Kevin Ritz – Nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit

Two years ago, U.S. Attorney Kevin Ritz was comfortably confirmed to his current role by the Senate. However, Ritz likely faces a tougher road in seeking to succeed his former boss on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Background

Born October 15, 1974, in Petersburg Virginia, Kevin Gafford Ritz received a B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1997, an M.S. from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1999, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2004 before clerking for Judge Julia Smith Gibbons on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Ritz subsequently joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Tennessee, rising to become Criminal Appellate Chief in 2010, Appellate Chief in 2018, and being confirmed as U.S. Attorney in 2022. Ritz currently serves as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee.

History of the Vacancy

Ritz has been nominated for a Tennessee seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. If confirmed, Ritz would replace Gibbons, for whom he had previously clerked.

Legal Experience

Ritz has spent his entire legal career at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Tennessee, starting with narcotics prosecutions before working on both criminal and civil appeals at the Sixth Circuit, and finally, being appointed to be U.S. Attorney.

Starting in the office in 2005, Ritz spent the first five years of his prosecutorial career handling narcotics cases at both the trial and appellate level. During that time, Ritz tried eleven jury trials. Among his trials, Ritz won convictions for carjacking, robbery, and firearms crimes in a trial presided over by Judge Bernice Donald. See United States v. Chandler and Benton, No. 09-cr-20518 (W.D. Tenn.).

From 2010 to 2018, Ritz served as Criminal Appellate Chief for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and from 2018 to 2022, served as Appellate Chief, handling both Criminal and Civil cases. Ritz argued thirty-six cases before the Sixth Circuit, as well as one in the Third Circuit. Among the notable cases that Ritz argued, he defended a conviction for illegal possession of a firearm, which was challenged under the Rehaif v. United States Supreme Court decision, which held that the Brady handgun bill’s classes of prohibited individuals, who aren’t allowed to have firearms, requires the individual to know of their prohibited status. See United States v. Ward, 957 F.3d 691 (6th Cir. 2020). Ritz also notably argued before the en banc Sixth Circuit in turning back an ineffective assistance of counsel claim, in a case holding that such a claim only applied once the individual was charged. See Turner v. United States, 885 F.3d 949 (6th Cir. 2018) (en banc). Ritz’s sole Third Circuit case involved defending convictions for witness-murder against an actual innocence claim. See Bruce v. Warden Lewisburg USP, 868 F.3d 170 (3d Cir. 2017).

Notably, Ritz argued before the Sixth Circuit in the Castleman case that individuals convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence charges could be barred from owning firearms. See United States v. Castleman, 695 F.3d 582 (6th Cir. 2012). While the Sixth Circuit ruled against the government, a unanimous Supreme Court reversed and sided with the position that Ritz had taken. United States v. Castleman, 572 U.S. 157 (2014).

Since 2022, Ritz has served as the Senate confirmed U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee.

Political Activity

Ritz has a handful of political donations throughout his career, all to Democrats.

Overall Assessment

Ritz’s push for a lifetime appointment is likely to draw significantly more opposition than his first confirmation did. Both Tennessee senators oppose Ritz’s confirmation, and he has drawn some fire over a complaint filed against him alleging misconduct from several years ago.

However, Ritz’s supporters can reasonably argue that the mere filing of a complaint does not indicate any ethical issues, particularly in a situation where no finding of misconduct or disciplinary action appears to have been taken. Furthermore, many of the senators raising the issue saw no problem with Ritz’s candidacy to be U.S. Attorney. As a bottom line, if prioritized, Ritz can be confirmed in due course.

95 Comments

  1. I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but it would really be beneficial if Ritz can be fast tracked and confirmed sometime this summer before the recess. Having two vacancies in a red state like Tennessee stress me out a bit

    Liked by 3 people

    • Circuit court nominees should always be fast tracked in my opinion. Mitch McConnell figured that out. We would likely have Mangi sitting on the 3rd circuit had Schumer adopted that strategy. But Ritz should definitely be fast tracked if anything to hurry up & get Republican appointee Gibbons off the bench.

      Liked by 2 people

      • There never seems to be time to devote to confirming judges, there is always, always, always some other f-ing thing that takes considerable floor time.. After this FAA bill gets done, then what. There should be no budget votes til late Sept. I think the debt ceiling was taken care of until 2025 ? A border bill would be great, but the House won’t bring it up for a vote so that’s that. 

