing detention and denying rights

Barr’s nomination should trouble anyone worried about executive overreach, especially as Trump is trying to go beyond his authority to ban asylum-seekers and expand detention, including the separation of parents from their children.

During the George H.W. Bush-era, Barr endorsed the administration’s use of the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay to detain Haitians seeking asylum in the U.S., denying them access to legal advice during their asylum proceedings.  A federal judge rebuked the government for indefinitely detaining the Haitians and denying them access to legal counsel.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has announced that it will force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims for protection are processed.  And right now, the President is threatening to formally declare a national emergency in order to build his border wall without congressional approval or appropriations.

As Trump leads attacks on civil liberties and the rule of law, often by making false claims about national security, senators must ask Barr about his troubling record and make sure that he will not become a rubber stamp for the President’s unlawful actions.

"Barr pledges to protect Mueller probe from partisanship and ‘personal interests’" PBS NewsHour 1/15/2019

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In his confirmation hearing, William Barr wasted no time declaring independence from the President who nominated him.  President Trump's pick for attorney general vowed not to fire -- without just cause -- special counsel Robert Mueller, nor interfere with the probe into Russian election meddling.  Yamiche Alcindor reports.

"Klobuchar ‘very concerned’ about Barr’s independence in light of Mueller memo" PBS NewsHour 1/15/2019

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) said she has serious concerns about Attorney General nominee William Barr’s stances on the Mueller investigation, but that it was positive to hear him say he would let the probe run its course.  The senator joins Judy Woodruff to discuss Barr’s answers on obstruction of justice, voting rights, his rhetoric on immigration and more from Tuesday’s hearing.

"Barr’s Mueller probe memo shouldn’t be disqualifying, former deputy says" PBS NewsHour 1/15/2019

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Lots of lawyers have thoughts about the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference, said former Deputy Attorney General George Terwilliger, and the fact that Attorney General nominee William Barr shared his thoughts isn’t “really unusual.”  Terwilliger joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the confirmation hearing, including immigration issues wrapped up in the government shutdown fight.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 9/28/2018

"Shields and Brooks on Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation in question" PBS NewsHour 9/28/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Fallout from sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh threw American politics into upheaval this week.  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the testimonies of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh, how partisanship is recasting our politics and a moral reckoning around sexual abuse.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  From the stock market floor on Wall Street to barbershops on Main Street, the nation tuned in to watch a series of riveting moments unfold in United States Senate this week.

Thankfully, we have the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

We're so glad to see both of you tonight.

Yes.  What are we going to talk about?

Mark, yes, there was the Kavanaugh hearing yesterday, the extension of the hearing, but — and the news today that the Republicans in the Senate have agreed to go along with an FBI investigation before a vote, a week.  I have just been told that the Senate has formally gone into session to consider the vote.  We're still talking about a week from now.

But what do you make of this turnaround by Republicans in the Senate and the President?

MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist:  I first want to say a word about — about Jeff Flake.

Jeff Flake is a senator from Arizona.  When Tim Kaine was nominated for President by the Democrats in 2016, he immediately tweeted the statement, trying to count the ways I hate Tim Kaine, coming up with a blank.  Good man good and a good friend.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS:  And that's — that's Jeff Flake.  I mean, he has friendships.

And one of the friendships he has is Chris Coons, the Democrat from Delaware.  And these are two people who aren't constantly running for President.  They are — they are senators.  They treat each other as human beings.  They treat other senators as human beings.

And Jeff Flake — Jeff Flake did the Senate a favor.  He did the Supreme Court a favor.  He did the entire country a favor, not the least of which his own justice, Judge Kavanaugh, he did a favor to.  And he did his party a favor.

If this nomination, Judy, had been railroaded through, strong-armed through, outmuscled, and all the rest of it, it would have left an aftertaste, it would have left bitterness, more business than there already is.

And, most of all, 27 years after Anita Hill testified, there is still a cloud of controversy and doubt over Justice Clarence Thomas.  And, to me, this week is that important.  It was that logical and almost inevitable to have it done, and have done the right thing.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  But, David, I mean, it is a turnaround.

This morning, it looked as if Republicans were moving through the Kavanaugh nomination regardless, no FBI investigation.

DAVID BROOKS, New York Times:  Yes, but we were entering a period of semi-political hysteria and confrontation over that.

I was hearing e-mails with friends wondering if this would turn to violence, if this would lead to such a sense of civic breakdown and national anger, that it would spill over into something completely ugly.

And that was a very plausible conversation.  And maybe it still will be.  But we had a very believable and compelling witness in Dr. Ford, I thought also a compelling witness in Kavanaugh, a man who clearly believes in what he's saying.

And, as a result, because — and there was no evidence corroborating one side of the other, basically.  And so we had a country breaking down purely on tribal lines.  Who you believed was 100 percent determined by which party you supported.

And there was no intellectual integrity.  People were making an avalanche of bad arguments to support their side.  Passions were going up, as people egged each other on.  And so maybe this will allow us all to step back.

