[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 147 (Wednesday, September 5, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H7829-H7830]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 SHAM NOMINATION HEARINGS IN THE SENATE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Washington (Ms. Jayapal) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme 
Court nomination and the sham hearings that are happening in the Senate 
today.
  Even before President Trump nominated Judge Kavanaugh, Senate 
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned that the millions of pages in 
Judge Kavanaugh's White House records would reopen controversies dating 
back to George W. Bush's administration and delay consideration of his 
nomination. But instead of following regular order, rather than 
obtaining Judge Kavanaugh's full record and sharing it in a timely 
fashion with all the Senators, Senate Republicans simply changed the 
rules. This is unacceptable.
  The nine Justices who sit on the Supreme Court make crucial decisions 
about justice in our country. At times, the Court's landmark decisions 
have shown the best of who we are and what our country stands for, the 
ideas that our public schools should not be segregated based on race, 
that women have a right to make their own decisions about their bodies, 
and that everybody has the right to marry the person they love.
  In other cases, Supreme Court decisions have been stains on our 
Nation;

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for instance, deciding that African Americans could not be U.S. 
citizens, upholding the cruel and unjust internment of Japanese 
Americans during World War I, maintaining segregation, and striking 
down key provisions protecting access to voting.
  Make no mistake, Judge Kavanaugh poses a serious threat to the rights 
that we hold so dear. Take, for instance, the case of Jane Doe, the 
teenage girl who sought an abortion last year while being held in 
government custody in Texas.
  Jane Doe did everything herself to secure that abortion. She got 
permission from a judge. She got her own transportation. And yet, the 
Federal Government physically blocked her from leaving the government-
run shelter where she was detained.
  So then the ACLU sued on her behalf, and her case eventually made it 
in front of Judge Kavanaugh. Although he recognized the time 
sensitivity, even clarifying that she would no longer be able to seek a 
legal abortion in Texas at 20 weeks, Judge Kavanaugh blocked Jane Doe's 
access to her legally allowable abortion when she was about 15 weeks 
pregnant. He gave the Trump administration 11 more days to find a 
sponsor, a process that he was aware takes months to complete. He told 
Jane Doe that, after those 11 days, she could ask a lower court again 
for an abortion. If at 17 weeks she was unsuccessful, then he told her 
that she could bring it up again to him for consideration, which would 
have been scheduled when she was, at that point, 18 or 19 weeks 
pregnant, if she were lucky. Court delays could have pushed it even 
further, seriously putting her at risk of being outside the window to 
obtain something that was her legal right.
  But, fortunately, the full court overturned Judge Kavanaugh's 
decision a few days later, and Jane Doe was able to proceed in the 
course that she chose for her own body, a decision that Judge Kavanaugh 
vehemently opposed.
  Fortunately for Jane Doe, Judge Kavanaugh's decision was not the 
crucial vote deciding her future. But if Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed, 
the rest of the country will not be so lucky.
  There is broad consensus that Judge Kavanaugh would be a decisive 
vote to eliminate women's constitutionally protected right to abortion, 
a right, by the way, that is not partisan. Seventy-one percent of 
voters support that right.
  In addition, Judge Kavanaugh's record shows that he could be the 
deciding vote to undermine access to healthcare for millions of 
Americans. He has written dissenting opinions in three cases that would 
have undermined the Affordable Care Act. In one of those dissenting 
opinions, Judge Kavanaugh argued that a President could choose not to 
enforce a law like the Affordable Care Act if he thought it was 
unconstitutional, even if a court had already ruled that it is 
constitutional.
  Further, in a 2013 speech, Judge Kavanaugh said that it is ``a 
traditional exercise of power by Presidents'' to pick and choose which 
laws to enforce. At a time when we are hearing reports from the highest 
levels of our government that top aides to the President are literally 
hiding papers from him so that he cannot execute orders that they view 
as dangerous to our security and would result in geopolitical crises, 
what we need is a Justice who will serve as a check on the executive, 
as our Founders intended.
  The Senate has a responsibility to the American people to fully vet 
Supreme Court nominees. The most basic function is for them to do the 
leg work of obtaining all records related to those nominees. I strongly 
urge my Senate colleagues to adjourn the Kavanaugh hearing, as Senator 
Blumenthal and my good colleagues proposed. A ``no'' vote is a vote for 
the people.

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