Congress

How the Kavanaugh confirmation saga still haunts the Senate

Published

11 months ago

August 4, 2025

As the Senate prepared to vote last week to confirm Emil Bove to a lifetime seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, one familiar name kept cropping up: Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

It will be seven years this October since senators confirmed Kavanaugh in the culmination of a politically fraught and highly emotional ordeal that tested personal beliefs and partisan loyalties. And while Bove’s confirmation process was nowhere near as explosive, Democrats and Republicans made comparisons to the Kavanaugh affair throughout.

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley of Iowa accused Democrats of “dust[ing] off the playbook that they devised” for Kavanaugh in order to vilify Bove. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who is next in line to be the top Democrat on the committee in the next Congress, said Trump allies attempted to paper over ethical questions around Bove’s qualifications in the same way they shrugged off a sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh.

“There’s a similarity here,” said Whitehouse. “[It] smells like political maneuver.”

It illustrates how one of the Senate’s most painful moments continues to haunt lawmakers — particularly those who sit on the Judiciary Committee, which has historically operated on a bipartisan basis at the frontlines of helping the legislative body fulfill its obligations to advise and consent.

“Kavanaugh has kinda become a verb,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a senior member of the Judiciary panel whose defense of the Supreme Court nominee in 2018 catapulted him to conservative stardom.

At least three different whistleblowers came forward ahead of Bove’s confirmation vote with allegations against the nominee, who served as President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense attorney before becoming a senior Justice Department official. Democrats pressed Bove about his role in facilitating the dismissal of federal corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams, and whether he suggested the administration ignore court orders that would undercut the president’s immigration agenda.

In Bove’s case, the allegations were markedly different from those lodged by Christine Blasey Ford against Kavanaugh, who she said sexually assaulted her in high school — an offense Kavanaugh unequivocally denied. But the tactics deployed by Democrats and Republicans in these cases mirror each other.

In the fights over Kavanaugh and Bove, Democrats and Republicans accused each other of acting in bad faith. With Bove, each party leveraged the other’s behavior during the Kavanaugh episode to undermine the opposite side’s credibility.

“I think it was an embarrassment to the Republicans, with Kavanaugh, that someone would come before us and literally tell her story under oath, a very credible presentation,” said the panel’s ranking member Dick Durbin of Illinois, who was a senior member of the panel when it considered Kavanaugh’s nomination. “I think the same thing is true of these whistleblowers.”

Blasey Ford’s allegations were submitted to Democrats long before they came to light, completely upending Kavanaugh’s anticipated glidepath to party-line confirmation. The new information forced the Judiciary Committee to regroup to hear testimony from Blasey Ford and hold another round of questioning for Kavanaugh.

Still, Democrats complained that Republicans, and the Trump administration, cut corners to expedite a final vote on Kavanaugh. Democrats, in Bove’s case, also accused Republicans of acting too hastily to confirm their nominee, including by refusing to hold an additional hearing with at least one of the whistleblowers who went public.

Conversely, Republicans accused Democrats of waiting until the immediate leadup to Bove’s scheduled confirmation vote to highlight potentially damaging claims against him.

“I felt like it was Kavanaugh-esque,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). “[The whistleblowers might have] thought at the eleventh hour, without time to complete due diligence, that maybe they could get through.”

Tillis, who is not running for reelection, had previously announced he would oppose nominees who expressed support for the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; Bove was involved in the dismissal of prosecutors who worked on DOJ cases tied to the attack and advised on White House pardons of the rioters. Tillis was seen as a potential “no” vote who might have blocked Bove from being reported favorably out of the Judiciary Committee; he ended up voting “yes.”

“When you call everyone corrupt, nobody’s corrupt; when the Democrats bring forward whistleblowers every other Thursday, coincidentally just before the vote … to confirm somebody that they oppose, people just tend not to pay attention to the whistleblowers,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “The last minute whistleblowers look contrived and are getting old.”

Ultimately, Bove was confirmed last week in a narrow 50-49 vote, over objections from two Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. Notably, neither of them formally opposed Kavanaugh on the Senate floor, with Collins deciding to support him and Murkowski voting “present.”

As the shadow of the Kavanaugh saga lingered over the Bove proceedings, it’s possible the bad feelings between the two parties from both episodes will continue to worsen: Democrats are already bracing for the possibility that Trump could be in a position to appoint another justice on the Supreme Court if a vacancy occurs, which would set up another monumental political battle.

And while the confirmation of conservative jurists was a key pillar of Trump’s first term, Trump is making clear that, in his second term, loyalty is the driving factor in his selection process, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

Trump is also now pressuring Grassley to abandon the practice of allowing home state senators to effectively veto potential U.S. attorneys or district court judges for their own state, and Senate GOP leadership is considering changing the chamber’s rules in the fall to speed up the process for confirming some nominees. Both would further shake up institutional precedent just as Democrats say the Kavanaugh and Bove cases challenged the status quo.

