Tuesday round-up

Court-watchers maintain their focus on records from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s time working in the George W. Bush White House. For USA Today, Richard Wolf reports that documents from Kavanaugh’s two-year tenure in the White House counsel’s office reveal Kavanaugh’s “involvement in efforts by the Bush administration to get his nominees on to federal courts – efforts that Democrats successfully blocked in many cases during Bush’s first two years in office.” For The Washington Post, Stephanie McCrummen writes that the most recent batch of documents, released on Sunday, contains “no obvious bombshells about Kavanaugh.” Tony Mauro reports for The National Law Journal that the documents show “a heightened-alert atmosphere inside and outside the White House surrounding the speculation that Supreme Court vacancies would soon open up.” For The Hill, Jordain Carney reports that “[t]he National Archives is doubling down on its refusal to respond to Democratic requests for documents from” Kavanaugh’s three-year stint as White House staff secretary, informing Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, that “it is the agency’s policy to only respond to requests from a committee chair, all of whom are Republicans.”

At Crime and Consequences, Kent Scheidegger offers a chart comparing “the number of days from nomination to the commencement of hearings for the last four Justices nominated by Democratic Party Presidents and the scheduled date for Judge Kavanaugh.” The editors of the Weekly Standard write that “all the Democrats can do is delay—and they plan to.” In an op-ed for The Hill, Penny Nance looks at three cases that “shed light on [Kavanaugh’s] clear understanding of the First Amendment, and his rulings to block the government from infringing on these rights.”

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