Donnie Trump—who knows more about public debt, the Chinese, U.S. foreign policy and the Bible than economists, the Chinese, diplomats, and theologians—also surely knows more about the Supreme Court than the justices themselves.
He also knows more about the Constitution than any constitutional scholar. He realizes that, at best, he might be able as president only to appoint three or maybe four new justices if he went along with standard operating procedure. But you can expect that his reading of constitutional Article number something or other assures him he’ll have the authority to unnominate sitting justices and fill the Court with his own choices.
And why not? A fresh start in keeping with his rebellious image and reality TV show persona. Fire ‘em all and hire new ones! If the Senate doesn’t agree, he’ll call them all into his office for a verbal flogging. Or given his views about torture, maybe a real flogging. He knows the Senate better than anybody, after all.
On Wednesday, The Donnie released the list of prospective Supreme Court nominees he says he will choose from if he takes the presidential oath of office next January. He doesn’t actually say “if” in this regard. Even though The Donnie probably started this quest to be president as a prank that got way out of hand, he’s now got to at least pretend he really wants the job and that he will definitely win it. Pretending aside, however, being Grifter-in-Chief must have special appeal to someone who knows more about leaving other people holding the bag in bankruptcy court than just about anybody.
The toughest part of his pretense is persuading people he’s actually serious and not engaged in some extended nightmare performance art project concocted by a dark comedy troupe.
Hence, the issuance of the Supreme Court list. It contains the names of 11 people. All of them white. Three of them women. All of them judges. Five of them on the Heritage Foundation’s recommended roster.
Now, before you go there, don’t be thinking The Donnie is unaware how many Supreme Court justices there are. He knows. He counts better than anyone. But, what happens when somebody goes on vacation or is out with the flu or dies and a judicial intervention from the Supremes must be delivered immediately? Best surely to have not just a chief justice and associate justices but also a couple of alternate justices on the Court to fill in for absences. Or maybe just make them temp justices so they don’t get benefits.
The list is pretty much standard conservative fare these days: rightwingers, far rightwingers and ultra-rightwingers.
There was a White House response to the release of the list:
“I would be surprised if there are any Democrats who would describe any of those 11 individuals as a consensus nominee,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest at his Wednesday briefing. “But the individual who President Obama has put forward is somebody that Republicans have described as a consensus nominee. I think that speaks to the wisdom of the Senate acting on the president’s nomination.”
And a response from the Hillary Clinton campaign:
John Podesta says Trump's list of 11 Supreme Court candidates includes "no people of color, but does include a judge who upheld a law requiring doctors to use scare tactics to impede reproductive rights and another judge who equated homosexual sex to bestiality, pedophilia and necrophilia."
Podesta was referring, respectively, to Missouri appeals judge Raymond Gruender and Alabama appeals judge William Pryor Jr.
John Yoo, on the other hand, lover of torture, said he is “thrilled” with the list of what he labels outstanding conservatives. But he says he doesn’t trust The Donnie to actually carry through if elected.
Six of The Donnie’s prospective nominees are federal judges. Every one of them appointed by President George W. Bush:
Eighth Circuit Court Judge Steven Colloton, Eleventh Circuit Court Judge William H. Pryor, Seventh Circuit Court Judge Diane Sykes, Eighth Circuit Court Judge Raymond Gruender, Third Circuit Court Judge Thomas Hardiman, and Sixth Circuit Court Judge Raymond Kethledge.
Five of them state supreme court justices. Every one of them appointed by a Republican governor:
Utah Supreme Court justice Thomas Lee, Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras, Colorado Supreme Court Justice Allison Hartwell Eid, and Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willet.
The Donnie should perhaps have had his advisers do a better job of vetting. Judge Willet isn’t exactly a Trump fan. He’s got a huge Twitter following and has used it to take some two dozen pokes at the putative Republican nominee. Like this one:
But on Wednesday Willett was saying what a “rich honor” it was to be included on the list.
Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress has taken a look at all 11. Much of what follows is taken from his report, that of Miranda Blue at Right Wing Watch, and Sarah Mimms’ examination at Vice.
Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett, 49, J.D. Duke University, ‘92. Damon Root at the libertarian Reason publication was ecstatic that Willett made it to the Heritage list even if he was ranked #6 out of 8. He’s known for challenging regulations from a strong libertarian stance. Among the items on his résumé are several posts in the Bush administration, including being Special Assistant to the President and Director of Law and Policy for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (WHOFBCI). Willett isn’t always so funny on Twitter. One of his tweets sneered “I could support recognizing a constitutional right to marry bacon.” Another stated “Go away, A-Rod. @FoxNews: California's transgender law allows male high schooler to make girls' softball team.”
