President Donald Trump has nominated career diplomat David Hale to be the next under secretary of state for political affairs. 

Hale has been serving as U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan since 2015. Before that he was the ambassador to Lebanon and Jordan. 

He has also served in Tunisia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Nations. 

In Washington, Hale served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Israel, Egypt and the Levant; director for Israel-Palestinian Affairs and executive assistant to former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.

He speaks Arabic, is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and a native of New Jersey.
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Battle lines began to form Tuesday in Washington for the upcoming Senate confirmation fight over President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, federal Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Republicans have embraced Kavanaugh as a nominee who could shift the Supreme Court in a more conservative direction for a generation. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee may not have to wait too long for controversial cases if he is confirmed to the job, with disputes involving abortion, immigration, gay rights, voting rights and transgender troops possibly heading toward the justices soon.

Republicans are hoping Brett Kavanaugh, the conservative U.S. appeals court judge selected on Monday by Trump to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, will be confirmed by the Senate before the next Supreme Court term opens in October.

There are no blockbusters among the 38 cases already on the docket for the justices, but they could add disputes on controversial issues being appealed from lower courts.

Abortion

Legal battles are developing over state laws restricting abortion including one in Arkansas that effectively bans medication-induced abortions. The justices in May opted not to intervene in a case challenging that law, waiting instead for lower courts to rule, but it could return to them in the future.

Other abortion-related cases could reach the court within two years.

These involve laws banning abortions at early stages of pregnancies, including Iowa’s prohibition after a fetal heartbeat is detected. There is litigation arising from plans by certain states including Louisiana and Kansas to stop reimbursements under the Medicaid insurance program for the poor for Planned Parenthood, a national abortion provider.

There also are challenges to state laws imposing difficult-to-meet regulations on abortion providers such as having formal ties, called admitting privileges, at a local hospital.

Kavanaugh’s judicial record on abortion is thin, although last year he was on a panel of judges that issued an order preventing a 17-year-old illegal immigrant detained in Texas by U.S. authorities from immediately obtaining an abortion.

Gay Rights

Another issue expected to return to the court is whether certain types of businesses can refuse service to gay couples because of religious objections to same-sex marriage.

The high court in June sided, on narrow legal grounds, with a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for two men because of his Christian beliefs, but sidestepped the larger question of whether to allow broad religious-based exemptions to anti-discrimination laws.

That issue could be back before the justices as soon as the court’s next term in a case involving a Washington state Christian florist who similarly spurned a gay couple.

Kennedy, who wrote the baker ruling, cast decisive votes backing gay rights four times, most notably in 2015 when the court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. It is not known how Kavanaugh would vote on those issues as he has not been involved in any gay rights cases during his 12 years as a judge.

Transgender People in the Military

Trump’s bid to ban transgender people from the military has been challenged in lower courts. That issue could make its way to the Supreme Court.

After lower courts blocked Trump’s ban last year, he announced in March he would endorse Defense Secretary James Mattis’ plan to restrict the military service of transgender people who have a condition called gender dysphoria. Trump’s administration has asked courts to allow that policy to go into effect, but so far to no avail.

Sharon McGowan, a lawyer with gay rights group Lambda Legal, said she saw no evidence Kavanaugh would be any less conservative on gay and transgender rights than Trump’s other appointee to the court, Neil Gorsuch.

Immigration

On immigration, litigation is continuing over Trump’s plan to rescind a program created under Democratic former President Barack Obama that protected from deportation hundreds of thousands of young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.

Lower courts blocked Trump’s plan to scrap the program.

Congress has failed to agree on a plan to replace it.

Gerrymandering

Kavanaugh could have to deal with cases involving a practice called partisan gerrymandering in which state legislators redraw electoral maps to try to cement their own party in power. In June, the justices avoided a broad ruling on whether partisan gerrymandering violates the constitutional rights of voters and whether federal judges can intervene to rectify it.

Democrats have said Republican gerrymandering has helped Trump’s party keep control of the U.S. House of Representatives and various state legislatures.

Kennedy previously kept his conservative colleagues from closing the door to litigation in federal court challenging partisan gerrymandering.

The partisan gerrymandering case most likely to return to the Supreme Court involves claims that Republican legislators in North Carolina manipulated the boundaries of the state’s 13 U.S. House districts to ensure lopsided wins for the party.

