On the night before the confirmation hearings for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, 42,000 documents containing legal opinions, emails and other records pertaining to Kavanaugh were distributed to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
After several calls to release this information over the past several months, Democratic leaders expressed discontent over having little time to review the new materials. During the first day of Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, Democrats called for the session to adjourn. Presiding chairman of the committee and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley refused over the shouts of protesters in the room.
“It doesn’t matter what’s in the those documents, there is almost an infinitesimally low probability that anything would be discovered to change anybody’s vote,” Dave Andersen, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Iowa State, says. “The Democrats are not going to be convinced that they want him on the bench and Republicans are never going to be scared away from voting from him. This is largely partisan grandstanding. We all know this process is being rushed.”
On this Politics Day edition of River to River, host Ben Kieffer talks with Andersen about the politics of confirming a checks-and-balances position designed to be apolitical. Also discussed, associate editor of the Washington Post Bob Woodward’s latest book on the Trump presidency.
