Harry Reid and Senate Democrats have thrown down the gauntlet, in no uncertain terms. If GOPers follow through with their threat to pursue the so-called “nuclear option” (a procedural maneuver that would outlaw filibusters on judicial nominations and allow them to slide through on a simple majority vote), Senate Dems will stop cooperating with all the legislative lubricants (many of which require unanimous consent) that keep the chamber operating.According to (subscription-only) Roll Call today, every Senate Democrat is on board with this strategy, and while Republicans claim to have 50 solid votes for upholding the rule change that’s at the heart of “going nuclear,” their ranks are shaky, beginning with Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter.There are several smart things about the way Reid has approached this fight.First, he’s made it clear that Democratic resistance will not extend to issues like support for U.S. troops, urgent national security matters, or the basic functioning of the federal government. This will avoid some of the parallels the media, in its two-sides-to-every-argument approach to partisan issues, would otherwise draw to Newt Gingrich’s defiant and hugely unsuccessful government shutdown of 1995.Second, Reid is treating the “nuclear option” not as a procedural matter, or even as a defiance of Senate traditions, but as part of a broader pattern of abuse of power by the Republicans who control Washington. As such, he is linking Democratic opposition to this tactic to a broader message of reform, which is exactly what Democrats ought to be doing every day of the year. If nothing else, it will help remind the roughly one-third of the population that doesn’t know who runs Congress that Republicans can no longer pose as the anti-Washington party, because they are in charge of the whole federal government.And third, in terms of the underlying dispute over the judiciary, Reid is linking Democratic resistance to a long bipartisan tradition of opposition to one-party and executive-branch control of the federal bench. I hope Democrats take every opportunity to remind people that these are lifetime appointments we are talking about, which could have a profound impact on the laws of this country for decades.Now, Democrats obviously have a Big Bertha in reserve: the GOP’s real goal, which is to pave the way for Supreme Court appointments designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, the long-delayed payoff to the cultural conservative foot-soldiers of the Republican base. As a self-proclaimed (if moderate) pro-lifer, Reid may well have special credibility in opposing an indirect assault on the right to choose, by GOPers who know they would lose any straight fight on abortion.Add it all up, and you’ve got a formula for raising the stakes on this obscure-sounding conflict, and that’s what Democrats need in order to win. Some real drama is required to overcome the media perception that this is just cloakroom maneuvering by the partisan pols in Washington, over a snoozer of an issue.Maybe the Democratic battle-plan will act as a deterrent to the deployment of the nuclear option. Some GOPers, after all, want to use the so-called Judicial Obstruction issue as a conservative fundraising and crowd-pleasing device going into the 2006 elections. And even more of them won’t be happy with the consequences of provoking a partial shutdown of the Senate, interfering with all sorts of opportunities for pork-barrelling, constituency-tending, and beast-starving (not to mention those handy little bills naming some home-state highway interchange after a big contributor or local potentate).But deterrent or not, this is a fight well worth having, and a fight that can only be won if Democrats are serious and systematic about waging it with a large reform message.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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December 6: When the Religious Views of Trump Nominees Are and Aren’t Fair Game
With Senate confirmation hearings of Trump’s motley crew of Cabinet-level nominees, one issue Democrats will need to confront right away is when and whether the appointees’ often-exotic religious views are an appropriate subject for discussion. I offered some simple guidelines at New York:
Amid all the hotly disputed allegations that he has a history of excessive drinking and inappropriate (or even abusive) behavior toward women, Donald Trump’s defense-secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, has another potential problem that’s just now coming into view: His religious beliefs are a tad scary.
Early reports on Hegseth’s belligerent brand of Christianity focused on a tattoo he acquired that sported a Latin slogan associated with the medieval Crusaders (which led to him being flagged as a potential security problem by the National Guard, in which he served with distinction for over a decade). But as the New York Times reports, the tattoo is the tip of an iceberg that appears to descend into the depths of Christian nationalism:
“’Voting is a weapon, but it’s not enough,’ [Hegseth] wrote in a book, American Crusade, published in May 2020. ‘We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must …’
“In his book, Mr. Hegseth also offered a nod to the prospect of future violence: ‘Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.’”
His words aside, Hegseth has chosen to associate himself closely with Doug Wilson, an Idaho-based Christian-nationalist minister with a growing educational mission, notes the Times:
“[After moving to Tennessee two years ago] the Hegseth family joined Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a small church opened in 2021 as part of the growing Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. The denomination was co-founded by Doug Wilson, a pastor based in Moscow, Idaho; his religious empire now includes a college, a classical school network, a publishing house, a podcast network, and multiple churches, among other entities …
“In his writings, Mr. Wilson has argued that slavery ‘produced in the South a genuine affection between the races,’ that homosexuality should be a crime, and that the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote was a mistake. He has written that women should not ordinarily hold political office because ‘the Bible does say that when feminine leadership is common, it should be reckoned not as a blessing but as a curse …’
“Mr. Hegseth told [a] Christian magazine in Nashville that he was studying a book by Mr. Wilson; on a podcast Mr. Hegseth said that he would not send his children to Harvard but would send them to Mr. Wilson’s college in Idaho.”
All this Christian-nationalist smoke leads to the fiery question of whether Hegseth’s religious views are fair game for potential confirmation hearings. Would exploration of his connections with a wildly reactionary religious figure like Doug Wilson constitute the sort of “religious test … as a qualification to any office or public trust” that is explicitly banned by Article VI of the U.S. Constitution? It’s a good and important question that could come up with respect to other Trump nominees, given the MAGA movement’s cozy relationship with theocratic tendencies in both conservative-evangelical and traditionalist-Catholic communities.
Actually, the question of the boundary between a “religious test” and maintenance of church-state separation came up conspicuously during the first year of Trump’s earlier presidency in confirmation hearings for the then-obscure Russell Vought, whom Trump nominated to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (he later became director of OMB, the position to which Trump has again nominated him for the second term). Bernie Sanders seized upon a Vought comment defending his alma mater, Wheaton College, for sanctions against a professor who said that Christians and Muslims “worship the same God.” Sanders suggested that showed Vought was an Islamophobic bigot, while Vought and his defenders (included yours truly) argued that the man’s opinion of the credentials of Muslims for eternal life had nothing to do with his duties as a prospective public servant.
This does not, to be clear, mean that religious expressions when they actually do have a bearing on secular governance should be off-limits in confirmation hearings or Senate votes. If, for example, it becomes clear that Hegseth believes his Christian faith means echoing his mentor Doug Wilson’s hostility to women serving in leadership positions anywhere or anytime, that’s a real problem and raising it does not represent a “religious test.” If this misogyny was limited to restrictions on women serving in positions of religious leadership, that would be another matter entirely.
More generally, if nominees for high executive office follow their faith in adjudging homosexuality or abortion as wicked, it’s only germane to their fitness for government offices if they insist upon imposing those views as a matter of public policy. Yes, there is a conservative point of view that considers any limitation on faith-based political activism in any arena as a violation of First Amendment religious-liberty rights. But those who think this way also tend to disregard the very idea of church-state separation as a First Amendment guarantee.
Critics of Christian nationalism in the Trump administration need to keep essential distinctions straight and avoid exploring the religious views of nominees if they are truly private articles of faith directed to matters of the spirit, not secular laws. It’s likely there will be plenty of examples of theocratic excesses among Trump nominees as Senate confirmation hearings unfold. But where potential holders of high offices respect the lines between church and state, their self-restraint commands respect as well.