And, frankly, there are a lot of questions I would like to see answered.  I sat there trying to think, who do I believe?  And I really don't know.  And so to have Judge interviewed, to have Leland Keyser, Ford's friend, interviewed…

JUDY WOODRUFF:  The woman, then girlfriend of hers.

DAVID BROOKS:  Who was allegedly at the party.

Maybe they will be some more information.  Maybe we can find the house where it happened, and that can provoke some more facts.

And so, to me, just to prick the bubble of hysteria that was sweeping around this whole thing was a very important thing.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Mark, what about yesterday?  Did you find one more credible than the other?  What did you make of her testimony and his?

MARK SHIELDS:  Well, it's the first time we had met her.

And all we knew was what we had heard about her, read about her.  I thought compelling is an understatement.  She was — she was believable.  She was — what she wasn't, I think, was almost as impressive as what she was.  She wasn't brittle.  She wasn't vengeful.

So there was nothing mean-spirited.  There was an openness about her, a naturalness.  She wasn't affected.  She was totally believable.  And I thought she — she came across as an appealing human being.

And I would say, after that, after her appearance, the Republicans were despondent.  And I think Brett Kavanaugh, probably shrewdly, changed his testimony, I mean, that he realized he had to go back and win — re-win the Republicans, beginning with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where they had openly expressed doubts about his appearance, I think the wisdom of his appearance, on FOX News.

This became the first, I think, Supreme Court nominee to discuss his loss of virginity.  I don't think Earl Warren did that.  Maybe — I could check.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS:  But, you know, in a rather bizarre interview.

And so he tried — riled up the base.  He went to the…

JUDY WOODRUFF:  You mean by being angry and combative.

MARK SHIELDS:  By being angry.  And Democrats gave him a legitimate case.

I mean, when Cory Booker said, anybody who supports Brett Kavanaugh is complicit with evil, I mean, that just changes our politics.  I mean, not that David's wrong, or made a mistake, or made a larger conclusion, you're evil, that you're somehow morally unacceptable, that just changes the entire equation and makes future coalitions or compromise all but impossible.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  But, David, I mean, you're saying this whole thing yesterday was — was moving in a partisan direction, that no matter what they were saying, you're saying, I mean, that neither story was — she gave, as both of you have said, a credible — I mean, a credible, compelling performance.

But you're saying it's still hewed to the party lines.

DAVID BROOKS:  Well, I just looked at my Twitter feed.  I looked at all the commentary.  I looked at the political reactions.

And it was 100 percent correlated.  If you supported Bill Clinton during the whole impeachment thing, then you were against Kavanaugh.  If you opposed Clinton, you were for Kavanaugh.  It was 100 percent party line.

I don't think I saw a single deviation from what you would predict from party affiliation.  And so we used to have people who could step back and look at the evidence.  And to me, I tried.  You get wrapped up in this — in the emotion.  And you begin to want to fight.

But I think you got to step back.  This is about the truth.  And one of my rules is truth before justice.  You got to — if we don't know what the truth is, we can't fight for justice.  You can never put justice before truth.  You always have to figure out what actually happened.

And a lot of people were not doing that.  And you look at these two people, and I found them both very compelling.  Now, she — my interpretation, psychological, from the TV screen, is that she suffered a trauma, and she's been dealing with it for a long time.  And so something probably happened.

When I looked at Kavanaugh, frankly, I thought he's in the middle of the trauma.  He is a week in.  You can imagine what it would feel like.  I think he feels completely innocent, that the Democrats have staged a partisan hit on him, and his whole reputation has been destroyed after 35 years of adulthood.

I'm sure that's a tough thing.  And so when he drinks water and sobs — choke sobs, I sort of get that.  But who to think is true, I don't think any of us have any concrete evidence to make a dispositive judgment on that.  I'm hoping it will come in the next week.  I don't know.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Mark, what about Kavanaugh's decision to take his anger and basically take it right back to Democrats, to challenge Amy Klobuchar:  How much do you drink?

(CROSSTALK)

MARK SHIELDS:  That was a mistake.  There's no question about it.  He apologized for it.  It was dumb.  It was rude to do that.

And the Republicans made a mistake coming with Kavanaugh.  They introduced Brett Kavanaugh, who is a widely respected judge, a widely respected public figure, they introduced him as a Norman Rockwell good boy.  He studied hard.  He helped the poor.  He was an athlete.  He was, you know, just kind of an admirable citizen.

George W. Bush, when he ran for President in 2000, had a far more checkered personal background than Brett Kavanaugh of personal embarrassments, drinking and misbehavior.  And they made a very wise decision.  They said, when I was young and foolish, I was young and foolish, and it became the answer.

And so, when Kavanaugh then was confronted with questions about his misbehavior, they kind of scurried back, and he got defensive.  There's no doubt about it.

And — but, I mean, I think he achieved what he felt he had to achieve.  He stayed alive.  I think they were ready to cut him loose after her testimony.  I mean, the President reportedly said, according to two of my sources, after her — why didn't anybody tell me she was that good?

