Republicans (we’re looking at you, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) have allowed Donald Trump to continue to abuse the power of the Oval Office, turning a blind eye to every single dubious act, and that’s likely because conservatives are pushing unqualified judges through while Democrats are forced to rein in the corrupt and destructive “president.” Republicans got their tax cuts for the wealthy, and now they’re packing the courts.
According to a report on the Daily Beast, McConnell has set aside 275 bipartisan bills from Democrats on issues including the climate crisis, gun safety, raising the minimum wage, net neutrality, and election security.
“He’s got other priorities, namely meeting the goal that he and Trump set of confirming 182 federal judges by the end of this year. McConnell’s motto: ‘Leave no vacancy behind.’ He is on track to meet the goal, which is twice the number of lifetime judges that President Obama had installed at the same point in his presidency,” the report states. “While the media is riveted on the House Judiciary Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee is doing what McConnell wants, teeing up a parade of Trump judges that win confirmation with party-line votes on the Senate floor.”
Fair Courts Campaign director Lena Zwarensteyn said that McConnell is focused on installing judges.
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“McConnell doesn’t care about passing legislation,” Zwarensteyn said. “He’s confident he can get the results he wants on health care, immigration, voting rights, educational equity and the rights for people to organize in the workplace by installing judges that will rule in their (GOP’s) favor.”
These individuals are not qualified, and some of them are just batshit crazy.
“The confirmation last month of Steven Menashi, a 40-year-old White House lawyer who had circulated an anti-Muslim myth about General Pershing dipping bullets in pig’s blood to put down a Muslim uprising, flipped the New York City-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to majority Republican-appointed judges, joining the 3rd Circuit and 11th Circuit in erasing any edge Democrats might have had after eight years of Obama,” the news outlet notes.
“With the exception of Maine Senator Susan Collins, every Republican voted this past week for Sarah Pitlyk, 42, whose extreme opposition to reproductive rights has been the cornerstone of her limited legal career,” the report continues. “She is critical of IVF and surrogacy, and believes embryos should not be ‘killed,’ but should have status as human beings under the law.”
“These are folks who have really raised their hands to signal how extreme they are,” the report adds.
The judges that McConnell is installing are extremists, and Republicans are all-in on confirming them, with the exception of Collins on Pitlyk, but she also voted to nominate Brett Kavanaugh. Maybe she likes beer, too. As the Daily Beast calls them, the judges McConnell is installing are “wingnuts.”
Every Democrat voted in opposition to Pitlyk. Although the Senate confirmed her, she currently serves as special counsel to the Thomas More Society, a conservative anti-choice law firm.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0
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