hello. i'm wolf blitzer. 1:00 p.m. here in washington. wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us. we're following major breaking news unfolding this hour. we're awaiting to hear from president trump's supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh after a rather rowdy start to his confirmation hearing up on capitol hill. democrats calling for a delay as protesters repeatedly disrupted the proceeding. also, what's being described as a truly devastating portrait of a totally dysfunctional trump white house. bob woodward's brand new book says president trump's aides are

deeply worried that he represents a danger to national security. we're going to have more of the explosive claims from the book just coming out. maur major breaking news on that. and tropical storm gordon takes aim at the gulf coast of the united states. it's expected to make landfall later tonight as a hurricane. hurricane warnings are now already in effect for parts of mississippi and alabama. but let's start with the breaking news. cnn is learning truly stunning new details about life inside a chaotic trump white house from a soon-to-be officially released book by the veteran journalist bob woodward. some of the details include how senior staff members took truly extraordinary measures to stop the president of the united states from making decisions they considered to be a genuine threat to u.s. national security, and that included taking official documents, papers from the president's desk so he wouldn't be able to sign them. the book also provides specific

details about the disdain some of the president's closest advisers display, including his white house chief of staff john kelly, who calls the president in this book at various meetings, quote, an idiot and unhinged. the defense secretary of the united states, general james mattis, complaining that the president of the yats had the understanding, and i'm quoting him now, of a fifth or a sixth grader. those quotes from bob woodward's book. our special correspondent has a copy of the book, has been going through it. our white house correspondent kaitlan collins is getting reaction over at the white house. jamie, let me start with you. these revelations are truly extraordinary. looks like bob woodward has done it again. you've actually read the entire book three times. >> i've read the book, and i think what is striking is we have heard publicly things about the president's temper and chaos and dysfunction, but this comes

from his top officials. these are people inside. these are not outside critics. and the level of detail is extraordinary. the president is quoted extensively. you go into meetings in the situation room, in the oval office, and time and again what you hear from his closest aides are words like erratic, that he has dangerous impulses, and as you just said, they've been so concerned that he would be a danger to national security, several of his senior staff literally took draft letters, documents off of his desk so he wouldn't sign them and they hid them from him. we have never heard anything like this before. >> and the word is that some of these senior aides use to describe the president. you posted an article on cnn.com. let me read one paragraph from the article. chief of staff john kelly describes trump as an idiot and

unhinged, woodward reports. james mattis reports trump as having the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader. john dowd describes the president as a "f'ing" liar, telling president trump he would end up in a, quote, orange jump suit if he testified before the special counsel robert mueller. >> right. so in addition to staff taking extraordinary measurin extraordinary measures to really circumvent the president, there are new details about the russia investigation. you see the president's former attorney john dowd going to the white house residence and putting him through a mock interview. according to woodward, dowd did not believe the president could get through an interview. so he puts him through a practice session. it unfolds. you see a scene. there are quotes.

woodward reports that in the end, the president fails the test. what's even more shocking is down the road, dowd and the present attorney go to mueller's office, special counsel robert mueller. in an attempt to convince mueller that the president cannot get through an interview without perjury, they re-enact the mock interview. john dowd plays robert mueller. jay sekulow plays trump. and they show him that trump will commit perjury. >> they point out to mueller this -- if this were to come out, it would be a real threat to the u.s. national security if world leaders saw what the president could say. if there was a transcript, for example, released of an official interview. >> right. it is stunning. you hear defense secretary john mattis is, quote, exasperated and alarmed, woodward writes

about the president. and the other thing you see for the first time in the book is you go behind the scenes to the mueller investigation. no one has been more secretive or tight lipped. woodward captures meetings in mueller's office between trump's attorneys and robert mueller. and in one of them in trying to convince mueller that the president doesn't have to testify, you actually -- mueller is quoted as saying he wants to see if the president had corrupt intent about james comey. so we're getting for the first time a glimpse behind the scenes. >> it's pretty amazing stuff. bob woodward, as i said, does it again. kaitlan, you're at the white house. the white house chief of staff john kelly quoted in the book, saying of president, quote, he's an idiot. it's pointless to try to convince him of anything. he's gone off the rails. we're in crazy town. i don't even know why any of us are here. this is the worst job i have

