Outside the Beltway

It’s been eight years since we’ve seen a Supreme Court retirement, and despite speculation there were none announced today.

Three months after it started, the Trump Trade War is already starting to have a negative impact on American businesses and American consumers.

President Trump once said that “trade wars are good and easy to win.” It’s only been three months since he started this war and we’re already finding out just how wrong he is about that.

With the end of the Supreme Court term approaching, speculation about a Kennedy retirement is ramping up again.

Republicans are planning on pushing judicial nominees through the Senate in case they lose control in November. Meanwhile, the possibility of a Supreme Court vacancy raises the stakes.

Republicans on Capitol Hill and in positions of power are slavishly backing their President over their country. They should be ashamed.

Trump’s tariff plan isn’t going over well in farm country, and that could cause problems for the GOP in November.

Once again, there’s speculation in Washington that Justice Anthony Kennedy could retire this year.

Despite mounting evidence and outrageous behavior, Republicans nationwide and on Capitol Hill continue to do the Administration’s dirty work. They’ll most likely live to regret it.

The Senate appears ready to get rid of another procedural move designed to block judicial nominees.

Justice Kennedy is telling prospective law clerks for the term that beings in October 2018 that he is considering retiring at the end of the term that begins this October.

With tomorrow marking the end of the Court’s current term, there’s speculation that we could see Justice Anthony Kennedy stepping down.

The Freedom Caucus may be mollified, but moderate Republicans and the Senate aren’t. Meaning that repeal and replacement of Obamacare is becoming less likely.

The Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is hinting at a new Supreme Court vacancy this summer.

Next week’s big news is likely to be the Senate’s vote to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, which could mean invocation of the so-called ‘nuclear option’ by Senate Republicans.

Comments from one Republican Senator are raising the possibility we could see hearings and a vote on Merrick Garland during the post-election lame duck session of Congress.

With Donald Trump now confirmed as the GOP nominee, some conservatives are suggesting that the Senate GOP should just give in on the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.

Conservatives are doing all they can to make sure Merrick Garland does not get either a hearing or a vote in the Senate, and it’s working.

Another Republican Senator has broken ranks and called for hearings on the nomination of Merrick Garland, as another poll shows most Americans support hearings as well.

It increasingly appears that the GOP is on the losing side of the argument over whether to hold hearings and a vote on the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.

A crack in the wall.

The coming political battle over President Obama’s effort to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia will likely be unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Another poll shows that most Americans would prefer that the vacancy on the Supreme Court be filled by President Obama than that it be left open for the next President to fill, but other factors make it unlikely the Senate will act.

Notwithstanding polling that indicates the American public disagrees with them, Senate Republicans emerged from a meeting today largely united on the idea of not giving any Supreme Court nominee named by President a hearing, or even the courtesy of a meeting.

Conservatives are sending a message to Senate Republicans about the vacancy on the Supreme Court, and it may require them to initiate a suicidal game plan.

Two new polls show that Americans are basically split equally on the question of who should appoint the Justice that will replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

The unity of the Republican Senate on the idea of no hearings or votes, if it ever really existed, appears to be cracking.

A crack in the Republican wall?

Republicans are putting much on the line in their refusal to consider any Supreme Court nomination from President Obama.

It didn’t take long for the political battle over the seat held by the late Justice Antonin Scalia to become another part of the 2016 political battle.

A wealthy alumnus has given Harvard $400 million, sparking a heated debate.

The GOP Senate Caucus seems to be split on whether or not to reinstate the filibuster for Presidential and Judicial appointments.

The next Attorney General will likely see their nomination taken up by Senators who will not be in office past December. That’s somewhat disturbing, but it’s become all too common in Washington.

The news PPACA controversy appears to be based on a complete misunderstanding of one provision of the law.

Thanks to one question from one Senator, we learned yesterday that the FBI has used surveillance drones inside the United States.

Filling normal vacancies on the bench is not “packing the court.”

For better or worse, the attack in Boston is likely to have an impact on the immigration reform debate.

Why was the ATF allowing thousands of weapons to be smuggled to Mexican drug gangs?

Supreme Court nominees were confirmed quite easily within recent memory. What’s changed?

Rick Perry will need to get past Michele Bachmann before he takes on Mitt Romney. But, really, how hard could it be?

Obama’s main politics are hardly as leftist as many make them out to be. Indeed, much of them could have fit well in the the GOP of 1990s and early 2000s.