Trump SCOTUS Pick Kavanaugh Supports Shielding President
Brett Kavanaugh opposed abortion rights, supports shielding president from scrutiny. NPR: "Over a dozen years as a judge on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., Brett Kavanaugh has weighed in on controversial cases involving guns, abortion, health care and religious liberty. But after Kavanaugh emerged on President Trump's shortlist for the Supreme Court, a suggestion the judge made in a 2009 law review article swiftly took center stage: 'Provide sitting presidents with a temporary deferral of civil suits and of criminal prosecutions and investigations' Kavanaugh proposed. The judge emphasized that no one is above the law, but he pointed out that the Constitution already provides a solution if there's a scoundrel in the White House. That matters now — especially to Democrats mulling whether to oppose Kavanaugh's nomination to the highest court in the nation — because Trump is facing a special counsel probe into Russian election interference in 2016 and whether anyone in Trump campaign took part."
Judge Rejects WH Request To Gut Flores
Judge rejects Trump request to alter agreement on release of immigrant kids. Politico: "A federal judge has turned down President Donald Trump's request to alter a decades-old legal settlement to allow long-term detention of children who entered the U.S. illegally with their parents. Los Angeles-based U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee dismissed as 'tortured' the Trump administration's legal argument to get out from under the so-called Flores consent decree agreed to in 1997, dictating that children in immigration detention not be held more than 20 days. 'Defendants seek to light a match to the Flores Agreement and ask this Court to upend the parties’ agreement by judicial fiat,' wrote Gee, an appointee of President Barack Obama. 'It is apparent that Defendants’ Application is a cynical attempt... to shift responsibility to the Judiciary for over 20 years of Congressional inaction and ill-considered Executive action that have led to the current stalemate.' An executive order Trump signed last month following a public outcry over the administration's policy of separating immigrant families instructed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to "promptly" ask the court to change the decree to permit a new approach of detaining children along with their parents. The Justice Department filed that request the following day."
Toddlers Must Face Immigration Judges
Kids as young as 1 in US court, awaiting reunion with family. AP: "The 1-year-old boy in a green button-up shirt drank milk from a bottle, played with a small purple ball that lit up when it hit the ground and occasionally asked for 'agua' Then it was the child’s turn for his court appearance before a Phoenix immigration judge, who could hardly contain his unease with the situation during the portion of the hearing where he asks immigrant defendants whether they understand the proceedings. 'I’m embarrassed to ask it, because I don’t know who you would explain it to, unless you think that a 1-year-old could learn immigration law,' Judge John W. Richardson told the lawyer representing the 1-year-old boy. The boy is one of hundreds of children who need to be reunited with their parents after being separated at the border, many of them split from mothers and fathers as a result of the Trump administration’s 'zero-tolerance policy.' The separations have become an embarrassment to the administration as stories of crying children separated from mothers and kept apart for weeks on end dominated the news in recent weeks. Critics have also seized on the nation’s immigration court system that requires children — some still in diapers — to have appearances before judges and go through deportation proceedings while separated from their parents. Such children don’t have a right to a court-appointed attorney, and 90 percent of kids without a lawyer are returned to their home countries, according to Kids in Need of Defense, a group that provides legal representation."
WH Will Miss Legal Deadline To Reunite Families
Trump administration will not meet deadline for reuniting young children. Mother Jones: "The Trump administration confirmed on Monday that it will not meet the deadline set by a federal judge for reuniting parents with their young children. Dana Sabraw, a federal judge in California, gave the administration until Tuesday to reunite children under five years old, and until July 26 to reunify older children. But only 56 out of about 85 children under five who are eligible for reunification will have been reunited with their parents by the Tuesday deadline. The numbers were revealed during a court hearing between the government and the American Civil Liberties Union, which secured Sabraw’s preliminary injunction requiring family reunification last month."
Heritage Foundation Groomed Trump's SCOTUS Pick
How the Heritage Foundation helped create Trump's SCOTUS list. The Hill: "For decades, American conservatives have expressed frustration with the U.S. Supreme Court for its rulings legalizing abortion, same-sex marriage, and affirmative action. With President Trump poised to name his nominee to replace the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court's swing vote, many on the political right are trying to ensure that the new associate justice will be reliably conservative. Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation on Monday joined Hill.TV's "Rising" to discuss how the conservative think tank played a role in helping the president create a list of potential Supreme Court nominees."