ever had. that quote in the woodward book from john kelly, the white house chief of staff. what's the reaction you're getting over there? this book is supposed to be released on september 11th, but obviously a lot of excerpts are already out there. >> reporter: well, wolf, we knew in recent days our sources have been telling us that president trump was complaining that he never had the chance to sit down with bob woodward for an interview for this book, even though woodward made several attempts through senior white house officials to sit down with the president one on one, and now we know exactly why the president has been complaining about that. these stunning allegations made in this book not just about things that the staffers said about the president but also things the president said about his own employees, including the attorney general jeff sessions, who he said was a traitor and a dumb southerner, according to this book. that raises questions about the white house about how to react to this book. there have been other tell-alls in the past, but this is

different. not only does he have first-hand accounts, but e-mail exchanges that back up what his claims are. we know that after that michael wolf fire and fury book came out, john kelly implemented this no interview policy for books here in the white house. they didn't want any staffers talking to people for upcoming books. we know before and after john kelly implemented that rule, at least a dozen white house officials here, current and former, spoke with bob woodward for this book, telling him these things that he's written about in this book. wolf, the question is going to be what is going to be the response from john kelly, james mattis, jeff sessions, all of these staffers who still work here in this white house, in this administration. what is their reaction to this book going to be? >> it's going to be tough going, i suspect, for all of them and a whole bunch of others. we're going to get to a lot more on this truly exemployeplosive .

kaitlan, stand by. jamie, stay with us as well. the reaction to this book is pouring in. we're going to discuss that. plus, this is truly extraordinary as well. there's new audio of a conversation between bob woodward and president trump. we're going to have excerpts of that, what the president told bob woodward in early august. stay with us. also, much more on the other important story we're following, moments from now the rather contentious confirmation hearing of the u.s. supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh will continue. we'll also have live conch of his opening statements. this is cnn's special live coverage. hey allergy muddlers. are you one sneeze away from being voted out of the carpool? try zyrtec®. it's starts working hard at hour one. and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. stick with zyrtec® and muddle no more®.

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inside the white house. we're talking about the pulitzer award winning author bob woodward's brand new book on the trump white house. a.b. stoddard is associate editor for real clear politics. she's joining us. also with us, cnn's senior political analyst, david gurgen. and our analyst laura coates. jamie, very quickly, it's amazing some of the stuff the president is quoted by woodward as having said in meetings about senior aides, about jeff sessions, the attorney general of the united states. we know he ridicules him, berates him on twitter all of the time. as you report, this is what the president said of the attorney general of the united states. this guy is metropolitanntally . he's this dumb southerner. it's amazing.

>> it is beyond the pale. rudy giuliani was the only person to go on the sunday talk shows and defend the president. he humiliates giuliani, according to woodward. >> this is what the president told rudy giuliani the day after the "access hollywood" tape came out on a sunday talk show. he was the only one willing to defend the president. this is the president quoted by woodward. rudy, you're a baby. i've never seen a worse defense of me in my life. they took your diaper off right there. you're like the little baby that needed to be changed. when are you going to be a man? >> and this is the man who is now acting as his personal attorney. but i think what you'll find is -- and this is the tip of the iceberg. woodward brings credibility with him. this is not like other books. he interviewed dozens of sources, firsthand sources. he has hundreds of hours of

taped intervurs friews from the people. he was given personal diaries. the book begins with a stolen document. he has one of the documents that was stolen off the white house desk. there is a memo with trump's handwriting on it. >> a.b., let me get your thoughts. it's pretty stunning. woodward, as we all know, has a pretty solid reputation. his reporting eventually contributed to the renation of president richard nixon. >> this is a president for president trump. this is not omarosa. this is bob woodward. the question here -- what's made clear is all the people around him at the very highest levels do not trust him and believe he's unfit to be president of the united states and commander in chief of the u.s. armed forces. that's made very clear. the next question is, does jay

sekulow, his lawyer, and does secretary of defense james mattis and his chief of staff general john kelly, do they deny this or do they resign? because these -- that's going to be the question before them. do they say out loud that bob woodward made all of this up, or do they walk away after enacting a practice session and playing trump before bob mueller at the special counsel's office and proving to the special counsel he's a liar. how is jay sekulow going to answer to this? >> a lot of these senior people, they've been ridiculed publicly, humiliated in private meetings. they haven't resigned for the simple reason they are convinced that this president represents a specific threat to the united states, and they have to protect the united states from the president. >> we haven't had that since nixon. nixon in the closing days when the people around him began to fear what he might do individually. but this seems to be systemic. this seems to run across a whole

