Republicans searching for that elusive issue to erase the Democrats' critical edge in voter enthusiasm heading into the midterm elections believe they've found their golden ticket in the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Senior Republicans are predicting that the opportunity to replace Kennedy, a swing vote on the narrowly divided high court, with a young conservative who could tilt the court to the right and serve for decades, will galvanize the conservative base and motivate rank-and-file GOP voters to put any uneasiness with President Trump aside and stick with the party in November.
"This is every Democrat candidate's worst nightmare, as it changes the game on turnout," Republican pollster Chris Wilson told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. "It doesn't just close the enthusiasm gap, it injects rocket fuel into the evangelical base that helped Trump win swing states."
The midterm elections have shaped up as a backlash against Trump, threatening Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
Energy on the Democratic side needs no explanation - the Left is motivated to register a vote against the president. Republicans are experiencing the drag on turnout that typically accompanies winning the White House, as GOP voters, exhausted by the Trump's provocative behavior, eye Democratic alternatives and grass-roots conservatives disappointed with Congress consider staying home.
Republicans are struggling to mitigate midterm election headwinds amid ongoing gusts from the White House - on immigration, trade, the Russia investigation, and Trump's proclivity to discuss it all on Twitter. They see the debate over a Supreme Court nominee as the great equalizer with a Democratic base already as electrified as it could possibly get.
Republicans were already poised to pad their 51-49 Senate majority. The party benefits from a favorable map that features 10 seats up in states Trump won in 2016.
But Republicans say a monthslong battle over Kennedy's replacement, and expected confirmation vote just before the election, is an insurance policy of "immeasurable" value. It gives the Republicans a tangible issue to motivate low-propensity voters and put the squeeze on vulnerable red state Senate Democrats who must choose: vote with their state or anger the liberal base
Democratic operatives concede that it's a dilemma for the party's Senate incumbents that could sow division and prove costly in November. Democratic leaders and influential progressives are already demanding the confirmation of Trump's forthcoming nominee be delayed until after the midterm elections, similar to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's blockade of a vacant Supreme Court seat prior to 2016.
The fight over President Trump's next nomination to the Supreme Court began almost immediately after the news broke of the opening on Wednesday.
Moments after Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said he would retire, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the Senate would act before the midterm election to confirm Trump's next nominee.
"We will vote to confirm Justice Kennedy's successor this fall," McConnell said on the Senate floor.
Democrats immediately cried foul, arguing the nomination fight should come next year.
Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.), recalling the bitter fight over Merrick Garland's nomination to the court in 2016, demanded that McConnell hold off until a new Congress is seated in 2019. He said Republicans should let voters weigh in on the choice through the November midterm elections.
Schumer said it would be the "height of hypocrisy" for Republicans to move quickly after they held open the late Justice Antonin Scalia's seat for more than a year in 2016.
McConnell blocked Garland, former President Obama's nominee for that seat, from getting even a hearing. He said at the time that voters needed to help decide the ideological balance of the court by picking a new president.
"Millions of people are just months away from determining the senators who should vote to confirm or reject the president's nominee, and their voices deserve to be heard," Schumer said Wednesday.
By Thomas Burr
· Published: 16 hours ago
Updated: 13 hours ago
Washington • Sen. Mike Lee and his brother, Thomas Lee, a Utah Supreme Court justice, are on the White House's short list of possible nominees to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would "begin immediately" vetting possible candidates for the high court and would stick to the list he provided during his campaign of 25 potential nominees.
"It will be somebody from that list," Trump said.
Sen. Lee, who clerked for the Supreme Court previously, told reporters he "would not say no" if he were asked.
His brother declined comment through a Utah courts spokesman.
"I think the single best choice President Trump could make is Sen. Mike Lee," Cruz told the cable channel. "I think he would be extraordinary."
Cruz added that Republicans haven't always picked the most conservative jurists in the past - some nominees turned more liberal once on the court - but that "I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mike Lee would be faithful to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. He's not going to evolve."
Lee, who clerked for Associate Justice Samuel Alito at the Supreme Court and the circuit court level, is a lawyer who previously served as general counsel to then-Gov. Jon Huntsman as well as assistant U.S. attorney.
Lee's father, Rex Lee, served as solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan, which gave his young son a front-row seat to history.
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SCOTUS Janus Decision Will Make Unions More Accountable to Their Members
The United States Supreme Court has been busy this week. I have only been focused on the Janus Case. The justices ruled 5-4 to prohibit unions from collecting fees in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31. The justices also ruled that workers must affirmatively opt into the union before fees can be taken out of their paychecks.
It will effectively break the cycle where government unions can collect compulsory fees from government workers and then use it to help elect pro-union politicians to achieve and maintain political power - who then empower and enrich the government employee unions. Think about this for a minute, the unions were arguing in this case: "that government has a duty to financially prop up a private enterprise." "In what universe?" the Supreme Court Justices must have thought. The legal rationale was questionable at best.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in the majority opinion and addressed that directly: "It is hard to estimate how many billions of dollars have been taken from nonmembers and transferred to public-sector unions in violation of the First Amendment. Those unconstitutional exactions cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely." Justice Alito then added: "We conclude that this arrangement violates the free speech rights of nonmembers by compelling them to subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern."
The opinion added: "The First Amendment is violated when money is taken from nonconsenting employees for a public-sector union; employees must choose to support the union before anything is taken from them. Accordingly, neither an agency fee nor any other form of payment to a public-sector union may be deducted from an employee, nor may any other attempt be made to collect such a payment, unless the employee affirmatively consents to pay."
