By Karen Rubin, News & PhotoFeatures

Politically, Trump’s Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh is a win-win-win-win for him. Any one on that list assembled for him by the Federalist Society would be a reliable vote to overturn women’s reproductive rights, environmental and economic protections, workers rights, voting rights, while making gun rights sacrosanct. But with Kavanaugh, he gets the one person on the list who has written explicitly on the need to shield a president.

This is truly ironic (hypocritical) since he was on Ken Starr’s commission that turned an investigation into a failed real estate deal into a witch hunt over Bill Clinton’s adultery, and wrote the articles of impeachment over lying about it. This was hardly colluding with a foreign adversary to hack an election to win the office that Kavanaugh now should be walled off from investigation or indictment – music to Trump’s ears.

What I never understand is why a nominee presents himself as standing for “equal justice,”“an independent judiciary” and to uphold the Rule of Law and faithfully follow the Constitution “as written informed by history, tradition and precedent”, rather than boast of what they have done: deny a pregnant minor migrant held in detention her request to be released to access an abortion, saying that otherwise, affirms the right of non-citizens to what citizens have a right to; and declaring the Consumer Financial Protection Board unconstitutional. He served on Ken Starr’s He also was part of the cabal that had to work around the Constitution, which gives authority of elections to the states, in stopping Florida’s constitutionally mandated recount in order to select George W. Bush president over Al Gore. And what role did he play in George Bush’s White House in the legal memos that authorized torture?

Kavanaugh, along with Samuel Alito and John Roberts (all out of the Federalist Society), believe in a Unitary Executive – as long as a Republican is the executive - which would seem to contradict the Framers’ hypersensitivity to replacing one monarchy with another. This nonsense that “Congress makes the law, the court interprets it,” is just that: The radical activist judges overturned Congress’ reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, and clawed back Citizens United in order to overturn precedent and equate dollars with speech, giving corporations and the wealthy unlimited “speech” and, in Hobby Lobby, to establish a corporation as capable of having a religious conscience.

"Brett Kavanaugh, contrary to 200 years of Supreme Court precedent, believes a president 'may decline to enforce a statute . . . when the president deems the statute unconstitutional,'”Sen. Bernie Sanders stated.

So Kavanaugh, like the other self-proclaimed “originalists” are really “ends justify the means” radical activists, conveniently mind-melding with The Framers like a spiritualist’s con, is Trump’s ideal.

Second, Trump gets to throw red meat to the Evangelicals who will forgive him anything (sexual assault, money laundering, tax evasion, colluding with a foreign power, even murder, I suspect), as long as they get to dictate a Radical Right agenda for the next 40 years, and he gets to fire up his base who would otherwise abstain in the midterms (having gotten Gorsuch and tax cuts and probably a little unnerved by botching North Korea and launching a trade war), so that he can retain control of a complicit Republican-dominated Congress and avoid impeachment.

Third: Trump gets to demonstrate the impotence of Democrats, now that a shameless Mitch McConnell has basically exerted one-party rule, disenfranchising more than half the country, that the Republicans hope will so discourage Democrats (or worse, cause the progressives to punish Democrats) that they see voting as a useless exercise and stay home.

Just how unfair this is: you have a president that was voted in with 42% of the vote, who lost the popular vote by 3 million; a Senate Republican majority of one (51) that was elected with 47% of the vote, but, because of the small-state advantage, probably represents about 35% of the population, force feeding its hard-right Supreme Court justice who will serve for 40 or 50 years, who advocates for positions that are scorned by the majority of people and denies the policies that are supported by vast majorities (gun reform, climate action, fair taxes, voting rights, criminal justice reform).

That’s why there was the tradition – if not formal procedure – of requiring a 60-vote threshold to end debate (the filibuster). It forced the Senate to be more representative of the people, and forced more of a consensus (or compromise) candidate.

But Mitch McConnell not only refused to hold confirmation hearings for Obama’s SCOTUS nominee, Merrick Garland, for nearly a year claiming the need for the next election so the people could be heard, but he clicked the nuclear trigger and ended the 60-vote threshold, so the Republicans could ram through Gorsuch with only Republican votes.

If Mitch McConnell wanted to at least appear to be a statesman with regard for the betterment of the nation, rather than a win-at-all-costs partisan, he would restore the 60-vote threshold. Since that won’t happen, Democrats are shown to be ineffective.

Fourth: Trump would likely also be the big winner If the Democrats somehow manage to delay confirmation until after the midterms, or even more unlikely, if Kavanaugh fails to get 51 votes. Trump will rile up the base with hysteria (he is already hysterical that he could lose control of the House and make impeachment more likely), and blame the “unprecedented obstruction” on Democrats.

That political calculus could backfire against the backdrop of unprecedented protest and resistance of the millions (20% of Americans) –and a good share of the 93 million who did not bother to vote in 2016, are mobilized to vote in the midterms. That would begin the process of taking back not just Congress, but state offices. Because Democrats, who never made the same priority of Supreme Court appointments as the radical right, are realizing the judiciary is no longer the “backstop” against the erosion of democracy, the ascendancy of the plutocracy and the loss of all the rights we hold dear and naively take for granted.

Indeed, Governor Andrew Cuomo is drawing a line in the sand, demanding state legislators return for special session to codify the protections of Roe v Wade into New York State law, which, though the state legalized abortion in 1970, three years before Roe, is in its current state much weaker than Roe. For years, Republican state legislators argued it was not necessary to bolster the state law because of Roe, but Roe is all but certain to overturned. As Cuomo said, many Republican moderates would make a pretense of supporting a woman’s right to choose in front of one audience, then, with wink-and-nod, assure other audiences that they would not allow a stronger law to be voted on in the state.

