Why It’s Worth Opposing Gorsuch
Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts
Slate Audio
4.6 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2017
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After a successful blockade of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, the GOP-led Senate will convene hearings this week on President Trump’s pick for the Court’s year-old vacancy. Considering all that has happened in the past year, how should Democrats handle the proceedings? On this week’s episode, we put that question to U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
We also sit down with veteran journalist Tom Rosenstiel to discuss his debut novel Shining City, a timely thriller about the inner-workings of a controversial Supreme Court nomination. Tom describes how his decades of political reporting informed the book, and reflects on some of the parallels between reality and fiction.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | To me, the thing that is the huge flashing billboard right front and center is the past record of the court with a five to four Republican majority. |
| 0:13.4 | Staffers and interest groups and money propel much of the action. |
| 0:18.7 | And you have a group of very talented and originally idealistic people |
| 0:23.5 | who came to Washington to try and make the country better, and many of them feel trapped in |
| 0:28.7 | this system. |
| 0:32.9 | Hi, and welcome to Amicus, Slate's podcast about the law and the Supreme Court. |
| 0:38.3 | I'm Dahlia Lithwick. I cover the courts and the law for Slate. |
| 0:43.1 | Starting Monday, Donald Trump's pick for the Supreme Court seat that has sat empty for well over a year now is going to start his confirmation hearings. |
| 0:53.0 | Judge Neil Gorsuch will be alternately grilled and celebrated by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee |
| 0:58.9 | in what has become really the only must-see TV event in the life of the High Court. |
| 1:05.2 | Later on in the show, we're going to talk to longtime D.C. journalist and observer Tom Rosensteestiel about his brand new novel that is, weirdly enough, set around a really controversial Supreme Court confirmation hearing. |
| 1:19.5 | But first we want to turn to the Senate where Democrats are trying to figure out how much energy they're going to expend on blocking a Neil Gorsuch nomination, |
| 1:28.9 | whether it's worth fighting really hard over a nominee that maybe isn't all that different from Antonin Scalia. |
| 1:36.2 | Sheldon White House sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee. |
| 1:38.7 | He is the junior senator from Rhode Island. |
| 1:41.0 | He served as Rhode Island's U.S. attorney under Bill Clinton and was Attorney General of that state. It is a tremendous honor to have you on the show. Senator White House, welcome to Amicus. |
| 1:52.1 | Thank you. It is my honor to be on your show. So I want to ask you just as a framing question, and maybe this is my journalistic onks showing, but we are dealing |
| 2:03.2 | every day with four constitutional emergencies, right, likened to drinking from a fire hose. |
| 2:10.1 | And so you're right at the epicenter, it seems to me, of everything, the wiretapping claims |
| 2:15.9 | and the corruption claims and the investigation |
| 2:19.7 | into Russia involvement. Is Neil Gorsuch even in the top 20 things Americans should be |
| 2:26.8 | focusing on right now? Yeah, I think he absolutely should be because of the track record that we have when five Republican appointees |
... |
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