Attorney Paul Smith of the Campaign Legal Center, which represents the North Carolina plaintiffs, said they had been focused on trying to convince Kennedy to rule in their favor, and now will try to convince Chief Justice John Roberts, seen as the next-most-moderate of the conservative justices. Smith viewed Kavanaugh as likely voting with the court’s most conservative justices to reject gerrymandering challenges.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, is taking his first step Tuesday toward securing his place on the high court, when he begins meeting with senators to shore up support for his nomination ahead of a major confirmation battle.

In what is likely to be one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency, Trump selected Kavanaugh to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.

“There is no one in America more qualified for this position, or more deserving,” the president said of Kavanaugh during Monday night’s prime-time television announcement from the White House East Room. He called Kavanaugh a “brilliant jurist” who has “devoted his life to public service.”

Kavanaugh, a 53-year-old conservative-leaning federal judge for the past 12 years, is no stranger to executive branch politics and controversy.

Prior to his time as a judge he oversaw an investigation into the death of a deputy counsel for President Bill Clinton. It was ruled a suicide, but conspiracy theorists were not so certain. Kavanaugh also did preliminary work that led to Clinton’s impeachment for an affair with a White House intern. And he worked on the vote recount in the state of Florida that made George W. Bush president. After that he became a staff secretary for Bush, often traveling with the president.

Swift partisan reaction

Kavanaugh’s selection was met with predictable reaction from both Republicans and Democrats.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised the appellate judge as “an impressive” nominee who is “extremely well qualified” to sit on the nation’s highest court.

Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold hearings on Kavanaugh’s nomination before it goes to a vote before the full Senate, echoed McConnell’s sentiments, calling him a “superb mainstream candidate worthy of the Senate’s consideration.”

Concerns that Kavanaugh will join with the court’s other four conservative members to overturn Rove versus Wade, the Supreme Court’s ruling that legalized abortion in the United States, prompted Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to announce he would try to defeat his nomination “with everything I have.”

Outside the Supreme Court building, scores of demonstrators led by Democratic party Senators Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, protested Kavanaugh’s selection. The two Democrats cited Kavanaugh’s written opinion that a president should not be subject to civil litigation or criminal prosecution while in office in opposing his nomination.

Observers believe if Special Counsel Robert Mueller tries to compel the president to testify in his investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible links to Russia, or even bring charges against the president, the issue will go all the way to the Supreme Court, which could return to its 5-4 conservative majority if Kavanaugh is confirmed.

‘Humbled’

Kavanaugh, whose wife and two daughters were with him Monday night, said he was “deeply humbled” by the nomination. He described how his mother was a trailblazer who went to law school, became a prosecutor and then a trial judge. His father went to law school at night, he added.

“Tomorrow I begin meeting with members of the Senate,” he said. “I will tell each senator I revere the constitution. … If confirmed by the Senate, I will keep an open mind in every case.”

With Republicans hoping to confirm a justice before the court resumes its session in October, as well as prior to the upcoming midterm congressional election in November, many perceived the timing as critical. “Trump did not move too fast in naming a nominee,” said Trevor Burrus, a research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.

What is almost certain — and those across the political spectrum agree — is that Kavanaugh’s selection will spark a major confirmation battle in the U.S. Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow 51-49 majority and opposition Democrats say they will fight to prevent the high court from swinging further to the right.

A handful of Senate Democrats running for re-election in states that Trump won handily in 2016 could face a difficult vote on the court nominee, potentially providing Republicans with an additional buffer if they decide to support the president.

Kennedy was often a member of five-to-four majority decisions on the high court. Those included a number of high-profile cases, including same-sex marriage and upholding a woman’s right to an abortion.

No middle position

Kennedy’s departure “leaves the court in a calcified state of a hardened left and right with nobody in that middle position,” says Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University constitutional law professor.

“Most of the time Kennedy swung to the conservative side, especially on questions of the limits of congressional power, the First Amendment, and the Second Amendment,” Burrus, who also is managing editor of the Cato Supreme Court Review, tells VOA. “He swung to the other side on the question of gay rights and abortion, and those are the particular issues that concern those on the left.”

The Supreme Court, sitting atop one of the three branches of American government, ”has grown in importance over the past few decades,” Burrus said. “This is partially due to the cases it has been asked to decide, such as the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, and it is partially due to the divided nature of American politics.”