        Liked by 2 people

  2. Yeah, was going to mention that the Senate is back today and will vote on cloture for Alexakis. Tomorrow will be to confirm Alexakis and then cloture on the motion to proceed to the FAA bill. I’d keep expectations low about any cloture motions being sent out for Thursday today since it’s likely that the FAA bill will keep them occupied for the week.

    For any other judiciary news, we’re still awaiting Eumi Lee to receive her commission, she’s currently the only confirmed judicial nominee who can take the bench right now who has yet to get a commission. Wouldn’t expect any new nominees tomorrow but I really hope we get nominees either tomorrow or next Wednesday which would allow for a 6/5 hearing and keep the possibility of having two hearings in June open (a second one would need to be held on Thursday, 6/20 as Juneteenth is on a Wednesday). If that were to happen that’d make up for only having one hearing in May IMO.

    Liked by 2 people

  4. @Rick because this is a relatively functional, if slow (thanks to both obstruction and inexperience), congress. The stuff other congresses have punted for the past 15-ish years has piled up, and Dems want that pile reduced as much as possible. Dems control the veto pen and the senate calendar, the GOP caucus in the house isn’t functional, and because the GOP house caucus technically has a seat at the table, the GOP senate caucus isn’t as obstructionist on legislation as it could be. There are just enough functional government GOPers in each caucus, both to force Johnson’s hand along with Dems, and to break filibusters.

    Liked by 2 people

    • @rick I think it can be really easy to forget that the Senate is just that: a senate (aka a legislative body). While obviously confirmations are an extremely important part of what they do, the legislation passed by the Congress, including the funding for programs, regulatory apparatus, etc, has an massive impact too.

      I don’t think its you, but there is always someone on here who makes the comment along the lines of “deputy basket weaver inspector” any time any confirmation other than a judge is given floor time. (even if the person is an assistant secretary of defense!!!).

      I guess the whole point of this is just to point out that the Senate has a lot of things to do, and they (mostly) are actually important. No hate to you at all though just wanted to rant!

      Liked by 1 person

      • Actually it’s Secretary of Baking Cookies but Deputy basket weaver inspector works too… Lol

        Sorry but in MOST cases, the lower level positions that can be replaced at the drop of a dime as soon as we have a new president are not as important as life time appointed judges. But my overall point is the senate takes too much recess time because ALL of the positions need to be confirmed. But if we are gonna have a 4 day work week & boat loads of recess weeks, judges should be prioritized in most cases.

        As for the Rebecca Pennell article, I see they couldn’t keep Adeel Mangi’s name out of their mouths. They are going all in against him to make sure neither of the three Democrats that have public ally come out absinthe him waver.

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  5. The fact that white male career prosecutor Ritz is going to be a party-line vote shows how pointless it is to try to work with Blackburn in anything. Ritz’s resume is just as conservative as Kolar’s and more conservative than Ramirez’s or Federico’s. The best attack the Republicans could do was that Ritz is…too tough on crime? 

    This shows how Manchin’s little maneuver is utter BS – given that Collins/Murk are no’s when there isn’t a home-state blue slip, Manchin’s going to vote no on Ritz (which makes this nomination vote hard to schedule, especially with the Menendez trial) because the WH wouldn’t let Blackburn keep this seat open for a possible future Trump term.

    Since Blackburn’s never going to return a blue slip, the WH should just hurry up and nominate someone to the Stranch seat already. That person’s going to get no more than 50 votes anyways given the lack of blue slips, so they might as well give Schumer more time/flexibility to schedule that close vote.

    Liked by 1 person

    • I totally didn’t even realize a business meeting was posted for this week to vote out some nominees. Think I’ve been thrown off by the Senate scheduling the past couple of weeks (weekend work, coming in on Tuesday over the break, etc).

      I don’t expect any Republican votes for Ritz in committee or on the floor, but there have been I think two instances where a nominee got a Republican vote despite not having Republican blue slips. Collins did vote for Johnstone who was not supported by Daines and Kennedy did vote for Andre Mathis.

      Liked by 1 person

      • This is why I do not completely bash Kennedy the same way others do. While he does say some bat sh*t crazy things at times, he is still not in the bottom three on the SJC Republican caucus. When it comes to judges, he is relatively consistent.

        He gave Trump nominees his ”law review” during SJC hearings. He also criticized many Trump nominees & even voted against his first judge on the DC circuit out of principle.

