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Trump Appointments Tag

It's getting crazy out here on the internet. Trump names his nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy at a live press conference at 9 p.m. tonight. Trump did a pretty good job keeping the selection on the quiet with Neil Gorsuch, and as of this writing, there have been no definitive leaks. Just a lot of "insider" speculation as to who the finalists and top 2 are.

As the July 9 date for Trump to announce his pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy nears, there is a vicious multi-front war evolving. Of course, Democrats are attacking every likely nominee, with the anti-Catholic bigotry against Amy Coney Barrett the most prominent. Barrett would be the most finger-in-the-liberals-eye pick, and not just because of her Catholicism. She has seven (7) children -- that is a provocation in the minds of liberal feminists and the people who love them that cannot be abided.

Neil Gorsuch was an incredibly safe pick for Trump. Despite the plaintive wails of Democrats about a "stolen" seat, they didn't have much with which to go after Gorsuch on the merits. Nonetheless Democrats filibustered Gorsuch, forcing Republican's to play the nuclear option for a SCOTUS nominee (as Democrats did in 2013 for all lower courts and made clear they would do if Hillary won and they regained the Senate).

Pretty much since the 2016 election we've been tracking the potential Donald Trump has to fundamentally alter the federal judiciary. At various times we've expressed frustration with the ability of Democrats to slow down the Senate confirmation process. We've also recognized that for the most part Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have kept nominees moving through the pipeline.

Has it really been a year? Yes, on April 10, 2017, Neil Gorsuch was sworn in as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Remember, Gorsuch only was nominated for the Scalia seat because Merrick Garland, Obama's nominee, was not given a Senate hearing much less vote (it's highly unlikely he would have been confirmed by the Republican Senate even if given a vote). Mitch McConnell recently commented that stymying the Garland nomination was the "most consequential" decision of his career.

After President Donald Trump nominated CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel to takeover as director, stories from a year ago circulated about how she was in charge of a secret CIA prison in Thailand that tortured al-Qaeda suspects. The reports contained claims that she even participated. I even blogged about it, mainly because I was curious how Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and others would vote to confirm her due to her supposed past. After it caught on, ProPublica issued a correction that Haspel did NOT oversee the waterboarding of suspect Abu Zubaydah.