Senate Democrats Should Delay All Trump Confirmations for as Long as Possible

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page

31 March 17

ome of Trump’s fact-free policy making will be stopped in the federal courts -- which will use against the administration its overt contempt for data, science, and analysis. Normally, courts defer to administrative fact-finding. But under Trump, there’s no fact-finding at all. Some examples:

1. Yesterday a federal judge extended the court’s block on Trump’s new travel ban indefinitely, citing a public statement from Trump that revealed the new version is basically a repackaged version of the old one designed to get around the courts. The original version didn’t hold up in court because its ostensible national security justification had no reasonable basis in fact.

2. Courts won’t look kindly on Trump’s new efforts to roll back climate change policies because they’re not based not on new facts but, rather, on a bizarre view that humans aren’t responsible for climate change. I’d expect courts to note, for example, that in justifying the rollback of the Clean Power Plan — which seeks to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants — the Trump administration is citing questionable data furnished by an industry group, rather than by government agencies.

3. If Trump tries to unravel the Affordable Care Act administratively, courts will want to know what facts justify the moves – which won’t be easy coming from an administration that tried to delegitimize the Congressional Budget Office even before it found that the GOP bill would cause 24 million Americans to lose coverage and then showed no inclination to change course.

4. Cases where states try to defend tougher voter ID laws will be harder to win because of Trump’s unfounded claim that “3 to 5 million” voted illegally – a claim that generated many studies showing virtually no voting fraud.

Bottom line: I expect federal courts will be one of our most important lines of defense against Trump. There will be a huge wave of litigation in which Trump’s fact-free policy making will be used against him. (Although only a small portion of these cases will make it to the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats should delay as long as possible any confirmations.)

What do you think?