Pacific Northwest’s Democratic Senators speak out against Kavanaugh nomination

Although no Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor from the Pacif­ic North­west has had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ques­tion Judge Kavanaugh or air their griev­ances regard­ing his nom­i­na­tion, they haven’t held back their crit­i­cism of the pick.

As the hear­ings go on, Sen­a­tors Mur­ray, Wyden, and Merkley have been active on Twit­ter crit­i­ciz­ing Judge Kavanaugh as trav­es­ties con­tin­ue to devel­op. Par­tic­u­lar­ly with Sen­a­tor Booker’s stand, Sen­a­tor Merkley tweet­ed his sup­port, saying:

“Thank you, Cory Book­er, for tak­ing a risk to show Amer­i­ca where
Kavanaugh stands on issues. Stand up. Speak up.”

Sen­a­tor Mur­ray took this a step fur­ther as of recent­ly, hold­ing a press con­fer­ence with women behind a ban­ner read­ing “Stop Kavanaugh”.

She did not mince words.

SENATOR PATTY MURRAY: So we Democ­rats are going to keep stand­ing up for patients with pre-exist­ing con­di­tions. We are going to keep fight­ing against Judge Kavanaugh and this sham process Repub­li­cans are using to hide the facts and try to jam him through. And I am con­fi­dent that fam­i­lies across the coun­try are going to be lis­ten­ing to what all of us say — and even more impor­tant­ly, they are going to be watch­ing what all of us do.

Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell hasn’t been as vocal in her oppo­si­tion towards Kavanaugh’s nom­i­na­tion, but that changed today when she issued a state­ment say­ing she would oppose the nom­i­na­tion. (Cantwell pre­vi­ous­ly said on Meet the Press say­ing that a vote for who­ev­er Trump nom­i­nat­ed could be a “career-end­ing” move.)

Said Sen­a­tor Cantwell:

As a Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor, it is my respon­si­bil­i­ty to thor­ough­ly review life­time appoint­ments to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I take this respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide advice and con­sent very seri­ous­ly. When [Don­ald] Trump nom­i­nat­ed Judge Brett Kavanaugh, I owed it to my con­stituents to review his full record.

After hav­ing done so, I oppose his confirmation.

In 2006, I vot­ed against the con­fir­ma­tion of Mr. Kavanaugh to serve as a judge on the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit because I had con­cerns his judi­cial phi­los­o­phy might have been out­side the main­stream. His record on the D.C. Cir­cuit Court affirmed those con­cerns for me.

Since he was con­firmed to serve on that court, Judge Kavanaugh refused to uphold the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the Afford­able Care Act, ruled against work­ers’ rights in favor of cor­po­rate inter­ests, would have struck down pro­tec­tions under the Clean Air Act and efforts to fight cli­mate change, dis­sent­ed from a deci­sion that allowed an undoc­u­ment­ed minor held in gov­ern­ment cus­tody to exer­cise her right to access abor­tion care, ruled in favor of a restric­tive vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion law, sup­port­ed expand­ed war­rant­less sur­veil­lance, and main­tained that the FCC’s net neu­tral­i­ty rule was unconstitutional.

Addi­tion­al­ly, in his hear­ing, Judge Kavanaugh would not answer whether he believes Roe v. Wade was right­ly decid­ed and failed to assure sen­a­tors he would not erode its crit­i­cal pro­tec­tions. And while he now claims Roe is set­tled law, his pre­vi­ous asser­tions while he worked at the Bush White House raise seri­ous questions.

The U.S. Supreme Court also serves as an impor­tant check on pres­i­den­tial pow­er. In his hear­ing, Judge Kavanaugh refused to say whether a pres­i­dent could par­don him­self or respond to a sub­poe­na. In the past, he has ques­tioned whether a pres­i­dent can be crim­i­nal­ly indict­ed while in office and argued that the pres­i­dent should be able to fire spe­cial coun­sels with­out cause. His views raise fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about whether he will uphold the Court’s role in our con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem of checks and bal­ances at this crit­i­cal time in our nation’s his­to­ry.  No one is above the law – espe­cial­ly the president.

Cantwell, Wyden, Mur­ray, and Merkley are all set to vote no on this nom­i­na­tion, but it’s impor­tant to encour­age their fierce oppo­si­tion to Kavanaugh by active­ly speak­ing out, espe­cial­ly with these new rev­e­la­tions com­ing by the minute.

Mean­while, Alaska’s Lisa Murkows­ki needs to be lob­bied to vote no.

On some issues this nom­i­na­tion could affect — such as a woman’s fun­da­men­tal right to make her own repro­duc­tive health deci­sions — our Sen­a­tors have been vocal. How­ev­er, oth­er issues aren’t get­ting the same degree of attention.

As impor­tant as a women’s right to choose is, a Supreme Court with Kavanaugh on it could wipe away decades’ worth of impor­tant prece­dents, destroy­ing or under­min­ing hard won progress on addi­tion­al fronts. Exam­ples are LGBT rights, affir­ma­tive action/equity, and vot­ing rights.

Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon’s Sen­a­tors have made their oppo­si­tion to the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion clear. Their will­ing­ness to defend a wom­an’s right to make her own repro­duc­tive health deci­sions is com­mend­able. How­ev­er, this should­n’t pre­vent them from being more vocal and inter­sec­tion­al in their advocacy.