1) Last wk's SCOTUs decisions in the LBGTQ case and the DACA ruling last week only underscored why the nominations over justices and the political fights in the Senate over their confirmations are so monumental.
2) Supreme Court appointments are for a lifetime. Only 114 persons have ever served on the Supreme Court. Most justices used to serve for a little more than a decade. But the average longevity on the High Court now tops 26 years.
3) This is why Presidents sweat over picking the right person for SCOTUS. This is why Senate Democrats threatened to filibuster the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017.
4) Senators filibustered the promotion of Associate Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas to Chief Justice of the United States in 1968. But never before had a nominee – who wasn’t already on the Supreme Court – faced a potential filibuster of his or her confirmation.
5) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took the extraordinary step of implementing a special parliamentary gambit and establishing a new Senate precedent to short-circuit a filibuster and usher Gorsuch’s nomination to confirmation.
6) Everyone saw how the Capitol devolved into vitriol, recriminations and opprobrium during the confirmation battle over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The Senate narrowly confirmed Kavanaugh 50-48 after weeks of fighting about an alleged sexual assault by Kavanaugh
7) Capitol Hill hadn’t seen such intensity over a Supreme Court nominee since the incendiary hearings in the fall of November, 1991 with Anita Hill over the nomination of Justice Clarence Thomas.
8) So, after all of this energy to craft a conservative judiciary and a Supreme Court which tilts to the right, one can understand why the right is apoplectic about the recent rulings.
9) Gorsuch wrote the majority 6-3 decision in the case barring employers from firing workers due to their sexual identity. Chief Justice John Roberts provided the swing vote in the DACA case. GOPers still blame Roberts for the decision in the '12 Obamacare case.
10) So Republicans are in a period of serious buyer’s remorse. They’ve invested all of this time, stocking the judiciary, and they’re not getting the judicial outcomes they want.
11) When picking a Supreme Court Justice, it’s always a roll of the dice for Presidents – and those who wish to contour the High Court from Capitol Hill.
12) President George H.W. Bush tapped David Souter for the Supreme Court in 1990. The National Organization for Women and NAACP opposed Souter. But in his years on the Court, Souter frequently sided with liberals.
13) Justice Harry Blackmun emerged as one of the most-liberal voices on the Supreme Court, despite his nomination by President Nixon. Blackmun authored the 7-2 decision in Roe v. Wade. Nixon selected Blackmun as part of an effort to shift the Court to the right.
14) President Dwight Eisenhower appointed former California Gov. Earl Warren (R) as Chief Justice. Eisenhower also nominated William Brennan for the High Court. The Warren Court emerged as the most liberal court in U.S. history.
15) An interviewer famously once asked Eisenhower if he made any mistakes.

“Yes,” replied Ike. “And they are both sitting on the Supreme Court.”
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