poor paid of his presidency. it's not something that happened in the last few weeks. wolf, you and i go back long way with woodward. we know on many of his books there are small mistakes, but the essence of the book always turns out to be correct. that's what is devastating about this. i want to go back to this whole episode of mueller. that is extraordinary to me, that they would go and make a case to him why the president of the united states is unfit to give testimony because he does not understand reality or he will lie. they're saying he's unfit more testimony. what does that say about his fitness for the presidency? >> and in the book, mueller reacts by saying, i understand what you're saying. what did you think of that? >> i was shocked. first of all, the idea that you would have the appetite for punishment that all these men seem to have, the idea they're almost gluttonous at this point in time, to be recent daudy giuo

be ridiculed the way he is, let alone jay sekulow, his attorney at this point in time. to re-enact the president committing perjury. what i respect about bob mueller is his statement of, i understand that. he persisted nonetheless because it is not fair to have somebody who's the head of the executive branch say, well, i may actually lie, therefore, i can't be held accountable like eaveryone else could be. the fact they kept going forward is a good thing. it shows his objectivity and perhaps he has the dog with the proverbial bone, but at least he has a purpose. it's astonishing to think this is continuing in the oval office. i don't buy the argument any longer. it seems cowardly to say, well, if i'm not here, the world will end. while you're there, perhaps the world is ending. you're not much of a gate keeper anymore. >> everybody stick around. there's a lot more on this

explosive new book by bob woodward. more details, more excerpts. there you see judge brett kavanaugh. his confirmation hearing has begun. we're going to be hearing from him in his opening statements. the chairman of the senate judiciary committee is speaking now. >> it seems to me that that's something i hope somebody will take into conversation. probably won't, but at least i said my piece. then i also -- several senators have brought up about the 6% and the 99% and things like that, that i thought i ought to clear up. i could say myself that when i first started finding out how much paper judge kavanaugh had on his record, i mean, for his

background, i started talking about 100 million pages. then when we finally get 488,000, then i could say, well, i got about 48% of what we ought to have. but there's a good explanation why we don't have it. so i want to read. some of my colleagues keep saying that we have only 6% of judge kavanaugh's white house records. but that 99% of justice kagan's records were made public before the hearing. this is fuzzy math. my colleagues calibrate their phony 6% figure on two inaccurate numbers. first, their 6% figure counts the estimated page count by career archivists at the national archives based upon their historical practice before the on-process e-mails and attachments are actually

reviewed. when judge kavanaugh's white house e-mails that we've received, the actual number of pages ended up being significantly less than the number the national archives estimated before the actual review. one reason is because we were able to use technology to cull out the exact duplicate e-mails. instead of having to read 13 times an e-mail that judge kavanaugh sent to 12 white house colleagues, we only had to read the e-mail once. second, the 6% figure counts millions and millions of pages of irrelevant staff secretary documents that we never, ever requested or needed. more importantly, we received 100% of the documents we requested from judge kavanaugh's time as an executive branch lawyer. and while we may have received 99% of justice kagan's white

house records, we received zero records from her most relevant legal service as a solicitor general. the federal government's top supreme court advocate. we received much less than 99% of her records as a lawyer, and we didn't receive 60,000 e-mails from justice kagan, so 99% is an overestimate. even though we never receive them, justice kagan's solicitor general records were much more needed at the time because kagan was a blank slate as a judge, unlike judge kavanaugh with his 12 years of judicial service and over 10,000 pages of judicial writings on the nation's most important federal circuit court. justice kagan had zero years of judicial service and zero pages

of judicial writing before her appointment to the highest court. senator klobuchar. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and before i begin my opening statement, i just wanted to respond to a few things. one, none of that takes away from the fact that 42,000 documents were dumped on us last night, and i don't think anyone would go to trial and allow a trial to go forward or allow a case to go forward in one side got 42,000 documents the night before and the other side -- and you can't simply review them, as pointed out. you'd have to review 7,000 documents every hour. that happened last night. >> let me respond without taking time away from you. >> thank you. >> democrats got exactly the same amount of money we did to do the work, the massive amount of work we had to do. and we got it done at 11:00 last night. >> the point is that no one