This could give Democrat Anna Kaplan an edge in her bid to defeat Republican Elaine Phillips for state senator.

“Elections have consequences. This is a wake-up call to all of us,” Governor Cuomo told a packed audience at the Teamsters Hall in New Hyde Park, as he signed an executive order requiring insurance companies to cover emergency contraception.

_______________

© 2018 News & Photo Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. For editorial feature and photo information, go to www.news-photos-features.com, email editor@news-photos-features.com. Blogging at www.dailykos.com/blogs/NewsPhotosFeatures.  ‘Like’ us on facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures, Tweet @KarenBRubin

In case there was any doubt, let’s get one thing clear. If Brett Kavanaugh ends up on the Supreme Court—and, as Katha Pollitt wrote, he won’t get there without a political fight—he will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and deny women the guarantee of reproductive rights they currently enjoy. That’s not a possibility or even a probability, it’s a fact. Kavanaugh wouldn’t have been on the Federalist Society’s magic list of nominees acceptable to the right if they weren’t absolutely sure of that, something the WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin explained in a column aimed at supposedly pro-choice Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).

So we know that Republicans want to take away women’s reproductive rights. They say it’s because they want to stop abortions. But here’s the thing: we already know how to do that, and the evidence shows that changing the laws and subjecting women to much greater risk in order to get the abortions they are going to get either way isn’t going to be particularly effective.

First, let’s talk about individual states. Many states have since 2010 passed laws that seek to restrict access to abortion. An Associated Press report compared data from 2010 and 2014 drawn from all 45 states where numbers on abortion are comprehensively collected (California, Maryland, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Wyoming do not compile such data). Which states saw the biggest drop?:

Five of the six states with the biggest declines — Hawaii at 30 percent, New Mexico at 24 percent, Nevada and Rhode Island at 22 percent, Connecticut at 21 percent — have passed no recent laws to restrict abortion clinics or providers.

Know what else those five states have in common? They all accepted the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid, which took effect on January 1, 2014, thus increasing access to contraception after that date. Then-president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, further explained: “Better access to birth control and sex education are the biggest factors in reducing unintended pregnancies. More restrictive abortion laws do not reduce the need for abortions.”

Another report, this one from the Guttmacher Institute, examined similar data from 2011 to 2014 and likewise “did not find a clear and consistent relationship between state restrictions and changes in state abortion rates.” Here’s state by state data from 2010 to 2014 compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court nominee from Russia asset Donald Trump, has the weakest net support from the American public since George W. Bush's bizarre nomination of Harriet Miers, according to new polling from Pew.

The opposition to him among the public at 36 percent is higher than it's been for any of the seven nominees since 2005, even four points higher than for Neil Gorsuch. That suggests the public is becoming increasing distrustful of Trump and, specifically, this nominee. They also have demands of the nomination process: “Overall, 61% of adults—including 70% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans—say that when senators ask about issues like abortion, Supreme Court nominees should be required to answer.”

Breaking that down by party demonstrates why this nominee should not get the support of a single Democratic senator: 63 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners say he should be not be confirmed. This isn't a vote that is going to drive voters away from any Democrat. A whopping 83 percent say this appointment is either very or somewhat important to them personally—and 63 percent clock in at very important—which just reinforces how little there is to lose for Democrats, and why Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski need to be under the gun.

That's particularly true because of the gender breakdown in the poll: 40 percent of women are opposed to his confirmation. Women are going to be paying a lot of attention to how this confirmation process proceeds. They're going to be paying a lot of attention to how their senators vote.

Live in Alaska? You have the power. Sign and send a petition to Sen. Lisa Murkowski: Save Roe v. Wade. Oppose any anti-choice Supreme Court nominee.

Do you live in Maine? You have a powerful voice in stopping Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Click here to write Sen. Collins.

Less than a month after Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement announcement and Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade’s already a hot topic in courtrooms dealing with abortion-adjacent cases. In the legal battle over a Texas fetal burial law that went to trial on Monday, the federal district judge introduced the case by acknowledging the emotional stakes involved—and promising he’ll decide the case based on “current legal precedent, not potential future rulings.” Lest you think that’s unrelated, Judge David Ezra cited the Supreme Court vacancy and “speculation” about Roe’s fate.

It’s the second time Texas has tried to implement a fetal burial law. The first effort, via the Health and Human Services Commission, came in 2016. Another district court judge, Sam Sparks, struck that rule in 2017. He concluded it was vague, caused undue burden on women, and had “high potential” for irreparable harm.”

This second attempt, an actual state law—called Senate Bill 8—requires health clinics and hospitals to bury or cremate fetal tissue from ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, and abortions. Judge Ezra agreed to block February implementation of the law on the basis of the 2017 ruling and recognition that abortion rights proponents arguments were sound.

There’s an obvious, overarching problem: The law treats everything from a blastocyst or embryo to a fetus as a person. It’s an overt effort to deter women from seeking abortion—and to sneakily establish embryos as legal entities deserving of the same treatment as people, a.k.a. an effort to entrench the notion of embryonic personhood.

One woman who lost a pregnancy at 11 weeks and had to have an abortion procedure to remove the pregnancy tissue has already testified. She told the court of how she found herself—immediately pre-procedure, already hooked up to an IV—presented with a choice between hospital and private burial. The form listed her relationship to her “tissue” as “mother.” 

