Washington, D.C. — After President Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, issued the following statement:
This nomination is key to President Trump’s plan to strip health care protections from millions of people through the courts. After the American people stopped him in Congress, Trump needs a justice who will play along with his attempt to gut the Affordable Care Act through frivolous political lawsuits, and he’s found the right person for the job. This nomination is also payback for the hardline anti-choice activists who have defended his disgusting misogyny no matter what. Trump chose Kavanaugh from a list of preapproved, guaranteed votes to gut and overturn Roe v. Wade.
Even from that list, Kavanaugh is an offensive choice. Kavanaugh would bring all of Trump’s worst qualities to the Supreme Court for decades to come. In a disturbing echo of Trump’s policies toward immigrant families, Kavanaugh tried to force a detained immigrant woman to carry her pregnancy against her will, using anti-choice activist code of “abortion on demand” in his official written opinion. Kavanaugh has proven himself to be a political operative when it comes to undermining the Affordable Care Act through frivolous cases and opinions. He has also written with shocking deference to presidential power and immunity, which raises the alarming but wholly legitimate question of whether this is one more effort by President Trump to obstruct justice for himself and his associates. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was right: Kavanaugh’s paper trail is a horror show and flatly disqualifies him.
To ram through a Trump loyalist nominee and reshape the entire court this way would be an outrageous partisan power grab against all Americans, especially women. Trump is trying to rig the system on an unprecedented scale, eliminating the last check on his abuses of power, and casting his cloud of corruption over the entire court by appointing the deciding vote on his own criminal investigations.
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