could prepare and review 40,000 documents in one evening. we know that. no matter how much coffee you drink. the second point is that it is true that executive privilege has never been invoked before to block the release of presidential records to the senate during a confirmation hearing. i will begin my opening statement, but those are two points i don't believe are refuted. >> okay. i'll refute it from this standpoint. there were 5,000 documents, 42,000 pages. >> okay. >> proceed. >> thank you. welcome, judge kavanaugh. we welcome your family as well. on its face, this may look like a normal confirmation hearing. it has always trappings, all of us up here, all of the cameras out there. the statements, the questions, all of it looks normal. but this is not a normal confirmation hearing.

first, as we have debated this morning, we are being asked to give advice and consent when the administration has not consented to give us over 100,000 documents, all of which detail a critical part of the jung's career, the time he spent in the white house. and in addition, the majority party has not consented to make 189,000 of the documents we do have public. as a former prosecutor, i know that no lawyer goes to court without reviewing the evidence and record. i know, and i know you know, judge kavanaugh, that a good judge would not decide a case with only 7% of the key document. a good judge would not allow a case to move forward if one side dropped 42,000 pages of documents on the other side the night before the case started.

and yet, that is where we are today. this isn't normal. it's an abdication of the role of the senate and a disservice to the american people, and it is our duty to speak out. secondly, this nomination comes before us at a time when we are witnessing seismic shifts in our democracy. foundational elements of our government, including the rule of law, have been challenged and undermined. today our democracy faces threats that we never would have believed would be occurring not that long ago. our intelligence agencies agree that a foreigned aer ha adversa attempted to interfere in our most recent election, and it's happening again. in the words of president's director of national intelligence, the lights are blinking red. there is an extensive ongoing investigation by a special counsel.

the president's private lawyer and campaign chairman have been found guilty of multiple federal crimes. the man appointed as special counsel in this investigation, a man who has served with distinction under presidents from both parties, has been under siege. the dedicated public servants who work in our justice department, including the attorney general and the fbi, have been subjected to repeated threats and have had their work politicized and their motives questioned. in fact, just this past weekend, federal law enforcement was called out, was rebuked by the president of the united states for simply doing their jobs, for prosecutes two white-collar defendants. one for insider trading, one for campaign theft. why? because the defendants were personal friends and campaign supporters of the president of

the united states. as a former prosecutor, as someone who's seen federal law enforcement do their jobs, this is abhorrent to me. so no, this is not normal. and the last branch, the third branch of government, our courts and individual judges have been under assault, not just by a solitary disappointed litigant but by the president of the united states. our democracy is on trial. and for the pillars of our democracy and our constitution to weather this storm, our nation's highest court must serve as a ballast in these times. they must be fair, impartial, and unwavering in their commitment to truth and justice. so today we will begin a hearing in which it is our duty to carry

on the american constitutional tradition that john adams stood up for many centuries ago. and that is to be, in his words, a government of laws and not men. to me, that means figuring out what your views are on whether a president is above the law. it is a simple concept we learned in grade school. that no one is above the law. i think it's a good place to start. there were many highly credentialed nominees like yourself 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's actually written that the president, on his own, can declare laws

unconstitutional. of course we are very pleased when a judge submits an article to the university of minnesota law review, and even more so when that article receives so much national attention. but the article you wrote that i'm referring to, judge, raises many troubling questions. should a sitting president really never be subject to an investigation? should a sitting president never be questioned by special counsel? should a president really be given total authority to remove a special counsel? in addition to the article, there are other pieces of this puzzle which demonstrate that the nominee before us has an incredibly broad view of the president's executive power. judge kavanaugh, you wrote, for example, that a president can disregard a law passed by congress if he deems it to be unconstitutional even if a court has upheld it.

