WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 09: U.S. President Donald Trump introduces U.S. Circuit Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as his nominee to the United States Supreme Court during an event in the East Room of the White House July 9, 2018 in Washington, DC. Pending confirmation by the U.S. Senate, Judge Kavanaugh would succeed Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, 81, who is retiring after 30 years of service on the high court. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) ORG XMIT: 775188136 ORIG FILE ID: 994988298

Senate hearings for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh that begin Tuesday are expected to be contentious as Democrats plan on grilling the nominee on his judicial record and legal philosophy. The battle has been controversial from the start since the nominee will be filling the seat of retiring justice Anthony Kennedy, the court’s swing vote on many key issues including abortion rights, affirmative action and same-sex marriage. Democrats are complaining of lack of transparency, claiming much of Kavanaugh's record and key documents are being withheld from the public. “There will be sparks at this hearing. Sparks will fly," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut. "And there will be a lot of heat.”

Tropical Storm Gordon expected to strengthen to hurricane as it hits the Gulf Coast

A hurricane watch has been posted for coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, as dangerous Tropical Storm Gordon is expected to strengthen into a hurricane late Tuesday when it hits the central U.S. Gulf Coast with winds of 74 mph and over. Strong wind gusts, battering waves, above-normal tides, minor coastal flooding, flash flooding and a couple of isolated tornadoes and waterspouts will be the main threats from the storm, AccuWeather said. The National Hurricane Center also issued a storm surge warning, meaning possible "danger of life-threatening inundation,'' for the area stretching from Shell Beach, Louisiana, to Dauphin Island, Alabama.

Kerry Perry, whose nine-month tenure as USA Gymnastics CEO was marked by heavy criticism and little tangible action in helping the organization recover from the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal, is expected to resign Tuesday. Though she preached transparency when she began the job, Perry's resignation, confirmed to USA TODAY Sports by two people with knowledge of the decision, was seen as inevitable — she made very few public statements and had no experience in gymnastics or the Olympic movement when she took over Dec. 1. Her expected departure will be the latest in USA Gymnastics after former CEO Steve Penny was forced to resign under pressure from the USOC in March 2017 for the way the organization handled sexual abuse complaints.

Students at Detroit’s city schools are starting the school year Tuesday with concerns about the safety of the city’s water. The school district shut off drinking water to all of its schools after test results found elevated levels of lead or copper in 16 of 24 schools recently tested. Detroit's water department and the regional water and sewer agency for southeast Michigan issued a statement to assure residents that the lead and copper contamination with water in the school buildings do not extend to the pipes that deliver water to customers' homes. The district will be providing bottled water and using portable water coolers at schools when classes start.

A trial begins Tuesday that pits relatives of about 1,200 dead people against licensed funeral homes accused of sending bodies to a Memphis, Tennessee, cemetery for three years after the cemetery said its registration expired in December 2010. The class-action lawsuit claims more than a dozen Memphis-area funeral homes failed to carry out their “sacred and contractual duties” for vulnerable, mourning relatives who expected their loved ones to be interred with dignity.Investigations revealed that Galilee Memorial Gardens' owners, the Lambert family, misplaced hundreds of bodies, buried multiple cadavers in the same grave, and crushed caskets to fit them into single plots for years.</s>As much as we have dreaded this moment, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court are upon us. Barring a miracle bordering on the Immaculate Conception, the committee will vote along party lines to approve the nomination, and shortly thereafter, Kavanaugh will be confirmed in another close vote by the full Senate.

If the recent past is any prologue, before reaching their all-but-scripted conclusions, committee members in the coming weeks will spend a lot of time probing Kavanaugh’s record. We’ll hear a good deal about Kavanaugh’s work as a young lawyer with Clinton-era independent counsel Ken Starr, his tenure as George W. Bush’s staff secretary, and his rulings as a judge on the federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where he has served since 2006.

Kavanaugh, for his part, will answer most questions with well-rehearsed clichés and evasions. He’ll give a nod or three to God and country, and praise the American legal system as the finest that mankind has ever devised. He’ll declare how proud he and his family are that he’s received the honor of being considered to join the country’s most powerful judicial body.

He will also politely decline to give expansive or unambiguous answers as to how he might approach the hot-button issues that will come before him as a member of the high tribunal. (To be fair, ever since Robert Bork helped torpedo his 1987 nomination by being too forthcoming about his originalist judicial philosophy, all nominees, regardless of political affiliation, have learned that when it comes to the judiciary committee, less is always more.)

Throughout the hearings, conservatives on the committee will portray Kavanaugh as eminently qualified to succeed the retiring Anthony Kennedy to become the nation’s 114th Supreme Court justice. By contrast, the committee’s liberals and centrists will paint Kavanaugh as a threat to civil rights and liberties who will tip the court’s balance to a hardened 5-4 right-wing majority on a variety of subjects, ranging from abortion, gun control and voting rights to presidential power, environmental protection and affirmative action.

Both sides will argue that the stakes posed by Kavanaugh’s ascension to the court could not be higher. In this respect, if in no other, both sides will be correct.

But what neither side is likely to mention is something even deeper and more vital to the future of American law than the elevation of a single justice—namely, that Kavanaugh’s confirmation will mark the triumph of a conservative legal counterrevolution aimed at neutralizing the use of law as an instrument of progressive social and economic reform.

The counterrevolution is real, longstanding and well-known to legal scholars and commentators. It isn’t a conspiracy theory, much less the equivalent of “QAnon,” “birtherism,” 9/11 “truth” or any of the other “deep state” quackeries that have gained currency in recent years.

Although it’s impossible to pinpoint exactly when the movement began, many analysts cite as a seminal text a 6,400-word confidential memorandum written in 1971 for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by the late Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell Jr. before his own ascension to the bench.

I’ve covered the Powell memo before in this column. Titled “Attack on American Free Enterprise System,” the memo urged the chamber and business leaders generally to get more involved in the legal system to reverse what Powell saw as a dangerous liberal drift in American constitutional law. Among other measures, Powell stressed the recruitment of lawyers of “the greatest skill” to represent business interests before the Supreme Court, which, under the stewardship of Chief Justice Earl Warren, had moved steadily to the left. Powell wrote: “Under our constitutional system … the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.”

