"Trump's hijacking of our
judiciary will be his most enduring legacy, and it will continue to threaten
everything progressives care about long after he leaves office."
Friday, December 20, 2019
The right-wing takeover of the
U.S. courts continued apace Thursday as the Republican-controlled Senate, with
the help of some Democrats, quietly confirmed a dozen more of President Donald
Trump's lifetime judicial nominees hours before leaving for Christmas recess.
The confirmations received
little media attention amid Trump's impeachment and the 2020 Democratic debate,
but progressives warned the consequences could reverberate for generations.
"While all eyes were
understandably on impeachment, Mitch McConnell's conveyor belt churned out a
shocking number of judges this week in what remains the most underrated story
of the Trump era," Christopher Kang, chief counsel for advocacy group
Demand Justice, said in a statement.
"Trump's hijacking of our
judiciary will be his most enduring legacy," added Kang, "and it will
continue to threaten everything progressives care about long after he leaves
office."
The Senate has now confirmed
187 of Trump's disproportionately young and ultra-conservative
judicial picks, putting them in a position to reshape U.S. law on reproductive
rights, climate, and other areas for decades to come.
According to the Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human Rights, three of the judges confirmed this week
refused to say whether Brown v. Board of Education—the 1954 Supreme Court
decision that ruled racial segregation of public schools unconstitutional—was
correctly decided.
Those judges, according to
a list (pdf)
from the Leadership Conference, are Mary Kay Vyskocil and Lewis Liman of the
Southern District of New York and Gary Brown of the Eastern District of New
York.
McConnell is rushing to
confirm as many lifetime nominees as he can to entrench his terrifying
agenda," Lena Zwarensteyn, Fair Courts campaign director at The Leadership
Conference, said in a statement.
"With his caucus' full participation, he will stop at nothing to achieve
through the courts what his party cannot accomplish legislatively: erasing the
progress the nation has made to protect civil rights."
As Common Dreams reported earlier
this month, Trump—with the help of the right-wing Federalist Society—has
appointed around one in every five federal judges.
"With shameful glee,
McConnell has transformed twenty percent of the federal judiciary already, and
is intentionally installing individuals who have demonstrated hostility to the
communities whose civil and human rights are most at risk under this
administration," said Zwarensteyn.
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