        When it comes to his home state he has worked in good faith with Biden. We got four Louisianna judges & Kennedy has voted for all four of them. Three of the four are African American. And he exceeds most of his non-Murkowski, Collings & Graham Republican collogues when it comes to getting Black men on the bench. In addition to the two Black men in Louisiana I mentioned above, he voted for Andre Mathis. Plus, even though we got Dana Douglas on the 5th, Kennedy actually recommended a progressive Black man for the seat. So I get a lot of the Kennedy bashing but I for one will defend him to a certain degree, particularly when you compare him to the majority of Republicans on the SJC.

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  6. Collins did support Johnstone, but in that case there was at least Tester supporting. The window isn’t completely closed here, but I suspect she will be a no for Ritz as well.

    Which again, just sort of proves that Manchin’s new MO is sort of pointless. If anything, it is having the opposite effect and emboldening the GOP senators to oppose every nominee because they know they can bring Manchin along with them.

    Liked by 2 people

    • I think the main reason there is no clear front runner is because of how dumb Blackburn’s approach to judges has been. For God’s sake, Cornyn & Cruz got a centrist 59-year-old for the 5th in return for 3 district court judges out of the 8 vacancies (So far). The Indiana senators got two left of center circuit court judges. The Louisiana & Kansas senators also got acceptable circuit court judges for both sides of the political asile.

      Blackburn & Haggerty seems to be the only red state senators that are working in such bad faith, they continue to get nominees shoved down their throats. Now if they were smart, they would present an acceptable Democrat for the WDTN & give the White House a list of Democrats they could support for the final 6th seat.

      If that was the case, I could see any number of Nashville possibilities. Henry Leventis, Lisa Schulz Bressman, Tu Pham, Alistair Newbern, James Mackler, Kathryn Barnett, Jerry E. Martin & Ana L. Escobar are names that come to mind. I wouldn’t be jumping for joy for any of them but if it came along with a Democrat to fill the WDTN, it would be a good deal.

      Liked by 1 person

    • I wouldn’t rule Leventis out bc so many of the other names we’ve mentioned for that seat have issues. Not sure why it’s so hard to find a candidate here.

      I’d also say that anyone who’s a professor with Vanderbilt is gonna get bombarded with highly charged campus protest questions by the Judiciary.

      Liked by 1 person

  8. @dequan

    Two years ago, Newbern released a man from prison who, while out, murdered a white suburban woman. I can only imagine the speeches that Blackburn and Kennedy would make from the Senate floor about this, not to mention the the assault of freebeacon, JCN, Washington Examiner, and Fox News stories that would ensue.

    Your take on Edelman is … interesting. At the end of the day, the reason that would have to “spend political capital” was bc they didn’t have 50 Dem votes to confirm bc of the news about him releasing a man from prison who then murdered a child. You may recall the many weeks on this blog where people went after Jackie Rosen bc of the article saying that she and other Dems were hesitant to vote for him. Somehow I doubt that the apprehension had to do with the fact that he wasn’t demographically representative enough for the court.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Oh yea I agree Edelman didn’t have the votes. What I was saying is the White House didn’t want to spend the political capital to get him the votes. Just looking at the Mangi nomination, there is a clear distinction between when the White House wants to put their political might behind a nominee & when they don’t.

      Mangi would be the first Muslim circuit court judge at a time Biden is bleeding support amongst the Muslim community, particularly in the swing state of Michigan. You see a steadfast all-out blitz by the White House to try & get Mangi across the finish line. I didn’t see that same effort for Edelman, who again is a 56-year-old White man that will still be a judge even if he is not confirmed.

      So I was just showing the difference between when the White House wants to really put their weight behind somebody versus when they don’t see the need to waste political capital on them. Again, I doubt Alistair Newbern will be the nominee for the 6th at the end of the day. But if she was, I can see the White House fighting harder for her then they did for Edelman. I’m not saying how political capital is spent is fair, I’m just saying that’s reality.

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  10. I didn’t expect any. Sounds like the Aviation bill will take the rest of the week and possibly some of next week too. It is what it is.

    There should be a slew of district court nominees (including many with some GOP support) to work through during the month of May, so I suspect that is the approach Schumer will take.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. Every Circuit Court seat Republicans can keep open at this point they’re going to try which is why sans the 1st Circuit vacancy, every seat is going to be a party line vote.
    As for vacancies for the other 6th Circuit seat, no way in heck is it going to be Alistair Newbern, as the one case where she didn’t revoke the pre trial release of someone for failing drug treatment programs who then went on to murder someone makes her nomination DOA with swing state Democrats up this year.
    I also don’t see her being someone the WH would spend political capital on trying to save when other nominees (not just Edelman) like Marion Gaston got sunk for criminal justice issues.