It took a while for Powell’s message to sink in and for the counterrevolution to find its footing, but the right responded with the formation of the Business Roundtable and the Heritage, Koch, Castle Rock, Scaife, Bradley and Olin foundations, among other organizations, to fund conservative legal causes; and groups like the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society and the chamber’s own National Litigation Center to implement conservative causes by way of litigation.

Of all the groups to answer the right-wing summons, none has been more influential than the Federalist Society, especially in the age of Trump. From its founding by three law students in 1981 at Yale and the University of Chicago, the society has grown to include more than 200 chapters at law schools across the United States, with a total student membership of more than 10,000. From its base in Washington, D.C., today, the society also operates a “lawyers division” with more than 60,000 attorneys in chapters and “practice groups” in 80 cities.

The society’s membership also boasts a large number of judges, federal and state, including Kavanaugh. Four sitting members of the Supreme Court—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch—reportedly are current or former members.

Along with White House counsel Don McGahn, the guiding hand behind Trump’s judicial appointments—not only Kavanaugh and Gorsuch to the Supreme Court but also dozens of judges to the lower federal courts—has been the society’s executive vice president, Leo Leonard. Although McGahn, who has famously clashed with Trump over special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, is slated to leave his post in the fall, Leonard remains very much in favor. He is presently on leave from the society to facilitate his role as a Trump adviser.

Ideologically, the Federalist Society embraces a broad spectrum of economic, social and Christian conservatives as well as right-wing libertarians. While the various constituencies may differ on a few issues like gay marriage, they are united by two overriding beliefs: faith in originalism as the only bona fide method of constitutional interpretation, and an unwavering endorsement of “free-market” principles (read: wide-scale deregulation).

No matter who expounds upon them, both beliefs are routinely deployed to yield result-oriented, business-friendly outcomes.

Originalism, as Fordham University history professor Saul Cornell has noted, posits that the Constitution should be read according to the meaning it had for the Founding Fathers rather than as a “living document” that should be interpreted not only in light of the document’s text but also in view of contemporary values and evolving traditions. Originalists contend that their approach minimizes the personal views of judges—what the late Antonin Scalia called “judicial subjectivism”—and prevents judges from acting as unelected legislators.

In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), perhaps the most far-reaching majority opinion he wrote during his nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, Scalia used originalist methodology to hold that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. So, too, did Anthony Kennedy in his majority opinion in the Citizens United v. FEC (2010), which held that under the First Amendment, as originally understood, corporations and unions have the right to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections.

Both Heller and Citizens United have proved to be a boon to commercial interests—Heller to gun manufacturers and the National Rifle Association, and Citizens United to corporations and wealthy political campaign donors. Both decisions are fully in line with the free-market dogma of the judicial counterrevolution that with Kavanaugh’s elevation will complete its conquest of the Supreme Court.

According to several leading academics, even before Kavanaugh’s nomination, the court had displayed a pro-business bias rivaling that of the Gilded Age, when it struck down laws establishing minimum wages and maximum hours for working people, and overturned the first federal child labor act. Such measures, the court of that bygone era insisted, violated due process and the “liberty of contract.”

Far from being vestiges of a distant past, such rulings are harbingers of the future.

Just last term, the court issued two decisions that would make the justices of the Gilded Age proud: In Janus v. AFSCME, the court turned the nation’s entire public sector into a monolithic right-to-work jurisdiction, decreeing that public-employee unions that extract fees from non-union members to support collective bargaining violate non-members’ First Amendment rights. And in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, the court upheld the use of binding agreements in the private sector that require employees to press wage and hour claims through individual arbitration proceedings, prohibiting them from filing class-actions in court.

It took 50 years for the judicial counterrevolution to reach its ascendency. With the confirmation of Kavanaugh—a pro-business originalist cut from the cloth of the counterrevolution—it will take decades to turn the tide.</s>"A team player on the Team of Nine."

Given the drama and anguish of the last months in the Church and the country, the average American and certainly the average Catholic might be forgiven for having possibly forgotten about the impending confirmation hearings for the 53-year old Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. After all, there are the upcoming mid-term elections, the on-going investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and, of course, the catastrophic scandal surrounding Theodore McCarrick, the horrifying Pennsylvania Grand Jury report, and the letter of Archbishop Carlo Viganò accusing Pope Francis of complicity in covering up McCarrick’s sexual misconduct and abuse of power.

Any thoughts, however, of overlooking the hearings on Judge Brett Kavanaugh were swiftly disabused by the theatrics, shouting, histrionics and apocalyptic tone all within the very first hour of the confirmation hearing that began on Tuesday morning. More than seventy angry and shouting protesters were arrested and removed from the committee room, and all of the Democrat members of the Senate Judiciary Committee made repeated efforts to postpone the hearing by lodging unsuccessful procedural motions and interrupting their Republican colleagues.

While the anger and raucous atmospherics eased in the hours that followed, the tone and direction of the hearing had been made clear. They point to an ugly week of questioning and bitter division that reflect the equally divided situation in the country and the understandable political posturing of Democrats trying to rally their base two months out from an election.

President Donald Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on July 9, to be his Supreme Court nominee to replace the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. From the moment Kennedy announced his retirement in July, both sides of the political aisle in the U.S. Senate and the country set to work to bolster or derail the nominee. As it is, the Democrats have a tough task to stop the process.

Equally, The Democrat members of the Senate Judiciary Committee face the potentially insuperable obstacle in the mathematics of opposing the nomination. Without a defection from the GOP caucus in the Senate, the Democrats simply do not have the votes to stop let alone defeat the expected up and down vote on Kavanaugh that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wants by the end of the month so that Kavanagh is in place before the start of the high court’s new term in October.

What, then, is left to the Left?

The strategy of the Democrat minority in the Senate and on the committee is essentially the same that they tried against Neil Gorsuch only with greater vehemence, vitriol and perhaps significantly more ammunition.

