The New York Times - USA (2020-06-29)

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALMONDAY, JUNE 29, 2020 N A

President Trump this month
celebrated the confirmation of his
200th lifetime appointment to the
federal bench, outpacing his pred-
ecessor by dozens through three-
and-a-half years.
Campaign supporters of Mr.
Trump and Senator Mitch McCon-
nell, the Republican majority
leader, have been urged to buy T-
shirts saluting the two men as
“Back-to-Back Supreme Court
Champs,” their faces rendered in
white silhouette with “Gorsuch”
and “Kavanaugh” etched on the
sleeves.
And four years after the battle
over a court vacancy helped de-
liver Mr. Trump to the White
House, the president hopes to
keep his job by playing the hits:
He has pledged to produce an up-
dated roster of would-be justices
to galvanize the right before No-
vember, warning that his Demo-
cratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden
Jr., would nominate “a radical
lefty” as a slate of major rulings
returns the judiciary to the politi-
cal fore.
“Based on decisions being ren-
dered now, this list is more impor-
tant than ever before,” the presi-
dent wrote on Twitter on June 18.
“VOTE 2020!”
By their own account, Demo-
crats have long found themselves
outmaneuvered in campaign
fights over the courts. Exit polls
from 2016 showed Mr. Trump win-
ning by double digits among those
who called the Supreme Court the
“most important factor” in their
vote.
Most memorably, Mr. Trump
made the novel choice to publish a
list of prospective nominees,
shaped by leaders from conserva-
tive groups like the Federalist So-
ciety, supplying specificity (at
least on this subject) from a candi-
date prone to ideological shape-
shifting.
“It gave certainty to people who
didn’t know the president — and I
was one of them,” said Penny
Nance, the chief executive of Con-
cerned Women for America, a con-
servative Christian group. “It was

probably the No. 1 issue when we

looked at the polling of what

brought conservatives to the vot-

ing booth in 2016. I think it will be a

top-of-mind issue, certainly, in

2020.”

Trailing in the polls amid over-

lapping national crises that he has

strained to corral, Mr. Trump

seems even more likely to place

the courts, an area of unambigu-

ous conservative triumph, at the

center of his case for re-election.

Whether Democrats can har-

ness their own enthusiasm on this

score is at once uncertain and po-

tentially critical to election for-

tunes this fall, both in the presi-

dential race and several competi-

tive Senate contests where the Re-

publican incumbents’ Supreme

Court votes might figure promi-

nently. (In Maine, Senator Susan

Collins’s support for Justice Brett

M. Kavanaugh in 2018 attracted

wide-scale scrutiny — and mil-

lions of dollars in donations

against her — before she had an

official opponent.)

Recent years have produced no

shortage of seminal moments to

mobilize Democrats around mat-

ters of the judiciary: the confirma-

tion of Justice Kavanaugh; the

non-confirmation of Judge Mer-

rick B. Garland; the Supreme

Court’s refusal in April to extend

the deadline for absentee voting in

Wisconsin during a pandemic.

Still, some in the party sense an

asymmetry in how urgently many

Democratic voters think about the

courts.

“I do think it has picked up in

visibility, but I don’t think it moves

millions to the polls in the way that

it really should,” said Senator

Chris Coons, Democrat of Dela-

ware and a close Biden ally.

“That’s the challenge that re-

mains before us.”

Progressives have suggested

that Mr. Biden, the former vice

president, could prompt enthusi-

asm by releasing his own list of

preferred judges. Some activists

have urged him to embrace a pro-

posal to expand the size of the Su-

preme Court.

Mr. Biden has done neither,

though he has promised to nomi-

nate a black woman to the court

and said that the judiciary was

“the single most important rea-

son” that his wife, Jill, wanted him

to run in 2020.

John Anzalone, a pollster and

adviser for Mr. Biden, said that

much of the modern Democratic

electorate plainly grasped the sig-

nificance of the courts. A Suffolk

University/USA Today poll in

April found that Democrats were

slightly more likely than Republi-

cans to call the Supreme Court one

of the most important issues af-

fecting their vote.

“I do think that women — col-

lege-educated women, suburban

women — are without a doubt a

much bigger part of our coalition,”

Mr. Anzalone said. “And they’re

much more awake to the ramifica-

tions of replacing a Ruth Bader

Ginsburg. That is real.”

Democrats have been bracing

for possible disappointment in

pending Supreme Court decisions

involving abortion and the disclo-

sure of the president’s financial

records before the end of this

court term.

But two high-profile rulings

have already come as a pleasant

surprise to liberals: one holding

that a landmark civil rights law

protects L.G.B.T.Q. employees

from workplace discrimination

and another preventing Mr.

Trump from immediately pro-

ceeding with plans to end a pro-

gram shielding young immigrants

from deportation.

While welcoming the outcomes,

activists have advised Democrats

to beware a conservative majority

bearing gifts.