“I do think that the sense of frustration and even anger has become more pronounced simply because there are so many rules and norms that they are defying and disregarding without even a pretense of fairness,” Blumenthal, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said of the chamber’s judicial confirmation process.

“I think the partisan divide may have deepened somewhat,” he continued. “The issue is the same –that is, the denial of a full and fair investigation of the nominee, whether it was Kavanaugh or Bove.”

Congress

Democrats have some rare praise for Trump’s DHS chief at hearing

Published

2 minutes ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin received praise from an unexpected corner of the House on Thursday: Democratic appropriators tasked with funding his department.

At an oversight hearing for the Department of Homeland Security, Rep. Ed Case of Hawaii, along with Texas Reps. Henry Cuellar and Veronica Escobar, thanked Mullin for an improved culture of communication and engagement between the department and Capitol Hill.

Escobar noted that she recently had “a really great meeting” with Mullin.

“I so appreciated your openness to hearing me out and hearing out the concerns that I brought to you,” she explained. Escobar also praised Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief David Venturella for “exhibiting that same openness” during a recent visit to El Paso.

Cuellar, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee, noted that border czar Tom Homan and other senior officials were in his district recently and that he was glad to be getting “notifications before” officials visited now “instead of hearing that from my mayor and other folks.”

Those same Democrats did question the DHS chief on the installation of fencing in sensitive areas along the U.S.-Mexico border and conditions at immigration detention facilities. Still, they maintained a fairly convivial tone with the previous senator and House member from Oklahoma.

While some Democrats in the hearing did have sharp words for Mullin, his relatively warm reception is notable given the hostile reaction from Democrats that Mullin’s predecessor, former Secretary Kristi Noem, received in her appearances on Capitol Hill. Democrats lashed Noem during hearings, calling for her resignation or firing over a litany of policy disagreements — from the tone and tenor of immigration enforcement to controversial spending decisions Democrats and some Republicans characterized as self-indulgent and self-serving.

Mullin had pledged to mend fences with Capitol Hill and work with both Republicans and Democrats, a promise that had prompted skepticism from prominent Democratic lawmakers. The hearing suggested that some improvements to the relationship have materialized.

Reps. Lauren Underwood of Illinois and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the full Appropriations Committee, were less diplomatic. They clashed with Mullin over conditions in immigration detention facilities and the Trump administration’s plans for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The exchanges, in which Mullin shouted back at the members and accused them of lying about the department and approaching the Trump administration with a double standard, were sufficiently unruly that Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) intervened and scolded both the members and the Homeland Security secretary.

Still, the mostly friendly environment allowed Mullin to speak more at length about his policy approaches on a litany of issues in the face of questions from both Democrats and Republicans.

On immigration enforcement, Mullin pledged that his department was reviewing decisions under his predecessor to acquire warehouses for use in housing unauthorized immigrants in ICE custody, acknowledging to Escobar there are “some that we’re trying to make work, but there was some due diligence that maybe wasn’t actually checked off.”

Mullin also explained that the large tranche of funds Congress allocated to DHS via reconciliation allows the department to “set out missions and force ourselves to look at technology today, not just what we can spend in a fiscal year.” He specified that those funds are already providing for investments at ports of entry to handle foreign trade and keeping DHS’ operations stable.

And he pledged to address a complaint from early in the Trump administration: that staffing levels at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are too low. Mullin argued that there needed to be measured increases to the agency’s currently low staffing.

“Do we need to hire everybody back? No. Do we need to hire about 600 people back? Yes, but I don’t want to put bodies in position. I want to put the talented individuals that know what they’re doing and have partnerships with our state and local officials,” he explained.

Mullin also spoke positively about his engagements with Democratic officials. In an exchange with Case, Mullin lavished praise on Hawaii’s Democratic governor, Josh Green, saying Green “has been very helpful.” Green, he explained, “reports to us when some governors don’t” and called his approach to DHS “key to getting this done.”

Case told Mullin: “I’m texting him as we speak to say that you’re saying nice things about him.”

Mullin joked back: “Don’t say it. Don’t publish it.”

Congress

A district that went +20 for Trump now in play for Democrats

Published

2 minutes ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — A new internal poll shows a Democratic House candidate is in a dead heat with his Republican challenger in an upstate New York district President Donald Trump won by 20 points in 2024.

The poll, commissioned by Democratic candidate Blake Gendebien’s campaign and conducted by the left-leaning group Impact Research, found Gendebien trailing Republican Anthony Constantino by just one percentage point, 45-44, with 11 percent of voters undecided.