Since July, the writings, speeches, opinions – both legal and personal – and background of the nominee have been subject to intense scrutiny. This is true for every nominee in the modern era and above all a nominee presented by a Republican president. Nominees typically are targeted ruthlessly by special interest groups, as Judge Robert Bork discovered in 1987 when his infamous nomination process ended with his defeat in the Senate. Since then, his name has been a verb to describe the treatment of would-be Supreme Court Justices. In other words, Kavanaugh is likely this week to be “Borked.”

The Democrats on the committee and their leadership in the Senate have already been trying this strategy. It failed conspicuously with Gorsuch, but Kavanaugh has one of the most expansive paper trails of any recent Supreme Court nominee. He served for more than a decade on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, five years as a lawyer in the White House Counsel's office in the George W. Bush administration and was a member of the legal team of Special Counsel Ken Starr that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998-1999. Democrats on the hearing’s first day were especially vocal in complaining that 100,000 pages of Kavanaugh’s background had been placed under Executive Privilege and that another 42,000 pages from his time in the Bush Administration had been handed over only the night before.

Having failed – as they knew they would – to stop the proceedings with procedural maneuvers, Democrat members on the committee embraced the Bork stratagem with great enthusiasm. One by one, they minority members of the Senate Judiciary Committee spoke in apocalyptic terms about the nominee. They focused especially on his presumed threat to Roe v. Wade, minority rights, financial regulation and especially whether he would be an independent voice against the ambitions of the Executive Branch and its Chief Executive, Donald Trump, whom they openly despise.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) already under intense pressure by the increasingly enraged progressive movement declared, “The impact of overturning Roe is much broader than a woman’s right to choose, it’s about protecting from governmental intrusion, who to marry, where to send children to school, medical care at end of life and whether or when to have a family.”

She was joined in similar rhetoric by the other Democrat members of the committee, in particular the liberal Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) who are expected to run for the Democrat nomination for president in 2020 and therefore are positioning themselves with the party’s left-leaning base. Booker has already declared that he will vote no and has called blocking Kavanaugh a “moral moment,” adding that “you are either complicit in the evil, you are either contributing to the wrong, or you are fighting against it.” In his opening statement, Booker called Kavanaugh a tool for special interests. "It seems to so clear that in your courts,” he intoned, “the same folks seem to win over and over again: the powerful, the privileged, big corporations, special interests. Over and over again, the folks who lose are the folks who I came to Washington to fight for: working folks, consumers, women, immigrants, minorities, the disadvantaged, the poor.”

Harris continued to question the absence of documents and Kavanaugh’s adherence to “deeply conservative partisan agendas.” She declared that she was concerned whether he would “treat every American equally or instead show allegiance to the political party and conservative agenda” and that his “loyalty would be to the president who appointed” him and not to the U.S. Constitution.

For the Republicans, the parliamentary and numeric advantage is dependent on their ability to hold the Senate’s GOP caucus against any pressure on some of their members to defect. So far, they have reason to be confident. The Republican members of the committee spoke as would be expected in support of Judge Kavanaugh, but they are adopting a mostly low key defensive posture.

When at last Kavanaugh’s moment came on day one, he was introduced by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who praised his record and his mind. "His intellect,” she said, “is unquestioned. His judgement is highly regarded. And I can personally attest to his character and integrity as a colleague.”

His opening statement was not filled with soaring imagery but, as throughout the nomination process, he ticked off all of the right boxes. He complimented his mentor and friend, Justice Kennedy, for whom he clerked. He described Kennedy as “a model of civility and collegiality. He fiercely defended the independence of the Judiciary. And he was a champion of liberty.”

Kavanaugh then said, “A good judge must be an umpire—a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy…I don’t decide cases based on personal or policy preferences. I am not a pro-plaintiff or pro-defendant judge. I am not a pro-prosecution or pro-defense judge. I am a pro-law judge.” He also noted, “If confirmed to the Court, I would be part of a Team of Nine, committed to deciding cases according to the Constitution and laws of the United States. I would always strive to be a team player on the Team of Nine.”

As with the future Justice Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh now must face absolutely withering attacks on his character, record, temperament, allegiances, faith and principles. The interrogation will be conducted by Democrat members determined to portray him as a radical threat to the country. As with all nominations, everything will depend on how Kavanaugh responds to the frontal assaults as well as the inevitable surprises and “gotcha” moments. With his long record of government and judicial service, he will face tough questions.

Ultimately, Kavanaugh’s seat on the High Court is in his own hands. The GOP members seemed content with Judge Kavanaugh’s opening statement, cautiously worded as it was. The Republicans know quite well that they can only run interference for him so far. It will be a nasty week but at the end of it, the Judge will be on his way to becoming a Justice or Donald Trump will have to find himself a new nominee.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the Senate hearings on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh (all times local):

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh says he knew nothing about the sexual misconduct allegations against a judge who was a friend and mentor.

Kavanaugh said Wednesday that when the allegations against former federal appeals court judge Alex Kozinski became public, they were a "gut punch" for him and for the federal judiciary. Asked whether he knew about the allegations before they became public, Kavanaugh responded: "nothing." He said he was "shocked and disappointed."

Asked whether he was on an email list that Kozinski used to send offensive material, Kavanaugh responded: "I don't remember anything like that."

Kozinski retired in December after several female former law clerks and colleagues accused him of sexual misconduct.

Kavanaugh clerked for Kozinski, and Kozinski introduced him during his 2006 confirmation hearing to be a judge.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is refusing to say whether a president can be forced to testify in a criminal case, calling it a hypothetical.

The topic is front-and-center at Kavanaugh's hearing because the man who nominated him, President Donald Trump, could face a subpoena in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, asked Kavanaugh whether he thinks a sitting president can "be required to respond to a subpoena."

Kavanaugh responded: "I can't give you an answer on that hypothetical question."

The Supreme Court has never ruled on a presidential subpoena.

President Bill Clinton was subpoenaed by independent counsel Kenneth Starr in 1998. Clinton eventually agreed to testify voluntarily and the subpoena was withdrawn.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh says a 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion is an "important precedent" that has "been reaffirmed many times."