And what — he gave the highest salute he can give afterwards.  Brett Kavanaugh showed the nation why I picked him.

It always does come back to Donald.  But that was…

JUDY WOODRUFF:  But — and, David, what about the reaction of women?

I mean, there have been, what — I just read there were 88 more people arrested at the Capitol today.  Women were calling in yesterday to hot lines talking about their own experiences that they hadn't been comfortable talking about before.

This has intersected with the #MeToo movement.  And people keep talking about the comparisons to Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill 27 years ago, but we're in a different time now, aren't we?

DAVID BROOKS:  Right.

Well, frankly, this week, I have been thinking about millions of women over 20 centuries who — we have a world history, world literature going back 20 centuries, and, presumably, sexual abuse has been a part of human civilization for all that time.  And how many stories have come out?

And so, to me, it's a big, finally, unveiling of stories that have been hidden for 4,000 years.  They come out in little bits of literature, but not really.

And so, to me, that's one of the historic good things of this horrible moment, that at least the stories, these sorts of stories are coming out.  And it's part of the unveiling that we have to go through, just as racial stories have to come out.  And so, to me, that is the one good thing that's coming out of this week.

MARK SHIELDS:  I think that, politically, to be venal about it and bring it down to politics, Donald Trump did carry women who had not gone to college by 27 points, 61 to 34.  That's how you could say he got elected.  They were 17 percent of the electorate in 2016.  He lost college-educated women to Hillary Clinton.

Right now, Republicans generically are running 5 to 6 percent behind among non-college women, and 22 percent behind among college women.

So, yes, I mean, Trump set the table for the Republicans to be in trouble on this issue.  And I…

DAVID BROOKS:  Yes.

MARK SHIELDS:  Go ahead.  I'm sorry.

DAVID BROOKS:  Well, I would just say, I think the Republican intensity is up.  The early polling indications is that Republican — Democratic intensity has been up.

MARK SHIELDS:  Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Has been up.

DAVID BROOKS:  Republicans' is coming up.

I happened to be in Texas, Minnesota, and Appalachia and Southeastern Ohio this week, and so saw it in the context of that.  And what struck me is, when we're in Washington, we think it's right-left.  But in — with the conversations I had this week, maybe 150, a lot of people, it was in, out.

They just wanted to recoil.  And it wasn't like, oh, the Republicans are good, the Democrats are bad.  It's, Washington is a swamp.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So it's not just Kavanaugh.  You mean Washington.

DAVID BROOKS:  The conversation is, the general tenor was, what a mess that is.  Aren't you so glad you're out of there?

And so, to me, the big winners of the week politically are Trump, because he hates — he wants to blow up the system, and some future Democratic version of Trump, who will also want to blow up the system.

MARK SHIELDS:  Boy, I disagree completely.

I think this is a referendum in 2018 on Donald Trump, as it is on every sitting President, especially in his first term.  It's a corrective election.  There's no question that voters do want a check, not — they don't want Donald Trump with a blank check.

And I think that's what we're going to see in 2018.  I think we're headed to it.  Republicans I have talked to report basically nothing but bad news from races.

DAVID BROOKS:  Yes, I don't disagree with that.

But I just think there's a recoil from Washington.  Washington is some hostile thing that we can't affect and can affect us.  Let's just get away from that whole Washington thing.

MARK SHIELDS:  I do — I think that part of that — not to get on a Trump diatribe, but there's a sense of exhaustion, that Donald Trump — I think voters are really — somebody who just says, look, I'm going to bring tranquility to the country.  We're going to get along.  We're going to move ahead.  We're going to bring justice.

I think it's a winning message.  I mean, the idea that everything has to be chaotic, that everything has to be a crisis is what — seems the watchword of this administration.

KAVANAUGH vs FORD

Brett Kavanaugh - Typical Male Chauvinist Pig

"How Washington is reacting to emotionally charged Kavanaugh hearing" PBS NewsHour 9/27/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  High drama played out in a day-long hearing on the allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.  Christine Blasey Ford offered her much-awaited testimony about the summer day in 1982 that she remembers being assaulted, while Kavanaugh defiantly called it a “political hit.”  Amna Nawaz reports, then Lisa Desjardins and Yamiche Alcindor join Judy Woodruff for more.

VS

Blasey Ford - Victim of Sexual Assault

"At Kavanaugh hearing, tests of credibility and partisan blowups" PBS NewsHour 9/27/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Judy Woodruff takes a deep look at the day-long hearing into allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh with Amy Walter from the Cook Political Report, Michael Gerson of The Washington Post, and former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, also a former prosecutor.

"Christine Blasey Ford’s friend: ‘She’s paid a high price’ in coming forward" PBS NewsHour 9/27/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Samantha Guerry, a friend of Christine Blasey Ford, says that Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony that he didn’t know Ford seemed “like an evasive answer.” Guerry talks with Amna Nawaz about watching Ford testify in front of Congress and how she might feel if Kavanaugh is confirmed.

