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[FULL TITLE] NBC: We Hear From A Single Source That Kennedy Negotiated His Retirement To Get Kavanaugh; Update: “That Is Garbage” Did Anthony Kennedy cut a secret deal with Donald Trump back in November to have Brett Kavanaugh replace him on the Supreme Court? Or do media outlets need to verify claims from single sources before taking them public? NBC’s Leigh Caldwell and Frank Thorp hear the pick has been locked in since November, and that the drama over the last two weeks was sheer atmospherics: Leigh Ann Caldwell ✔ @LACaldwellDC Replying to @LACaldwellDC Furthermore, the five names Trump added...

Justice Anthony KennedyÂ’s announcement Wednesday of his retirement from the Supreme Court has sent the left into a tizzy. Although Justice Kennedy has often sided with the more conservative-leaning Justices in 5-4 decisions, he has also joined the four liberal-leaning Justices as the swing vote on several contentious cases important to the left involving such issues as abortion rights and same-sex marriage. With Justice KennedyÂ’s retirement, which will take effect at the end of July, the door is open for President Trump to nominate a more reliable conservative replacement in the mold of his first pick, Justice Neil Gorsuch. "We...

While it is true that Justice Anthony Kennedy was a disappointment to conservatives, the observation misses the point. Kennedy did not owe conservatives decisions that they liked. What all Americans deserved from him was the conscientious application of the law. That they did not get it is the true indictment of his time on the Supreme Court. Again and again, Kennedy made rulings that aggrandized the power of the Court and of himself as its swing justice. No justice, right or left, was more willing to substitute his judgment for that of elected officials and voters. No justice was less...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised the country Wednesday that a new justice will be confirmed to the Supreme Court this fall, setting out an ambitious goal for himself to approve a key seat with the narrowest of majorities. Democrats were already sounding obstructionist notes, however. Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said the Senate should wait until after this year’s election, giving voters a chance to weigh in on some of the senators who will confirm the next pick.

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Rumors continue to swirl that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy plans to retire soon. If that happens, one attorney says the political equivalent of Armageddon can be expected. American Family Association (AFA) legal counsel Abraham Hamilton III says one of the biggest legacies of any president will be the legacy the chief executive makes in the federal judiciary. If Kennedy leaves, any additional Supreme Court opening, you can expect the political equivalent of Armageddon to occur," Hamilton tells OneNewsNow. "One area where Democrats have been a bit more shrewd than Republicans is in recognizing the role the judiciary will play...

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will publish its final rulings for this term on Monday. Some significant cases, including the possibility the court will hand down a decision on the legality of President Trump's travel ban, will be decided. But Washington is rife with rumors and speculation about the future of Justice Anthony Kennedy and whether or not he will retire after the term. Kennedy is 80 years old and said to be seriously considering the idea of stepping down. If he did, it would set off the mother of all confirmation battles. Kennedy has been...

The Supreme Court enters its final week of work before a long summer hiatus with action expected on the Trump administration's travel ban and a decision due in a separation of church and state case that arises from a Missouri church playground. The biggest news of all, though, would be if Justice Anthony Kennedy were to use the court's last public session on Monday to announce his retirement. To be sure, Kennedy has given no public sign that he will retire this year and give President Donald Trump his second high court pick in the first months of his administration....

Let’s look at sections of the Opinion Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for Arizona v. United States 567 U.S. ___ (2012)The Government of the United States has broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration and the status of aliens. See Toll v. Moreno, 458 U. S. 1, 10 (1982) ; see generally S. Legomsky & C. Rodríguez, Immigration and Refugee Law and Policy 115–132 (5th ed. 2009). This authority rests, in part, on the National Government’s constitutional power to “establish an uniform Rule of Nat- uralization,” U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 4, and its inher- ent power as...

