Senate Keeps Confirming Trump's Nominees

[stillcool]

5. Those aren't Trump's nominees...

they're Mitch McConnell's. Got to give credit, where credit is due.

The Thurmond Rule — an unwritten rule, not legally binding — holds that a judicial nominee should not be confirmed in the months leading up to an election. It has its origins in June 1968, when Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina, blocked President Lyndon B. Johnson’s appointment of Justice Abe Fortas as chief justice.

It is not an actual rule, which means there is no way to adjudicate how close to an election it applies, or whether it applies at all. In June 2012, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a Republican and the majority leader, invoked it to block President Obama’s nominations to circuit courts. In December 2015, Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, argued that the rule was invalid.