Senate Confirms Wildly Problematic Trump Court Pick Steven Menashi
WASHINGTON ― The Senate voted Thursday to make Steven Menashi a lifetime federal judge, despite his inflammatory writings about women’s rights and diversity, his refusal to answer senators’ questions and his role in devising an illegal Education Department effort to deny debt relief to students cheated by for-profit colleges.
Every Democrat present voted against confirming Menashi, who is President Donald Trump’s choice for a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. Every Republican present but one, Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), voted to confirm him.
Menashi, 40, is one of Trump’s most controversial court picks to date. Nearly every national civil and women’s rights group opposed him, including the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, the Human Rights Campaign, Muslim Advocates and Planned Parenthood. Democrats questioned his qualifications ― he has never tried a case, made oral arguments in court or conducted a deposition ― as well as his temperament.
In past editorials, Menashi, who is currently Trump’s White House legal aide, compared race data collection in college admissions to Germany under Adolf Hitler; denounced women’s marches against sexual assault; opposed the “radical abortion rights codified in Roe v. Wade”; accused the Human Rights Campaign of having “incessantly exploited the slaying of Matthew Shepard” for political benefit, and claimed that a Dartmouth fraternity wasn’t being racist when it held a “ghetto party” attended by white students donning Afros and carrying toy guns.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/steven-menashi-republicans-senate-confirms-trump-judge_n_5dcd9beae4b00b9293bff09a
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