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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U.S. President Donald Trump’s attorney said Sunday the president’s legal team is “close to determining” that he won’t sit for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign aimed at helping Trump win.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump’s lead attorney, told ABC News and CNN that Trump’s lawyers want evidence from Mueller’s investigators that Trump engaged in wrongdoing before agreeing to let him be questioned.

Trump has often said he is ready for an interview in Mueller’s 14-month probe, but Giuliani told CNN, “We’d like to know if there’s any factual basis for the investigation originally or the developed one, because we can’t find one. Nor can anyone else.” He said the prosecutors “don’t have to prove a crime. They have to give us factual basis leading to some suspicion of a crime.”

Giuliani told ABC, “We’ve been through everything on collusion and obstruction. We can’t find an incriminating anything, and we need a basis for this investigation.”

Mueller has been investigating Russian links to the Trump campaign and whether the president obstructed justice by firing James Comey, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who was heading the agency’s Russia probe before Mueller was appointed to take it over. There is no indication when the Mueller probe might end and his team has not publicly responded to Trump’s frequent attacks on it, claiming it is biased against him.

Giuliani said, “If the president says, ‘I fired him for the good of the United States,'” it was justification enough. Trump, however, told NBC anchor Lester Holt days after he ousted Comey in May 2017 that he was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he fired him. Trump has long contended that the investigation is an excuse by Democrats to explain his upset win over Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state.

Giuliani contended that Mueller would not be pressing to interview Trump “if they had anything” against the president, although it is not known what evidence he may have collected.

Mueller could subpoena Trump to testify before a grand jury if he does not agree to an interview, but Giuliani said, “If he does, we could have it quashed.” Any attempt to force Trump to testify could lead to a protracted legal fight that could eventually land before the Supreme Court for a decision.

Giuliani also said he had “zero” concern that Michael Cohen, a former Trump attorney who represented him for a decade while he was a New York real estate mogul and into the first year of his presidency, might provide prosecutors damaging information about Trump. Cohen, who has described himself as “the guy who would take a bullet” for Trump, is under investigation for making a $130,000 hush money payment shortly before the 2016 election to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who alleges that she had a one-night affair in 2006 with Trump shortly after Trump’s wife Melania gave birth to their son.

Cohen has scrubbed a reference of his long-time representation of Trump from professional credentials, saying recently, “My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” not the president.

Trump has said he does not see Cohen turning against him. Giuliani said Sunday, “I don’t know what he has to flip. I do not expect Michael Cohen is going to lie.”

 
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The Trump administration said Saturday it’s freezing payments under an “Obamacare” program that protects insurers with sicker patients from financial losses, a move expected to add to premium increases next year.

At stake are billions in payments to insurers with sicker customers.

In a weekend announcement, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the administration is acting because of conflicting court ruling in lawsuits filed by some smaller insurers who question whether they are being fairly treated under the program.

Risk adjustment

The so-called risk adjustment program takes payments from insurers with healthier customers and redistributes that money to companies with sicker enrollees. Payments for 2017 are $10.4 billion. No taxpayer subsidies are involved.

The idea behind the program is to remove the financial incentive for insurers to cherry pick healthier customers. The government uses a similar approach with Medicare private insurance plans and the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Major insurer groups said Saturday the administration’s action interferes with a program that’s working well.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, whose members are a mainstay of Affordable Care Act coverage said it was “extremely disappointed” with the administration’s action.

The Trump administration’s move “will significantly increase 2019 premiums for millions of individuals and small business owners and could result in far fewer health plan choices,” association president Scott Serota said in a statement. “It will undermine Americans’ access to affordable coverage, particularly those who need medical care the most.”

Serota noted that the payments are required by law, and said he believes the administration has the legal authority to continue making them despite the court cases. He warned of turmoil as insurers finalize their rates for 2019.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main health insurance industry trade group, said in a statement that it is “very discouraged” by the Trump administration’s decision to freeze payments.

“Costs for taxpayers will rise as the federal government spends more on premium subsidies,” the group said.

Conflicting rulings

Rumors that the Trump administration would freeze payments were circulating late last week. But the Saturday announcement via email was unusual for such a major step.

The administration argued in its announcement that its hands were tied by conflicting court rulings in New Mexico and Massachusetts.

Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Seema Verma said the Trump administration was disappointed by a New Mexico court ruling that questioned the workings of the risk program for insurers.

The administration “has asked the court to reconsider its ruling, and hopes for a prompt resolution that allows (the government) to prevent more adverse impacts on Americans who receive their insurance in the individual and small group markets,” she said.

