Senator Amy Klobuchar never seems to give up on her efforts to restrict political speech. Even after her failed efforts at enacting regulations for “Honest Ads” and last Congress’ S. 1 effort (nicknamed the “Corrupt Politicians Act”), the Senate Rules Chair is back with a new effort to restrict the speech of non-Democrats. This time, it is the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act (S. 2770). As Senator Bill Hagerty pointed out at a Senate Rules hearing earlier this week:

.@SenatorHagerty exposes that @amyklobuchar is trying to regulate AI, even though we don't even have anything close to an agreed on definition of AI.

— RNLA ⚖️ (@TheRepLawyer) September 27, 2023

On Tuesday, hearings were held by the Committee on House Administration and the Senate Rules Committee to discuss the current state of our elections. While the hearings covered different angles of the issue, one common theme emerged: Republicans are committed to finding solutions to the most pressing election integrity issues, while Democrats balk at those solutions.

On Tuesday, Senators Angus King, Amy Klobuchar, and Dick Durbin announced their proposal for reforming the Electoral Count Act (ECA), the Electoral Count Modernization Act. Before we begin on the actual bill, we must give the Democrats credit for actually making a proposal on the ECA. After massive "voting rights" bills that had little to do with making elections better or voting rights and more to do with their re-elections and a federal takeover of elections, the Democrats are actually focused on the subject of the bill's title this time. We are hopeful that this is sign the Democrats' dreams of partisan election "reform" outside the ECA are dead.

On Tuesday evening, the Senate rejected the Corrupt Politicians Act when it failed to receive the necessary votes to invoke cloture. Democrats are already claiming that the Republicans rejected a common sense compromise, but the reality is that the Manchin "compromise" was not a compromise — it had no bipartisan support. More importantly, the "compromise" was not actually being voted on today. As many Republican Senators, including Leader McConnell and Rules Ranking Member Roy Blunt, pointed out, the bill voted on today was essentially the same as the original.

Earlier today, the Senate Rules Committee held a hearing on the Corrupt Politicians Act. As Senator Cruz pointed out, Democrats have made keeping themselves in power their #1 priority for this Congress despite the myriad of important issues facing the country.

Democrats’ #1 priority is not:

❌ Defeating the #COVID pandemic

❌ Getting people back to work

❌ Helping kids return to the classrooms

It’s keeping themselves in power. pic.twitter.com/oEytF7D1q2

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) March 24, 2021

Today, the RNLA's Judicial Affairs Committee released a second round of summaries on "2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates on Judges." The Judicial Affairs Committee has been reviewing and assessing top tier Democrat candidates and Democratic U.S. Senators contending to become the Democratic nominee for President and their positions on judges and the courts during the Trump Administration.

Last week, the committee released summaries on: Former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Cory Booker, Senator Kamala Harris, Former Congressman Beto O'Rourke, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Senator Elizabeth Warren. 

Today, summaries were released on Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. A link to all the published summaries can be found on our home page here or via our blog article search here.

Below are a few of the extreme comments that Senators Klobuchar and Gillibrand have made regarding judges and the courts:

This is another installment of an ongoing series of posts summarizing 2020 Democratic presidential candidates' views on judges and the courts.  All posts in this series can be viewed here.

On Brett Kavanaugh:           Voted No. [i]

On the nomination of Judge Kavanagh to the Supreme Court, Senator Klobuchar said the following:

• “There were many highly credentialed nominees like yourself [Judge Kavanaugh] that could have been sitting before us today, but—to my colleagues—what concerns me is that during this critical juncture in history, the President has hand-picked a nominee to the Court with the most expansive view of Presidential power possible… a nominee who has actually written that a President—on his own—can declare laws unconstitutional.” [ii]
• “I just think we could have had someone who was more independent.” [iii]
• In a television townhall, Senator Klobuchar: “[Judge Kavanaugh] was basically politicizing the whole judiciary with how he acted [during his confirmation hearings].” [iv]

On Neil Gorsuch:                  Voted No.[v] 

On the nomination of Judge Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Senator Klobuchar stated:

• “After thorough examination and consideration, I have decided that I will not vote in favor of Judge Gorsuch’s nomination. His judicial record on critical issues including the rights of children with disabilities, campaign finance, and preserving health and safety protections have led me to conclude that I cannot support his nomination.” [vi]
• “I felt that he [Judge Gorsuch] was out of the mainstream, not really in—how he interacted personally. I had a very good conversation with him…I’m not going to relitigate the whole thing today, but there were some real concerns about his philosophy.”[vii]

Her opposition to Trump’s judicial nominees: 

During the last Congress, Senator Klobuchar voted against Trump judicial nominations about half of the time, or 50.9% of the time. Of the 57 lower court judicial nominations, Senator Klobuchar voted to confirm 29 nominees. [viii]

• In September 2018, Senator Amy Klobuchar stated that she regrets Senate Democrats eliminating the filibuster for most judicial nominees in 2013. She went on to say: “I would prefer to bring it back…But we are where we are and now I don’t think anyone’s going to want to hamstring themselves.” [ix]
• Regarding the recent post-cloture time change in April to overcome Senate Democrat obstruction of Trump nominees, Senator Klobuchar stated: “I don’t know why they are continuing to pursue this [rule change] except that they want to ram through judges, they want to ram through Justice Department people.”[x]
• In apparent attempt to justify Senate Democrat obstruction on President Trump’s nominees, she made the follow remarks on the Senate Floor: “At a time of blistering rhetoric, anger and divisiveness, this is no time to cede this chamber’s ability to do its due diligence by removing the guardrails that help ensure judicial nominees have the qualifications for lifetime appointments to the federal bench.”[xi]