“The court’s not evil 100 percent

of the time,” said Meagan

Hatcher-Mays, the director of de-

mocracy policy at Indivisible.

“But they’re evil, like, 94 percent

of the time.”

Such occasional successes can,

paradoxically, register as some-

thing of a narrative complication

for those arguing that the court is

stacked against the left.

Brian Fallon, the executive di-

rector of Demand Justice, a pro-

gressive group, suggested that

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

understood as much — and was

steering the court accordingly.

“These rulings are enough to

convince a lot of people on the left

that they should continue to play

within the system and not offend

sitting federal judges by calling

them out as overly political,” he

said. “In some sense, that is the

exact game that Roberts is play-

ing: to side with the liberals in just

enough cases so the public misses

the larger trend of this court’s

rightward swerve.”

The chief justice has nonethe-

less angered many Republicans

who appraise his tenure as a fail-

ure, recalling him siding with the

court’s liberal wing in cases chal-

lenging core provisions of the Af-

fordable Care Act.

Some of those critics hold high

office: “Do you get the impression

that the Supreme Court doesn’t

like me?” Mr. Trump wrote on

Twitter this month.

Conservatives say that, if any-

thing, the Roberts era has demon-

strated the need for Mr. Trump to

fill vacancies for another four

years.

“Frustration with the chief jus-

tice and concern about the direc-

tion the courts were going was

part of what galvanized conserva-

tives in the first place to elect

someone like Trump,” said Carrie

Severino, president of the conser-

vative Judicial Crisis Network.

By prizing “courage” in addition

to credentials, Ms. Severino said,

Mr. Trump’s approach “is almost

designed to avoid a future John

Roberts,” whom she accused of op-

erating with politics in mind — in

some ways echoing the charge of

his progressive skeptics.

She also joined some liberal

counterparts in calling for Mr. Bi-

den to release a list of potential

nominees.

Many Biden supporters see lit-

tle need for that step because, un-

like Mr. Trump in 2016, the former

vice president has an exhaustive

record on judicial affairs, includ-

ing an extended tenure as chair-

man of the Senate Judiciary Com-

mittee.

Those close to Mr. Biden are

rarely eager to dwell on the treat-

ment of Anita Hill before his com-

mittee at the confirmation hear-

ings for Justice Clarence Thomas.

But others cite his work to defeat

the nomination of Judge Robert H.

Bork in 1987 as a towering feat for

Democrats — and a turning point

for a chamber that had previously

been disinclined to reject a nomi-

nee for primarily ideological rea-

sons.

“I don’t think there’s ever been

any president — assuming Biden’s

elected — who knows as much

about or has been as involved in

shaping the Supreme Court as Joe

Biden,” said Mark Gitenstein, who

led Mr. Biden’s Judiciary Commit-

tee staff during the Bork fight.

And those who have doubted

Mr. Biden in 2020, he added, were

hardly the first.

“The irony of the Bork fight is

it’s not unlike what you’re seeing

now,” Mr. Gitenstein said. “People

totally underestimated Biden.”

Democrats Strategize

G.O.P.-Style Hardball

To Get Judges Seated

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER

Mitch McConnell, the Senate

majority leader, above with

President Trump, has gotten

200 conservative judges con-

firmed to the federal bench

during Mr. Trump’s term, in-

cluding Supreme Court Justice

Brett M. Kavanaugh, left.

DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

T.J. KIRKPATRICK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Progressives hope

Biden will release

a list of nominees.

Giovanni Russonello contributed
reporting.

WASHINGTON — President
Trump on Sunday retweeted a vid-
eo of one of his supporters yelling
“White power!,” once again using
the vast reach of his social media
platforms to inflame racial divi-
sions in a nation roiled by weeks of
protests about police brutality
against black people and de-
mands for social justice reforms.
The edited racist video shows a
white man riding in a golf cart
bearing “Trump 2020” and
“America First” signs during
what appears to be an angry clash
over the president and race be-
tween white residents of a Florida
retirement community. Mr. Trump
deleted the tweet more than three
hours after posting it.
In response to a protester
shouting “Where’s your white
hood?” and other taunts, the man
in the golf cart pumps his fist in
the air and says “White power!”
twice. The two-minute video con-
tinues to show profane exchanges
between protesters and other
Trump supporters riding on more
golf carts.
The president retweeted the
video to his millions of followers
just after 7:30 a.m., thanking “the
great people of The Villages,” the
Florida retirement community
where the clash apparently took
place. He added: “The Radical
Left Do Nothing Democrats will
Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot.
See you soon!!!”
The tweet was widely criticized
as racist and insensitive, and
again demonstrated the presi-
dent’s willingness use social me-
dia to amplify some of the most
hateful commentary of some of his
followers, even at a moment of na-
tional unrest.
Senator Tim Scott of South Car-
olina, the only black Republican
senator, called the video “offen-
sive” and asked Mr. Trump to take
it off his Twitter page.
“There is no question he should
not have retweeted it, and he
should just take it down,” Mr. Scott
said on “State of the Union” on
CNN. “We can play politics with it
or we can’t. I’m not going to. I
think it’s indefensible. We should
take it down.”
Mr. Trump deleted it less than
an hour after Mr. Scott’s com-
ments, but he did not condemn the
“white power” statement or spe-
cifically disavow the sentiment
expressed by his supporter.
Judd Deere, a White House
spokesman, said Mr. Trump “is a
big fan of The Villages.”
“He did not hear the one state-
ment made on the video,” Mr.
Deere said. “What he did see was
tremendous enthusiasm from his
many supporters.”