The district is currently represented by outgoing Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who congratulated Constantino on winning the GOP nomination Tuesday after he defeated Republican state Assemblymember Robert Smullen in a nasty primary.

Constantino, the CEO of a sticker company who’s self-funding his campaign with $10 million, earned Trump’s endorsement in April, a blow that proved fatal for Smullen’s primary campaign.

Constantino is an eccentric and passionate supporter of the president and recently recorded an adulatory rap album titled “Thank You President Trump.”

During the primary, he left a threatening voicemail to a constituent in the district, threatened to sue his opponent, whom he referred to as “Slimebob,” and frequently touted the 100-foot-wide Trump sign on top of his Sticker Mule factory, which he erected during Trump’s 2024 campaign. Constantino is also a former boxer.

Luke Martin, a pollster from Impact Research who works for the Gendebien campaign, said the campaign watched the primary in hopes they would face the polarizing Constantino.

“Our research has always shown that a wannabe DC insider like Constantino is very beatable in NY-21, but his rapidly increasing negatives had us concerned that we might lose our shot to run against him if he couldn’t keep it together through the primary,” Martin said in a statement. “The more money he spent, the more we saw his unfavorability tick up in our polls. The data was always clear that Robert Smullen would have been a more competitive Republican candidate for this district.”

Anthony Constantino, a Republican candidate for Congress, stands in front of a

After respondents received messaging on the two candidates, Gendebien, a dairy farmer, climbed ahead of Constantino, 49-40, with 11 percent still undecided. The poll quizzed 500 likely general election voters from May 26-31 and had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.4 percent.

Forty percent of those surveyed said they voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, and 58 percent said they voted for Trump. Twenty-three percent of respondents identified as Democrat, 27 percent said they were independents and 46 percent identified as Republicans.

There has been no independent polling of the district, which is one of the largest in the northeast and stretches from the northern Catskills region to the Canadian border. Trump won the district with 60 percent of the vote.

A potential curveball in the general election is whether Smullen, a retired Marine colonel, will continue to run for the seat despite losing the Republican primary. Smullen, who has the backing of the state’s Conservative Party, is on its ballot line in November. That would set up a three-way contest between him, Gendebien and Constantino.

Smullen has not ruled out running as a Conservative Party candidate. He has until Friday, July 3 to decline the ballot line.

Another potential factor to Smullen’s decision making is that the Conservative Party’s chair, Jerry Kassar, is in a bitter, personal feud with Constantino. Kassar is suing Constantino for defamation after Constantino said Kassar threatened to kill him. Kassar told Blue Light News it’s up to Smullen whether or not he wants to run on the Conservative line.

“The party itself has no role whatsoever, until an action is taken by the candidate,” Kassar said. “Bob has not indicated to me anything other than what has been public, which is that he’s interested in staying on but is thinking it through and will make a final decision soon.”

Gendebien’s campaign declined to release survey data on a three-way race.

Blake Gendebien testifies before a Senate subcommittee in May 2023.

Battleground New York, which works to flip competitive House seats by engaging disaffected voters, said the bruising Smullen-Constantino primary has put Democrats in a winning position.

“With Democrats surging and the race already tied, Republicans in NY-21 couldn’t afford a messy primary and they got one anyway,” said Andrew Grossman, a spokesperson for the group. “They spent the entire primary proving they can’t stand each other, and now they’ve handed voters a November ballot where they can choose between the guy the party hates and the guy the nominee hates.”

Congress

To get the Senate moving, this Republican is jamming up the House

Published

2 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is leading a blockade that has frozen the House — to the growing annoyance of some fellow Republicans.

The casualties of her fight, after all, are major GOP-written bills that are now going nowhere fast as Luna and allied hard-liners push the Senate to enact a partisan elections bill, a version of which the House has already passed. The move is now threatening the annual defense policy bill and the entire House schedule next week unless Speaker Mike Johnson can quickly find an off-ramp.

It’s stirring frustrations among many Republicans, even those who want to pass the elections overhaul known as the SAVE America Act.

“She’s going to have to start being a team player here,” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) said in an interview. “I mean, you can’t be a team of one. It’s not an institution that can function with one rogue member, especially in the small majority you have.”

But Luna says she is perfectly comfortable picking the fight because she can claim a crucial ally: President Donald Trump.

“It’s not my job to play trust games with the Senate when they’ve actively betrayed our trust multiple times,” Luna said in an interview this week. “Plus, the president’s on my side.”

Luna’s tactics, in fact, are a mirror image of Trump’s own approach to the SAVE America Act, which has stalled in the Senate for months due to internal GOP opposition to the bill’s contents and the precedent-smashing maneuvers that would be required to pass it.