Having a burial disrupted her grieving process: She was forced to treat the loss of a pregnancy as the loss of a person. She had no control over what happened next to the product of her body she hoped would become her child. One can only hope her testimony made an impact. Attorney General Ken Paxton’s statement on the case leaves little room to doubt that the state’s willing to employ whatever rhetoric they find effective, no matter how distant from the truth, to argue for the law’s reasonableness.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to blackmail Democrats over the upcoming vote on Russian asset Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Democrats are responding with a resounding "meh."

Those Democrats are demanding upward of a million pages of documents from Kavanaugh's career, including the years he was working in the often-lawless Bush administration. So there might be something in those documents that McConnell definitely does not want to see brought to light. He's telling Democrats that if they continue to demand these documents, he'll put off the vote to as close to the November midterms as possible, giving them little time to campaign for re-election.

One of McConnell's trusty manservants, John Thune (R-SD) clarified that yes, it is entirely about politics, because it is impossible for a Republican to believe that a senator might want to take their vote on a lifetime appointment to the nation's highest court seriously enough to review their entire record. "To me," Thune said, "it's in their best interest to have that vote done for a lot of their red-state senators who are facing their voters. … One is, you're stuck here, you can't get home. And two, the vote is going to be of significant consequence in a lot of those races. I don't know how it's to their benefit to drag it out."

Democrats are betting that there's a lot in those records that will prove to be of benefit, just like with lower court nominee Ryan Bounds. That's the nominee whose nomination the White House was forced to withdraw Thursday, literally moments before his scheduled vote. A close review of his record demonstrated that he was such a racist asshole that even one Republican had to oppose him. There's also the part about holding this nominee to the same standard as the Senate did with previous nominees, like Elena Kagan whose records as President Obama's solicitor general required an examination of nearly 200,000 records.

Anyway, at least one Democrat isn't particularly intimidated by this threat. "It doesn't bother me either way, whatever they do," Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said. "The vote's going to be taken, sooner or later." Democrats are looking at McConnell's rush to get Kavanaugh seated as evidence that there's probably a larger downside for Republicans in having this nomination drag out than for Democrats. Kavanaugh is already going to be hauling a lot of baggage just by virtue of being nominated by Trump. Every additional crazy thing Trump does between now and then, like proposing to bring Vladimir Putin to the country weeks before the election, is going to pile on. And who knows what bombshells are awaiting from Mueller. McConnell's threat is definitely an empty one.

Abbe Gluck is a very smart health policy analyst, in addition to being a professor of law and faculty director of the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School. So when she says Russian asset Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee poses a threat to the Affordable Care Act, it's worth paying attention.

The threat comes from the Affordable Care Act cases percolating in lower, Trump-friendly courts that are likely to work their way to the Supreme Court. The key things that Gluck says Democrats need to make Brett Kavanaugh answer relate to his "jurisprudence as it relates to health care," but "especially his views about executive power […] particularly because the president and his agencies have been using their powers to sabotage the ACA for more than a year." With the constitutionality of the ACA now in question in the case coming out of Texas (the case in which the Trump administration is refusing to defend the law and in fact arguing that the protections included in the law should be struck down), the leeway Kavanaugh thinks Trump should have in doing that is a critical question.

So that's the first question she wants Democrats to raise: "Should courts strike down entire laws if Congress renders one part of a statute unenforceable?" The Trump administration is unaccountably arguing "yes," a basically unprecedented approach to how federal law works. At issue here is the doctrine of "severability" and what a court should do with the entirety of a statute when part of it is found unconstitutional. Traditionally, it means as little damage as possible to the whole law and deferring to Congress for its intent with the law.

In this case the part of the law in focus is the individual mandate. In the new tax law Congress zeroed out the penalty for the individual mandate, but the rest of the law remains intact. In fact, Republicans have bent over backward to say they don't agree with the Trump administration and the suing states—they want the protections included in the law to be retained. Kavanaugh needs to clarify whether or not he will adhere to the doctrine or try to impose his will on Congress.

Senate Democrats are demanding that Russian asset Donald Trump cough up the huge amount of documents amassed in his Supreme Court nominee's career in public service. For good reason. That nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, has some troubling views on the unitary executive, the untouchable president. He also has served as staff secretary to former President George W. Bush, the guy who lied us into a war and whose administration committed war crimes. Kavanaugh was the guy in charge of what Bush saw on his desk every day, and was in the room when decisions were made. So those documents are worth seeing, and Democrats want them.

As of now, no Democrat has yet had a courtesy meeting with Kavanaugh, though two red-state Democrats up for re-election this year say they'll meet with him. Joe Manchin (WV) has one scheduled next week and Heidi Heitkamp (SD) is in the process of setting one up. The remainder are waiting to see these documents, and are using the "Kagan standard" (because everything having to do with Supreme Court nominations has to be a "standard" or a "rule") as an equivalent.

When Justice Elena Kagan was nominated, she had served as President Obama's solicitor general and thus had reams of documents related to that service. All of that was released, and Obama did not invoke executive privilege to withhold any of it. Democrats are demanding the same of Kavanaugh, led by minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and ranking Judiciary Committee member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

"We want the same procedure that was used for Justice Kagan," Ms. Feinstein said Monday. "That was the Republican procedure, and for some reason there’s opposition to that now."

