Tuesday round-up

ANDREW HAMM JUL 10, 2018 9:56 AM

Yesterday President Donald Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to the Supreme Court. Amy Howe has this blog’s coverage; Mark Walsh provides a “view” from the East Room. Additional coverage comes from Nina Totenberg on NPR’s Morning Edition (podcast), Tony Mauro of The National Law Journal and David Jackson and Richard Wolf of USA Today. Commentary comes from Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire.News, who writes that “as in all reality TV, there was a clear winner in Trump’s selection process. But unlike on The Bachelorette, the rest of us are the ones who were always going to lose.”

Reporting on Kavanaugh as Washington insider comes from Richard Wolf of USA Today and Joan Biskupic of CNN. Writing for The Economist, Steven Mazie calls Kavanaugh “an unremarkable choice for a Republican president,” notwithstanding that for Trump, “who has departed from so many presidential norms, to have picked someone with close ties to the Washington, DC establishment, may seem surprising for its utter conventionality.”

At The National Law Journal, Tony Mauro lists seven of Kavanaugh’s “more notable rulings that will come into sharp focus now” as his nomination moves forward in the Senate; in a second story at The National Law Journal, Mauro, with Mike Scarcella, compiles “snippets from some of Kavanaugh’s remarks over the years” that could also attract attention. If Kavanaugh is confirmed, it “will not take long before the President’s ambition – to choose a Justice who would vote to roll back constitutional protection for women’s abortion rights – could be fulfilled or frustrated,” reports Lyle Denniston for Constitution Daily. Commentary comes from Bill Blum of Truthdig, who writes that except for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, “Trump could not have chosen a candidate who poses a greater threat to progressive values and causes.”

Briefly:

• At The Atlantic, Garrett Epps marks the 150th anniversary of the 14th Amendment by reviewing the history around its ratification. He concludes that “Americans don’t agree on when the amendment was approved, and, I am sure, some in their hearts believe it should not bind the United States today. The battle of 1868 must be fought again, and so far it is not going well.”
• Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services covers Mount Lemmon Fire District v. Guido, a case about the “ability of the Mount Lemmon Fire District to fire its two oldest employees” that will be argued before the justices on the first day of the October 2018 term.
• Writing for The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, Bernard Grofman parses last term’s partisan-gerrymandering decisions in Gill v. Whitford and Benisek v. Lamone. He describes “tools from the cases” that could make a district-specific standard for challenging partisan gerrymanders “completely manageable.”

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