what would that mean when it comes to laws protecting the special counsel? what would that mean when it comes to women's health care? the days of the divine rights of kings ended with the magna carta in 1215 and centuries later in the wake of american revolution a check on the executive was a major foundation of the united states constitution. for it was james madison who may not have had a musical named after him but was a top scholar of his time who wrote in federalist 47, the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. so what does that warning mean in real life terms today? here's one example. it means whether people like kelly gregory, an air force veteran, mother, and business

owner who is here from tennessee and who is living with stage four breast cancer, can afford medical treatment. at a time when the administration is arguing that protections to insure people with pre-existing conditions can't be kicked off their health insurance are unconstitutional, we cannot and should not confirm a justice who believes the president's views alone carry the day. one opinion i plan to ask about, when jungsdges appointed by bot presidents uphold the consumer protection bureau, you dissented. an agency which has served us well in bringing back over $12 billion to consumers for fraud was unconstitutional. or in another case, you wrote a dissent against the rules that protect net neutrality. rules that help all citizens and small businesses have an even

playing field when it comes to accessing the internet. another example that seems mired in legalese but is critical for americans, anti-trust law. in recent years, a conservative majority on the supreme court has made it harder and harder to enforce the nation's anti-trust laws, ruling in favor of consolidation and market dominance. yet, two of judge kavanaugh's major anti-trust opinions suggest that he would push the court even further down this pro-merger path. we should have more competition and not less. now, to go from my specific concerns and end on a higher plane, all of the attacks on the rule of law and our justice system over the past year have made me, and i would guess some of my other colleagues on this committee, pause and think many times about why i decided to come to the senate and get on

this committee and much further back why i decided to go into law in the first place. i will tell you that not many girls in my high school class said they dreamed of being a lawyer. we had no lawyers in my family, and my parents were the first in their families to go to college. but somehow my dad convinced me to spend a morning sitting in a courtroom, watching a state court district judge handle a routine calendar of criminal cases. the judge took pleas, listened to arguments, and handed out misdemeanor sentences. it was certainly nothing glamorous like the work for the job you've been nominated for, judge, but it was important just the same. i realize that morning that behind every single case, there was a story and there was a person, no matter how small. each and every decision the judge made that day affected that person's life. and i noticed how often he had to make that decision and had to take account of what his decisions would mean for that

person and his or her family. this week i remembered that day, and i remembered i had written an essay about it at the ripe old age of 17. i went back and looked at what i had said. it is something that i still believe today. and that is that, to be part of an imperfect system, to have a chance to better that system, was and is a cause worth fighting for, a job worth doing. our government is far from perfect, judge. nor is our legal system. but we are at a cross roads in our nation's history where we must make a choice. are we going to dedicate ourselves to improving our democracy, improving our justice system, or not? the question we're being asked to address in this hearing, among others, is whether this judge at this time in our history will administer the law with equal justice as it applies to all citizens, regardless of if they live in a poor neighborhood or a rich neighborhood or if they live in a small house or the white

house. our country needs a supreme court justice who will better our legal system, a justice who will serve as a check and balance on the other branches of government, who will stand up for the rule of law without consideration of politics or partisanship, who will uphold our constitution without fear or favor and who will work for the betterment of the great american experiment in democracy. that is what this hearing is about. thank you. >> senator sass. >> thank you, mr. chairman. we need to get to judge kavanaugh, but i really want to riff with amy for a while. senator klobuchar, you did madison, lin manuel miranda, the magna carta. i had all that on my bingo card. i've taken my two little girls to court a few times, mostly to juvi to scare them straight, not to turn them into attorneys. >> who said that wasn't what my

dad was doing? >> wisdom in minnesota. congratulations, judge, on your nomination. actually, congratulations and condo condolences. this process has to stink. i'm glad your daughters could get out of the room. i'm glad they still get the free day from school. good news, bad news. the bad news first. judge, since your nomination in july, you've been accused of hating women, hating children, hating clean air, wanting dirty water. you've been declared a quote/unquote existential threat to our nation. alumni of yale law school. faculty members at your alma mater praised your collectisele. this drivel is patently absurd. i worry we're going to hear more of it over the next few days. the good news is, it is absurd and the american people don't believe any of it.