Now that Roe v. Wade has gone from canon to a likely fatality of the Trump administration, reproductive justice proponents are hustling to get better laws on the books at the state level—and to repeal the laws that Roe made moot, as they’d otherwise go back into effect if Roe falls. They’re also thinking ahead in another way: They’re anticipating the need to provide information about self-managed abortion.

A 2015 article from the Guttmacher Institute reported that between 2011 through August 2015 states enacted a total of 287 new restrictions on abortion care. These laws have been used to persecute women aggressively. Women of color and women living in poverty are most likely to be targeted under such laws. The violations—a.k.a. pretexts—range from failure to report an abortion to fetal homicide. Women who insist they miscarried have nonetheless been convicted and jailed. Mistrust of health care providers and law enforcement both will only get worse if we lose Roe, with good reason. 

Women—especially young women—have already turned to the internet for self-abortion information. During a 32-day period between May and June 2017, people in the United States searched for information about self-abortion more than 200,000 times. 

Those searches likely yielded the only current workaround for self-managing a medical abortion: ordering misoprostol online. Misoprostol is available OTC in many countries and is also prescribed here to treat a variety of conditions. Of course, it’s only one part of the two-drug regimen—mifepristone and misoprostol both—recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The combination is 98 percent effective, but mifepristone is highly regulated; misoprostol alone is 85 percent effective in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. It’s also safe. And far better than nothing.

The Senate Democrats' fight to make Brett Kavanaugh's record in politics public has increased in urgency. Kavanaugh, Russian asset Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, worked for President George W. Bush as both is private secretary and in the Office of Legal Counsel, and Democrats want every document from his entire service revealed. But Republicans are battling just as hard to conceal the records from more than half of Kavanaugh's time in the Bush White House.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) met with White House counsel Tuesday night to strategize on how to cover up those records.

Republicans, including Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) emerged from the meeting saying that the demand for Kavanaugh's records as staff secretary is irrelevant. It's just a "bridge too far," says Cornyn about that request. "He was more or less a traffic cop," in that role. If the records are going to be so mundane and unimportant, then what could possibly be the harm in having them released? What would it hurt? What are Republicans so intent on hiding?

Their arguments are also contradicted by Kavanaugh himself, circa 2006 when he was coming up for confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Kavanaugh then said that his time as staff secretary was particularly "instructive" in his role on the judiciary. "When people ask me which of my prior experiences has been most useful to me as a judge, I tell them that all of them have been useful, and I certainly draw on all of them," Kavanaugh said in materials then released to the committee. "But I also do not hesitate to say that my five and a half years in the White House—and especially my three years as Staff Secretary for President Bush—were the most interesting and in many ways among the most instructive."

Democratic leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) fired off a letter to Grassley Tuesday night reminding him of those words from Kavanaugh, and of Senate Republicans at the time. He points out that in 2006, "Sen. [Orrin] Hatch [R-UT] stated that then-nominee Kavanaugh's backgroud as Staff Secretary 'may prove to be particularly good judicial training.'" He adds that Cornyn "described the position of Staff Secretary as 'a job whose title belies the very serious and important responsibilities that that individual performs." And that Cornyn "reiterated that position two weeks ago when, in detailing Judge Kavanaugh's qualifications to be a Supreme Court Justice, he described the Staff Secretary position as 'a very, very important job.'" He also couldn't resist this reminder to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his words about one of the strangest Supreme Court nominees in recent history, when he "pointed to then-Supreme Court nominee [Harriet] Miers' time as Staff Secretary when detailing her fitness to serve on the Court."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, makes the direct point: "The American people deserve to know who is being nominated and what his record shows. […] They're the ones who will be affected for generations if he is confirmed. What are Republicans and the White House trying to hide?"

Maybe his strong convictions about the power of the president? The power that should never be ceded to such a deeply and completely corrupted president as Trump?

Senate Democrats remain steadfast in their demand that the nomination process for Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court wait until all of his documents from his time with the George W. Bush administration are released. Republicans are still intent on trying to hide what happened during three years of that service, when he was Bush's staff secretary, the person in charge of what the president saw on his desk every day.

That wasn't all he did. He was "also a key part of the president’s speechwriting process, helped put together legislation and worked on drafting and revising executive orders, … and traveled with the president, at points sitting in on meetings between the president and foreign leaders." That all sounds so normal and reasonable, right? So this AP article making it into a "Democrats say, Republicans say" just shows a typical partisan fight, right?

Wrong. There's a lot more here to what Kavanaugh was doing in those three years as Bush's staff secretary—2003-06—that is directly relevant to Kavanaugh's views now about the power of the president. One of those things is torture. Sen. Patrick Leahy has the goods on that, a "2004 email showing Bush's Deputy Nat Sec Advisor wanted then-Staff Sec. Kavanaugh looped in on spinning the torture memo," from a previous freedom of information act request. As Leahy tweeted, it's "a drop in the bucket" in terms of the documents being withheld, "and IN THAT DROP they are discussing TORTURE."

In an op-ed in The New York Times, Leahy expands on that, and the fact that the last time Kavanaugh appeared before the Senate, in his 2006 confirmation hearing to the D.C. Circuit, he didn't tell the truth about torture and about the Bush administration's abuses of power he was privy to.

Senator Dick Durbin and I asked about his knowledge of several Bush-era scandals, including warrantless wiretapping, torture and detainee treatment. Judge Kavanaugh testified that he had no knowledge of such issues until he read about them in the newspaper. But a year after his confirmation, press reports indicated that he had participated in a heated discussion in the White House over the legality of detainee policies.

