ВИБОРЧА ГАЗЕТА

Source: Biden Interviews Trio of Candidates for Supreme Court 

President Joe Biden has interviewed at least three candidates for the Supreme Court, according to a person familiar with the matter, and the White House is reiterating that he remains on track to make a final selection by Monday.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that Biden had not decided whom to nominate. But the president has interviewed Judges Ketanji Brown Jackson, J. Michelle Childs and Leondra Kruger, according to a person familiar with the matter. A second person familiar said Biden had interviewed at least three candidates for the post. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the process.

Biden has pledged to nominate the first Black woman to the high court by the end of the month to fill the vacancy being created by the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer. It was not clear whether any additional candidates have been interviewed by the president.

Psaki declined to discuss whether Biden had conducted interviews but insisted the president was “on track” to make the selection despite rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

Jackson was nominated by President Barack Obama to be a district judge. Biden elevated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Early in her career, she was also a law clerk for Breyer.

Childs, a federal judge in South Carolina, has been nominated but not yet confirmed to serve on the same circuit court. Her name has surfaced partly because she is a favorite among some high-profile lawmakers, including Representative James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat.

Kruger, a graduate of Harvard University and Yale University’s law school, was previously a Supreme Court clerk and argued a dozen cases before the justices as a lawyer for the federal government before becoming a justice on the California Supreme Court.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is signaling he wants a fair fight over Biden’s pick, discouraging those within his GOP ranks who are eager to interject a broader debate over race into the confirmation process.

Speaking Tuesday in Kentucky, McConnell distanced himself from GOP senators and others who have criticized Biden for declaring his intent to nominate a Black woman.

“I heard a couple of people say they thought it was inappropriate for the president to announce he was going to put an African American woman on the court. Honestly, I did not think that was inappropriate,” McConnell said.

The GOP leader drew on history to remind people that former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump both promised to put women on the court — when Reagan tapped Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female justice and Trump chose Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “I’m not complaining about that,” McConnell said.

More to the point, Republicans are unable to stop Biden’s pick in the 50-50 Senate where Democrats have the majority with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. They want to allow the confirmation process to unfold without self-inflicted political drama so they can resume challenging the president on their preferred topics of the economy and the administration’s handling of COVID-19.

Republicans believe one way to show voters how they would govern is by drawing a contrast between this court battle and the controversy that exploded around Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, when the Trump nominee was accused of sexual assault, a claim he denied. Republicans believe Senate Democrats suffered with voters after those highly politicized public confirmation hearings.

“This confirmation will not occur like that,” McConnell said. He said he expects a confirmation process that Americans can be proud of. “We believe a Supreme Court nominee ought to be respectfully treated, thoroughly vetted and then voted upon.”
…

US Lawmakers: Russia Incursion Into Ukraine Is Assault on Democracy 

Top U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s incursion into the occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine an assault on democracy.

“It’s stunning to see – in this day and age – a tyrant rolling into a country. This is the same tyrant who attacked our democracy in 2016,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a press conference, recalling Putin’s interference in U.S. elections.

Pelosi and other top Democrats returning from participation in the Munich Security Conference this week praised President Joe Biden for working with European allies to maintain a united front in deterring Russia.

“The decision to essentially cancel the process of moving forward with the [Nord Stream 2] pipeline, I think, is a very strong indication of the solidarity of NATO and our other allies to punish Putin for this naked aggression and the prospect of further devastating sanctions,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told reporters of the decision to cancel certification of the key pipeline delivering Russian gas to Europe.

Biden announced Tuesday that the U.S. also would sanction Russian officials and banks in response to Putin’s speech claiming Donetsk and Luhansk were independent of Ukraine. The White House is expected to announce additional sanctions this week.

Sequence of sanctions

Despite significant bipartisan unity for deterring Russian aggression in Ukraine, Democrats and Republicans have struggled to agree on how to sequence sanctions to discourage and penalize Putin for incursions into the independent eastern European nation.

An estimated 150,000 Russian troops have massed at the border with Ukraine in recent weeks. Putin’s claim that Donetsk and Luhansk were no longer a part of Ukraine opened the door for so-called Russian “peacekeeping” troops to go into those areas. The U.S. and its allies called this mission a false-flag operation to allow further incursion into Ukraine.

Congressional Republicans have criticized the White House’s approach to the crisis, calling the Russian leader’s move an invasion and accusing the Biden administration of waiting until it is too late to deter Putin.

Republican Senator Ben Sasse, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the first round of sanctions was “too little, too late. First, these sanctions should have happened before Putin further invaded Ukraine — not after. Second, economic sanctions now need to more aggressively target Putin’s oligarchs to make sure they feel real pain. Third, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that today’s incremental sanctions will deter Putin from trying to install a puppet government in Kyiv.”

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a top Capitol Hill ally of former President Donald Trump, had a direct message for Biden late Tuesday: “You said a couple years ago that Putin did not want you to win because you’re the only person that could go toe-to-toe with him. Well, right now, Mr. President, you’re playing footsie with Putin. He’s walking all over you and our allies.”

Working with allies

Democrats praised Biden, though, for working in concert with European allies and avoiding escalating the crisis.

“I think the administration handled this, given the Russian intentions, as well as it could be handled,” Schiff told reporters Wednesday. “They telegraphed in advance the punitive sanctions that would be applied if Russia invaded. I think it makes sense not to enforce those sanctions before Russia invaded. If you do that, then Russia loses its disincentive and figures, ‘Well, we’ve already been sanctioned. We might as well move forward with it.’ ”

Small minorities within both the Republican and Democratic parties have cautioned against escalating tensions with Putin.

“While we work in coordination with our European allies to respond and impose targeted sanctions, we must continue to do all we can to de-escalate and utilize the full power of diplomacy to find a negotiated solution to this crisis,” Democratic Representative Barbara Lee – the only member of Congress to vote against authorizing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – said in a statement Wednesday.

“I am confident in President Biden’s repeated commitment to keep U.S. military personnel out of any conflict in Ukraine itself,” Lee continued.

Several members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus have expressed concern the U.S. could become mired in a ground war in Ukraine, despite Biden’s repeated statements that the U.S. would not commit troops to the conflict.

Senator Bob Menendez and Senator Bob Risch, the top-ranking Democrat and Republican, respectively, on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have separately introduced sanctions bills that would end Russian access to international banking transactions, provide hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, and cut off funding for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Congress is in recess this week and will be back in session at the end of the month.
…