SUPREME COURT - Brett Kavanaugh

"Where does Brett Kavanaugh see the limits of executive power?" PBS NewsHour 8/28/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will begin a week from today.  Set against the backdrop of the ongoing Mueller investigation, new attention is being focused on Kavanaugh’s record on executive power.  John Yang turns to Jonathan Turley a law professor at George Washington University, and Robert Barnes a Supreme Court reporter for the Washington Post, for analysis.

"Where does Brett Kavanaugh stand on business issues and workers’ rights?" PBS NewsHour 8/30/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Business and labor are two areas of the law that have been front and center at the Supreme Court in recent years.  What does nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s record suggest about how he might rule on cases at the high court?  Judy Woodruff gets analysis from Karen Harned of the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center, and Daniel Goldberg of Alliance for Justice.

SUPREME COURT - Kavanaugh on Abortion

"Despite reference to settled law, ‘all bets are off’ for Kavanaugh on abortion" PBS NewsHour 8/23/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In just 12 days, President Trump's Supreme Court pick will face contentious hearings before the U.S. Senate.  Where does nominee Brett Kavanaugh stand on key issues?  Lisa Desjardins, and CNN Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic, join Judy Woodruff to analyze Kavanaugh’s judicial record and recent statements on the politically charged topic of abortion, including whether Roe v. Wade is 'settled law.'

SUPREME COURT - Who Is Brett Kavanaugh?

"Who Is Brett Kavanaugh? A Supreme Court Reading Guide" by Ian MacDougall, ProPublica 7/9/2018

President Trump proposed a replacement for retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.  Here, the best reporting to date on the Supreme Court nominee.

President Trump on Monday night nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the seat on the U.S. Supreme Court that Justice Anthony Kennedy will vacate at the end of the month.  Kavanaugh is a judge on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  Below, we’ve gathered some of the best reporting on Kavanaugh.

Did we miss anything?  Leave a link in the comments or tweet to us with #scotusnominee.

Potential Nominee Profile: Brett Kavanaugh
SCOTUSblog, June 2018

SCOTUSblog’s profile of Kavanaugh provides a comprehensive summary of the judge’s background, from his upbringing in the Washington area to his college and law school years at Yale to his prestigious positions in various parts of the federal government.  As the profile notes, Kavanaugh was a law clerk for Kennedy, whom he has been nominated to replace.  The piece offers a highlight reel of Kavanaugh’s time on the federal appeals court in Washington.  Ultimately, the article concludes, Kavanaugh “brings a pragmatic approach to judging,” albeit with a serious conservative bent.

Read the story

Brett Kavanaugh, a Conservative Stalwart in Political Fights and on the Bench
New York Times, July 2018

The New York Times’ Adam Liptak examines Kavanaugh’s personal and professional history.  The profile depicts Kavanaugh as a decidedly conservative Washington insider but hardly a rank partisan.  He’s known as a nuanced and careful thinker, and although his judicial opinions are often lauded by voices on the right, he has shied away from absolutist positions, at times to the chagrin of conservatives.  He has “formed lifelong friendships with liberals, many of whom praise his intellect and civility,” and those who worked with him before he became a judge described him as “often a moderating force.”

Read the story

Kavanaugh Paper Chase Threatens to Draw Out Confirmation Battle
Politico, July 2018

Kavanaugh’s nomination “presents a band of government archivists and White House officials with a herculean task: wading through what could be millions of pages of records” ahead of his confirmation hearings.  The paper trail leads back to the two years Kavanaugh spent in Bush’s White House Counsel’s Office and another three years he spent as Bush’s staff secretary.  Politico’s Josh Gerstein takes a look at how the extensive documentation of Kavanaugh’s executive branch career could slow the judge’s confirmation process.

Read the story

Trump’s Supreme Court Frontrunner Is the “Forrest Gump of Republican Politics”
Mother Jones, June 2018

This Mother Jones profile casts Kavanaugh as a consummate insider of the D.C. conservative establishment who “frequently inserted himself into high-profile political battles.”  Kavanaugh worked on the team of Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.  He represented the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez in a high-profile immigration dispute in 2000, in which they sought to keep the Cuban boy in the United States.  He worked on George W. Bush’s legal team during the contentious 2000 presidential election recount in Florida — and went on to oversee judicial nominations in Bush’s White House Counsel’s Office.  His ubiquity earned him the nickname the “Forrest Gump of Republican politics.”

Read the story

How Four Potential Nominees Would Change the Supreme Court
FiveThirtyEight, July 2018

FiveThirtyEight draws on a tool to measure judicial ideology developed by legal scholars and political scientists to assess Kavanaugh’s potential effect on the Supreme Court’s jurisprudential makeup.  The conclusion: A Justice Kavanaugh “would likely represent a reliably conservative voice and vote on the high court”—“to the right of Gorsuch and Justice Samuel Alito, and just to the left of the arch conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.”  That would leave Chief Justice John Roberts as the “new median justice.”  FiveThirtyEight adds a caveat, however, about the metric it’s relying on: It’s based on the ideology of the politicians who nominated a judge—in this case, Bush—rather than the judge’s rulings.