Republicans are worried enough about the potential for defection by one or two Republican senators that they're blatantly concern-trolling red-state Democrats up for re-election this year. None of those Democrats have weighed in yet on their position, though a few of them have set up meetings with the nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

When when it comes to their Republican opponents, there's no subtlety in trying to force their hands. Republican Patrick Morrisey—Joe Manchin's opponent in West Virginia—says that "the longer Joe Manchin waits [to announce a position], the more it's clear he's only in this to appease his liberal donors." Yes, that huge swath of liberals that's propping up Manchin. Morrisey might want to consider instead his backing of a law suit that could end up taking away health insurance from tens of thousands of West Virginians, definitely an issue in this state—particularly with a Supreme Court nominee likely to use his vote to end protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

Heidi Heitkamp's opponent Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) is full of advice for her, saying "she has no choice but to vote for Brett Kavanaugh." Which is as ridiculous as his advice for her: "The best thing she could do for herself politically would be to announce her support for him very early and not have to be viewed through the cynical lens of a last-minute trick." Heitkamp's not biting: "The only timeline I have is that I have to watch the hearings," she says. Likewise, Manchin isn't taking the challenge, either. "I think after the hearings I'm going to know," he told reporters, "because I'll have another meeting, probably, if there are any discrepancies from his first meeting and the hearings." Ditto for Claire McCaskill (D-MO): "I'm not going to speak about it until after I’ve learned more and have made up my mind."

As for potentially wavering Republicans, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski is giving leadership the most headaches. She's delayed meeting Kavanaugh, saying she wants to focus on a spending bill she's shepherding to the floor this month. She also says she wants a two-hour meeting with him and will probably ask for a second, post-hearing meeting. "I have to do my own due diligence as a senator. And if that means that I take longer than others, I'm okay with that," she said. "I don't make any apologies for being too thorough."

Live in Alaska? You have the power. Sign and send a petition to Sen. Lisa Murkowski: Save Roe v. Wade. Oppose any anti-choice Supreme Court nominee.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) has been making a lot of noise about opposing Russian asset Donald Trump, giving impassioned floor speeches and making vague threats, but when it comes down to actual action he's been missing. His voting record attests to that: he's with Trump more than 80 percent of the time. But now Flake is missing in action in the Senate, carrying on with the plans he had made for August before Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decided the Senate would work through the month instead of recessing as is tradition.

Right now Flake is in Zimbabwe, monitoring that country's presidential election, and making some pointed statements about it. He praised president Emmerson Mnangagwa's "commitment to transparency and universally accepted standards for free and fair elections" following the nearly 40 years of Robert Mugabe's strong-man rule. Mnangagwa, Mugabe's successor is allowing elections for the first time in four decades. "As the ballots are counted and the election results are determined, I urge the Zimbabwean government to remain committed to peaceful, fair, and democratic reform," Flake said.

Which could be Flake's not-so subtle message to Trump, albeit a little big of a passive aggressive one. In fact, what Flake appears to be doing is resisting Trump in absentia. James Hasson, a writer at the Federalist, reports that Flake is deliberately staying away from the Senate and specifically the Judiciary Committee on which he serves, to prevent McConnell from carrying through his August plans—shoving through as many judges as possible. He's also, Hasson says, purposefully tying up the Senate so that Vice President "has to stay in DC to break ties instead of campaign for R candidates."

You have to consider the source here, a far-right Trump supporter who is no fan of Flake. He is railing against Flake for "screwing the GOP caucus (and conservative causes generally, by slowing pace of confirmations)." And he's reporting this all on the word of anonymous Senate staffers who are supposedly unhappy with Flake. If Flake is indeed planning to disappear for the month of August, fine.

If he's doing it to resist Trump, he do more good by doing his resistance in the Senate where his opposition could possibly help by getting Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to put their votes where their mouths are. But again, all this could be a far-righter's attempt to pressure Flake. Which means he's not going to be anyone's savior here, and we have to keep up the pressure on, particularly when it comes to the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

Live in Alaska? You have the power. Sign and send a petition to Sen. Lisa Murkowski: Save Roe v. Wade. Oppose any anti-choice Supreme Court nominee.

Do you live in Maine? You have a powerful voice in stopping Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Click here to write Sen. Collins.

Russian asset Donald Trump was going out on absolutely no limbs in nominating Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court to fill the seat being vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy. For one thing, Kavanaugh did him a real solid six years ago when he helped Trump keep workers at one of his casinos from joining a union.

Kavanaugh was one of three Republican-appointed judges on a D.C. Circuit panel who voted unanimously in 2012 to set aside an order from the National Labor Relations Board to force bargaining between Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City and the United Auto Workers.

In 2007, workers at the casino voted in favor of joining the UAW, 324 to 149. But because the UAW and supportive federal and state lawmakers had held a media event before the vote, the Trump Plaza asked the NLRB to throw out the election. They argued the event had been tainted by the media attention and that the appearance of elected officials "could make workers think the labor board wanted them to unionize."

The dispute eventually reached the D.C. Circuit, and there Kavanaugh did what Kavanaugh would do on the Supreme Court—help Trump out and screw working people. "Kavanaugh, along with Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch—and Roberts along for the ride—will comprise the most radical, anti-labor-law Supreme Court in my lifetime," said University of Wyoming law professor Michael Duff, who served as an attorney for the NLRB.

