Summary
- Rebecca
Taibleson nominated to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. - Supported
by Senate Republicans and White House despite pushback. - Faces
criticism from conservatives for being insufficiently conservative.
Rebecca Taibleson emphasized her “conservative
values” in an attempt to reassure members of the Republican-led SenateJudiciary Committee that, should she be confirmed to a position on the 7th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, she would be a judge similar to the
justices of the U.S. Supreme Court she had previously clerked for.
As a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit, Taibleson, who is now a federal prosecutor in Wisconsin,
clerked for Brett Kavanaugh and Antonin Scalia, who passed away in 2016, at the
Supreme Court. After Trump nominated him in 2018, she later provided testimony
to the Supreme Court in favor of his confirmation.
Leaders of dozens of conservative organizations, including
the Family Research Council, Gun Owners of America, and First Liberty
Institute, opposed her nomination despite her qualifications, claiming in a
joint statement on Monday that her confirmation would “damage the legacy
of President Trump.”
They cited what they claimed
were donations she and her husband had made to progressives and Democrats,
including to a local Jewish group that the conservatives claimed promoted LGBTQ
people and to former U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, the sole Democrat to vote for
Kavanaugh.
Their worries, according to Texas Republican Senator Ted
Cruz, “boil down to that you’re secretly a closeted liberal and that you’d
be an activist on the bench.”
Cruz, however, claimed to have received messages from
“multiple conservatives who I respect deeply and know you well and have
vouched for you energetically.” Her “very impressive legal
career” was praised by him, who also offered her an opportunity to address
her detractors.
Although Democrats seemed to disagree with Taibleson’s legal
perspective, the panel’s senior Democrat, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois,
criticized the conservative activists’ reference to her congregation and
endorsement of the Jewish organization, stating that it “may be a new low
point.”
Taibleson claimed that her husband, Benjamin Taibleson, a
fellow prosecutor who has given and was one of five finalists to become the
U.S. attorney in Milwaukee under Democratic President Joe Biden, was largely to
blame for her opponents’ worries.
“It is true that my husband and I don’t agree about
everything in politics and in the law, but my husband and I do agree it turns
out about more important things in our day-to-day life,”
Taibleson
told the senators.
How has Trump’s judicial appointment strategy evolved
recently?
During his first term, Trump primarily utilized the
Federalist Society to review and recommend highly qualified conservative
judicial nominees who had legal philosophies that aligned with Trump’s
preference.
In his second term, Trump has departed from this more
technocratic approach to nominations, favoring nominees who demonstrate
personal loyalty to him and ideological alignment with his agenda, even when
they lack the stamp of approval from the Federalist Society or traditional
conservative credentials.
Trump has openly framed some nominations in political and
outcome-based terms, rather than merely on the basis of legal qualifications.
For example, he publicly backed the nomination of Emil Bove, a former lawyer
for Trump, with pledges of loyalty to Trump’s agenda.