Read the story

Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court Front-Runner, Once Argued Broad Grounds for Impeachment
The New York Times, July 2018

The Times’ Mark Landler and Matt Apuzzo take a look at Kavanaugh’s time on Starr’s team — and its implications for Trump.  Starr’s report as independent counsel, which Kavanaugh co-wrote, argues that lying to staff members and misleading the public are grounds to impeach a president for obstruction of justice.  That “broad definition of obstruction of justice,” Landler and Apuzzo write, “would be damaging if applied to President Trump in the Russia investigation.”

Read the story

Top Supreme Court Prospect Has Argued Presidents Should Not Be Distracted by Investigations and Lawsuits
The Washington Post, June 2018

The Washington Post examines a 2009 law review article in which Kavanaugh argued that a sitting president shouldn’t have to deal with “time-consuming and distracting” lawsuits and investigations.  The distraction “would ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis,” Kavanaugh wrote.  That, the Post notes, “puts him on the record regarding a topic of intense interest to Trump — and could be a central focus of his confirmation hearing.”

Read the story

Holding Court
The New Yorker, March 2012

In this comment, Jeffrey Toobin describes Kavanaugh as a judge in thrall to partisan politics.  Toobin characterizes Kavanaugh’s work as an appeals judge as “startling.”  He accuses Kavanaugh of “pandering to the base” in a dissenting opinion he wrote in a case challenging Obamacare.  Kavanaugh “appeared to offer some advice to the Republicans who are challenging Obama in the election,” Toobin wrote — whatever courts hold, a Republican president could simply decline to enforce the health-care law because he deems it unconstitutional.

Read the story

Leading Contender to Be Trump’s Supreme Court Pick Faces Questions from Social Conservatives
The Washington Post, July 2018

The Washington Post’s Robert Acosta and Josh Dawsey survey conservative misgivings about Kavanaugh’s record on the federal appeals court in Washington.  Where Toobin saw Kavanaugh as a right-wing partisan, many social conservatives fear he’s not enough of a hardliner.  The conservative response to the White House floating Kavanaugh’s name included “a clamor from those who see him as out of step on health care and abortion, or too tied to George W. Bush’s White House.”  The concerns arise from opinions Kavanaugh wrote in cases challenging the Affordable Care Act and in a recent case over the right of an immigrant teenager in federal custody to have an abortion.  The judge dissented in those cases, but did not go as far as “ideological purists” would have liked.

Read the story

Federal Judge Downplayed Role in Detainee Cases
NPR, June 2007

NPR’s Ari Shapiro reported on what some Democratic senators saw as misleading testimony Kavanaugh provided during his 2006 confirmation hearing to become a federal appeals judge in Washington.  Kavanaugh had told Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) that during his time in the Bush White House he was not involved in conversations about the rules governing the handling of detainees captured in the War on Terror.  In fact, he had been involved in 2002 discussions about whether detainees had a right to an attorney.  Durbin told NPR he felt “perilously close to being lied to.” (Kavanaugh, through a court spokesman, called his testimony accurate.)

Read the story

OPINION - Brooks and Marcus 5/11/2018

"Brooks and Marcus on Trump quitting Iran deal, Gina Haspel grilling" PBS NewsHour 5/11/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus join Amna Nawaz to analyze the week’s news, including President Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal, reactions from voters in Elkhart, Indiana, where President Trump held a campaign rally on Thursday, the contentious confirmation hearing of CIA director nominee Gina Haspel and more.

Amna Nawaz (NewsHour):  And now to the analysis of Brooks and Marcus.  That’s New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus.

Thanks so much for being here.

Let’s jump in.

Earlier this week, one of the biggest stories, David, obviously, the President making good on his promise to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal.  That’s despite the protest of a lot of U.S. allies.

Politically, was that a smart move?

David Brooks, New York Times:  I think so.

One of the things you notice with the President is that he comes from a background where basically, in the real estate business, he worked with a lot of thugs and he cultivated a lot of thugs, and he was a little thuggish himself.

But, in my view, that helps him, for all his drawbacks, understand thugs.  And so North Korea, he understood that being tough with a thug produces some results.  And we’re in a better situation with North Korea than we were otherwise.

He’s been much tougher on the Chinese in trade.  And a lot of people thinks he’s adopted the right policy, because sometimes you have got to just stand up to people.  And Iran, I have very mixed views about whether Trump did the right thing.

But President Obama, the argument he made for it, which is that Iran would moderate and become a more familiar member of the company of nations.  That has turned out to be clearly false.

They are the most genocidal nation on the face of the earth.  They export violence, terror around the earth.  And so Trump standing up to them at least has some legitimacy.  It’s possible that he understands people like that better than people who have higher SAT scores.

Amna Nawaz:  You wrote in your column this week thug is going to thug.

