Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Trumps second nominee to the US Supreme Court.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's second nominee to the US Supreme Court. Alex Wong / Getty Images

Midterm elections have consequences. "Miserably low turnout in the 2014 midterms helped Republicans take the Senate," David Leonhardt reminds us, "which in turn allowed them to steal a Supreme Court seat from Barack Obama. And mediocre turnout in 2016 helped Donald Trump to win the presidency, which has allowed him to nominate two justices." The first was Neil Gorsuch. The second is...

Brett Kavanaugh.

Who is Judge Brett Kavanaugh?

Vox says:

Kavanaugh, 53, is a candidate straight out of Supreme Court central casting: He went to Yale and Yale Law (every current justice either attended that school or Harvard Law); he clerked for two federal appellate judges, including the well-known Alex Kozinski; worked in the solicitor general’s office in the George H.W. Bush administration; and then clerked for Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Since 2006, he has sat on the DC Circuit, which also produced current justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It’s not for nothing that the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, who has been Trump’s most important adviser on court nominations, singled Kavanaugh out as one of the most promising contenders for Kennedy’s seat.

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Ezra Klein says: