Elizabeth Warren Burns Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee

 

Democrats have been mostly silent since Donald Trump named Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, with some members of the Senate confessing their unwillingness to engage in the kind of obstructionism of the past eight years. But if Elizabeth Warren is any indication, Trump’s pick may be in for a protracted fight.

Warren began her address on the Senate floor Thursday by explaining how a “rigged” justice system has devastated working people and “made it harder for people who have been injured or cheated” to get a fair hearing.

“The best example was the unprecedented blockade of Judge Merrick Garland nomination to the Supreme Court,” argued Warren. “Judge Garland was an obvious consensus nominee and a straight shooter who followed the law, so why block it? The problem was that Judge Garland’s career didn’t reflect a sufficient willingness to bend the law to suit the needs of the rich and powerful and for that sin, far-right groups financed by big business interests spent millions of dollars attacking him to torpedo his nomination and keep that seat open.”

A GOP-controlled Senate gave Garland neither a hearing or vote; yet Trump is now threatening to “go nuclear” should democrats oppose Gorsuch, a judge who has sided with corporations throughout his career.

“Judge Gorsuch has shown a truly remarkable insensitivity to the struggles of working Americans and an eagerness to side with businesses that break the rules over workers who are seeking justice,” Warren continued. “Even before he became a judge, Judge Gorsuch argued in favor of limiting the ability of investors and shareholders to bring lawsuits when companies commit fraud; whining about how annoying it is for billionaire corporations to have to face their investors when they cheat them.”

Warren is convinced that Trump’s pick will not be a “neutral arbiter” of the law should he be confirmed, and that he represents the president’s very “hostility” for an independent judiciary.

“This is exactly the type of Supreme Court justice that giant corporations want, but they have never been quite so brazen it-spending millions to slime a consensus, straight-shooter nominee like Merrick Garland and steal a Supreme Court seat, then drawing up a public list of acceptable alternatives and handing it over to a billionaire president so he can do his buddies of favor. That’s bold,” she argued. “And that is not how America is supposed to work.”

Watch: