NOMINATIONS/SUPREME COURT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “When President Donald Trump unveils his second Supreme Court pick Monday [7-9-18] night with the prime-time flourish of a reality show star, he will lay a momentous marker in modern political history…Trump’s pick will cement a 5-4 majority on the court for conservatives who could quite possibly dominate for a generation and, combined with his aggressive efforts to appoint judges to other federal courts across the country, ensure that the imprint of his contentious presidency will endure long after he has left office. In many ways, Trump’s pick will further empower the conservative backlash against progressive victories of the Obama era, on issues like gay rights, immigration and health care legislation that set a torch under his shock general election campaign. Some of those victories were made possible by the swing vote of Anthony Kennedy, whose retirement handed Trump a golden ideological opening. Liberal horror and conservative delight about the implications of the pick have crystalized into a debate about the newly constituted court’s potential to overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that upheld a legal right to an abortion.”
-Stephen Collinson, “Trump to unveil Supreme Court pick for the ages,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, July 9, 2018 2:37 pm