Not that there was any question of that. But what else is Kavanaugh going to be willing to help Trump out on? Like avoiding an investigation into conspiracy with a foreign adversary to throw a presidential election? With his track record, Kavanaugh is just the man for that job.

Senate Democrats have been unofficially boycotting meeting with Russian asset Real Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, pending an agreement from Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley to obtain all of the documents relating to his service with President George W. Bush. Republicans have agreed to provide his documents from his service to the legal counsel office for Bush, but not for his service from 2003-06 as Bush's staff secretary, a time when he was involved with other senior administrative staff in things like figuring out how to spin torture.

Republicans are fighting the document request through a highly political process—not through the National Archives—but through Bush's legal team. By his "legal team,"we mean Bill Burck. Bill Burck "also has close ties to President Trump through his current representation of Stephen K. Bannon, Reince Priebus and Donald McGahn," as Sen. Chuck Schumer has pointed out. Yeah, the guy who is choosing which material to present for Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination is representing these guys in the Russia probe. No problem there, right?

Since Republicans have absolutely no shame in this, Democrats have decided to go directly to the source. Schumer and ranking Judiciary member Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) have announced that they will meet with Kavanaugh and ask him specifically to provide the records.

"In addition to questioning Judge Kavanaugh on health care, women's freedom, presidential power and other issues, Senate Democrats intend to demand that he call for and support the release of all of his files from his time in the Bush White House," a senior Democratic aide told the Washington Post. "Democrats will urge Judge Kavanaugh to ask the National Archives and President Bush to adhere to the same standard that was met for Justice [Elena] Kagan’s confirmation."

They've also made the request directly to Bush, telling him their "concern is that the Archivist of the United States, who is responsible for guiding the review and release of responsive documents, would be cut out of this new process being contemplated by Senate Republicans."

If, as is glaringly apparent, there is stuff to hide in Kavaugh's record, then they might have stronger footing in blowing up the issue having agreed to meet with him. It will also give them the ability to say they met with him, and they didn't like what they heard.

But none of this should prevent them from doing what needs to be done: refusing to attend any confirmation hearings for Kavanaugh. They need to deploy the McConnell doctrine here: no confirmations until after the election.

Once in a while, a story happens along that is so blatant and awful, you couldn’t use it in fiction because it would be deemed too far over the top.  The current scandal with the Federal Emergency Management Agency perfectly captures the ripple effect of sexism and objectification of women.

Corey Coleman, the former head of human resources at FEMA, is being investigated after charges of sexual harassment and retaliating against women who said no.  Even more importantly, he’s charged with creating a culture specifically designed to cater to harassers:

Starting in 2015, investigators said, Coleman hired many men who were friends and college fraternity brothers and women he met at bars and on online dating sites. He then promoted some of them to roles throughout the agency without going through proper federal hiring channels.

Coleman then transferred some of the women in and out of departments, some to regional offices, so his friends could try to have sexual relationships with them, according to employees’ statements during interviews with investigators.

Our culture still has this notion of access to women’s bodies as one of the perks of power for men.  From his point of view (which is usually the only one we see), it’s portrayed as harmless fun. We see it in every movie and music video where the guy flashing cash is surrounded by scantily clad, submissive women.  We see it in a black-tie “charity fundraiser” where the only women allowed are scantily clad hostesses who have to sign a non-disclosure agreement first.  We see it when a CBS showrunner casually discusses trying to cast a particular actress because an executive is hoping to have sex with her.

This is toxic in any environment, but FEMA isn’t just any agency.  It’s supposed to be a lifeline for people in the aftermath of major catastrophes.  In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, we saw how dangerous it was to leave FEMA in the hands of people with no expertise in managing emergencies.  Now we’re told that Coleman routinely passed over women and men with actual qualifications, so he could live out his fantasy of reducing women to a sexual service.

Suddenly FEMA’s massive failure around Hurricane Maria makes a lot more sense.  

The report reveals that FEMA-funded emergency-supply warehouses were emptied from prior hurricanes and never restocked; FEMA staff were under-qualified to handle emergency management for an entire island; and FEMA’s satellite-operated cell phones did not function because they were not wired to operate in the Caribbean.

Overall, emergency management in Puerto Rico was a logistical nightmare. FEMA’s slow response time to assist Puerto Rico, coupled with poorly managed communications among federal agencies, exacerbated Hurricane Maria’s destruction. The death count is up to 4,645. While there was not any malintent against Puerto Rico, FEMA’s lack of preparation is a testament to the U.S.’s colonial relationship to its territories.

No “malintent against Puerto Rico”— just the damage that happens when only the powerful are allowed to matter.

As always, WOW is a collaborative effort.  Many thanks to Besame, BMScott, elenacarlena, SandraLLAP, Clio2, and the rest of the WOW crew for links and discussion.

Reproductive Rights:

An Anti-Abortion Initiative Just Got on the Ballot in the Nation’s Most Pro-Choice State: Following Alabama and West Virginia, Oregon will weigh new limits on abortion.

Brazil is holding hearings to reconsider its restrictive abortion laws.

Immigration is a reproductive justice issue.

Workplace and Economic Issues:

Lara Bazelon on lawyering while female.

Hotel housekeepers call for “panic buttons.”

Secret network helps abused migrant domestic workers in Lebanon.

How the bail industry targets women of color.

Violence and Harassment:

Lawmaker accused of abuse introduces a bill to drug test victims of domestic violence.

Illinois state Rep. resigning after scandal involving revenge porn against his ex-girlfriend.  

