The one political article you should read today
A little under a week ago, CNN’s Joan Biskupis took a look at the heightened pace with which dictator-wannabe Donald J. Trump is packing the appellate courts:
The Trump administration has strategically focused on the appointment of judges to the crucial appeals-court rung of the US judiciary as part of its concerted effort to axe Obama era policies.
Yet, as the White House has pushed a record number of appellate judges through the Senate, its number of appointments to the district courts – the first level of the three-tier federal judiciary – ranks far behind that of most recent presidents.
Today’s edition of The Guardian has a jaw-dropping look at what may well br Trump’s most durable legacy:
It was a startling omission even according to the peculiar moral norms of the Trump era. When Wendy Vitter, one of the US president’s judicial nominees, was asked whether she supported the supreme court’s 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision to end racial segregation in schools – a near sacred pillar of progress for civil rights in the 20th century – she did not say yes.
“I don’t mean to be coy,” Vitter, who is up for a seat on the US district court for the eastern district of Louisiana, told her Senate confirmation hearing. “But I think I get into a difficult area when I start commenting on supreme court decisions which are correctly decided and which I may disagree with.”
Translation: “I don’t mean to be coy, I just want to avoid the question, because I am a judicial extremist who wants to undo the New Deal, women’s reproductive rights, and other steps toward equality, democracy, and rational rule in America.”
But I digress.
David Smith has put together one of the most insightful and scathing examinations of Trump’s toxic appointees to the federal bench. Trump is supported by the Senate’s own authoritarianists and tools of dominionism, neo-Confederacy, shooting gallery USA, “states’ rights,” and removal of civil rights, who are backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from special interests. Do not hesitate. Go read now.
