The House of Representatives, on the advice of the Office of the Attending Physician, has delayed returning to D.C. and to resume in-person work, even while the next phase of coronavirus stimulus becomes more urgent. "The House physician's view," Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, "was that there was a risk to members that was one he would not recommend taking." It's a risk Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has no problem asking his members to take, and it's not to pass critical aid to the nation.
No, McConnell is bringing back his senators, and all of the staff and all of the maintenance and cafeteria and security workers they require, to confirm more extremist judges. He reiterated that last week when he talked to wing-nut radio host Hugh Hewitt, saying he will "leave no vacancies behind" and that the coronavirus "will not prevent us from achieving that goal." His first priority is promoting an unqualified judge, Justin Walker, to the second highest court in the land. He put Walker ahead of the nation last month when he delayed passing emergency stimulus legislation for days so that he could celebrate Walker back home in Kentucky, and he's doing it again.
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Walker's confirmation hearing to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the Judiciary Committee is already scheduled for Tuesday. Never mind that he just got his district court seat in Kentucky in October, despite the fact that the American Bar Association had rated him unqualified because at age 37 and as a law professor, he had never even gone to court. He is, of course, a Federal Society favorite and a McConnell protégé who also clerked for Brett Kavanaugh when he was on a lower court. Of Kavanaugh, Walker said, his "courageous and influential opinions on countless different issues—presidential power, regulatory overreach, religious liberty, the Second Amendment, and the list goes on—leave no doubt that he would be a forceful conservative justice for decades to come." So you know what kind of judge he's going to be, on the court that provides the springboard not just for the big cases the Supreme Court considers, but for future Supreme Court justices.
That's why they're coming back, for Walker and the other appeals court vacancies McConnell wants to pack with extremists. That's why he's endangering all the staff that works in the Senate and all the high-risk senators by forcing them back on Monday to do the nation's work. Not to respond to this coronavirus crisis, but to exploit it.