Unlike presidents or members of Congress, however, Supreme Court justices in the United States do not have terms — they usually serve until they resign or die, giving presidents who select them a judicial legacy sometimes lasting decades beyond their terms in office.

Kennedy, who is 81, had been nominated for the court by President Ronald Reagan in 1987.

Trump, just days after becoming president in January of last year in a similar televised event, selected the reliably conservative Neil Gorsuch to succeed Antonin Scalia, who had died at the age of 79 in February 2016.

Jim Malone contributed to this report.
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President Donald Trump’s nomination of federal Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court is being met with predictable reaction from both Republicans and Democrats.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement immediately after President Trump’s Monday night televised announcement praising Kavanaugh as “an impressive” nominee who is “extremely well qualified” to sit on the nation’s highest court.

The Kentucky Republican said the 53-year-old nominee’s judicial record “demonstrates a firm understanding of the role of a judge in our Republic:Setting aside personal views and political preferences in order to interpret our laws as they are written.”

Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold hearings on Kavanaugh’s nomination before it goes to a vote before the full Senate, echoed McConnell’s sentiments, calling him a “superb mainstream candidate worthy of the Senate’s consideration.”

“Judges should rule according to the law, no matter what their views of the policy outcomes are,” Grassley said in a statement on the Judiciary Committee’s Twitter page hours before Kavanaugh’s nomination was announced. Grassley pledged that “”…the process will be as fair and transparent as I can make it. That has been my approach during my nearly 38 years in the Senate, and I will not change that.”

Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh was also applauded by Rev. Franklin Graham, a prominent leader of religious conservatives who have long sought the repeal of Roe versus Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion.”Thank God for this long awaited opportunity to change the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court,”Graham posted Monday on Twitter.

Concerns that Kavanaugh will join with the court’s other four conservative members to overturn Rove versus Wade prompted Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to announce he would try to defeat his nomination “with everything I have.”The veteran lawmaker from New York state issued a statement accusing Trump of putting the “reproductive rights and freedoms and health care protections for millions of Americans on the judicial chopping block.”Schumer also expressed fears that Kavanaugh will welcome legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.

California Democrat Kamala Harris, considered by many to be a leading candidate for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, also announced her immediate opposition to Kavanaugh’s nomination, calling it “a direct and fundamental threat to the rights and health care of hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Two other potential Democratic presidential contenders, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and New Jersey’s Corey Booker, have also cited Kavanaugh’s written opinion that a president should not be subject to civil litigation or criminal prosecution while in office in opposing his nomination.Observers believe if Special Counsel Robert Mueller tries to compel the president to testify in his investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible links to Russia, or even bring charges against the president, the issue will go all the way to the Supreme Court, which could return to its 5-4 conservative majority if Kavanaugh is confirmed.

Warren and Booker led a large demonstration on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court Monday night hours after the announcement to protest Kavanaugh’s nomination.
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Brett Kavanaugh, the consummate Washington insider picked by President Donald Trump on Monday for a lifetime seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, has viewed business regulations with skepticism in his 12 years as a judge and taken conservative positions on some divisive social issues.

He joined the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2006. Appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, Kavanaugh, 53, on several occasions ruled against regulations issued under Democrat Barack Obama, who succeeded Bush in 2009.

Kavanaugh faulted Obama-era environmental regulations, including some aimed at fighting climate change. In 2016, he wrote the appeals court decision that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, formed under Obama, was unconstitutional.

In 2017 he dissented when his appeals court declined to reconsider its decision upholding “net neutrality” regulations implemented under Obama – and later rescinded under Trump – requiring internet providers guarantee equal access to all web content.

His extensive record on what is widely viewed as the country’s second most powerful court and in prior Washington jobs means his appointment promises to attract a barrage of questions during a contentious U.S. Senate confirmation process.

The timing of the nomination means the Senate could confirm the nomination before the start of the Supreme Court’s next term on the first Monday in October.

Kavanaugh has shown conservative credentials on social issues ranging from gun rights to abortion cases.

In 2011, he dissented as the court upheld a District of Columbia gun law that banned semi-automatic rifles. Kavanaugh said such guns are covered by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.

Last October, he was on a panel of judges that issued an order preventing a 17-year-old illegal immigrant detained in Texas by U.S. authorities from immediately obtaining an abortion. That decision was overturned by the full appeals court and she had the abortion.

