Trump nominee Rao tells Senate panel she’s matured
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Brett Kavanaugh on a high-profile appeals court backed away from language she used as a college student in writing about sexual assault, race and equal rights for women.
“To be honest, looking back at some of those writings … I cringe at some of the language I used,” Neomi Rao told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, adding that writings in which she criticized affirmative action and suggested that intoxicated women were partly responsible for date rape do not reflect her current thinking.
“I like to think I’ve matured as a thinker, writer and indeed as a person,” she said at a confirmation hearing for a seat on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Trump nominated Rao for the seat left vacant when Brett Kavanaugh joined the Supreme Court.
Rao, who currently serves as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, said there were “certainly some sentences and phrases” from her college writing in the 1990s that “I would never use today.”
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-iowa, who recently revealed she was raped by her boyfriend in college, said Rao’s writings “give me pause,” in part because of the message they send to young women who may be reluctant to report a rape.
Rao, 45, worked in the George W. Bush White House but has never tried a case in state or federal court.
Rao, who would be the first South Asian woman to serve on a federal appeals court, said her experience in the White House, and as a former Judiciary Committee staffer, law professor and Supreme Court clerk, qualified her to join the D.c.-based appeals court, widely viewed as the nation’s second-most important court.