The Note: Supreme Court showdown

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April 3, 2017

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Supreme Court showdown

The Big Story

This is the week another Washington institution appears likely to discard old traditions and heighten new tensions, and it just might take another branch of government along with it. This time, President Trump's influence is only marginal, but here's guessing he won't be urging cooler heads. Today's Judiciary Committee vote to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court will, barring Senate "gang" activity, set off a chain reaction that would destroy the possibility of filibusters' being used to block judges at any level in the Senate. The consequences of a post - "nuclear" Senate include the possibility of doing away with filibusters altogether down the road, at least in the minds of some senators. More immediately, one might expect more fiercely partisan Supreme Court nominees in the future because controlling a majority will virtually clinch confirmation in this new world. Trump's Washington is looking less and less like what came before it.

The Sleeper Story

"I am beating up on Russia," U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley told ABC News' Martha Raddatz on "This Week" Sunday. "[The president] has got a lot of things he's doing, but he is not stopping me from beating up on Russia." For all the appropriate scrutiny of President Trump's warm words for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the active investigations of alleged ties between Trump's campaign and Putin's government, the question of actual policy toward Russia is set to come into sharper focus. At Haley's United Nations, the United States takes over the rotating chairmanship of the Security Council today. And Trump closes his week with two days of meetings with President Xi Jinping of China, talks that are likely to be tense but that are happening well in advance of a presidential meeting with Putin. Trump himself is maintaining on Twitter that the "real story" is "surveillance and leakers," presumably, surveillance of him and his associates, and leaking about them. At some point, and maybe soon, the story becomes actual policy, where the combination of Congress, investigative scrutiny and the instincts of his own appointees have the president doing virtually nothing of what he was feared he might on Russia.

The Shiny Story

Hatch Act violation! That was the immediate accusation after Dan Scavino Jr., the White House's director of social media, used his "personal" Twitter account, which at the time was filled with presidential imagery, to call on the #TrumpTrain to defeat a Republican congressman in his primary. As lawyers who worked in the Bush and Obama administration agreed that this looked like a federal employee's wading into overtly political matters in an official capacity, Scavino changed a few aspects of his profile to make it less "official" looking. Scavino might have violated the law. But does anyone think there will be meaningful consequences? (Recall that top Trump administration officials have already been warned about hyping Ivanka Trump's product line, and about urging people to see "Lego Batman.") Most critically, does anyone think that Scavino wasn't acting without at least the implicit blessing of his boss, the president?

TLDR

It's nuclear week in the Senate, as Democrats approach the number of votes they'd need to block Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination, a move that would likely set off a chain reaction that could kill the filibuster and lead to more partisan justices on the Supreme Court.