Kavanaugh, who emphasized his Roman Catholic faith in his appearance with Trump at the White House on Monday, said in a dissent that the full court was embracing “a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.”

He dissented in 2015 when the appeals court spurned religious groups that sought an exemption from a requirement under the 2010 Obamacare healthcare law that employers provide health insurance that covers birth control for women.

Washington background

A senior White House aide under Bush, he previously worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Democratic former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Kavanaugh faced a long confirmation battle when Bush nominated him to his current post in 2003. Democrats painted him as too partisan, but the Senate ultimately confirmed him three years later.

Kavanaugh grew up in Bethesda, a Maryland suburb of Washington, and attended the same high school as Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee, Neil Gorsuch. Both men served as clerks in the Supreme Court’s 1993-1994 term to long-serving conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, who announced his retirement on June 27 at age 81.

A graduate of Yale Law School, Kavanaugh has come under fire in some conservative circles for his ties to Bush, a member of the Republican establishment that is eschewed by Trump, as well as for not sometimes ruling aggressively enough on issues of importance to conservative activists.

Some conservatives have faulted his reasoning in a dissenting opinion in a case involving Obamacare.

Kavanaugh dissented from his court’s 2011 conclusion that Obamacare, a law detested by conservatives, did not violate the U.S. Constitution, asserting that it was premature to decide the case’s merits.

Kavanaugh in his dissent mentioned that a financial penalty levied under Obamacare on Americans who opted not to obtain health insurance might be considered a tax, a pivotal distinction in the conservative legal challenge to the law.

Conservative critics said Kavanaugh’s dissent created an opening that eventually led to U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts casting a crucial vote in upholding the law when it reached the Supreme Court in 2012.

In his remarks on Monday, Kavanaugh sought to spotlight his bipartisan credentials. He noted that he has taught at Harvard Law School, where he was hired by former dean Elena Kagan, appointed by Obama to the Supreme Court in 2010. He said a majority of his clerks have been women.

He worked for four years for Starr, whose investigation of Clinton helped spur an effort by congressional Republicans in 1998 and 1999 to impeach the Democratic president and remove him from office.

In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote a law review article questioning the value of that investigation and concluding that presidents should be free from the distractions of civil lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and investigations while in office.

That view has assumed fresh relevance, with Trump facing several civil lawsuits as well as a Russia-related criminal investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The Supreme Court could be called upon to weigh in on these matters.
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Despite his low popularity overall with the American people, President Donald Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is at an all-time high. Beyond partisan lines, there is also an increasing gap of support between genders. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has more.
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The Pentagon is doing environmental assessments at two military bases to assess their suitability for housing migrant families, a spokesman has told VOA.

But the spokesman, Army Lt Col Jamie Davis, added that no ground would be broken to build facilities at Fort Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base until a “notice of intent” has been signed by the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Health and Human Services (HHS).  Fort Bliss is in the U.S. states of Texas and New Mexico while Goodfellow is located in Texas.

The Trump administration has asked the U.S. military to shelter thousands of undocumented migrants, including unaccompanied children who illegally crossed the U.S. southern border.

During the Obama administration, the military housed nearly 16,000 unaccompanied migrant children on five military bases after they were detained by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Mark Greenberg, a former acting assistant secretary of HHS who worked in the department’s Administration for Children and Families during the Obama administration, said his department has asked the military for help various times after “large, sudden, unexpected increases in the number of children” arriving at the border.

“What had been 2,000 to 3,000 [unaccompanied migrant] children arriving each month grew to 10,000 each month,” he told VOA.

At least 11,800 migrant children are currently in custody at about 100 standard shelters in 14 states, according to HHS. When those beds fill up, costly temporary shelters must be set up in order to help with the overflow.

“From the headlines, people sometimes think that we are facing a very large increase in border crossings. In fact, the numbers in 2017 were the lowest they had been since 1971,” Greenberg said. “They are on track to be higher this year, but still low in historical terms.”

However, a migrant population once principally made up of Mexican adults has now seen large increases of families and unaccompanied children from Central America.

Family units grew from 3 percent of all apprehensions at the border in 2012 to 14 percent of all border apprehensions in 2014 to 24 percent of all apprehensions so far in 2018. In addition, the number of unaccompanied child detainees has jumped from 7 percent of apprehensions in 2012 to 13 percent this year.