Kavanaugh was asked about the Roe v. Wade ruling by Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California. He said the decision has "been reaffirmed many times over the past 45 years." And he noted that a 1992 decision of the court called Planned Parenthood v. Casey didn't just reaffirm Roe v. Wade in passing. He said that decision becomes "precedent on precedent."

Kavanaugh compared the Roe decision to another case, Miranda v. Arizona, which requires law enforcement to tell suspects their rights. Kavanaugh noted that former Chief Justice William Rehnquist had been a critic of the Miranda decision but later upheld it as precedent.

Republicans are invoking Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to make the case that Brett Kavanaugh should decline to say how he might vote on any particular case.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley referred to the so-called "Ginsburg standard" Wednesday during the second day of Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings.

Ginsburg said during her 1993 confirmation hearing that it would be wrong for her to "preview in this legislative chamber how I would cast my vote on questions the Supreme Court may be called upon to decide."

As Kavanaugh put it, quoting Ginsburg, that means "no hints, no forecasts, no previews."

Despite her statement, Ginsburg was questioned extensively about abortion during her hearing. She told lawmakers, "It is essential to woman's equality with man that she be the decision maker."

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is pointing to a decision where he ruled for an associate of Osama bin Laden as evidence of his independence as judge.

Asked by Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley to discuss what judicial independence means to him, Kavanaugh pointed to his opinion in a case involving Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was bin Laden's former chauffeur. Hamdan challenged his detention at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Kavanaugh told senators that "you'll never have a nominee who's ruled for a more unpopular defendant." Kavanaugh says judges don't make decisions based on who people are, but "whether they have the law on their side."

Hamdan was released from Guantanamo before the appeals court ruling that vacated his conviction.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh says he believes the first thing that makes a good judge is "independence."

Kavanaugh is answering questions Wednesday in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It's his first day answering questions from lawmakers.

Committee chairman Chuck Grassley began the day by asking Kavanaugh to explain what he thinks makes a good judge.

Kavanaugh responded that he thinks "the first quality of a good judge in our constitutional system is independence." He said being a good judge also requires paying attention to the words of the Constitution and the words of laws, "not doing what I want to do."

The judge said he wants parties to leave oral arguments in his cases believing he had an "open mind, he gave me a fair shake."

Demonstrators are again disrupting the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley attempted to gavel in the second day of hearings on Wednesday when shouting protesters began disrupting the hearings. Grassley said 70 people were arrested during the first day of hearings the day before.

Kavanaugh will be answering questions from senators all day. Democratic senators are expected to press for his views on issues like abortion, guns and executive power.

President Donald Trump nominated the 53-year-old appellate judge in July to fill the seat of retired Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Liberal and progressive groups are pressuring Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to unify Democrats against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

A letter sent to Schumer on the second day of hearings for President Donald Trump's court pick says bluntly: "You are failing us."

Democrats face a difficult climb trying to block Kavanaugh's confirmation. If nearly all Republicans back Kavanaugh, as is expected, several Democrats facing tough re-election races may vote to confirm him.

But the groups say Democrats in states like West Virginia, North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri, Montana and Alabama have nothing to fear from voting against Kavanaugh. They say voters in those states "care deeply" about the issues before the court and "will reward a principled vote."

The Senate's questioning of Kavanaugh is set to begin Wednesday morning.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh touted the importance of an independent judiciary as his confirmation hearings began with strident Democratic criticism that he would be President Donald Trump's man on the high court.

On Wednesday, Kavanaugh can expect to spend most of the day in the hot seat, sparring with Democratic senators over abortion, guns, executive power and other high-profile issues.

A long day of questioning awaits the 53-year-old appellate judge, whom Trump nominated in July to fill the seat of retired Justice Anthony Kennedy. The change could make the court more conservative on a range of issues.

Barring a surprise, Republicans appear on track to confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, perhaps in time for the first day of the new term on Oct. 1.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — Judge Brett Kavanaugh's life seems as carefully constructed as the Supreme Court arguments he will hear if he is confirmed to the high court. He checks all the boxes of the ways of Washington, or at least the way Washington used to be.

He's a team player — the conservative team — stepping up to make a play at key moments in politics, government and the law dating to the Bill Clinton era and the salacious dramas of that time.

Yet in a capital and a country where politics has become poisonously tribal, Kavanaugh has tried to cover his bases, as Washington insiders have long done. He's got liberal friends, associates and role models. He was a complicated figure in the scandal-ridden 1990s, by turns zealous and restrained as an investigator.

If he wins confirmation, he'll be seated with Justice Elena Kagan, the Obama-era solicitor general who hired him to teach at Harvard when she was dean of the law school, as well as with his prep school mate, Justice Neil Gorsuch. Kavanaugh's law clerks have gone on to work for liberal justices. He's served with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in mock trials of characters in Shakespeare plays, a night out from the real-life dramas.

Amateur athlete, doer of Catholic good works, basketball-coaching dad, Yale degrees, progression from lawyer to White House aide to judge — it's all there in a rarefied life of talent and privilege, though strikingly not one of great personal wealth.

The only skeleton in Kavanaugh's closet that the White House has owned up to is as American as apple pie.

Spending on baseball games helped drive him into debt one year, the White House said. He's also been ribbed for hoarding gummy bears when he worked as an aide to President George W. Bush. Because Republicans are not releasing critical documents for the Senate hearings that begin Tuesday, it remains to be seen if anything else is rattling around.

To critics, like Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee lining up to question him, Kavanaugh's collegial disposition is "Much Ado About Nothing" (Kavanaugh's 2012 mock trial for Washington's Shakespeare Theatre Company, Ginsburg presiding).

"From the notorious Starr report, to the Florida recount, to the president's secrecy and privilege claims to post-9/11 legislative battles including the Victims Compensation Fund, to ideological judicial nomination fights, if there has been a partisan political fight that needed a very bright legal foot soldier in the last decade, Brett Kavanaugh was probably there," New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, now Senate Democratic leader, said in 2006 hearings that preceded Kavanaugh's confirmation as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

His judicial record since? With some ideological mashup, it's been conservative in the main, reflecting views that could swing the court right on abortion, gay rights, executive power and more for decades to come.

