Two Stories by Quin Hillyer at Liberty Headlines;
Conservative court picks getting confirmed (published Nov. 1): After complaints from conservative movement leaders about U.S. Senate inactivity, the Senate is moving resolutely this week to confirm a series of President Trump’s judicial nominees, including one that Democrats had tried to block because she dared to express faithful Catholicism.
In all, the Senate is expected to confirm five nominees either this week or very early next week, and the Judiciary Committee next week is expected to approve five others that then will be sent to the full Senate for confirmation. Of the first five either already or soon to be confirmed by the full Senate, four are nominees to powerful circuit appeals courts…. [Full story is here]
Dem Senators, union bosses rage against expected court loss: Months before the U.S. Supreme Court actually hears oral argument on a key labor-union case, nervous Democratic senators already are jawboning against the expected pro-worker result.
The case is Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). In it, an Illinois state employee named Mark Janus contests the automatic withdrawal from his paycheck of dues for a union to which he does not belong, but which claims (in effect) to represent him via collective bargaining.
As Liberty Headlines reported in September, “Janus does not agree with the union’s bargaining position with regard to what at heart is a political dispute concerning how, and how much, Illinois pays its public employees. Presumably, he believes he can get a better deal under the policies pushed by Republican governor Bruce Rauner than under the one-size-fits-all system favored by the union bosses.”
When the Supreme Court considered a similar case in 2016 while the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia was vacant, the court split 4-4. Now that conservative Neil Gorsuch is on the court, many observers expect the justices to rule 5-4 in Janus’s favor.
Hence the panic among leading Democrats, who count on the muscle of union bosses to help further their liberal political aims. If workers can choose to de-fund the union bosses, most observers believe that Democratic Party organizational models will be weakened.
On Wednesday Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer unleashed a furious speech on the Senate floor….. [Full story is here.]
