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Trump's pick to replace Kavanaugh blames women for being raped
Lisa Needham
Neomi Rao, Trump's pick to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, thinks women are at fault if they are sexually assaulted after drinking. And that's only the beginning.
Since Brett Kavanaugh's disgraceful ascension to the United States Supreme Court, his seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguably the second-most powerful court in the country, has been vacant. And Trump's pick to fill the spot, Neomi Rao, manages to be nearly as awful as Kavanaugh himself.
Trump nominated Rao back in November, but only recently have her terrible, retrograde views come to light.
When she was in college in the mid-1990s, Rao wrote articles showing that she is happy to blame other women for being raped. In a 1994 piece for the Yale Herald, Rao wrote:
Unless someone made her drinks undetectably strong or forced them down her throat, a woman, like a man, decides when and how much to drink. And if she drinks to the point where she can no longer choose, well, getting to that point was part of her choice.
In that same piece, she mused that the best way for women to avoid date rape was to stay sober.
Rao isn't just a rape apologist; she also cheers women's inequality more broadly. She praised societies where women are subordinate to men, claiming those societies provide women "greater protection from horrors such as rape." In that same article, she slammed women who "believe falsely that they should be able to go anywhere with anyone."
It should probably go without saying that Rao also loathes multiculturalism. She bragged that Yale largely remained a meritocracy despite dropping its standards for "a few minorities, some legacies, and a football player here and there."
It's really no surprise that the person Trump picked to replace Kavanaugh would be such an echo of Kavanaugh himself. The GOP went all-in on being the party of rape when it elevated Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court even after he was credibly accused of sexual assault by multiple women, and even after his shameful rage-fueled meltdown during his confirmation hearing.
Besides the fact that Rao shares the sexist views of both the man she will replace on the D.C. Circuit and the man who nominated her, Rao is also a conservative favorite because she fetishizes deregulation as an inherent good.
She's currently the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which is part of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Her work there seems to mostly consist of gutting regulations. In a recent speech, she boasted about allowing 22 deregulatory actions for every one regulatory action at government agencies.
Kavanaugh also hates regulations, particularly those relating to slowing climate change.
And if that wasn't enough, there are rumors that Rao is on Trump's short list for the Supreme Court.
Rao is only 45 years old. If she managed to get confirmed to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land would be stuck with another Kavanaugh clone — and Trump's conservative majority on the judiciary would be cemented for decades to come.
Neomi Rao
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Attorney, editor, and writer who has worked in the areas of First Amendment, education, and labor law. Follow her on Twitter @snipy.