Kavanaugh heads into the hothouse of confirmation hearings representing the hopes of President Donald Trump and the right that he will do just that. One question from senators, whether expressed or implied, will be how far the apple fell from the tree.

E. Edward Kavanaugh, 77, was a fixture in the Washington influence game years before Trump began calling it a swamp. Brett Kavanaugh's dad lobbied for the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, the national trade group for companies making personal care products.

He fought against government regulation and advocates who wanted cosmetics-testing stopped on animals, calling those activists "zealots who cannot comprehend that a child's life is more important than a dog's."

"He is known by my colleagues in Congress as a straight shooter," Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch said of Brett Kavanaugh's father in supporting the son's confirmation as a federal judge in 2006. "In this case, the apple did not fall far from the tree."

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who tangled with the dad in hearings over potential health risks of cosmetics, finds the son's record on regulation also troubling. "You don't have to look at his genes," Wyden told The Associated Press. "Just look at his record."

An AP review of Kavanaugh's dozen years on the D.C. appeals court and his wider public record shows him opposed to a variety of regulations, on greenhouse gases and more, as well as to the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau established after the 2008 financial crisis, and to administration policies that circumvent Congress and risk "a runaway executive branch." Yet he is deferential to the presidency, an approach that raises questions about whether he would protect special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible coordination between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia if that matter came before the high court.

His mother, Martha Kavanaugh, went on to become a prosecutor and state judge in Maryland, where Kavanaugh was raised as an only child, attending Georgetown Preparatory School as Gorsuch did.

Brett Michael Kavanaugh's career progression: law clerk for federal appeals judges, fellowship with then-Solicitor General Kenneth Starr, law clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy (with high-school classmate Gorsuch), associate counsel in the Starr investigation, law-firm partner, Bush White House associate counsel, White House staff secretary, judge. He first dated Ashley Estes, then Bush's personal secretary, on Sept. 10, 2001; they married in 2004 and have two daughters.

He's from a wealthy family. In 2005 his father earned just over $13 million in compensation and a send-off retirement package as the cosmetic group's president. But his own family's finances are apparently modest.

Public disclosure forms for 2017 showed only two investments, together worth a maximum of $65,000, along with the balance on a loan of up to $15,000. As well, the White House said he had $45,000 to $150,000 of credit card debt in 2016, some of it from buying season tickets to the Washington Nationals for himself and several friends. That debt was paid off by last year, the White House said, and Kavanaugh was reimbursed for the friends' tickets.

The National Archives has millions of pages of records concerning Kavanaugh and he's only 53. That's how plugged in he was in Washington even before becoming a federal judge.

Kavanaugh put his stamp on investigations of the 1993 suicide of Clinton aide Vince Foster and the late 1990s Clinton-Lewinsky impeachment episode as a member of special counsel Starr's team, served on the Republican legal team in the Bush v. Gore election stalemate of 2000 and had a quiet hand in White House national security and terrorism policy in the crucible of 9/11 and the wars that followed.

Archivists couldn't process so many records for release in time for the hearings as Republican lawmakers push to get him confirmed before the November elections that could switch Senate control to Democrats.

Altogether, a mountain of material on the Zelig-like Washington player has emerged and an even larger mountain is yet to be revealed.

In a vast collection of released emails from his days as a White House aide, humdrum rules. They reveal little more than long nights at the office and the fact that other aides counted on him to advise when Bush's travel costs should be billed to the Treasury and when they were too political to ding taxpayers.

AP's review of Kavanaugh's judicial record and decades of his writings and speeches does not illuminate whether he would vote to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision establishing the right to abortion. But his record suggests he would vote to support restrictions.

He's spoken admiringly of Justice William Rehnquist's dissent in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, yet recently told a senator that Roe is settled law. In a dissent, Kavanaugh accepted that a 17-year-old in immigration custody had a right to the abortion she wanted. Yet he indicated the Trump administration could delay her abortion while they tried to identify U.S. sponsors with whom she could live and who could counsel her on the abortion decision.

A more in-your-face — yet still nuanced— figure emerges in a recently released August 1998 memo to Starr urging that Clinton be asked blushingly explicit questions about his sexual interactions with intern Monica Lewinsky so as to understand a "pattern of revolting behavior" and give Congress more information to decide whether Clinton should remain president. As a lead investigator of the Republican-sparked investigation, Kavanaugh also floated expansive grounds for impeaching a president, a trigger of some concern to Republicans now should an appetite in Congress grow for Trump's impeachment.

But in a memo later in 1998, he recommended the Starr investigation be brought to a close and its findings turned over to the next president. "We believe an indictment should not be pursued while the President is in Office," Kavanaugh wrote, suggesting this conclusion be reached by his colleagues.

The Starr report did bring on Clinton's impeachment by the House, for perjury and obstruction of justice. The Senate acquitted Clinton and he served out his term.

Kavanaugh was also at the center of one of Starr's many tangents, the investigation of the death of Foster, Clinton's deputy White House counsel. In one way, Kavanaugh was a moderating force in that investigation. His ultimate finding, embraced by Starr, was that Foster indeed killed himself, and nothing was found connecting that self-inflicted shot in a Washington-area park nefariously to the Clintons, as the conspiracy theories had it. Yet the mere fact Starr took on that matter and Kavanaugh pursued it gave those conspiracy theories enough credence to persist, which they still do.

A decade later, in his 2006 confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh said he came to realize it was a mistake for a special counsel investigation to grow so broad, as if "Judge Starr was somehow the permanent special investigator of the administration." Such prosecutorial reports, he said, can damage people's reputations and the credibility of the investigation itself.

And in 2009, he wrote in the Minnesota Law Review that the country would have been better off if investigators such as Starr and himself had let Clinton focus on Osama bin Laden and other issues of the day rather than become entangled in a criminal probe. Put off criminal investigation until a president is out of office, he suggested. "If the President does something dastardly, the impeachment process is available."

Said Schumer: "Seems exactly like the kind of man President Trump would want on the Supreme Court if legal issues from the Mueller probe arise."

Associated Press writers Richard Lardner, Mark Sherman and Jessica Gresko contributed to this report.</s>Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee today.

