COURTS/GOP/NOMINATIONS/SENATE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “The sprint by President Trump and Senate Republicans to install conservative judges to the nation’s courts hit an unexpected speed bump on Thursday [7-19-18] after a nominee for a key federal appeals court was pulled to avoid an embarrassing defeat on the Senate floor. The nomination of Ryan W. Bounds to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit faced opposition over his writings in college, which included a column in which he railed against ‘race-focused groups’ on campus and ‘race-think.’ The Senate’s only black Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, had concerns about those writings and Mr. Bounds’s inability to clarify how his thinking had changed since then, according to a Senate Republican aide…Republican leaders have no room for error when the Democratic caucus is united in opposition, given that the party has only a 51-to-49 majority, and one Republican senator, John McCain of Arizona, has been absent while battling brain cancer. At least one other Republican, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, agreed to join Mr. Scott in opposition to Mr. Bounds’s nomination, according to another Republican aide.”
–Thomas Kaplan, “White House Withdraws Appeals Court Nominee Who Deplored Multiculturalism,” The New York Times online, July 19, 2018