As our Monday editorial details, there is every reason to believe that the eventual ruling of the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court will control the outcome of litigation over President Trump’s temporary travel ban on both aliens from seven countries and refugees. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit is considering the Justice Department’s appeal of a temporary restraining order issued by Seattle federal district judge James Robart, which suspends the ban. The panel has announced that it will hear oral argument on Tuesday. The Ninth Circuit’s determination is likely to be dispositive because there are currently only eight justices...

Last week the Supreme Court of the United States voted that President Obama exceeded his authority when he granted exemptions from the immigration laws passed by Congress. But the Supreme Court also exceeded its own authority by granting the University of Texas an exemption from the Constitution's requirement of "equal protection of the laws," by voting that racial preferences for student admissions were legal. Supreme Court decisions in affirmative action cases are the longest running fraud since the 1896 decision upholding racial segregation laws in the Jim Crow South, on grounds that "separate but equal" facilities were consistent with the...

When President Obama was first running for office in 2008, he promised that he'd go about "fundamentally transforming" America once in office. But it wasn't the 47-year-old Senator from Illinois — who went on to win two presidential elections — who'd bring about such a transformation. It was a 78-year-old unelected Supreme Court justice from California named Anthony Kennedy.

What can it possibly matter to you, they were asked, if two men or two women who love each other call their relationship marriage? We learned that it matters a great deal. It matters to Brendan Eich, who was forced to resign last year as CEO of the company he co-founded after it became public that he had donated $1,000 to Proposition 8, the successful California ballot measure banning same-sex marriage. It matters to Chick-fil-A, which in 2012 saw the mayors of Chicago and Boston declare the restaurant chain had no place in their cities because its chief executive held...

From Scalia's dissent on court conducting a putsch to overthrow the country: "22 If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,” I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie....

As the Supreme Court's oral arguments on whether states should be constitutionally obligated to issue same-sex marriage licenses adjourned Tuesday afternoon, Heritage Foundation's Ryan Anderson said in a news conference outside the building that the likely swing vote justice, Anthony Kennedy, was "not persuaded" by LGBT arguments. As many are predicting the Supreme Court's decision in June to come down to a narrow 5-4 vote, Justice Kennedy has been pegged again as the justice who is likely to decide which way the court leans in making the tough decision on whether the 14th Amendment requires states to uphold same-sex marriages...

By his own logic, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy should lead the court’s majority in upholding individual states’ laws against same-sex marriage. In the four conjoined cases on the subject set for oral argument April 28, the high court is asked not whether same-sex marriage is good policy. It is instead asked if such marriage is a national, constitutionally protected right, one so fundamentally interwoven in our nation’s fabric of protections that no state law can refuse to recognize it. Kennedy’s most recent decision regarding marriage, the 2013 case of U.S. v. Windsor, contained two notions seemingly in tension with...

Dear Justice Kennedy, June is nigh, and with it will comes your ruling on the most contentious political issue of our time: marriage. I write because I am one of many children with gay parents who believe we should protect marriage. I believe you were right when, during the Proposition 8 deliberations, you said “the voice of those children [of same-sex parents] is important.” I’d like to explain why I think redefining marriage would actually serve to strip these children of their most fundamental rights. It’s very difficult to speak about this subject, because I love my mom. Most of...

Dear Justice Kennedy,June is nigh, and with it will comes your ruling on the most contentious political issue of our time: marriage.I write because I am one of many children with gay parents who believe we should protect marriage. I believe you were right when, during the Proposition 8 deliberations, you said “the voice of those children [of same-sex parents] is important.” I’d like to explain why I think redefining marriage would actually serve to strip these children of their most fundamental rights.It’s very difficult to speak about this subject, because I love my mom. Most of us children...

It's impossible to overestimate the damage that will be done to our constitutional republic if Justice Anthony Kennedy imposes homosexual marriage on the entire nation in blatant defiance of the express will of the people. The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide the issue of whether states can be compelled, against the will of the people and their elected representatives, to accept sodomy-based marriage. Voters in 31 states went to the polls to enshrine natural marriage in their state constitutions. The legislatures in another 13 states passed laws expressly forbidding recognition of homosexual marriages. While legislatures in a small...