Standard migrant shelters are all subject to state licensing requirements, but facilities on federal property, including military bases, are not, making them valuable to administration officials who do not have the time needed to go through what can be months long licensing processes.

DHS, which will be using Fort Bliss to shelter detained migrant families, has specifically requested the construction of “semi-separate, soft-sided camp facilities capable of sheltering up to 4,000 people” at three separate installations.

HHS will be using Goodfellow Air Force Base to house unaccompanied migrant children caught illegally entering the United States.

 
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The privilege of naming justices to the U.S. Supreme Court — judges whose decisions could affect the lives of Americans for decades — is one of the most consequential choices a president can make.

President Donald Trump has already placed one justice on the court, Neil Gorsuch, and says he wants to choose a “great one” to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Trump says the new justice should have a great intellect and the right temperament.

Although Trump said during the campaign he would appoint anti-abortion judges who would overturn Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, he said he would not ask candidates about whether they think the ruling should be reversed. But a woman’s right to choose may be at the center of the Senate’s confirmation hearings.

From a reported list of 25 Supreme Court candidates, Trump said he has narrowed his choices.

The White House said Trump has interviewed four potential picks, all of whom are federal appeals court judges.

Amy Coney Barrett

Barrett, 46, is a former law clerk to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She is a graduate of Notre Dame Law School, where she was also a law professor before joining the federal bench. She is a well-known conservative whose past comments on abortion drew attention at her Senate confirmation hearing. Barrett has said she believes life begins at conception. She once called a 1992 Supreme Court decision that upheld Roe v. Wade “erroneous.” But Barrett told senators she would not let her staunch Catholic beliefs affect her legal rulings.

Thomas Hardiman

Hardiman, 52, attended Georgetown Law. His “blue-collar” personal story appeals to Trump: Hardiman was the first member of his family to attend college, the University of Notre Dame, and then worked his way through law school as a taxi driver. He was in the running last year for the Supreme Court seat left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. He lost to Justice Neil Gorsuch. Hardiman, who lives in Pennsylvania, is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, where he served at one time with Trump’s sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. SCOTUSblog, which covers actions of the Supreme Court, said his opinions have shown an “originalist approach to the Second Amendment right to bear arms,” and that he “has not weighed in directly on issues relating to abortion” — two hot-button issues.

Brett Kavanaugh

Kavanaugh, 53, earned his law degree from Yale University and was also an editor on the prestigious Yale Law Journal. He has the Ivy League credentials Trump desires, but has also been a controversial judge. Former President George W. Bush nominated him to the appeals court in 2003. But Senate Democrats held up his confirmation for three years, accusing him of being a Bush political operative. As an attorney, Kavanaugh worked for the special counsel investigating former President Bill Clinton, who was eventually impeached, and also worked for the Bush campaign during the 2000 presidential election recount. Kavanaugh had been a law clerk for Kennedy. His views on abortion are generally unknown, but Kavanaugh was part of a panel that signed an order last year to prevent an illegal teenage immigrant from getting an abortion.

Raymond Kethledge

Kethledge, 51, is a University of Michigan Law School graduate and former Kennedy law clerk who works out of an office he set up in an old barn overlooking Lake Huron in northern Michigan. The barn office has no internet connection and uses a wood stove for heat. A self-described introvert, Kethledge co-authored a book, “Lead Yourself First,” in which he talks about how some of the world’s great leaders learned from solitude and quiet. As an appeals court judge, Kethledge authored several notable opinions, including one that upheld the death penalty against a suspect who murdered a woman on federal land and a case in Ohio that questioned whether private citizens can sue the state for failing to enforce pollution controls. The judge ruled in favor of the state.

Amul Thapar

Thapar, 49, would be the first Supreme Court justice of Indian descent if he fills Kennedy’s seat. Thapar is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley law school. As a Kentucky federal judge in 2014, he sentenced an 84-year-old nun to three years in prison for breaking into a warehouse storing nuclear weapons materials and throwing blood on the walls. Thapar rejected attorneys’ calls for leniency, saying the elderly nun showed no remorse. An appeals court found the nun guilty of a lesser charge and released her. Thapar has also been an instructor and professor at several of the country’s top law schools.
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