John R. Bolton, the former na-

tional security adviser who just

released a scathing book about

Mr. Trump, said on Sunday that

the president’s inattention to de-

tail made it possible that he did not

notice the racist comments.

“He doesn’t pay attention to a

lot of things,” Mr. Bolton said on

“State of the Union.” “It’s entirely

possible that he tweeted this video

because he saw the sign, I think it

was in the first go-kart that said

the Trump 2020 or something like

that. That’s all he needed to see.

Not paying attention. Not consid-

ering all the implications of infor-

mation he gets.”

But Mr. Bolton added, “It may

be that you can draw a conclusion

that he heard it, and it was racist,

and he tweeted it to promote the

message. It’s a legitimate conclu-

sion to draw.”

Either way, the president’s ini-

tial decision to approvingly share

the blatant support for white su-

premacy was the latest example

of his willingness to use his vast

Twitter following to inject incendi-

ary commentary into the ongoing

debate in the country over sys-

temic racism.

In May, as protests erupted af-

ter the killing of George Floyd, a

black man, by a Minneapolis po-

lice officer, Mr. Trump tweeted,

“When the looting starts, the

shooting starts,” a phrase with a

long history of connection to rac-

ism.

More recently, Mr. Trump has

used his Twitter feed to attack pro-

testers who have pulled down

statues of Confederate generals,

calling them “arsonists, anar-

chists, looters, and agitators.” On

Saturday night, he tweeted out 15

“wanted” posters for people the

U.S. Park Police were seeking in

connection with vandalism in La-

fayette Square, just outside the

White House.

The video on Sunday — which

could not be independently veri-

fied by The New York Times — ap-

peared to show a slow-moving pa-

rade through the Florida commu-

nity with supporters of Mr. Trump

riding golf carts, wearing red,

white and blue, and displaying

pro-Trump materials.

Protesters lined the street,

many of them screaming epithets,

accusing the Trump supporters of

being racists and holding signs

calling the president a bigot.

In his tweet, Mr. Trump did not

specifically refer to the man who

yelled “white power.” But his ref-

erence to “the great people of The

Villages” was an eerie echo of his

comments in the summer of 2017,

when he responded to deadly vio-

lence by white supremacists in

Charlottesville, Va., by saying

there were “very fine people on

both sides.”

Former Vice President Joseph

R. Biden Jr., the presumptive

Democratic presidential nominee,

invoked the president’s com-

ments about Charlottesville in re-

sponse to the video on Sunday.

“We’re in a battle for the soul of

the nation — and the President

has picked a side,” Mr. Biden

tweeted.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly de-

nied that he was expressing sup-

port for white supremacy with his

“both sides” comment. But the

tweet on Sunday underscores

what has become a hallmark of his

presidency since he took office: a

willingness to embrace divisive

comments when they are coming

from people he perceives to be his

supporters.

The president has routinely re-

tweeted far-right messages and a

conspiracy theory known as

QAnon, which includes people

who believe that a “deep state” in

the government is filled with sa-

tanic pedophiles. Mr. Trump once

retweeted VB Nationalist, an

anonymous account that has pro-

moted a hoax about top Demo-

crats worshiping the Devil and en-

gaging in child sex trafficking.

An analysis of Mr. Trump’s Twit-

ter account by The New York

Times at the end of last year found

that the president had retweeted

at least 145 unverified accounts

that had pushed conspiracy, racist

or other fringe content, including

more than two dozen that were

later suspended by Twitter.

Recently, Twitter has begun to

crack down directly on Mr.

Trump’s feed, posting warnings

on some of his messages. In May,

when the president tweeted about

shooting following looting, the

company added a statement to the

post.

“This Tweet violated the Twit-

ter Rules about glorifying vio-

lence. However, Twitter has deter-

mined that it may be in the public’s

interest for the Tweet to remain

accessible,” the company wrote.

The quick deletion of the video

on Sunday was a rare instance in

which Mr. Trump backed down in

the face of criticism. His previous

tweets have remained online de-

spite the company’s online warn-

ings.

Trump Amplifies ‘White Power’ on Twitter

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Sharing a video of a

supporter in Florida

yelling a racist slogan.

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