Political scribe: Dems Changing the Rules on Kavanaugh

For at least 25 years, it’s been considered off-limits to ask a Supreme Court nominee how he or she would decide a specific case. But now, says The Atlantic’s Russell Berman, Democratic leaders are signaling this “is no longer operative.” Even before Brett Kavanaugh’s selection was announced, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared that any nominee “has an obligation — a serious and solemn obligation — to share their personal views” on a whole range of issues. And without even waiting for an answer, many Senate Democrats immediately announced their opposition, citing the threat that he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Still, their only remote hope of blocking Kavanaugh’s confirmation is to force him “to be more candid that any modern contender before him.”

Court reporter: Don’t Expect SCOTUS Lurch Rightward

If confirmed, Brett Kavanaugh will move the Supreme Court toward more consistently conservative rulings. But The Washington Post’s Robert Barnes predicts “more of a gradual climb than a jack-rabbit acceleration, without the kind of alarms that are set off by disposing of the few landmark precedents that are familiar to the general public.” For example, “The justices do not need to junk their landmark decision finding a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry to exempt individuals and businesses that, because of religious objections, do not want to serve such couples.” Indeed, this “incremental approach” has been Chief Justice John Roberts’ judicial hallmark. Moreover, justices have always been wary of overturning a previous Supreme Court’s precedents, which gives them “more authority” when they make “a later, more dramatic ruling.”

Conservative: Standing Up the Lactation Bullies

The Trump administration is under fire after a New York Times story alleged its diplomats threatened the sponsor of a UN resolution on breast-feeding with sanctions and the withdrawal of aid unless it was rescinded. The suggestion is that Team Trump was doing the bidding of Big Formula, since the resolution was said to oppose the “inappropriate promotion of foods for infants and young children.” But The Weekly Standard’s Jonathan Last notes that the Times story “doesn’t actually quote the text of the resolution” — which passed unchanged. Most important, notes Last, while “breast-feeding is great,” so is formula, which for some women (and babies) works better.” Moms, he says, “already feel guilty enough. They don’t need the UN trying to body-shame them, too.”

From the right: Trump’s Not Responsible for NATO Chaos

President Trump is headed to a fractious European summit amid suggestions he’s responsible for NATO chaos and is “bringing about the breakup of the ‘liberal order,’ simply because he has told European countries that freeriding is over.” Both suggestions are flawed, says Sumantra Maitra at The Federalist. The debate about NATO funding is hardly new: Indeed, “one of the strongest speeches against NATO was from former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in 2011,” when he predicted that “if NATO leaders failed to immediately increase their funding and improve hardware, retention, and deployment capabilities,” future US presidents would find it hard to justify subsidies for rich European countries. But “it took a Trumpian slap to shake the smug complacency of European polity.”

Culture critic: The Right Move on Racial Preferences

The Trump administration withdrew six Obama-era guidelines to colleges on using racial preferences in admissions to increase diversity. Yet, as City Journal’s Heather Mac Donald notes, none of the “hysterical” news coverage “even hinted at why racial preferences are needed to engineer racial diversity in the first place” — namely, “the abyss between the academic qualifications of black and Hispanic students on the one hand, and whites and Asians on the other.” Fact is, “lack of qualifications is not the same thing as lack of access,” and “the most salient barrier to proportional representation of underrepresented minorities is the academic skills gap.” Says Mac Donald: “Preferences are not the most effective way to create diverse classrooms; raising the academic competitiveness of minority students is.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann