Controversial pick to fill Kavanaugh’s appeals court seat gets Judiciary Committee OK
Published in USA Today
President Donald Trump’s controversial nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was approved along party lines by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
The 12 Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voted in favor of moving Neomi Rao’s nomination forward for a vote on the Senate floor. All 10 Democrats on the committee voted against her. Kavanaugh left the seat vacant when his nomination to the Supreme Court was approved last year.
Rao, 45, currently heads the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, where she serves as the “regulatory czar” and has been at the forefront of Trump’s effort to eliminate government rules that the administration regards as anti-business.
Her nomination encountered fierce opposition from women’s rights activists after the liberal judicial activist group Alliance for Justice unearthed old opinion pieces Rao wrote in college about what she considered to be “hysteria over date rape.”
She said “a good way to avoid a potential date rape is to stay reasonably sober” and that if a woman drinks “to the point where she can no longer choose, well, getting to that point was part of her choice.”