WASHINGTON – Brett Kavanaugh's path to the Supreme Court ran into protests Tuesday as Democrats complained about withheld documents and protesters interrupted his confirmation hearing with shouts before being dragged out by Capitol Police.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the second highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, said the hearing had degenerated into "mob rule" within the first hour. Democrats said they were just seeking respect and accused Republicans of trying to push Kavanaugh through without a proper review.

Before the hearing began, Democrats on the committee gathered on the Supreme Court steps to complain about what they see as a lack of key documents about Kavanaugh's tenure as staff secretary for former President George W. Bush.

"We go to these hearings under protest," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the panel's senior Democrat.

Before the hearing could even get started, Democrats called for it to be adjourned so thousands of pages of just-released documents could be reviewed. More than a dozen people in the audience stood and shouted intermittently their opposition to the nominee, interrupting the proceedings. About half the public seats in the hearing room were empty after the protesters were removed.

"What is the rush? What are we trying to hide?” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said.

Democrats and Republicans squabbled over documents withheld from the 53-year-old Washington D.C. native's years working for Republican causes.

Republicans are determined to push President Donald Trump's nomination of Kavanaugh to the full Senate later this month, but Democrats want to press the federal appeals court judge on his views on abortion, health care, guns and other hot-button issues.

Pledge to be an 'umpire'

The nominee planned to tell the senators that he would be "an umpire," a phrase used by Chief Justice John Roberts when he went before the committee in 2005.

"I don’t decide cases based on personal or policy preferences. I am not a pro-plaintiff or pro-defendant judge. I am not a pro-prosecution or pro-defense judge," Kavanaugh will say, according to prepared remarks. "I am a pro-law judge."

 

 That won't satisfy Democrats concerned about his past – and his future.

“There will be sparks at this hearing. Sparks will fly," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. "And there will be a lot of heat.”

More: Five reasons Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court is controversial

The hearing is scheduled to last four days. Tuesday is being devoted to opening statements by committee members, three people chosen to introduce Kavanaugh and, finally, the judge himself. Questioning will begin Wednesday and last at least two days. Friday will focus on panels of supporters and opponents.

If all goes according to Republicans' plans, the committee will vote later this month – almost surely along straight party lines – to send his nomination to the full Senate in hopes of getting him on the court by the Oct. 1 start of the 2018 term.

More important, however, is making certain nothing stands in Kavanaugh's way that would delay confirmation beyond the November elections, when Democrats have an outside shot of winning a Senate majority.

Kavanaugh stands to inherit Justice Anthony Kennedy's seat on the court, and there is no seat more important. Kennedy, who retired in July, was the perennial deciding vote on 5-4 cases, usually siding with the four conservatives but swinging to the liberals' side on abortion, affirmative action, gay rights and other social issues.

Trump's first nominee to the high court, Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed in April 2017, 14 months after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia created a vacancy in President Barack Obama's last year in office. Senate Republicans refused to consider Obama's nomination of federal appeals court Judge Merrick Garland for the vacancy.

Kavanaugh topped a list of 25 potential nominees put together by the White House in conjunction with conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. He has been on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for 12 years and has authored 307 opinions, concurrences and dissents.

Before ascending to the bench, Kavanaugh assisted in the investigation of President Bill Clinton, which led to his impeachment, and worked for five years in the White House as deputy counsel and staff secretary under President George W. Bush. He has since said that presidents should not be subject to criminal investigations while still in office, a position that could affect Trump in the future.

The paper trail from those jobs proved to be too voluminous for the Senate to pile through in the eight weeks since Kavanaugh's nomination. So Republicans have released only those documents they consider most relevant – about 440,000 pages for senators to see, and fewer than 300,000 publicly.

That's far more than for any previous Supreme Court nominee, but millions of pages have been withheld. On Friday, the Trump administration said it would withhold more than 100,000 pages on the basis of presidential privilege.

“We were not able to get a lot of documents we felt we were entitled to," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the committee. "We’re laboring under this disadvantage.”

More: Brett Kavanaugh is President Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court

More: Brett Kavanaugh: Supreme Court nominee straight out of central casting

More: Will Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh deliver the change conservatives crave?</s>WASHINGTON—Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly stressed the importance of judicial independence on the second day of his confirmation hearing Wednesday as he faced questioning from senators, including Democrats who fear he would be President Donald Trump’s man on the high court. But he declined to address whether Trump could be subpoenaed or could pardon himself.

Pressed by Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican, on whether he would be independent from the president who nominated him, Kavanaugh responded, “No one is above the law.”

But asked later by the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, whether a president can be required to respond to a subpoena, Kavanaugh said, “I can’t give you an answer on that hypothetical question.” The Supreme Court has never answered that question, and it is among the most important at Kavanaugh’s hearing since Trump could face a subpoena in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Kavanaugh also refused to say whether he thinks a president can pardon himself — or provide a pardon in exchange for a bribe or pardon someone on the understanding that the person wouldn’t testify against the president.

“I’m not going to answer hypothetical questions of that sort,” Kavanaugh said, responding to questions from Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Day two of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings began much as the first with protesters often interrupting proceedings. Some two dozen protesters were escorted from the hearing room after shouting objections to Kavanaugh’s nomination. One shouted that the questions senators were asking about executive power were not “hypothetical” and should be answered.

Despite interruptions, senators plunged into their initial opportunity to publicly question Kavanaugh in what was expected to be a marathon day of examination.

The hearing has strong political overtones ahead of the November election, but Democrats lack the votes to block Kavanaugh’s confirmation. They fear Kavanaugh will push the court to the right on abortion, guns and other issues, and that he will side with Trump in cases stemming from Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Addressing some of those concerns, Kavanaugh said that “the first thing that makes a good judge is independence, not being swayed by political or public pressure.” He cited historic court cases including Brown v. Board of Education that desegregated schools and U.S. v. Nixon that compelled the president to turn over the Watergate tapes — a ruling that Kavanaugh had previously questioned.

“That takes some backbone,” he said of the justices who decided those cases.

Asked about court precedents, the importance of previously settled cases including the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that ensures access to abortion, Kavanaugh said, “Respect for precedent is important. … Precedent is rooted right in the Constitution itself.”