this stuff isn't about brett kavanaugh. when screamers say this stuff for cable tv news. the people who know you better, not those who are trying to get on tv, they tell a completely different story about who brett kavanaugh is. you've earned high praise from the many lawyers, both right and left, who have appeared before you during your 12 years on the d.c. circuit. and those who have had you as a professor at yale law and harvard law. people in legal circles invariably applaud your mind, your work, your temperament, your collegiality. that's who brett kavanaugh is. and to quote lisa blatt, a supreme court attorney from the left who's known you for a decade, quote, sometimes a superstar is just a superstar, and that's the case with this judge. the senate should confirm him, close quote. it's pretty obvious to most people going about their work today that the deranged comments actually don't have anything to do with you. so we should figure out why do we talk like this about supreme court nominations now? there's a bunch that's atypical in the last 19, 20 months in

america. senator klobuchar is right. the comments from the white house yesterday about trying to politicize the department of justice, they were wrong, and they should be condemned. my guess is brett kavanaugh would condemn them. but really, the reason these hearings don't work is not because of donald trump. it's not because of anything in the last 20 months. these confirmation hearings haven't worked for 31 years in america. people are going to pretend that americans have no historical memory, and supposedly there haven't been screaming protesters saying women are going to die at every hearing for decades. this has been happening. this is a 31-year tradition. there's nothing new the last 18 months. the fact the hysteria has nothing to do with you meanings that we should ask what's the its hysteria coming from? it's coming from the fact that we have a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the supreme court in american life now. our political commentary talks about the supreme court like they're people wearing red and blue jerseys. that's a really dangerous thing.

by the way, if they have red and blue jerseys, i would welcome my colleagues to introduce the legislation that ends lifetime tenure for the judiciary. if they're just politicians, then the people should have power, and they shouldn't have lifetime appointments. so until you introduce that legislation, i don't believe you really want the supreme court to be a politicized body. though, that's the way we constantly talk about it now. we can and should do better than this. it's predictable that every confirmation hearing now is going to be overblown, politicized circus. and it's because we've accepted a new theory about how our three branches of government should work and in particular how the judiciary should work. what supreme court confirmation hearings should be about is an opportunity to go back and do schoolhouse rock civics for our kids. we should be talking about how a bill becomes a law and what the job of article 2 is and what the job of article 3 is. so let's try just a little bit. how did we get here, and how can we fix it? i want to make four brief points. number one, in our system, the legislative branch is supposed

to be the center of our politics. number two, it's not. why not? because for the last century, and increasing by the decade now, more and more legislative authority is delegated to the executive branch every year. both parties do it. the legislature is impotent. the legislature is weak. and most people here want their jobs more than they really want to do legislative work. so they punt most of the work to the next branch. third consequence is that this transfer of power means the people yearn for a place where politics can actually be done. when we don't do a lot of big, actual political debating here, we transfer it to the supreme court. and that's why the supreme court is increasingly a substitute political battleground in america. it is not healthy, but it is what happens, and it's something that our founders wouldn't be able to make any sense of. fourth and finally, we badly need to restore the proper duties and the balance of power from our constitutional system. so point one, the legislative

branch is supposed to be the locust of our politics, properly understood. since we're here in this room today, we're tempted to start with article 3. but really, we need -- article 3 is the part of the constitution that sets up the judiciary. we really should be starting with article 1, which is us. what is the legislature's job? the constitution's drafters began with the legislature. these are equal branches, but article 1 comes first for a reason. and that's because policymaking is suppose to be done in the body that makes laws. that means that this is supposed to be the institution dedicated to political fights. if we see lots and lots of protests in front of the supreme court, that's a pretty good litmus test barometer of the fact that our republic isn't healthy. because people shouldn't be thinking they're protesting in front of the supreme court. they should be protesting in front of this body. the legislature is designed to be controversial, noisy, sometimes even rowdy because making laws means we have to hash out the reality that we

don't all agree. government is about power. government is not just another word for things we do together. the reason we have limited government in america is because we believe in freedom. we believe in souls. we believe in persuasion. we believe in love. and those things aren't done by power. but the government acts by power. and since the government acts by power, we should be reticent to use power. and so it means when you differ about power, you have to have a debate. and this institution is supposed to be dedicated to debate and should be based on the premise we know since we don't all agree, we should try to constrain that power just a little bit, but then we should fight about it and have a vote in front of the american people and then what happens? the people get to decide whether they want to hire us or fire us. they don't have to hire us again. this body is the political branch where policymaking fights should happen. and if we are the easiest people to fire, it means the only way the people can maintain power in

