Wednesday round-up

At CNN, Lauren Fox reports that “[t]wo red state Democrats are scheduled to meet [today] with President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, highly anticipated meetings that could set the tone for where some of the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrats land on appeals court Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination.” According to Seung Min Kim for The Washington Post, “the White House is warning that time is running short for Democratic leaders to schedule sit-downs with the judge before his confirmation hearings next month.” Jordain Carney reports at The Hill that “[l]iberal activists are pressing Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other prominent members of the caucus to publicly and privately pressure the red-state Democrats to oppose Kavanaugh.” At Fox News, Chad Pergram reports that “Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is getting help from an old Senate hand as he seeks to navigate the chamber ahead of his confirmation hearing — tapping into a long tradition of nominees using ‘sherpas’ to find their way.”

For The New York Times, Adam Liptak and others explore “some of the possible scenarios” in which a solid conservative majority on the Supreme Court might “sustain sharp restrictions on access to abortion in the United States.” Lorraine Wollaert reports at Politico that “[a]bortion rights and civil liberties have so far dominated the fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, but his confirmation would mean a victory for another constituency: business.” For this blog, Aaron Nielson looks at Kavanaugh’s record in cases involving threshold questions about whether a federal court has the authority to resolve a dispute at all. For The New York Times, Erica Green reports that “[o]ver his decades-long legal career, Judge Kavanaugh has argued in favor of breaking down barriers between church and state,” and that his nomination is “breathing new life into the debate over public funding for sectarian education.”

For The Washington Post’s Fact Checker column, Salvador Rizzo “round[s] up some key claims from Democrats and Republicans about Kavanaugh’s time as a White House adviser.” At Rewire.News, Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo collect the latest news and commentary about the Kavanaugh nomination. The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal maintains that “Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation is fast becoming one of the most transparent in history.” At The Atlantic, Benjamin Wittes laments that “Kavanaugh is preponderantly likely to be confirmed by the Senate, yet for all the wrong reasons”: “not because of any of his virtues, though he has many virtues,” but “because Republicans right now have the raw political power to confirm him on their own.”

Briefly:

• At The Hill, Aris Folley reports that “[a] company that created a successful Kickstarter campaign to make a Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg action figure says it is planning to ship the products in October.”
• Jordan Rubin reports at Bloomberg Law that “[t]wo execution disputes the U.S. Supreme Court will hear next term with swing vote Anthony Kennedy off the bench could foreshadow its treatment of certain death penalty cases going forward.”

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