More than 10 million people currently buy individual health insurance plans through HealthCare.gov and state insurance marketplaces. The vast majority of those customers receive taxpayer subsidies under the Obama-era health law and would be shielded from premium increases next year.

The brunt of higher prices would fall on solid middle-class consumers who are not eligible for the income-based subsidies. Many of those are self-employed people and small business owners, generally seen as a Republican constituency.

The latest “Obamacare” flare-up does not affect most people with employer coverage.
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Lawyers for President Donald Trump unleashed a blistering attack on former FBI Director James Comey in a confidential memo last year to the special counsel, casting him as “Machiavellian,” dishonest and “unbounded by law and regulation” as they sought to undermine the credibility of a law enforcement leader they see as a critical witness against the president.

The letter, obtained by The Associated Press, underscores the intense effort by Trump’s legal team over the last year to tarnish Comey’s reputation and pit the president’s word against that of the former FBI director. Comey’s firing in May 2017 helped set in motion the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, and one-on-one conversations with Trump that Comey documented in a series of memos helped form the basis of Mueller’s inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.

The June 27, 2017, letter was written by Marc Kasowitz, then the president’s lead lawyer, as Mueller and his team were in the early stages of their investigation into Trump associates and as they had begun examining whether the president, by firing Comey, had sought to stymie an FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The White House initially pointed as justification for the firing to a Justice Department memo that faulted Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, though Trump later said that “this Russia thing” was on his mind when he made the move.

Trump legal strategy

It’s not clear to what extent, if any, the attacks on Comey have resonated with Mueller’s team, which is broadly investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and continues to seek an interview with the president to assess whether he had a corrupt intent when he fired the FBI director. And even in the face of withering criticism, Comey has been largely consistent in his telling of his interactions with Trump in his memos, his book and numerous press interviews he’s given in recent months.

The 13-page document provides a window into the formation of a legal strategy that remains in use today by Trump’s lawyers — to discredit Comey’s value as a witness. It could have new relevance in the aftermath of a Justice Department inspector general report that criticized Comey for departing from established protocol in the Clinton investigation.

The letter aims to identify for Mueller what the lawyers believe are grievous errors both in how Comey handled the Clinton investigation and in his early, and limited, encounters with the president. In it, Kasowitz argues that Comey cannot be trusted as a witness because he repeatedly embellished his testimony before Congress, put his “own personal interests and emotions” above FBI protocol and left a cloud of undue suspicion above the president’s head.

“Over the last year, Mr. Comey has engaged in a pattern of calculated unilateral action unbounded by governing law, regulation and practice, and plainly motivated by personal and political self-interest,” wrote Kasowitz, who has since stepped aside as lead lawyer.

Lawyers for Comey declined to comment Saturday, as did Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller. Kasowitz and Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow did not immediately return messages, and former Trump attorney John Dowd declined to comment.

Lines of attack

The document, unlike other correspondence between Trump lawyers and Mueller’s team, does not dwell on questions of Trump’s guilt or innocence. Instead, it casts in a negative light actions that Comey has said he carefully reasoned and that he has vigorously defended in his book and interviews. Those include the decision to announce without Justice Department consultation the conclusion of the Clinton investigation, and the decision months later to brief Trump — then the president-elect — on salacious allegations about him in a dossier.

“Mr. Comey continued his Machiavellian behavior after President Trump was elected,” Kasowitz wrote.

Among the principal lines of attack are Comey’s acknowledgment that he provided his lawyers with contemporaneous memos about his interactions with Trump and authorized one of them to share details with the news media. In one such encounter, Comey said the president asked him at a private dinner for his loyalty and that Comey offered him “honest loyalty” instead.

“There is no ‘honest loyalty’ in an FBI director surreptitiously leaking to civilians his privileged and confidential conversations with the president, or misappropriating and disseminating his confidential FBI memos or their contents about those meetings,” Kasowitz wrote. “There is no ‘honest loyalty’ in using those civilians as surrogates to feed stolen information and memos to the press to achieve a personal, political, and retributive objective of harming a sitting president.”

Like Trump, the lawyer also complains about Comey’s refusal to state publicly to Congress that the president was not under investigation even though he said so privately.

“Despite his repeated assurances to the president over the prior three months that he was not under investigation, the president’s repeated pleas to make that fact public, and Mr. Comey’s testimony that he had DOJ (Department of Justice) approval to make this ‘extraordinary’ announcement, Mr. Comey not only declined to clarify that there was no investigation of the president, but he used broad language that only reinforced the inaccurate perception that the president was under investigation,” Kasowitz wrote.

