Thread by @SenDuckworth

I’m spending a lot of time reviewing Judge Kavanaugh’s rulings to see if he has the temperament and wisdom—and whether he has shown the independence needed of our next #SupremeCourt Justice. Very disappointed by what I’m seeing:

He disagreed with, and wrote a dissent against, a court ruling that the punishment for entering this country illegally cannot be “forcing a child to have a baby”

His opinion would have allowed the government to use delay tactics to prevent women and girls from controlling what happens to their own body. Or, in other words, he drafted a (losing) legal argument that would have forced a child to have a baby acludc.org/sites/default/…

Though some are trying to convince Americans that Judge Kavanaugh will support precedent & hasn’t definitively ruled on #RoevWade, make no mistake: he opposes it

He delivered a speech *last year* arguing that late Justice Rehnquist’s dissenting opinion in the Roe case was right latimes.com/politics/la-na…

When the D.C. Circuit ruled in Priests for Life v. @HHSGov that the Obama Admin’s accommodation for religious employers did not violate those employers’ rights, Kavanaugh dissented, arguing that the accommodation for religious nonprofits did not go far enough

Kavanaugh would have granted more employers the ability to deny women access to no-copay birth control coverage, effectively placing a woman’s boss between her and her health care provider tinyurl.com/y8ytp7a3

In 2010, Judge Kavanaugh concluded that courts should ignore international law (like the #GenevaConventions) *and* seemed to disagree that federal law shouldn’t authorize breaches of int'l law when it comes to treatment of detainees

His argument disregards Supreme Court precedent and would enable the Executive Branch to act outside of international norms, putting our troops in greater danger overseas dccircuitbreaker.org/wp-content/upl…

Judge Kavanaugh joined a ruling that private defense contractors who abused US detainees are protected from lawsuits filed under state laws. Judge #MerrickGarland was right in his dissent to this ruling

I’m troubled that Judge Kavanaugh invented judicial justifications to protect military contractors from accountability, even though NO Federal law or judicial precedent required such a ruling. Read here: cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opini… #JudicialActivismForTheWealthyAndPowerful

Kavanaugh put air quality at risk for 1/2 of USA risk by blocking pollution restrictions in such an extreme way that even conservative #SCOTUS Justices reversed him in a 6-2 ruling, suggesting he'd put his own policy views ahead of the statute’s plain text cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opini…

Judge Kavanaugh appears to be believe that it violates the Constitution to protect every American from being denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition

There are already cases in the system that threaten to rip these critical protections away from my constituents (such as Texas v. US). I’m gravely concerned that he may hold radical beliefs about what is necessary and proper to protect the health of hard-working American families

Perhaps most troubling, after helping lead an investigation into President Clinton, he wrote that President should not be investigated—much less prosecuted—while in office. Seriously. You can read his “do as I say not as I do” article right here: minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/upl…

That might make Donald Trump want him on the #SupremeCourt, but it doesn’t make me confident that he’ll be independent in the face of a President who is under investigation and doing whatever he can to undermine the investigation duckworth.senate.gov/news/press-rel…