It was reported just over a week ago, in Buzzfeed of all places, that the word on Pennsylvania Ave was that the White House was negotiating with Senator Feinstein on their list of judges for the Ninth Circuit.
President Donald Trump is making a new push on some of the most criticized judicial nominees he selected during his first two years in office, with the White House announcing late Tuesday the renomination of 50 of the president’s picks for the federal bench.
However, the Senate returned 73 federal court nominees when the last Congress ended in early January — meaning there are 23 previous nominees that Trump has decided to drop, or hasn’t determined what to do with just yet. The omissions include a handful of nominees opposed by Democrats, as well as all of Trump’s nominees for federal courts in California — the state’s senior senator, Democrat Dianne Feinstein, has been in talks with the White House about reconsidering certain names, two sources familiar with the situation tell BuzzFeed News.
This seemed unbelievable to me at the time, especially with the way the Ninth Circuit had been a thorn in Trump’s side. Why on earth would the White House be negotiating with the likes Dianne Feinstein after the Kavanaugh incident??
Well now the WSJ has come out with an editorial last night that suggests this is exactly what is happening, and that Kamala Harris is in on the negotiations too.
True that WH is prepared to let Feinstein and Harris pack 9th District w/ MORE radical judges?? What a disaster!! Kiss POTUS agenda goodbye. https://t.co/wZTyDWkwWu
— Brent Bozell (@BrentBozell) January 30, 2019
This from Powerline:
Last November, Feinstein and Harris requested of the new White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, “that the White House work with us to reach an agreement on a consensus package” of appeals court nominees from California. The Democrats want to pick one name from the White House list, one from their own, and a third consensus nominee.
It’s hardly surprising that Feinstein and Harris want this. What’s shocking is that the White House didn’t dismiss the request out of hand. Instead, it took the request seriously — so seriously that it chose not to resubmit Bumatay’s nomination plus the nomination of two other highly qualified conservative nominees from California, Daniel Collins (a former Scalia clerk) and Kenneth Lee.
What on earth is the administration thinking? Feinstein and Harris have no power to prevent the confirmation of Bumatay, Collins, and Lee. And the Ninth Circuit needs all three. Remember, this is hands down the most left-wing appeals court in America. It has been instrumental in blocking key Trump administration initiatives.
The Ninth Circuit needs to be transformed. It won’t be transformed by adding one conservative, one moderate and one leftist handpicked by Feinstein and Harris.
The most amazing thing about this is what Mirengoff points out, that Feinstein and Harris have no power to prevent any of these confirmations. Yet the White House would negotiate with them, presumably because of the fuss they made over Kavanaugh?
Erickson points out that this is being done behind Trump’s back, that he doesn’t know about it. Indeed, Senator David Perdue says he’s gonna call Trump and warn him about all of this:
News; @SenDavidPerdue committed to me to call @realDonaldTrump, warn him about the terrible deal emerging on 9th Circuit judges: https://t.co/fRA35AA7ie This would be a disaster for @POTUS. Renominate the 3 blocked last year by @JeffFlake (and also @cullystimson for @USNavy GC)
— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) January 30, 2019
The WSJ suggests this negotiation with Harris and Feinstein is being done to keep what happened to Kavanaugh from happening to future nominees:
The editors of the Wall Street Journal suggest that the administration’s motive is to produce less resistance to future Trump nominees including, perhaps, a nominee to succeed Justice Ginsburg.
Ok first of all, Democrats will stab Trump in the back without even blinking. They hate Trump, and yet the White House counsel things they can trust these two?
Secondly, despite all the mess – and it was epically ridiculous – Kavanaugh is on the high court. We did not allow Democrats to ‘bork’ him. We won.
One of the great things from November’s election was that we not only kept the Senate, but grew our majority. Because Republicans control the Senate, they can put on the bench whomever they choose and Democrats can’t stop them. They can tangle up the process a little, but they can’t ultimately stop any of these nominees.
But now it appears the White House counsel is nullifying that victory by compromising with the likes of Harris and Feinstein. I hope Erickson is right, that Trump isn’t behind this, and furthermore that he stops it hard in its tracks.