Kavanaugh noted that Roe was reaffirmed in a 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. He likened it to another controversial, landmark Supreme Court decision, the Miranda ruling about the rights of criminal suspects. Kavanaugh said the court specifically reaffirmed both decisions in later cases that made them “precedent on precedent.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, praised Kavanaugh for hiring female lawyers as his clerks as a judge on the District of Columbia court of appeals, and then posed questions about whether Kavanaugh was aware of sexual harassment allegations against retired circuit court Judge Alex Kozinski in California. Kavanaugh had clerked for Kozinski in the early 1990s and considered the judge a friend and mentor.

Kavanaugh said he had known nothing about the allegations until they were disclosed last year. “It was a gut punch for me,” he said, and he was “shocked, disappointed, angry.”

Asked about an email list Kozinski allegedly used to send offensive material, Kavanaugh said: “I don’t remember anything like that.”

Trump nominated Kavanaugh, 53, to fill the seat of retired Justice Anthony Kennedy. The change could make the court more conservative on a range of issues.

Republicans hope to confirm Kavanaugh in time for the first day of the new Supreme Court term, Oct. 1.

In stressing his independence, Kavanaugh pushed back against suggestions that after his time on independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s team investigating Bill Clinton in the 1990s, he no longer believes a sitting president should be investigated. He said his views did shift after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but his ideas about revisiting the special counsel law were merely suggestions.

“They were some ideas for Congress to consider. They were not my constitutional views,” he told the panel.

Pressed by Feinstein on his comment several years ago that U.S. v. Nixon might have been wrongly decided, he said his quote — shown on a poster above the senator — was “not in context” and “I have repeatedly called U.S. v. Nixon one of the four greatest moments in court history.”

The judge’s work in the George W. Bush White House also has figured in the hearing, particularly as Democratic senators have fought for access to his documents from his three years as staff secretary that could shed light on his views about policies from that era, including the detention and interrogation of terror suspects. Republicans have declined to seek those papers, and instead have gathered documents from his work as White House counsel to Bush. Many are being held as confidential within the committee.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois asked Kavanaugh if he would seek a delay in his hearing so the paper trail could be vetted.

But Kavanaugh declined to engage, saying. “I do not believe that’s consistent” with the way prior nominations have been handled. He also declined to give an opinion on the Republicans’ action on the documents, responding, “It is not for me to say.”

Kavanaugh stood by his 2006 testimony when nominated for the appellate court when he said he was not involved in some Bush-era policies, particularly a bill-signing statement on the treatment of terror suspects that would have passed his desk as staff secretary.

Kavanaugh responded to Durbin, as he did to similar questioning from Leahy about Bush-era surveillance policy, that his earlier testimony was “100 percent accurate.”

Democrats, including several senators poised for 2020 presidential bids, tried to block the proceedings on Tuesday in a dispute over the records. Republicans in turn accused the Democrats of turning the hearing into a circus.

Trump jumped into the fray Tuesday, saying on Twitter that Democrats were “looking to inflict pain and embarrassment” on Kavanaugh.

The president’s comment followed the statements of Democratic senators who warned that Trump was, in the words of Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, “selecting a justice on the Supreme Court who potentially will cast a decisive vote in his own case.”

The most likely outcome of this week’s hearings is a vote along party lines to send Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate. Majority Republicans can confirm Kavanaugh without any Democratic votes, though they’ll have little margin for error.

One of several red-state Democrats watched as potentially voting for Kavanaugh, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, joined the hearing in the audience for a while. He is up for re-election this fall. Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine also stopped in for part of the session.

Republicans will hold a slim 51-49 majority in the Senate once Jon Kyl, the former Arizona senator, is sworn in to fill the seat held by the late Sen. John McCain.

Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who both favor abortion access, are the only two Republicans even remotely open to voting against Kavanaugh, though neither has said she would do so. Abortion rights supporters are trying to appeal to those senators.</s>Brett Kavanaugh snubbed Parkland shooting victim Jaime Guttenberg’s father, Fred Guttenberg, during the first day of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for the Supreme Court nominee in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, September 4.

“Just walked up to Judge Kavanaugh as morning session ended,” Fred tweeted. “Put out my hand to introduce myself as Jaime Guttenberg’s dad. He pulled his hand back, turned his back to me and walked away. I guess he did not want to deal with the reality of gun violence.” (Seventeen staff members and students, including Jaime, were shot and killed after former student Nikolas Cruz opened fire with an AR-15 rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14.)

“Here is the photo of me trying to shake Kavanaugh’s hand,” Fred captioned a picture of the incident.

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah responded to Fred’s tweet and denied that Kavanaugh rejected his hand. “As Judge Kavanaugh left for his lunch break, an unidentified individual approached him. Before the Judge was able to shake his hand, security had intervened,” Shah tweeted.

Fred was quick to reply, “Incorrect. I was here all day and introduced by Senator Feinstein. No security involved. He turned and walked away.”

Elsewhere at the 53-year-old circuit judge’s hearing, women dressed as characters from The Handmaid’s Tale and a protest against Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination and his stance on abortion broke out. Actress Piper Perabo was one of the almost two dozen protestors arrested at the hearing.

“I was just arrested for civil disobedience in the Kavanaugh hearings,” Perabo, 41, tweeted on Tuesday. “Many citizens before me have fought for the equal rights of women. I can’t be silent when someone is nominated to the Supreme Court who would take our equal rights away.”

Sign up now for the Us Weekly newsletter to get breaking celebrity news, hot pics and more delivered straight to your inbox!

Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone? Download the Us Weekly iPhone app now!</s>WASHINGTON — Brett Kavanaugh's path to the Supreme Court ran into protests Tuesday as Democrats complained about withheld documents and protesters interrupted his confirmation hearing with shouts before being dragged out by Capitol Police.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the second highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, said the hearing had degenerated into "mob rule" within the first hour. Democrats said they were just seeking respect and accused Republicans of trying to push Kavanaugh through without a proper review.

Before the hearing began, Democrats on the committee gathered on the Supreme Court steps to complain about what they see as a lack of key documents about Kavanaugh's tenure as staff secretary for former President George W. Bush.