Trump shocked congressional Republicans Wednesday by canceling his planned signing of a landmark bipartisan housing package, explaining he wanted the elections bill passed first. Luna has similarly demanded that no further legislation pass the House until the Senate acts on elections — never mind GOP leaders’ repeated insistence the votes just aren’t there.

Many Hill Republicans believe there’s a reason the two appear to be in sync with their hardball approach to the legislation, which would mandate strict new proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting, among other provisions: They think Luna is privately pushing Trump to keep the pressure on the Senate, even as Johnson looks to keep his own agenda moving.

“The speaker talks to the president a lot. But Luna talks to him more,” said one House Republican who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Johnson is hoping to counter Luna’s push Thursday, meeting with Trump at the White House to discuss possible solutions to the impasse. House GOP leaders have already canceled scheduled votes Friday and are considering telling members not to come back for next week’s planned legislative business, either, according to five people granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

The possibility of losing nearly two weeks of floor time is fueling frustrations inside the House GOP. Leaders scrapped votes on two fiscal 2027 appropriations bills this week, and next week’s plan to bring up the annual defense policy bill is hanging in the balance — much to the chagrin of Armed Services Committee members who helped write that bill, including Jackson.

Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a senior appropriator, said Thursday the self-imposed blockade is “not our finest hour — we’ve got to get this thing open. But it’s not surprising to me because when you tend to want to reward bad behavior, you get more of it.”

That was a veiled reference to multiple prior episodes this Congress where Luna attempted, and sometimes succeeded, in hijacking control of the floor from Johnson.

A broader group of Republicans is annoyed that infighting over the stalled elections bill has now overtaken both chambers with just over four months until the midterms. What’s downright mystifying, in their view, is holding up House business over a lack of Senate action.

Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY) said it was “like beating your dog because your neighbor won’t cut his grass.”

Luna responded to the gripers in a social media video Thursday: “This is the No. 1 most important issue in the country,” she said, referring to the elections bill. “The American people want it, and we’re not budging until we get it.”

Johnson tried to convince Luna to end her blockade Wednesday, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the private conversation. He argued a party-line policy bill Republicans are separately trying to assemble could provide a pathway to enacting the SAVE America Act.

But Luna wasn’t swayed. She is among many GOP hard-liners who don’t believe Johnson’s proposed compromise — which would involve a grant program aimed at encouraging states to adopt strict voter-ID requirements — is sufficient. Johnson is expected to float a similar plan to Trump Thursday.

Luna is also pushing to attach the SAVE America Act to the Pentagon bill or another must-pass bill. That doesn’t have widespread support among Republicans, either, and is viewed by House leaders as a sure-fire recipe for derailing important bills. It doesn’t help that one key element Trump is insisting on — a crackdown on mail voting — divides the GOP and probably can’t pass the House.

“I hope that doesn’t happen,” Jackson said, adding he wanted the defense bill passed “as clean as we possibly can.”

House GOP leaders blew off Luna’s initial threat this week to lead a floor rebellion if they proceeded with a vote on the bipartisan housing bill. It passed Tuesday 358-32 after passing the Senate 88-5 last week.

The huge bipartisan margins didn’t deter Luna, who publicly announced she had enough members willing to indefinitely block the procedural measures that GOP leaders use to control floor debate and prepare major bills for votes.

Other House conservatives have said they were in Luna’s corner, including Rep. Max Miller of Ohio and Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who is among several House Freedom Caucus members who committed to the blockade Thursday. “I personally think we should not have any more legislation until the Senate comes back in session,” Norman said.

Johnson told reporters before meeting with Trump Thursday that “we’re in an era with small margins and small majorities, and we’ve got to get things moving.” He blamed Senate Democrats for the issues with the elections bill and did not mention Luna or the standoff.

“I’m going to talk with the president about these issues and how to get the agenda moving again,” he said.

Luna’s close relationship with Trump has shielded her from significant blowback inside the House GOP. She talks with the president frequently and is one of the few Republicans on Capitol Hill to enjoy Oval Office walk-in privileges. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Luna’s relationship with Trump and his view of her maneuvers.

During an internal crisis over a cryptocurrency bill last year, she left a meeting at the Treasury Department with a group of Republicans who were struggling with the matter, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the incident.

Luna walked over to the White House and into the Oval Office, the people said. Minutes later, Trump brought the whole group in and later issued a social media post saying they had hashed out the disagreement — by agreeing to give hard-liners a policy concession that wasn’t tenable with the rest of the House GOP.

“Luna has more operational control around here than most anyone,” said another House Republican granted anonymity to speak frankly.

Ali Bianco contributed to this report.