WATCHDOG: Trump’s Judicial Nominees Have Tried to Run Away From Their Out of Step Records, Evaded Basic Questions

Washington D.C. – Soon, the U.S. Senate is expected to vote on President Donald Trump’s initial slate of judicial nominees. Not only do all of Trump’s nominees have clear records of rolling back fundamental freedoms, a new Accountable.US report released today outlines how the nominees evaded Senate Judiciary Committee questioning and refused to give straight answers on their extreme positions to roll back reproductive freedom and further empower Trump.    

“Trump’s judicial nominees before the Senate were hand-picked because they will put unflinching loyalty to the President ahead of impartiality on the bench. And despite their efforts to dodge basic questions about their out-of-step positions, it’s clear that they would advance a far right ideological agenda intended to reshape American life,” said Accountable.US President Caroline Ciccone. “Senators must be clear eyed: a vote for these judicial nominees is a vote to roll back Americans’ freedoms and would dangerously consolidate Trump’s power even further.” 

Among the questions Trump’s judicial nominees before the Senate refused to answer:

• Maria Lanahan, nominee to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, claimed that her work on a lawsuit aiming to restrict mifepristone access was “discrete and limited” and distanced herself from the case. However as Solicitor General of Missouri, Lanahan had repeatedly and personally signed on to a lawsuit to revive FDA v. Alliance For Hippocratic Medicine, the unsuccessful Supreme Court case challenging FDA’s independent, science-based approval of medication abortion.

• Whitney Hermandorfer, nominee to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, minimized her role in Tennessee’s amicus brief supporting Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, despite signing on in her current role as Tennessee’s Director of Strategic Litigation.

• Joshua Divine, nominee to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and the Western District of Missouri, ran away from his record of advocating for literacy tests required for voting, a relic of the Jim Crow era, and from previous comments he made that he was a self-described “zealot” for the anti-choice agenda. 

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