(LAUGHTER)

Amna Nawaz:  But, Ruth, looking ahead to North Korea now, how do you break from a deal like this one, and then legitimately go into negotiations with North Korea to say, no, we’re going to stick with whatever deal we agree to?

Ruth Marcus, Washington Post:  Kind of a good question.  I have had that question myself.

I think, in general, there’s legitimate questions about the Iran deal, both whether it was the best deal that could have been gotten and whether it had the hope for effect on Iran’s behavior.

But the question really is, is pulling out of it — and I was a supporter of the Iran deal, so despite those concerns.  But even if you weren’t, is pulling out of it better or worse than staying in, and not just because of the impact on Iran?  Because of the impact on our relationships with our allies.

Thug’s going to thug, but we’re not thugs, and we have to continue to maintain decent relations with our allies.  Now we’re talking about threatening them, betraying the agreement that they agreed with, and going after their companies with secondary sanctions.

And then you have this question about, if you have proven that your word as a country can’t be trusted beyond the course of a single President, doesn’t that get priced into the price of negotiating with North Korea?

And he will say, well, yes, you, but, he, Kim Jong-un, yes, you say this, but what happens next time around?  So, giving a little bit less.

So, all in all, I think — you asked about whether it was better for him politically.  He promised it.  It may make his base happy to see him thugging around.  But I think, as a strategic matter of the U.S. national interest, not better.

AMERICAN POLITICS - Gina Haspel

"Gina Haspel vows never to resume CIA interrogation as Senate presses her on moral code" PBS NewsHour 5/9/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Gina Haspel couldn't talk about her work for three decades.  On Wednesday, she had to defend it.  Haspel, who played pivotal roles in the agency's most controversial recent actions in the years after 9/11, promised to never restart brutal interrogation techniques.  But Democrats wanted her to go farther.  Nick Schifrin reports.

"The arguments for and against Gina Haspel as CIA director" PBS NewsHour 5/9/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Should the Senate confirm CIA director nominee Gina Haspel?  Nick Schifrin gets two views on her background and role in a controversial detention and interrogation program from John Rizzo a former DIA chief legal officer, and retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Stephen Xenakis.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION - Ronny Jackson Nomination

"Is Ronny Jackson’s nomination in peril?  Here’s what Congress, Trump are saying" PBS NewsHour 4/24/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Senators have indefinitely postponed the confirmation hearing for Ronny Jackson, President Trump's nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.  Lawmakers are reportedly investigating unspecified allegations that including drinking on the job.  Yamiche Alcindor and Lisa Desjardins join Amna Nawaz to discuss what we know so far, and how the President is reacting.

"‘No red flags were raised’ in Ronny Jackson nomination vetting, White House says" PBS NewsHour 4/24/2018

This from the three-ring-circus called the White House.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Why didn’t accusations against Ronny Jackson come up when he was vetted for the role of Veterans Affairs Secretary?  White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short joins Amna Nawaz to discuss President Trump’s troubled Cabinet nominations; plus the ongoing military presence in Syria, and the legal basis for the President to launch strikes.

"Veterans community doesn’t know where VA nominee Ronny Jackson stands on key issues" PBS NewsHour 4/24/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Ronny Jackson's pathway to confirmation as head of the Veterans Affairs Department is anything but clear as lawmakers investigate allegations about his professional conduct.  Amna Nawaz learns more about the agency, its problems and increasing politicization from Lisa Rein of The Washington Post.

"White House prized loyalty of Ronny Jackson more than what’s best for veterans, says Sen. Sherrod Brown" PBS NewsHour 4/25/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Shocking new allegations emerged on Wednesday about Dr. Ronny Jackson, President Trump's nominee for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the White House stepped up its defense.  John Yang explores the claims, the President’s process for picking Cabinet members and what’s at stake for veterans with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION - 'Sorry the person you are trying to reach is' Out of Office

"Hundreds of top government jobs under Trump are unfilled.  So who’s running things?" PBS NewsHour 1/29/2018

Hint, Trump WANTS the effected agencies crippled, and it's NOT about money.  It IS about not protecting the American people so big business can rape and pillage to their heart's content.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The federal government employs 2 million civilian workers nationwide, but many positions at the top of the food chain remain empty a year into the Trump presidency.  Of more than 600 key jobs filled by Presidential nomination, more than half of them are currently vacant awaiting confirmation or have no nominee.  Lisa Desjardins reports.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 4/7/2017

"Shields and Brooks on Trump's Syria attack, Senate's fierce partisanship" PBS NewsHour 4/7/2017

IMHO:  This opinion is WORTH viewing if you fear what is happening to our federal government today.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including a U.S. strike on a Syrian military target after a deadly chemical weapons attack, reports of disarray and power struggles in the West Wing, the long-term consequences of the bitter partisan fight over Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 3/31/2017

"Shields and Brooks on Trump's conservative confrontation, Senate's Gorsuch showdown" PBS NewsHour 3/31/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including the continuing revelations from the investigation into Russian election meddling, President Trump's Twitter attacks on the House Freedom Caucus and the battle over Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

