Neil Gorsuch will take the stand again today before the Senate Judiciary Committee to once again school Senate politicians on the value of "seperations of power" despite their endless attempts to make him offer up his personal opinions on controversial legislation.
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Per Politico, here are some of the key takeaways from yesterday's testimony.
On being Trump's puppet:
Several Democrats noted that Trump publicly and repeatedly vowed that the judges he’d put on the bench would overturn the Supreme Court precedent finding a constitutional right to abortion, Roe v. Wade.
However, Gorsuch insisted he’d made no promises on that issue. In fact, he suggested he’d have stormed out in a huff if asked to do so.
“Senator, I would have walked out the door,” Gorsuch said to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “It's not what judges do. They don't do it at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and they shouldn't do it here.”
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) pressed Gorsuch about why he was being so evasive, given that officials like White House chief of staff Reince Priebus appeared to have promised conservative activists that Gorsuch would advance Trump’s agenda.
“Mr. Priebus went on to say your nomination was central to President Trump fulfilling his policy objectives,” Franken noted. “'Neil Gorsuch represents the type of judge that has the vision of Donald Trump.'”
Gorsuch said, in essence, that he had no idea what Priebus was talking about.
“Respectfully, Senator, Mr. Priebus doesn't speak for me, and I don't speak for him,” the nominee said. “I don't appreciate it when people characterize me, as I'm sure you don't appreciate it when people characterize you. I like to speak for myself. I am a judge. I am my own man.”
On gay marriage:
No matter how hard Democrats tried, Gorsuch refused to be pinned down on specific policies spanning from abortion to campaign finance to gun regulations.
But on at least one hot-button matter, the Supreme Court nominee said the issue was all but settled: same-sex marriage, which was legalized after the high court’s landmark decision in Obergefell s. Hodges in 2015.
“It is absolutely settled law,” Gorsuch said under questioning from Franken. He added that he would not weigh in with his personal views toward gay marriage, noting that his comments could inaccurately signal that he would not rule fairly in other cases and added: “There is ongoing litigation about its impact and its application right now.”
Later, pressed by Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Gorsuch again said of gay marriage: “That’s a right that the Supreme Court has recognized.”
And, of course, a series of baseless Democrat attacks that failed miserably:
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) brought up a former Gorsuch professor who once compared homosexuality to bestiality. Franken called one of Gorsuch's legal opinions — against a trucker who nearly froze to death — “absurd.” And Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) noted that even Chief Justice John Roberts said the landmark desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided, yet Gorsuch was unwilling to say so.
Durbin also raised one of the most uncomfortable recent revelations about Gorsuch. A former law student accused the Supreme Court nominee of making insensitive remarks about women and maternity leave in one of Gorsuch’s courses at the University of Colorado law school. Gorsuch denied the charge and said he was actually raising another matter through his teaching method, and the issue wasn’t brought up again.
The sprawling litany of attacks made it harder for one single negative narrative against Gorsuch to stick. But one may resonate more than others: Gorsuch was repeatedly unwilling to answer directly on multiple hot-button issues.
Yes, Gorsuch can’t say specifically how he would rule on a certain case, Democrats acknowledge — but he can certainly do better than the answers he was giving before the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
“I think he’s made a very poor impression on most, many of our members in his refusal to answer questions,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters. “There’s absolutely no legal basis, other than hiding.”