The body of Olivia Lone Bear was found in North Dakota, as Native women face a crisis of murders and disappearances.

A Silicon Valley startup’s “sexually charged office culture” included a “designated area” for masturbation and a chief technology officer who took his pants off in a meeting with one of his employees, according to a lawsuit filed this week.

A writer tried talking to Twitter harassers in order to study them.  It went about like you’d expect.

Man stomps a woman's windshield out after she declines to share phone number.

Black Alabama woman arrested after “standing her ground” and shooting her abusive husband.

CBS is keeping Les Moonves as CEO while harassment complaints against him are investigated.  Moonves did step down from an anti-harassment commission.  Christina Cauterucci has some thoughts on this latest #MeToo scandal, and on how how harassers have twisted the meaning of “No means no:”

This justification for Moonves’ alleged abusive behavior cleverly transfers responsibility from the accused harasser to the people forced to endure his harassment while attempting to preserve their dignity and career potential. Under the “no means no” school of consent, any sexual indignity may be ethically visited upon someone until the exact moment she utters a clear and convincing “no.” When abusers try to prove consent by saying it wasn’t not given, they can easily shroud physical violations under the cover of “she never said no,” and people tasked with evaluating allegations can convince themselves that no one can really say what the alleged victim wanted at the time.

...

The world that “no means no” imagines is one in which women are complicit in their own abuse merely for existing in the same place and time as someone who wants to abuse them. It asks people, mostly women, to be constantly on guard in the presence of those who might shove an unexpected tongue down their throats at a friendly meal or slide a hand up their skirts at a business meeting—as two of the allegations against Moonves claim—lest they be groped by surprise before they’re able to muster a “no.”

Around the World:

Top medical school in Japan reportedly lowered women’s test scores as a “necessary evil.”

Kosovo rape survivors to receive compensation.

The silent women candidates in Pakistan.

In France, catcallers and street harassers can now be fined.

Akashinga (‘The Brave Ones’), is the first exclusively female Zimbabwean anti-poaching unit.  The women come from poor villages near the nature reserve that they now guard. They include widows, victims of sexual violence, abandoned mothers, and former prostitutes — women treated as low-status before, but they now enjoy considerable respect and self-respect.

Uncategorizable:

Incel demands that women “stop appropriating male culture” because he’s sure women can’t really be depressed.

Action items:

Letter to Twitter: stop aiding anti-choice lies.

      I’ve always gotten a naughty pleasure out of asking questions you’re not supposed to ask.  I thought of this one at a session of Netroots Nation last Saturday morning, August 4, 2018, “No Choice: A World Without Roe”.   One of the panelists, Erin Matson of Reproaction reproaction.org said it was time to quit being defensive, and go on offense.  I’m pretty good at giving offense, and I suggested that every man running for office or up for the Supreme Court ought to be asked, “Didn’t you ever have a condom break?” 

     Depending on the forum, you might get shouted down.  That would bring up the matter of why that question should be out of bounds.  If you’d be allowed to say anything else, that’s the next thing to ask.  If the person just says the question is inappropriate, a follow-up is how does he square that with his position to abortion.  

     I doubt anybody will get a chance to ask Brett Kavanaugh this question, though I’m going to suggest it to both my Senators (Cornyn and Cruz).  But that leaves us carte blanche to imagine what he and a whole lot of other folks would say if they had to answer the question.

     Donald Trump would likely say he never bothers to use a condom, and if the woman gets pregnant he’d have Michael Cohen arrange an abortion and a payoff as part of a nondisclosure agreement.  

     Clarence Thomas might have said he’d accuse the woman of trying to prevent his anointment to the Supreme Court for the basest of political motives.  He’d call it a lynching.

     For a nod to “balance” fill in the blank about what Anthony Weiner would say.

     How about John Roberts?  He’d be a great poster boy for Abstinence Only.  I could believe he was a virgin until he got married at age 41.  I’ll give him credit for having that much self control, or being that repressed.  If he really has that much self control, he should realize he’s very unusual and shouldn’t expect most of us to follow his life path.  He might never have had any reason to use a condom.  Mrs. Roberts was also 41 when they married, in 1996.  Their two children are adopted.  If I remember correctly, the older one was a toddler when Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2005.  

     And Brett Kavanaugh?  I can imagine him wanting to overturn not just Roe v Wade but also Griswold v Connecticut.  If it were up to him, he’d make extramarital sex illegal, require proof of being married to buy condoms or any contraceptive, and maybe plead the Fifth Amendment if he had to answer the question.  

     Here are links to the people and organizations:

• You can watch #NoChoice at publicsquaremedia.org/NoChoice  Public Square produced the video.  For information on the organization contact Colby Kelly at kellyc@publicsquaremedia.org .  
• Melissa Harris-Perry was the moderator.  http://melissaharrisperry.com/ She founded the Anna Julia Cooper Center  http://ajccenter.wfu.edu/
• Carmen Berkley  https://www.netrootsnation.org/profile/carmen-berkley/ is Managing Director for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund  www.weareplannedparenthoodaction.org/Donate‎ 
• Amy Irvin represented the New Orleans Abortion Fund  https://www.neworleansabortionfund.org/
• Erin Matson co-founded Reproaction  https://reproaction.org/ The web site has information on a do it yourself at home abortion using misoprostol.
• Aimee Thorne-Thomsen represented Sistersong  https://www.sistersong.net/

Brett Kavanaugh, Russian asset Donald Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court, has been publicly auditioning for the job for years, taking every opportunity to appear as if he's a moderate living in the 21st century. But it's his writings that show his true colors.

