Battle begins over Trump’s high court pick
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers fired the opening shots yesterday in a bitter political battle to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, the conservative judge tapped by President Donald Trump to fill a vacancy on the US Supreme Court.
If confirmed by the Senate, Kavanaugh would help cement a rightward tilt on America's top court, potentially shaping many aspects of US society for decades to come, including women's access to abortions.
Trump on Monday nominated Kavanaugh, 53, as his pick to succeed retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, saying the federal judge has "impeccable credentials, unsurpassed qualifications, and a proven commitment to equal justice under the law."
The job-for-life appointment would lock down a conservative majority on the court following the departure of Kennedy, who acted as swing vote on a number of major issues including the legalization of gay marriage across America.
Opposition figures wasted no time in assailing Kavanaugh, warning his confirmation would usher in the erosion of civil liberties and long-held rights, while conservatives were quick to drum up support for the nominee. In selecting Kavanaugh, Trump "has put women's reproductive rights and vital health care protections... at grave, grave risk," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
"Now is the time for the American people to make their voices heard, loudly, clearly, from one end of this country to the other."
Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with opposition Democrats, said Kavanaugh would serve as a "rubber-stamp for an extreme, right-wing agenda pushed by corporations and billionaires."
But the Senate's top Republican, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, hailed a "superb choice" in Kavanaugh and urged senators to "put partisanship aside."
The conservative action group Judicial Crisis Network immediately launched a website called ConfirmKavanaugh.com featuring an advertisement for the nominee who "applies the Constitution just as it was written."
Calls to put party politics aside are likely to go unheard in Washington.
The appointment of Supreme Court justices was once a fairly civil and bipartisan affair: when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated in 1993, Senators voted 96-3 to confirm her. Not any more. Kavanaugh's nomination sets the stage for a brutal confirmation battle, a blueprint for which Republicans established in 2016 when they denied a hearing to Merrick Garland, Barack Obama's choice to fill the seat left vacant following the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia.