conservatives had second thoughts, and what the leaked draft did to any hope for compromise. now a year and a half later, the high court is on clean up duty. agreeing to take on the first major complication from its ruling, this one on the abortion pill. mifepristone. the decision, which could effectively ban the pill nationwide should come next june, meaning the court will keep abortion front and center in the summer before the presidential election. an issue that has repeatedly proven to boost democrats, especially as republicans are still struggling to figure out what to say on it. just listen to senators ted cruz and john cornyn on this week s decision by the texas supreme court to deny kate cox an abortion. senator, are you supportive of the texas supreme court s ruling in the kate cox case that prevented her from getting an abortion after she learned her fetus was not viable. call the press office. i have for two days, and i haven t received an answer. are you w
grabs. but corker will be voting to confirm brett stevens excuse me. brett kavanaugh to the supreme court. brett stevens is a reporter for the new york times. i have the new york times on my mind because i have a reporter from them here. and nancy cook is a reporter for politico still with us is josh barrow. adam, let me start with you. we ve seen it s been a long-term story going back at least 30 years. partisanship of washington intersecting with the supreme court nominations. it looks like the vote count on this in about an hour is going to be the closest we ve had, even closer than clarence thomas in 1991. this nomination, if it is successful this afternoon and brett kavanaugh joins the court, talk to me about the atmosphere of that court that he s joining. what will his addition to it mean? this will be the culmination of a long-term project that
supreme court is a policy-making body and its decisions are c consequenti consequential. both parties are using whatever power they have to get them on the court or block them from getting on the court based on the policies they re going to implement. yeah. to your point, we re not where we were before. but why were we where we were before? we had a couple of weird phenomena. one of them was republicans accidentally appointed people that weren t that conservative. but for decades. i mean, dwight eisenhower complained two of his biggest mistakes were putting earl warren and brennan to this court. it took literally several decades. up until the bush administration to have a reliable method on the court. adam mentions this is an effort that goes back to the reagan administration. but reagan put sandra day o connor on the court. they re not as conservative as brett kavanaugh probably. so when you had that set of
nominees being put up, it made sense to get votes for them. in one sbainstance because they were able to kill the bork nomination and get anthony kennedy. it makes sense we are where we are now. why would democrats help donald trump put another conservative on the court if they don t have to? they complained about garland. why would they have put him on the court when they didn t have to? really was a year, the vacancy after scalia s passing. if there s a vacancy next year, it could be two years. we re inside of an hour now we expect from that vote. confirmation of kavanaugh for the supreme court. the activity continues on the senate floor. cornyn from texas speaking now. the protests continue outside. we re going to slide in a quick break. i want to thank danny cevallos, adam liptek for being with us.
began in the reagan administration to put a solid conservative majority on the court. it s a huge move for president trump and the republicans. but it s going to come at a cost to the authority and legitimacy of the court. because the court likes to say it s engaged in law. and applying neutral principles without regard to politics. yet everything we saw in the preceding months and? particular from judge kavanaugh s second round of statements sent a different message suggesting the court is a partisan institution divided upon partisan lines like the rest of the country. and that those concerns that adam is speaking to there, danny, seem to be on brett kavanaugh s mind with this last-minute wall street journal op-ed that went up online two nights ago where he talked about sort of defending his presentation apologizing. it seemed a little opaquely for some aspects of it. he said i testified with people