For example, this anecdote related in a Washington Poststory, when he spoke to Yale's, his alma mater, Black Law Students Association about how he was "concerned that African Americans and other minorities were being shut out of coveted clerkships with federal judges like him" and then gave his email and phone number out, encouraging the students to apply. He did hire two African American Yalies for clerks at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. One of his former clerks says "It was important to him that everyone have access."

Which looks really great on camera when related to the Republican Senate Judiciary Committee in confirmation hearings. What doesn't look so great is all the stuff Kavanaugh has done over the years as a judge, things like uphold South Carolina's voter suppression efforts. Or things that he wrote previously, like a 1999 case when he was in private practice and called a government program for Native Hawaiians a "naked racial-spoils system." Writing about that case in a newspaper column, Kavanaugh invoked Antonin Scalia on a case in racial preferences in hiring: ­"Under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. . . . In the eyes of government, we are just one race here."

"That kind of statement," says Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, "really signals that he will bring an anti-civil-rights agenda to the Supreme Court and fails to recognize the current reality of being a person of color in this country and the history of discrimination." Giving talks to black law students and hiring people of color as clerks isn't indicative of "Kavanaugh's worldview" she notes, not given that he's spoken to the right-wing Federalist Society dozens of times.

Kavanaugh would tip the court on civil rights, on affirmative action, on voting rights as well as on abortion and healthcare. He's up for that pivotal seat, held by Anthony Kennedy, that has tended to swing in favor of a more just society. "He's not someone for whom you have to guess about," said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Quietly and determinedly, Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii has become one of the fiercest voices among the still too-small cadre of women senators. She's doing it in the nomination hearings of all five of the committees she sits on, starting with these questions.

"Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?"

"Have you ever faced discipline or entered into a settlement related to this kind of conduct?"

Hirono started asking the questions—which she will also pose to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh—seven months ago. She spoke with Huffington Post's Jennifer Bendery about how the Me Too movement has forced the issue into "a legitimate area of inquiry" for those who would serve in the highest levels of government. It's particularly true given the man who is nominating them, a serial abuser and assaulter. She's asked that question of nearly 100 nominees, according to HuffPo's count, putting the nominees on the spot often in front of their spouses and children.

Awkward for them, perhaps, but for Hirono? "Not anymore," she told Bendery. "The questions have never been asked before. And why is that? Because it would take a woman to ask questions like that, I would say." She's doing it because she knew there was "every potential" for her colleagues in the Senate to entirely ignore the Me Too movement roiling around them.

Those questions will have extra resonance when posed to Kavanaugh, for while he hasn't been accused of abusing his power by any women, he clerked for and has remained close to former U.S. Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, who retired last year after 15 women accused him of sexual harassment. Kavanaugh was there, working with Kozinski, during some of the alleged incidents. What did Kavanaugh know while he was there? What did he do in response? Another former clerk, law professor turned romance novelist Courtney Milan, says Kavanaugh had to know because of his close working relationship with the judge. "They worked together on hiring. Kozinski regularly used belittling and demeaning language in hiring with us as his clerks. I cannot attest to whether he used it in Kennedy screening, but it would surprise me if he didn't." (The "Kennedy screening" refers to Kozinski's being basically a feeder of clerks to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.)

Russian asset Donald Trump's pick to go to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, has some problematic views of executive authority and the untouchability of the president. Those views seem to apply just to the office of the president, however, and not the government of the executive branch. Because he wouldn't be a Federalist Society-endorsed nominee if he didn't believe that government should not exist to protect our health, welfare, or safety—not if it means infringing in anyway on corporate America's profits.

For example, in a dissent last year in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Kavanaugh wrote that agencies should not provide rules on any "major social or economic activities" unless they are specifically directed by Congress to do so. Some of his examples: "controls on cigarettes, banning physician-assisted suicide and imposing rules on greenhouse gas emitters." In a 2016 Harvard Law Review article, Kavanaugh advised judges to "seek the best reading of the statute" in restraining agencies, to "help prevent a runaway executive branch that exploits ambiguities in governing statutes to pursue its broad policy aims, even in situations where Congress has not enacted legislation embodying those policies."

That, of course, was in 2016 when it was the Obama administration attempting to govern with a totally dysfunctional Congress. Kavanaugh "has rejected a wide variety of federal regulations and sought to rein in agencies, according to an Associated Press review of his 12 years on the D.C. appeals court, along with other writings and speeches. He also has displayed skepticism of independent federal agencies that are not answerable to the president." Again, back to executive authority. There's an inherent contradiction here highlighted by the example of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In a case challenging the CFPB's constitutionality, Kavanaugh argued in dissent that the way Congress had explicitly designed the bureau—there's the Congress, putting it down in statute—was unconstitutional because it didn't give the executive (in this case Trump) the authority to fire its director. He lost that battle, with the full court upholding the bureau's structure.

Kavanaugh is also opposed to the FCC regulating net neutrality, of course. Not at all shockingly, there's one area of government intervention he champions: he argued that the Trump administration was right to deny a 17-year-old immigrant's request for an abortion. "The Government has permissible interests in favoring fetal life, protecting the best interests of a minor, and refraining from facilitating abortion," he wrote. The Government just doesn't have a permissible interest in protecting the environment or an open internet. Uteruses and vaginas, okay to interfere. Industrial pollution? Nope—not the government's job.