    Liked by 1 person

    • I can see more than the eventual Maine nominee getting at least one Republican vote. I haven’t given up on Maldanado getting Murkowski or Collins. Depending on the nominee for the 4th & 11th, they could get home state senator support if negotiations go well with the vacant district court seats. Both states have 3 each currently with no nominee.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Can we check if Rachel Maddow has a law degree? Haaaaaa

        But seriously I do think Bien should take the Montana approach to a lot more of these red state district court vacancies. Danna Jackson should be the model for a lot of these seats in which we know the home state senators are no working in good faith.

        Can you imagine African American groups coming out in defense of somebody like Bryan Stevenson if he was nominated in Alabama. Or an African American closely aligned with the Tennessee Three for the WDTN. The White House needs to think strategic. Some of these senate races should be a lot closer than they are. Use some of the open seats to galvanize the electorate.

        Liked by 1 person

  14. @Dequan, Sad to say but if the chance to get a truly liberal Supreme Court for the first time in 40 years wasn’t enough to get folks to vote Democratic, Circuit and district court nominees won’t.
    I know we get angry with Democratic senators sometimes when it comes to the courts but how can we expect them to care about them if voters for team blue don’t?

    Liked by 1 person

    • The only instance where the judiciary is going to drive a large portion of the vote is with the top level issuing unpopular opinions. SCOTUS didn’t drive conservative voters until the Warren and Burger Courts pissed them off. It started driving a small fraction their votes in the late 1950s, slowly grew until it exploded to peak impact in the 1970s-1980s, and has trailed off ever since, as conservatives have taken them increasingly for granted. Bush was liberals’ equivalent of Brown and Yates. There’s a strong chance that Dobbs is their equivalent of Roe.

      Liked by 1 person

      • How long did it take for Roe to activate conservatives? Dobbs drove Dem voter turnout in 2022 and will continue to do so but it is unclear how well. It will take years for Dems to implement a long-term plan to take back the courts and then decades more for that plan to come to fruition.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Roe prevented significantly larger gains for Dems in wake of Watergate in 1974. It almost handed the 1976 election to Ford, and that was with Ford campaigning on Carter’s lack of support for an anti-choice constitutional amendment. It hurried the fruition of the Southern Strategy by at least a decade; Dems may have even managed to reverse it without the complete unification of the racist and social conservative camps. The weighting of right-left ideology in judicial nominations also shot through the roof pretty much immediately.

        Liked by 1 person

  16. Thanks, Ben. It’s a shame Chief Judge Robert Harwell didn’t announce sooner, since we know that Graham, at least, usually works in good faith with Biden on SC judges (not that Harwell is the type to care whether Biden appoints his successor).

    I’ve fallen into this probably bad habit of using Irma Ramirez’s age at nomination/confirmation as the scale by which I put retiring judges’ ages in prospective. For example, when I see that the retiring Harwell is 64, I think: “Wow, he’s served for 20 years on the court but he’s only 5 years older than Ramirez.”

    Liked by 2 people

  17. Not getting my hopes up of getting this seat filled but never say never. It did take some time for Benjamin and Austin to get their nominations announced by the WH though, so I’d bet my money on this seat being filled in 2025.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Gee, I forgot it was a holdover week. The nominees weren’t listed in red so I assumed they had already been listed before and held over.

      Also forgot to mention another thing to look out for is when the nominees from last week get sent to the Senate. Only thing of interest there would be to see which seats the CDCA nominees are officially nominated to.

      Liked by 1 person

  20. @ 1991 – Nominees were sent to the senate on 4-30, except April Perry

    @ Mike – In 2022, midterm election year, 7 Circuit court nominees were confirmed in Sept 2022, so this Sept COULD be a good confirmation time as they’re scheduled to be in 3 full weeks that month. I do think they’ll be in Sept, they are already off entire month of Oct, so I think the schedule stays in tact for Sept.

    Liked by 3 people

    • Thanks! Didn’t catch that. Don’t think anything was posted on the White House site and the Biden judicial nominations Wikipedia page hadn’t had them listed as officially submitted until now.

      If anyone is curious on the CDCA seats:

      -Hwang was nominated to Wu’s seat (11/3/23 vacancy)
      -Court was nominated to the Fischer seat (vacancy effective as of today, 5/1/24)
      -Dixon was nominated to the Gutierrez seat (10/15/24)

      Not too surprising it wasn’t the Carney seat this that vacancy wasn’t announced until fairly recently. Also that would probably mean Hwang or Court get prioritized over Dixon?