Eleventh Circuit Court Judge William H. Pryor William Pryor, 54, J.D. Tulane University Law School, ‘87, #1 on the Heritage list. One of the scariest of The Donnie’s choices. Pryor is a fierce foe of abortion, having labeled Roe v. Wade and the decision in Miranda v. Arizona as “the worst examples of judicial activism.” He once blamed Roe for creating “a constitutional right to murder an unborn child.” He also called Roe “the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law,” worse than Plessey v. Ferguson, worse than Dred Scott, worse than Korematsu. He has said challenges to voter ID laws must include names of individuals who would be harmed. As Ian Millhiser notes, on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court implied a framework the Obama administration set up to accommodate religious objectors while providing birth control coverage to working women is legal, Pryor issued an opinion arguing that it is illegal. He compared homosexuality to "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia," according to a Washington Post story. Pryor has also questioned the legitimacy of the New Deal and written that the federal government should not be involved in public education or dealing with street crime. He also cast the deciding vote to oppose hearing a challenge to Florida’s law that banned gay people from adopting.
Seventh Circuit Court Judge Diane Sykes, 58, J.D. Marquette University Law School, ‘84. #2 on the Heritage list. Millhiser again: Even more conservative than Pryor. “[Sykes] wrote a decision expanding religious objectors’ ability to limit their employees’ access to birth control coverage that SCOTUSBlog’s Lyle Denniston described as ‘the broadest ruling so far by a federal appeals court barring enforcement of the birth-control mandate in the new federal health care law.’” She also wrote an opinion in Christian Legal Society v. Walker that anti-gay groups cannot be denied government subsidies even if they discriminate. In fact, she denied that the anti-gay organization in this case had actually engaged in discrimination at all. Why? It made an exception in its discriminatory policies for gay people do not have sex. She has dissented repeatedly in cases on product defects, always favoring the corporation involved. She argued in a dissent that a jury verdict should be confirmed even though one of the jurors did not speak English.
Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen, 47, J.D., Northwestern University School of Law, ‘ Like Willett, another former legal adviser to the administration of President George W. Bush and a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia about whom she wrote a glowing New York Times op-ed after his death. She has written standard conservative opinions for the Michigan Supreme Court on gun laws and religious freedom. At the Justice Department, according to the ACLU, she was co-author of a secret memorandum regarding detainees who challenged being detained. She claims she was not included in administration memos addressing torture.
Colorado Supreme Court Justice Allison Eid, 51, J.D., University of Chicago Law School, ‘91. She clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and, before going to law school, was a speechwriter for Education Secretary William Bennett during the Reagan administration. She might not go as far as Thomas who argued that child labor laws should be struck down on the grounds of states’ rights. She wrote a 2003 ruling saying that Colorado universities cannot ban concealed weapons from campuses.
Utah Supreme Court justice Thomas Lee, 52, J.D., University of Chicago Law School, ‘91. He is the son of the U.S. Solicitor General Rex Lee and the brother of Utah Sen. Mike Lee. His father was also later president of Brigham Young University. Lee is an expert in trademark law and formerly a BYU professor. In a concurrence on the high court, he argued that a fetus is a “minor child” for the purposes of a wrongful death statute. Lee is known as one of the most prolific opinion writers on the Utah Supreme Court, writing a majority or dissenting opinion in 43 percent of the cases,
Minnesota Supreme Court David Stras, 41, J.D., University of Kansas School of Law, ‘99. He clerked for Clarence Thomas. His legal writing before joining the court focused on limiting the power of the U.S. Supreme Court. Ian Millhiser notes that something Stras wrote would likely to be scrutinized heavily if he were nominated: “[T]he [Supreme] Court’s own ventures into contentious areas of social policy—such as school integration, abortion, and homosexual rights—have raised the stakes of confirmation battles even higher.”
Eighth Circuit Court Judge Steve Colloton, 53, J.D. Yale Law School, ‘88. #3 on the Heritage list. He served as a law clerk for Justice William Rehnquist, 1989-90. From 1995 to 1996, he was an associate independent counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. He wrote a decision reversing an $8.1 million award to whistleblowers in a pricing and kickback scheme a class action suit of $19 million against Tyson Foods for violating the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Colloton dissents are remarkable. He disagreed with a finding that a city had violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting strength of American Indians, disagreed with a ruling giving people a change to prove claims of excessive force, disagreed with a ruling saying employees must be allowed a change to prove employer retaliation if they filed sex harassment, age discrimination and other discrimination claims. Colloton was also on Mitt Romney’s short list for the Supreme Court.
Eighth Circuit Court Judge Raymond Gruender, 52, J.D., Washington University in St. Louis, ‘87. #4 on the Heritage list. He wrote an opinion upholding South Dakota’s abortion law provision requiring that women seeking abortion to told that end a pregnancy terminates the life of a whole human being and another arguing in 2007 that employers can exclude birth control coverage for their workers without violating the Pregnancy Discrimination Act or sex discrimination under Title VII.
Third Circuit Court Judge Thomas Hardiman, 50, J.D. Georgetown University Law Center, ‘90. In the Kelly v. Borough of Carlisle case, Hardiman ruled that there is no constitutional right under the First Amendment permitting citizens to film police officers and that such videos of police action don’t constitute evidence against police in a civil rights case.
Sixth Circuit Court Judge Raymond Kethledge, 49, J.D., University of Michigan Law School, ‘93. He clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kethledge has ruled against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in a case in which a for-profit education conducted credit and criminal background checks the EEOC said had discriminated against people of color. In 2008, he joined an opinion in favor of the Ohio Republican Party’s lawsuit to prevent up to 200,000 registered voters from having their ballots tallied. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed the decision three days later.