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Collins has voted to put more than 100 Trump judges on the bench [1]
['Allison Stevens']
Date: 2019-06-21 09:34:44+00:00
Sen. Susan Collins cast a rare vote in opposition to one of President Trump’s judicial nominees this week – an unusual defection from a senator who has largely supported her party’s efforts to push the federal judiciary to the political right.
On Wednesday, Collins joined Democrats in voting against the nomination of Matthew Kacsmaryk to the Northern District Court of Texas.
Citing Kacsmaryk’s “alarming bias” against the rights of LGBTQ Americans and a disregard for Supreme Court precedents, Collins was the only Republican senator to vote against Kacsmaryk, deputy general counsel at a nonprofit religious law firm in Texas.
Collins — a self-styled centrist — has now voted against four of the president’s judicial nominees, according to Quorum, a public affairs software company. That’s more than any other Republican in the Senate — but not enough to satisfy progressives, who say her opposition to the president’s judicial nominees is too little, too late.
The Maine senator has voted to put more than 100 of Trump’s nominees on the federal bench, dozens more nominees than President Obama had moved through the Senate at the same point in his administration. Many of these judges — including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — have records in opposition to causes Collins says she supports, such as reproductive rights, health care coverage for people with preexisting conditions, environmental protections, and equality for people who identify as LGBTQ.
On Wednesday, she voted to confirm three more Trump nominees who, according to People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy group, have troubling records on issues such as reproductive health, marriage equality, and racial equity.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) credits the GOP’s progress in its efforts to reshape the judiciary to a rules change he engineered that has allowed his party to confirm nominees “in a fraction of the time it would have otherwise taken.” The effort is paying off, he told an anti-abortion group earlier this month. “I think that’s the way we have the longest impact on our country, and the most positive way into the future.”
‘Newfound’ opposition
Progressives see opportunism in the timing of Collins’ “newfound” opposition to Trump’s judicial nominees — and say it doesn’t mean much anyway.
“She is most often on board when she’s worked it out with her majority that her vote won’t affect the outcome,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, told reporters Tuesday.
Apart from Kacsmaryk, Collins has voted against three other Trump nominees, all this spring. In March, she voted against Chad Readler, who has argued to strike down the Affordable Care Act, including its protections for people with pre-existing conditions. And in May, she opposed Wendy Vitter, a vocal opponent of women’s reproductive rights, and Howard Nielson, an opponent of marriage equality.
As with Kacsmaryk, Collins was the only Republican to vote against each nominee — and each was confirmed in spite of her opposition. Readler now sits on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Vitter on the Eastern District Court of Louisiana; and Nielson on the District Court of Utah.
Until Readler, Collins hadn’t cast a single vote against a Trump judicial nominee.
Daniel Goldberg, legal director at the Alliance for Justice, a coalition of progressive advocacy groups, said Collins, who faces what is expected to be a tough bid for a fifth term next year, is coming under political pressure in Maine. But, he added, a few “isolated votes can’t hide the fact that she’s been a rubber stamp for Trump’s judicial nominees.”
Marge Baker, executive vice president at People for the American Way, agreed. “She’s obviously taking heat for her vote on Kavanaugh,” she said. “She’s trying to clean up her act, but it’s not good enough.”
Collins’ office did not respond to a request for comment.
Spokeswoman Annie Clark told HuffPost that her boss “does not consider the nominee’s personal beliefs, political or otherwise” and instead focuses on whether he or she can “set aside these beliefs and rule fairly and impartially.” She added that Collins has supported more than 90 percent of nominees appointed by previous presidents — both Democratic and Republican.
But Baker said these nominees should be voted down not simply because of their personal or political views but because of their hostility to Americans’ fundamental legal rights.
Collins, she added, shouldn’t be able to get away with saying she supports certain issues while voting for judges who oppose them. “She just can’t have it both ways. Lifetime appointments to the courts have an enormous impact on people’s daily lives, and she’s voted in lock-step for virtually all of them.”
Alex Stack, spokesperson for the Maine Democratic Party, said Democrats will make that point — as well as her overall support for Trump — in their campaign to unseat Collins in 2020. “It’s going to play a big part of our conversation,” he said. “We’re definitely going to … make sure people know about that.”
Collins voted in line with Trump’s position 77 percent of the time in the last Congress, but has voted only 31 percent of the time with Trump so far in this Congress, according to the analytical firm FiveThirtyEight.
Political scientist Sandy Maisel, a professor at Colby College, suspects that Democratic efforts to link Collins to Trump, in part through her vote for Kavanaugh, will be effective, but that talking about lower-level nominees won’t, because few Mainers follow politics at that level. “I don’t think anything other than Kavanaugh will get any traction at all.”
But Stack says activists are “getting really fired up over this stuff,” particularly in the wake of a spate of recent state laws restricting access to abortion. “People are starting to understand a bit more — or just paying a bit more attention.”
(Photo: Getty Images)
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[1] Url:
https://mainebeacon.com/collins-has-voted-to-put-more-than-100-trump-judges-on-the-bench/
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