‘So much is at stake’: Why Cory Booker has shed his nice guy image in Brett Kavanaugh hearings
On Tuesday, he helped
"What is the rush? What are we hiding by not letting those documents come out?" Booker said near the start of Tuesday's hearing to Sen.
The chairman accused Booker of "taking advantage of my decency and integrity."
The televised confirmation hearings come as Booker considers a presidential bid in 2020, when he'd need to win over a Democratic primary electorate that has demanded defiance of Trump.
Many Democratic activists are seething with anger, and it isn't clear they'd be satisfied with Booker's lofty talk of
The battle over the direction of the
Trump replaced Scalia last year with the conservative judge
Kavanaugh, a federal appellate judge in
His appointment could cement a conservative majority on the court for a generation, and influence health care, abortion rights, voting rights, labor laws, and more; the judge also could have a potentially decisive role in the investigation of Trump. Kavanaugh has written about his skepticism of such inquiries.
"It seems so clear that in your court the same folks seem to win over and over again: the powerful, the privileged, big corporations, special interests," Booker told the judge Tuesday during opening statements. "This is why so much is at stake."
Booker will have another bite of the apple, as each senator gets to question Kavanaugh at length during the hearings.
Republican senators, without naming individuals, accused
Cruz, a
Other
But Booker won praise from some in his party pushing for a more aggressive posture.
"I think it's great that Booker's standing up, and
"I think he's been pretty much on fire for a year or two," Dean in an interview said of Booker.
In the weeks leading up to the hearings, some liberals had been underwhelmed by their party's seeming resignation to the inevitability of Kavanaugh's confirmation. Even though the
As Grassley gaveled in the start of the hearing Tuesday, Harris immediately moved to postpone it. Protesters repeatedly interrupted, were arrested and hauled away. And
Booker's role in the fray followed other recent moments of intense opposition from the normally sunny senator. He broke with precedent in testifying against a fellow senator,
And he blasted Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in January after she denied hearing Trump use vulgar words to denigrate African countries. "Your silence and your amnesia is complicity," he told Nielsen, recalling the "tears of rage" he shed when he learned of Trump's comments from news reports.
That remark prompted ridicule from conservatives but thrilled the left.
The Kavanaugh hearings may mark Booker's highest-profile confrontation with Trump to date.
"A lot of people think of him as being incredibly positive and uplifting, and may be surprised to learn that he also has this kind of tough, steady mettle internally," said
Asked if his actions Tuesday betrayed his reputation, Booker said: "My record of working across the aisle is incredibly solid."
He and other
Still, the senator of uplifting quotes showed signs he's not entirely comfortable as an attack dog.
"I do hope you understand that I value your friendship," Booker said to Grassley, with whom he has worked on criminal justice reform. "I've come to have a deep respect for you, sir."
"If you worry about our friendship being affected," Grassley responded, "it will not be."
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