SUPREME COURT - Gorsuch Spin

"Partisan Spin on Gorsuch Vote" by Eugene Kiely, FactCheck.org 3/31/2017

As the Senate considers Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, senators on both sides have engaged in partisan spin over the number of votes required to approve his nomination:

• Sen. Bernie Sanders falsely claimed the Senate “requires 60 votes for a Supreme Court nomination.”  It requires 51 votes.  Sanders is referring to the 60 votes needed to pass a cloture motion to end a filibuster, and cloture votes on high court nominations are rare.
• Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy left the false impression that “every current Supreme Court Justice cleared” a 60-vote threshold.  Justice Clarence Thomas did not receive 60 votes.  In that case, there was no cloture vote, and Thomas was approved 52-48.
• Republican Sen. John Barrasso claimed “every Supreme Court vote … for over 200 and some years, has been an up-or-down vote.”  That’s misleading.  Although rare, Supreme Court votes were preceded by cloture votes four times.  One cloture motion failed.
• Republican Sen. John Thune said there’s “never been a successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.”  There was, however, a successful GOP-led filibuster of President Lyndon Johnson’s nominee for chief justice.  Southern Democrats helped defeat that cloture motion.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is schedule to vote April 3 on President Donald Trump’s nomination of Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court after a one-week delay at the request of the Democrats.  The Republican-controlled committee is expected to approve the nomination at that time and send it to the full Senate for a final vote, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says will happen by April 7.

The Republicans have 52 votes in the Senate, just one more than required for Gorsuch to be approved.  But the Democrats have threatened to filibuster the nomination.  Typically, the Senate majority leader can end a filibuster by filing a cloture motion, which if approved would place a limit on the floor debate and set a time for a vote.  But a cloture motion requires 60 votes and, in this case, that would require at least eight Democrats to cross the aisle and vote with the Republican majority.

It is this two-step voting process — which is rare for Supreme Court nominees — that is causing senators in both parties to spin the facts.

Sanders and the Senate Rules

Sanders, the independent senator who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, frequently claims that the Senate rules “require” 60 votes for a Supreme Court nominee.  We wrote about an earlier instance of this, but the senator repeated it again in interviews on MSNBC's “Morning Joe” on March 29 (at about the 5-minute mark) and CNN’s “State of the Union” on March 26.

Sanders, March 29:  Right now as you know, the rule, the current rule is that it requires 60 votes for a Supreme Court nomination.

Sanders, March 26:  [W]e have a rule that says, appropriately, I think, that for a Supreme Court justice, a lifetime term, one of the most important positions in the United States government, that it should require 60 votes, because that would make it bipartisan.

In both cases, Sanders is referring to the 60-vote threshold that is required to pass a cloture motion and end a threatened filibuster.  Sanders makes it seem like this is common practice, but it is not.

The Senate adopted the cloture rule in 1917.  At that time, a cloture motion could not be used to end debate on presidential nominees, and it required the approval of two-thirds of the senators present in order to pass.  The rule was expanded in 1949 to include presidential nominees, and it was changed again in 1975 to require three-fifths, or 60 votes, to pass, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

But cloture motions have been filed only four times since 1949 on Supreme Court nominations.  (See Table 4 of the CRS report.)  It happened most recently in 2006, when President George W. Bush nominated Samuel Alito to the highest court.  The cloture motion passed 72-25 on Jan. 30, 2006, and Alito was confirmed 58-42 a day later with four Democrats voting yes.

In arguing against Gorsuch’s nomination, Sanders continually conflates the cloture motion (which requires 60 votes) with the nomination vote (which requires 51 votes).  But a cloture vote is not required unless Democrats force one, as they did in 2006.

Murphy and the Recent Precedents

Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, declared his opposition to Gorsuch in a Facebook post that leaves a false impression regarding the level of Senate support for the current Supreme Court justices.

Chris Murphy, March 28:  I trust that if moving this nomination forward does not receive the support of at least 60 Senators, a threshold which the confirmation of every current Supreme Court Justice cleared, President Trump will then nominate someone less extreme, who can garner bipartisan support in the Senate.

Murphy wasn’t in the Senate in 1991, but that year President George H.W. Bush’s controversial nominee, Clarence Thomas, was approved to sit on the high court by a slim 52-48 margin.  Despite their concern about Thomas’ fitness to serve on the court, the Democrats did not attempt to filibuster his nomination, and the Republicans did not have to file a cloture motion.

In that case, the Senate Judiciary Committee was deadlocked 7-7 after days of hearings that included explosive allegations by Anita Hill that Thomas had sexually harassed her when he was her supervisor at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  In voting 7-7, the committee sent Thomas’ nomination to the Senate floor without recommendation.

Shortly before the Senate vote, there were articles at the time that said the Democrats were considering a filibuster — which would have meant the Republicans would have needed to get 60 votes to end the debate on the nomination.  At a Sep. 27, 1991, hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch pointed out the irony of the Democrats using a filibuster to block an African American from the Supreme Court.