"We go to these hearings under protest," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the panel's senior Democrat.

Before the hearing could even get started, Democrats called for it to be adjourned so thousands of pages of just-released documents could be reviewed. More than a dozen people in the audience stood and shouted intermittently their opposition to the nominee, interrupting the proceedings. About half the public seats in the hearing room were empty after the protesters were removed.

"What is the rush? What are we trying to hide?” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said.

Democrats and Republicans squabbled over documents withheld from the 53-year-old Washington D.C. native's years working for Republican causes.

Republicans are determined to push President Donald Trump's nomination of Kavanaugh to the full Senate later this month, but Democrats want to press the federal appeals court judge on his views on abortion, health care, guns and other hot-button issues.

Pledge to be an 'umpire'

The nominee planned to tell the senators that he would be "an umpire," a phrase used by Chief Justice John Roberts when he went before the committee in 2005.

"I don’t decide cases based on personal or policy preferences. I am not a pro-plaintiff or pro-defendant judge. I am not a pro-prosecution or pro-defense judge," Kavanaugh will say, according to prepared remarks. "I am a pro-law judge."

That won't satisfy Democrats concerned about his past – and his future.

“There will be sparks at this hearing. Sparks will fly," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. "And there will be a lot of heat.”

The hearing is scheduled to last four days. Tuesday is being devoted to opening statements by committee members, three people chosen to introduce Kavanaugh and, finally, the judge himself. Questioning will begin Wednesday and last at least two days. Friday will focus on panels of supporters and opponents.

If all goes according to Republicans' plans, the committee will vote later this month – almost surely along straight party lines – to send his nomination to the full Senate in hopes of getting him on the court by the Oct. 1 start of the 2018 term.

More important, however, is making certain nothing stands in Kavanaugh's way that would delay confirmation beyond the November elections, when Democrats have an outside shot of winning a Senate majority.

Kavanaugh stands to inherit Justice Anthony Kennedy's seat on the court, and there is no seat more important. Kennedy, who retired in July, was the perennial deciding vote on 5-4 cases, usually siding with the four conservatives but swinging to the liberals' side on abortion, affirmative action, gay rights and other social issues.

Trump's first nominee to the high court, Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed in April 2017, 14 months after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia created a vacancy in President Barack Obama's last year in office. Senate Republicans refused to consider Obama's nomination of federal appeals court Judge Merrick Garland for the vacancy.

Kavanaugh topped a list of 25 potential nominees put together by the White House in conjunction with conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. He has been on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for 12 years and has authored 307 opinions, concurrences and dissents.

Before ascending to the bench, Kavanaugh assisted in the investigation of President Bill Clinton, which led to his impeachment, and worked for five years in the White House as deputy counsel and staff secretary under President George W. Bush. He has since said that presidents should not be subject to criminal investigations while still in office, a position that could affect Trump in the future.

The paper trail from those jobs proved to be too voluminous for the Senate to pile through in the eight weeks since Kavanaugh's nomination. So Republicans have released only those documents they consider most relevant – about 440,000 pages for senators to see, and fewer than 300,000 publicly.

That's far more than for any previous Supreme Court nominee, but millions of pages have been withheld. On Friday, the Trump administration said it would withhold more than 100,000 pages on the basis of presidential privilege.

“We were not able to get a lot of documents we felt we were entitled to," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the committee. "We’re laboring under this disadvantage.”</s>Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s daughters were rushed out of his heated nomination hearing on Tuesday amid raucous Democrat-backed protests.

Senate Democrats and leftist protesters repeatedly disrupted Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Democrats tried to delay the hearing, believing that they did not have enough time to review documents relating to Kavanaugh, while protesters cried about how his rulings on the Supreme Court might impact abortion rights, women’s rights, etc.

As protesters increasingly shouted and heckled the hearing Tuesday, Kavanaugh’s wife, Ashley, took her two daughters out, as it got too “hot.” Margaret is 13, while Kavanaugh’s other daughter, Elizabeth, is ten-years-old.

“It was very unpleasant for young children,” one insider said.

One leftist protestor screamed, “This is a mockery. This is a travesty of justice. Cancel Brett Kavanaugh, adjourn the hearing.”

Protesters during the hearing shouted that President Donald Trump is “an illegitimate president who cannot make an appointment to Supreme Court” and this “should be an impeachment hearing.”

One leftist protester even interrupted and subsequently upset Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) during the nomination hearing. The leftist protestor complained that women are going to be sent for “back-alley abortions” should he become a Supreme Court justice.

“Mr. Chairman, I do intend at any point to continue what I have to say with such interruptions,” Leahy fired back. “I don’t care who’s side they’re on.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) admitted Tuesday during the Senate hearing that he and other Democrats coordinated in a conference call to disrupt the hearings. NBC News reported that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) organized the call over the weekend to discuss how to disrupt the Supreme Court nomination hearing.

Mr. Chairman, there was a phone conference yesterday, and I can tell you, at the time of the phone conference, many issues were raised. One of the issues was the fact that over 100,000 documents related to Judge Kavanaugh had been characterized by the chairman of the committee as committee confidential.

Durbin then proceeded to defend the protests during the hearing as the “noise of democracy” after he admitted that he and other Democrats had coordinated disruptions to the hearing.

It’s different in what’s happened in this room, just this morning. What we’ve heard is the noise of democracy. This is what happens in a free country, when people can stand up and speak, and not be jailed, imprisoned, tortured, or killed because of it. It is not mob rule. There have been times when it is uncomfortable — I’m sure it was for your children, I hope you can explain this to them at some point — but it does represent what we are about in this democracy.

The anti-Trump and Democrat-aligned Women’s March group also claimed credit for the disruptions.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) said Senate Democrats would be “held in contempt” if Kavanaugh’s hearing were a courtroom.

“I haven’t been in as many confirmation hearings as my colleagues, but this is the first confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court justice that I’ve seen, basically, according to mob rule,” the Texas Republican added.

“We have rules in the Senate. We have norms for decorum,” Cornyn said.
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee opens confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.