It's Tuesday, June 28 and Day 136 since Justice Antonin Scalia died and Mitch McConnell laid down his Supreme Court blockade: No meetings, no hearings, no votes on his replacement. It's also Day 103 since President Obama named Merrick Garland to be Scalia's replacement. What's the Senate doing today instead of considering the Supreme Court nominee?
The Senate’s agenda for the day is as follows:
Convene and resume consideration of the conference report to accompanyH.R.2577, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017.
Hey, at least they’re working today. And yesterday, the Senate voted 90 to zero to confirm Robert Rossiter Jr. as a federal district judge in Nebraska. That 90 to zero vote came after Republicans held up his nomination for more than a year, by the way.
But something else that is ongoing, every single day, is this: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the guy preventing a vote or even hearings on Garland, will not say he believes Donald Trump is qualified to be president. That’s Donald Trump, the person who McConnell is holding a Supreme Court seat open for, unless McConnell is secretly a Hillary Clinton supporter. This just cannot be emphasized enough. Republicans are keeping a Supreme Court seat open for nearly a full year in hopes that Donald Trump will nominate someone to fill it. Even as many of them are clearly appalled by Trump. It’s hard to imagine a clearer display of hyper-partisanship.
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