“Before I got here this morning, I even heard talk of a filibuster,” Hatch said.  “Now, that would really — wouldn’t that be just the greatest irony of all?  The filibuster today is being used by both sides almost without care.  But in the early days, I once felt that the filibuster was used solely in civil rights matters to stop the onward push for civil rights.  Can you imagine liberals talking about filibustering the second black nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States of America? Shame.”

In the end, the two parties reached an agreement to bring the nomination to the floor without requiring a cloture vote.

Murphy spokesman Chris Harris objected to our characterization of the senator’s Facebook post, saying the senator was “very careful” in his wording.  “He said ‘moving [the] nomination forward’ received the support of 60 Senators.  That is 100% true,” Harris told us in an email.

It’s true that Thomas’ nomination moved to the floor for a vote by unanimous consent.  That means no senator objected to a floor vote, but Thomas did not have the support of 60 senators.

Updated, March 31:  This article was updated to include a response from Sen. Chris Murphy’s office, which objected to our characterization of the senator’s remarks as “false.”  We originally wrote that Murphy “incorrectly said ‘every current Supreme Court Justice cleared’ a 60-vote threshold.”  We changed that to say “Murphy left the false impression that ‘every current Supreme Court Justice cleared’ a 60-vote threshold.”

Republicans on Historical Precedents

The Democrats don’t have a monopoly on spinning the Supreme Court vote.  GOP Sens. John Barrasso and John Thune gave incomplete accounts of past votes on Supreme Court nominees.

In a CNN interview on March 29, Barrasso claimed “every Supreme Court vote in the United States Senate, for over 200 and some years, has been an up-or-down vote,” while Thune in a floor speech a day earlier said, “There has never been a successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.”

We will look at these claims together because they deal with the few times when cloture was invoked on a Supreme Court nomination.

First, Barrasso is technically right that every Supreme Court vote has been an up-or-down vote — because, as we noted earlier, it takes 51 votes to approve any nomination, including those to the high court.  However, as we also noted, there were four times when Supreme Court votes were preceded by cloture votes.  They occurred in 1968, 1971, 1986 and 2006.

In three of the four cases, the cloture vote was successful, and the Supreme Court nominations were approved on a straight up-or-down vote.  But it took 60 votes to get to an up-or-down vote, so it is misleading for Barrasso to suggest that it is unprecedented for the Democrats to demand 60 votes for Gorsuch’s nomination to advance.

The one successful filibuster occurred in 1968, when President Johnson nominated Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas to be chief justice.  Thune's office told us it did not count Fortas as a “successful partisan filibuster,” because Democrats and Republicans alike voted against cloture.  That’s true.  But the opposition was led by the Republicans and joined by Southern Democrats who were critical of what they viewed as the liberal rulings of Chief Justice Earl Warren’s court.  The opposition was described by CQ Almanac as “the conservative coalition.”

Here’s a quick recap, courtesy of CQ Almanac: On June 26, 1968, the day that Johnson made his appointment, a group of 19 Republican senators signed a letter opposing the nomination of Justice Fortas to replace the retiring Chief Justice Warren.  As they did in 2016 when President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, the Republicans expressed the belief that a president in his last year in office should not be allowed to fill a Supreme Court vacancy.

“It is the strongly held view of the undersigned that the next Chief Justice of the United States, and any nominees for vacancies on the Supreme Court should be selected by the newly-elected President of the United States, after the people have expressed themselves in November’s elections,” the 19 GOP senators wrote.  “We will, therefore, because of the above principle, and with absolutely no reflection on any individuals involved, vote against confirming any Supreme Court nominations of the incumbent President.”

Opposition to Fortas grew after committee hearings brought to light some damaging information, including “involvement of Fortas in White House affairs” and disclosure of a $15,000 payment that the justice received from American University for a nine-week seminar on law.  “The money had been raised by his former law partner from among five former business associates, one of whom had a son involved in a federal criminal case,” CQ Almanac wrote.

On Oct. 1, 1968, the cloture motion on Fortas’ nomination needed 59 votes — two-thirds of the senators voting that day — but it failed, 45-43, and President Johnson withdrew the nomination three days later at Fortas’ request.  The cloture vote was supported by 35 Democrats and 10 Republicans.

The Washington Post described Fortas’ defeat as a “successful 1968 GOP-led filibuster.”  The New York Times described the debate as “partisan and often bitter.”

“Justice Fortas was criticized for his liberal opinions while a Justice, his continuing practice of advising President Johnson on policy matters, and for what a number of senators viewed as excesses of the Warren Court,” the Times wrote.  “When his supporters in the partisan and often bitter debate, failed to end a filibuster, Justice Fortas asked that his name be withdrawn.”

It remains to be seen what will happen to Gorsuch’s nomination.  If they are unable to get the 60 votes to end a filibuster, the Republicans could change the cloture rule to allow the motion to pass with 51 votes — the so-called nuclear option.  It is unclear yet if the Republicans will do that.  One thing is for sure: Both sides are spinning the facts.