A group of female Democrats took to the Senate floor to rally against Judge Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination on Tuesday afternoon.
Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Senate Judiciary Committee member, spoke of the “real world consequences” of Gorsuch’s rulings and was joined by fellow Democratic Sens. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Kamala Harris of California, Patty Murray of Washington, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
“There is no question about Judge Gorsuch’s credentials or about his intellect,” Hirono said on Tuesday. “In fact, his credentials are a stark contrast to so many of the dangerously unqualified individuals President Trump appointed to his Cabinet. Judge Gorsuch should not get a pass simply because we are relieved that President Trump didn’t nominate a member of his family or a reality television personality for this job.
“Credentials cannot and should not be the only points we consider when evaluating a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.”
Hirono said Gorsuch was selected by right-leaning groups such as the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society, a point made by several Democrats on the Judiciary Committee during Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings. She also argued that the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals judge survived President Trump’s “litmus tests” for the job.
Harris added that during the Senate’s deliberations on Gorsuch’s nomination, she learned that Gorsuch “has a deeply conservative worldview” and “interprets the law in a theoretical bubble.” And Duckworth attacked Gorsuch as, “willing to elevate large corporations at the expense of everyday Americans.” Warren blasted Gorsuch as a judge whose rulings “harmed women, children, and consumers.”
The Democratic opposition comes as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would seek to limit debate by filing a motion to invoke cloture on Tuesday. “It’s not too late” for Democrats to drop the filibuster fight, McConnell said, but Democrats have not changed their plan.
Gorsuch’s allies in the Trump administration sought to blame liberals on Tuesday for the partisan bickering over the president’s Supreme Court nominee. Leonard Leo, an adviser to Trump on the Supreme Court, told reporters Tuesday that, “It was really the Left and the Democrats that started this fire” regarding the partisan fights over high court nominees. Leo said he thought people on all sides of the political spectrum had ample time to poke holes in Trump’s list long before the Senate vote because Trump released his list of candidates publicly.
“This is an election where we had in Donald Trump a presidential candidate who made judicial selection a relatively central plank of his campaign,” Leo said. “People knew, or at least should have known, what they were getting when he was elected as president.”
Republican leadership in the Senate is expected to deploy the “nuclear option,” whereby the Republican majority lowers the vote threshold required to confirm Gorsuch. Leo said he thought the country was “doing just fine without filibusters,” and did not appear concerned about its potential undoing by Republican senators.
Warren called such action “nuts,” and said it was “crazy” to even consider Trump’s Supreme Court pick given the FBI’s ongoing investigation regarding Russian connections to folks associated with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
