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There's been a small bit of kabuki surrounding popular vote loser Donald Trump's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, currently serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The story has been that there's some "backlash" against him from the extremist right as not being solid enough on "the crucial topics of abortion rights and Obamacare." That has been kabuki from the get-go. This was all about giving Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski the excuse of supporting someone that the extremists are "uncomfortable" with. It's so transparent that only Susan Collins would be idiot enough to actually go along with it.
Lest you think that perhaps maybe he really won't be a total disaster on our healthcare and reproductive rights, put that thought right out of your head. In one of his more totally out-of-the-mainstream ruling, he dissented in one of the many ridiculous challenges to the Affordable Care Act. Sitting on a three-judge panel in the DC Circuit, Kavanaugh argued in his dissent that presidents can disregard laws they deem unconstitutional, even if courts have held such law to be constitutional. "Under the Constitution," Kavanaugh wrote, "the President may decline to enforce a statute that regulates private individuals when the President deems the statute unconstitutional, even if a court has held or would hold the statute constitutional." Think he's going to argue with Trump that protection for people with pre-existing conditions under the law are unconstitutional? Me neither.
As for reproductive choice? During the Trump administration, Kavanaugh issued a ruling overturning a judge's decision to let an unaccompanied young immigrant woman being held in government custody have an abortion immediately—pitting her against the clock to obtain an abortion at all because Texas bans them after 20 weeks. That's a very contemporary ruling, just months old. Going back a bit, we find a speech he gave to the ultra-conservative American Enterprise Institute about Chief Justice Rehnquist, where he pointed to Rehnquist's dissent in Roe v. Wade as "stemming the general tide of freewheeling judicial creation of unenumerated rights that were not rooted in the nation's history and tradition." That reads as pretty hostile to Roe, something that Susan Collins has insisted will be a key factor in her decision-making.
For her part, Lisa Murkowski has been playing this all closer to the vest and pretending that this can all be bipartisan and "why don't we all get along." This is why, Senator. Because your party has been hijacked by male white supremacists.
If these two want their sort-of courageous stand against their leadership and against Trump on repealing Obamacare to mean anything, to have any lasting resonance, they have oppose this nomination. They have to work with Democrats to stop it.
Do you live in Maine? You have a powerful voice in stopping Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Click here to write Sen. Collins.
Live in Alaska? You have the power. Sign and send a petition to Sen. Lisa Murkowski: Save Roe v. Wade. Oppose any anti-choice Supreme Court nominee.