      Liked by 1 person

      • I was hoping one of the three CDCA nominees would be nominated to the Carney seat that becomes vacant in 30 days. Then the next nominee for the court could have been the Santa Ana seat.

        At least they nominated the three in order of age based on when the seat becomes vacant. Court is the oldest & was nominated to the seat that is already vacant. Valenzuela Dixon was nominated for the seat that becomes vacant October 15th & she is the middle aged of the three. Hwang is the youngest & was nominated for the seat that becomes vacant November 3rd. While it’s unlikely any of the three will ever become chief judge, no reason not to confirm them in order of age just in case something unexpected happens in the future. Good job

        Like

  21. Harwell becomes the 19th district judge to go senior/retire under Biden on the day they qualify. The closest any circuit judge has done so is 98 days after qualifying, in the case of Andrew Hurwitz, and he was a case of senior upon confirmation of successor. (Kathleen O’Malley was the closest with an announced date, at 114 days.)

    73 district judges have done so under Biden quicker than Hurwitz did. The median circuit departure has been Henry Floyd, a little over six years after he qualified; the median district departures have been Amy Jackson (44 days) and William Martinez (51 days).

    Liked by 2 people

  23. Cloture was invoked on the MTP to the FAA bill. If no time agreement is reached, since cloture was invoked around 4PM, the 30 hours would expire around 10PM tomorrow. The deadline for the reauthorization is actually next Friday so I doubt they stick around for a Friday this week, if the past is any indication there’s probably an 11th hour marathon instead next week. Without a time agreement the Senate wouldn’t be doing much tomorrow unless they bump up the vote on the motion to proceed to the afternoon and then take off.

    Decent chance this consumes the three days next week since they might vote on amendments throughout the day (like with the NDAA and the minibus last year).

    Liked by 1 person

  24. Maggie Hassan wrapped up. Two Marshals were confirmed on voice votes and there was a time agreement to make the Motion to Proceed to the FAA bill be the 1:45PM vote tomorrow. If any cloture motions are filed tomorrow it may be on the FAA bill which could be voted on Tuesday, if not there’d probably be amendments to vote on next week.

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  29. This guy! He must have thought that he was on an episode of Scared Straight!

    I’m glad he’s (mostly) off the court (but as we’ve seen, you can still do mischief as a senior judge). And I’m glad that he was replaced by a Dem appointee, after the CA senators prevented Trump from filling the seat:

    https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/courts/story/2024-05-01/9th-circuit-reprimands-san-diego-federal-judge-for-misconduct-in-handcuffing-of-defendants-teen-daughter

    Liked by 1 person

    • I’m still trying to figure out how almost every gun case in the state of California ends up in front of judge Roger Benitez. With the number of judges on the California federal district court, it seems as though he continues to get the hot button gun cases. Either way, I’m happy he’s no longer an active judge. As Gavi said he still can do damage in senior status sadly.

      Liked by 2 people

  31. I’m counting 17 remaining blue state vacancies, great process on nomations but I’d still like to see see someone in the pipelines for these before the end of summer and some movement on the now 26 nominees, what the heck is the holdup in PA.

    Liked by 1 person

  32. I didn’t really get into following judicial confirmations until the last few years. Considering that Bidens nominees for red states are pretty moderate or even right leaning due to the district court blue slip requirement, are the big chunk of Trumps judges for blue states like CA, IL and NY that bad?

    Liked by 1 person

    • This is true for any district court judge in any circuit: if you are an outlier or just out sync with the circuit your cases will be subject to review.

      In the 9th Circuit, they routinely reviewed cases by Manuel Real from the Central District.

      His courtroom behavior and antics were appalling to the extent that his decisions were reviewed if an losing party opted for it.

      That’s the last thing any of these trial court judges want: someone looking over their shoulder.

      Liked by 1 person

    • I would actually say Biden’s red state district court judges have been more left of center on the average than most past Democrat presidents. The only out right Republicans I know of are Camela Theeler, Susan Bazis, Gretchen Lund & Kelly Rankin. Hell Robert Kirsch was a Republican the day Biden was elected & he is a judge in blue state New Jersey so I would say that’s worse than any of the other names I just mentioned.

