Donald Trump is here. Instead of celebs making dumbass stupid empty threats of leaving the country, let’s do something to mitigate some real damage. Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry is a judge who seems to be not batshit crazy by right wing standards. But is she moderate or conservative? She did testify in support of Alito which is not good. Washington Post did a profile on her where she seems to be classified as a moderate conservative centrist.
Not so comforting to read this:
While on the district court, she would catch the attention of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who appointed her as chair of the Criminal Law Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, a position she held until 1996. That just happens to be the year when Rehnquist chose as a clerk a young Harvard Law School graduate named Ted Cruz.
But then the right wingers such as Ramesh Ponnuru and Ted Cruz, were bashing Trump on Supreme Court nominees he might bring up on advice of his sister back in the days of the primary.
Back in August, Donald Trump suggested that his sister might make a fine Supreme Court justice but said he would have to rule it out “for now, at least.” At the time I wrote that I hoped he would rule it out permanently, citing an opinion Judge Maryanne Trump Barry had written in defense of partial-birth abortion—an opinion that, I argued, had stopped just short of declaring infanticide a constitutional right. I came back to the subject a week and a half ago, when Trump said that Judge Barry’s then-colleague Samuel Alito had also “signed that bill.” I pointed out that Alito had refused to join Barry’s objectionable statements
She seems like a better counsel to Trump on SC nominees compared to the right wing fundamentalists like Pence. Is there any hope here for a not so horrible judge to be nominated under Trump? What pressure can the Senate Democrats apply to get Trump to compromise? This is one rare area where it may be better we have a Trump instead of a Pence as President.
What do you think? Will Maryanne Barry help Trump nominate someone on the moderate side? Or actually give us another Alito?
What can the Democrats do to force Trump to compromise here? Can they stonewall for a long time? The Republicans set a precedent for delaying things.