​Two letters to Mueller

The New York Times earlier reported that Kasowitz had written two letters to Mueller in June 2017, and published one in which he rejected the idea that Comey’s firing could constitute obstruction of justice. The AP obtained a copy of the other document, along with a two-page memo from September in which Trump lawyers lament to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that Mueller was “inexplicably” not investigating Comey’s “misconduct” they had earlier raised.

In the Kasowitz letter, he says Comey stonewalled the president’s request to clear his name in order to “sustain an investigative cloud” over his head that would make it hard for Trump to fire him. Comey has said he had already told congressional leaders who was and was not under investigation, and that he was reluctant to make public statements in case something changed and he needed to correct the record.

The letter also castigates Comey for usurping the authority of his Justice Department bosses by announcing the conclusion of the Clinton investigation without seeking their approval, a criticism echoed by the inspector general last month. Comey has said he made the announcement alone because of concern that Justice Department leadership was seen as politically compromised.

The letter says Comey “confronted” the president-elect in a January 2017 Trump Tower meeting “with phony but highly embarrassing allegations concerning his personal life” from a dossier compiled by a former British spy. It was the first in a series of conversations Comey documented in writing, something Trump lawyers say he did with the ultimate goal of undermining the president. Comey has said he told Trump about the dossier allegations because they were widely known in Washington, including by the media, and that he kept his memos because he was concerned that Trump might lie about their conversations.

In the September memo obtained by AP, Dowd, who left the legal team in March, expressed dismay to Rosenstein that there was no grand jury investigation into “the obviously corrupt conclusion” of the Clinton investigation, suggesting it was improper that Comey had begun drafting a statement closing the probe even before Clinton was interviewed.

“Today, you are faced with a terrible blight on our Department of Justice which must be addressed to restore and inspire confidence in the Department,” Dowd said in calling for the grand jury investigation.

Though the inspector general’s office faulted Comey for some of his decisions, it did not find that FBI or Justice Department actions in the case were tainted by political bias.
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday will announce his nominee for the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. The announcement is likely to set off a major confirmation battle in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow majority and opposition Democrats say they are ready for a fight over Trump’s court pick.

In his weekly presidential address, Trump said his “greatest responsibility is to select a justice who will faithfully interpret the Constitution as written.” The president vowed to select someone with “impeccable credentials, great intellect, unbiased judgment and deep reverence for the laws and Constitution.”

During a campaign rally in Montana Thursday, Trump sought to build expectations among supporters for his nominee.

“As you know there is now a vacancy on the Supreme Court. And if you tune in Monday at 9 o’clock I think you are going to be extremely happy with the selection. Right? And they are all great. They are all great,” Trump said to cheers at a rally in Great Falls, Montana.

WATCH: Trump to Unveil Court Pick Monday

Democrats mobilize

Anthony Kennedy was a critical swing vote in a number of high-profile cases, including same-sex marriage and upholding a woman’s right to an abortion.

Democrats have vowed to resist a nominee who could swing the high court further to the right.

“So it makes it all the more important that we get someone who is going to be a person of integrity and someone who is going to make a decision based on precedent, based on the rule of law, and not someone who is ideological,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

The Kennedy void

Legal analysts noted that Kennedy’s departure leaves a critical void on the high court.

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

Trump said he has narrowed his choice to three or four contenders. Among those believed to be on the short list are federal appeals court judges Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Raymond Kethledge and Amul Thapar.

Kennedy was often a member of five-to-four majority decisions on the high court, and now conservatives see a chance to solidify their majority on the Supreme Court for years to come.

“I think many on the right feel in particular that Anthony Kennedy, while broadly on the conservative side, was not as consistent as he might have been, and that the nominee of Donald Trump will have the court be much more consistently five votes in the conservative direction,” said John Fortier with the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.

Rightward shift

Analysts also predict that a firmly conservative nominee will spark a high stakes political battle in the Senate.

“I think that we probably have never seen an appointment process that will be as contentious as this one given the importance of Kennedy’s position on the court and the increasingly polarized state of the nation,” said George Washington University legal analyst Paul Schiff Berman via Skype.

A recent Quinnipiac Poll found that 31 percent of voters believe Trump’s nominee should make the high court more conservative. Twenty-nine percent want the pick to make the court more liberal and 35 percent said the appointment should keep the current balance on the court.

The survey also found that by a margin of 50 percent to 42 percent, Americans believe the Supreme Court is more motivated by politics than the law.

Trump’s nominee must be confirmed by the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow 51- to 49-seat majority. 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. They could provide Republicans with an additional buffer if they decide to support the president.
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President Donald Trump will announce his nominee to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court on Monday. The announcement is likely to set off a major confirmation battle in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow majority and where opposition Democrats are planning to wage a fight over Trump’s court pick. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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