Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee will likely be a vote to overturn both the Affordable Care Act and women’s abortion rights, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warns in a New York Times op-ed. You only have to look at Trump’s own words to realize that.
Words like: under Trump-appointed judges, Roe v. Wade ”will go back to the individual states”—which is to say, abortion will be banned in large swaths of the country, leaving poor women in those states to seek back-alley abortions and drugs from questionable online sources. Words like: Chief Justice John Roberts “turned out to be an absolute disaster because he gave us Obamacare” and “I don’t think I’ll have any catastrophic appointment like Justice Roberts.”
Trump has told us what he plans to do. He’s showed us, with Neil Gorsuch. Believe him.
But Schumer stops with those arguments—that Trump’s nominee will be dangerous on grounds we already know and understand. He doesn’t point out that Trump is nominating someone who is likely to have a decisive vote in the question of whether and how Trump himself can be investigated, even as Trump’s presence in the White House is under a shadow due to the investigation into whether he or his campaign colluded with Russia to undermine U.S. democracy in 2016. No, Schumer isn’t calling for Democrats to do every last thing they can to prevent this from happening. He’s pleading with Sen. Susan Collins to put her commitment to choice and health care over her identity as a partisan Republican:
The Republican majority in the Senate is razor-thin. One or two votes in the Senate will make the difference between the confirmation and rejection of an ideological nominee. If the Senate rejects an extreme candidate, it would present President Trump the opportunity to instead select a moderate, consensus nominee.
While the number of Democrats in the Senate is not a majority, the number of senators who believe in protections for those with pre-existing conditions and women’s reproductive rights is. Given this vacancy, the best way to defend those rights is for a bipartisan majority in the Senate to lock arms and reject a Supreme Court nominee who would overturn them. It will not happen on its own. It requires the public’s focus on these issues, and its pressure on the Senate.
If Democrats had a Senate majority, we wouldn't have to rely on begging Susan Collins to do the right thing. Can you chip in $3 to elect Democrats in Arizona and Nevada?