      Trump on the other hand had to nominate out right progressives to blue states. Those states include Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York & Michigan (That just was elevated to the circuit court by Biden). Of course, we still have a slew of red state vacancies left so let’s see what we get for the rest of the year but all in all I give Biden a high grade for the Republicans he has nominated so far. Of course, had the Chad Meredith deal gone through, that grade would have dropped dramatically.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Dem senators had various ways of dealing with vacancies during Trump. Washington’s senators held seats open as retribution for the nomination of Eric Miller. California’s senators allowed Trump to nominate some moderates while leaving other seats open. Senators in Illinois & New York allowed some FedSoc hacks in exchange for Trump appointing a few liberals.

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  33. Schatz wrapping up. A TON of nominations confirmed on voice votes. A chunk were military promotions but looking through the Cloakroom Twitter feed they all appear to be State Department-related (Ambassadors, for example). If they’re all getting confirmed now then some hold must have been lifted (I believe Rand Paul had or has a hold on State Department nominees). The executive calendar should look a bit lighter after today.

    No cloture motions sent out (thought there might have been one for the FAA bill, didn’t expect any on nominations), but the Senate is voting to confirm an ambassador Tuesday.

    Sucks there’s no judges in the pipeline but at least they got a lot of nominees voice voted when spending the week working on a bill.

    Liked by 3 people

  34. There’s a vote for an ambassador set for Tues. I guess it would have been too much to ask for a cloture vote on a Circuit court or District Court nominee..

    Schumer should have cleared the calendar of the controversial nominees while Sen Menendez was in everyday…

    I’ll never be able to figure out the way that guy schedules votes.. 

    Liked by 2 people

    • My biggest issue with the scheduling this week was on Wednesday, where only two votes were held (confirmation of Alexakis and the first FAA bill vote). Cloture could have been teed up for a second judge last week so that on Wednesday, you’d confirm Alexakis, cloture+confirm a second nominee, and then start the procedural votes on the FAA bill. Since a time agreement was reached on the next procedural vote having that first vote later on Wednesday wouldn’t have changed much. I think Mark Kelly was out all week so there wouldn’t have been a chance to vote on a party-line nominee this week.

      The last couple of weeks you had that impeachment trial, FISA, the supplemental, and the visit by the PM from Japan, so the Senate did have a ton of stuff to work on.

      Liked by 2 people

  36. There’s a publication called Colorado Politics (it has a paywall) that just wrote an article entitled

    The Bennet-Hickenlooper Court: How 2 senators left their mark on Colorado’s federal bench | COVER STORY

    So if anyone subscribes to this site, this article is up

    Liked by 1 person

    • Unfortunately for Republicans, Colorado has moved considerably to the left. I don’t think their grandfather’s Republican Party will play today. But they are more than welcome to try & sell repealing legalizing marijuana, gay marriage & abortion rights in the state. In the words of Morgan Freeman in The Dark Knight when he told the guy that found out Bruce Wayne was Batman & wanted a large sum of money for the rest of his life to keep it a secret… Good luck

      Like

  38. That’s Another reason why I wish that senate Dems would simply hold votes within a week or two of them being voted out of committee. If they moved faster before any opposition to these nominees could crystallize they’d likely create much less backlash.

    Liked by 1 person

    • @Joe,
      You hit the nail on the head.
      Just because Dale Ho and Nusrat Choudhury got confirmed doesn’t mean others will.
      Amir Ali was already facing fire due to the claim he supports defunding police (he doesn’t) and letting his nomination linger gives the bigots more time to do hatchet jobs on him and other nominees.

      Liked by 1 person

  39. I didn’t get to see Durbin’s comments on Mangi last week but I did think this weekend what the ultimate strategy could be to get him confirmed. I just don’t buy the whole wait until after the election thoughts. I don’t see the Nevada senators saying they are against him for 9 months to all of a something about face once the election is over. I know neither are up for reelection for another 4 years after this November but I just don’t buy it.

    I was thinking if they are waiting to see if Tim Scott is picked as Trump’s VP. There could be a path then if so. I could see Schumer finally ditching his “Don’t vote on a party line nominee while a senator opposed to him is out” strategy. It’s dumb. If Tim Scott is the VP & had a rally or debate in another state, there’s no reason why they can’t call Mangi’s vote up then.

    Besides that strategy if it were to play out, they would need to pick off Collins or Murkowski. I wonder if the WH is negotiating the 1st vacancy pick with Collins in exchange for her support for Mangi (Behind closed doors of course). I can’t think of a fourth option outside of one of the Nevada senators or Manchin changing their minds which is less likely in my opinion.

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