our system is if almost all the politicized decisions happen here, not in article 2 or article 3. so that brings us to a second point. how do we get to a place where the legislature decided to give away its power? we've been doing it for a long time. over the course of the last century, but especially since the 1930s and then ramping up since the 1960s, a whole lot of the responsibility in this body has been kicked to a bunch of alphabet soup bureaucracies. all the acronyms that people know about their government or don't know about their government are the places where most actual policymaking kind of in a way law making is happening right now. this is not what schoolhouse rock says. there's no verse of schoolhouse rock that says give a whole bunch of power to the alphabet soup agencies and let them decide what the government's decision should be for the people because the people don't have any way to fire the bureaucrats. what we mostly do around this body is not pass laws. what we mostly do is decide to give permission to the secretary

or the administrator of bureaucracy x, y, or z to make law-like regulations. that's mostly what we do here. we go home and pretend we make laws. no, we don't. we write giant pieces of legislation, 1200 pages, 1500 pages long that people haven't read, filled with all these terms that are undefined, and we say the secretary of such and such shall patrol up gait rules that do the rest of our dang jobs. that's why there's so many fights about the executive branch and about the judiciary, because this body rarely finishes its work. the house is even worse. i don't really believe that. it just seemed like i needed to try to unite us in some way. so i admit there are rational arguments that one could make for this new system. the congress can't manage all the nitty-gritty details of everything about modern government, and this system tries to give power and control to experts in their fields where most of us in congress don't know much of anything about technical matters for sure.

but when you're talking about technical, complicated matters, it's true that the congress would have a hard time sorting out every final dot about every detail. but the real reason at the end of the day that this institution punts most of its power to executive branch agencies is because it's a convenient way for legislators to have to -- to be able to avoid taking responsibility for controversial and often unpopular decisions. if people want to get re-elected over and over again and that's your highest goal, if your biggest long-term thought around here is about your own incumbency, then actually giving away your power is a good strategy. it's not a very good life, but it's a pretty good strategy for incumbency. at the end of the day, a lot of the power delegation that happens from this branch is because the congress mass decided to self-neuter. well, guess what, the important thing isn't whether or not the congress has lame jobs. the important thing is that when the congress neuters itself and gives power to an unaccountable fourth branch of government, it

means the people are cut out of the process. there's nobody in nebraska, there's nobody in minnesota or delaware who elected the deputy assistant administrator of plant quarantine at the usda. and yet, if the deputy assistant administrator of plant quarantine does something to make nebraskans' lives really difficult, which happens to farmers and ranchers in nebraska, who do they protest to? where do they go? how do they navigate the complexity and the thicket of all the lobbyists in this town? they can't. so what happens is they don't have any ability to speak out and to fire people through an election. so ultimately when the congress is neutered, when the administrative state grows, when there is this fourth branch of government, it makes it harder and harder for the concerns of citizens to be represented and articulated by people that the people know that they have power over. all the power right now or almost all the power rating now happens off stage. and that leaves a lot of people wondering who's looking out for me. and that brings us to the third

point. the supreme court becomes our substitute political battleground. it's only nine people. you can know them. you can demonize them. you can try to make them messiahs. ultimately, because people can't navigate their way through the bureaucracy, they turn to the supreme court looking for politics. knowing that our elected officials no longer care enough to do the hard work of reasoning through the places where we differ and deciding to shroud our power at times, it means that we look for nine justices to be super legislators. we look for nine justices to try to right the wrongs from other places in the process. when people talk about wanting to have empathy from their justices, this is what they're talking about. they're talking about trying to make the justices do something that the congress refuses to do as it constantly abdicates its responsibility. the hyperventilating we see in this process and the way that today's hearing started with 90 minutes of theatrics that are preplanned with certain members of the other side here, it shows us a system that is wildly out

of wac. us this a fourth and final point. the solution is not to try to find judges who will be policymakers. the solution is not to try to turn the supreme court into proper constitutional order with a balance of powers. we need schoolhouse rock back, we need a congress that writes laws and then stands before the people and suffers the consequences and getting to back to our own mt. vernon, if that's what the electors decide. we need an executive branch that has a humble view of its job as enforcing the law, not trying to write laws in the congress' absence and we need a judiciary that tries to apply written laws to facts and cases that are actually before it. this is the elegant and the fair process that the founders created. it's the process where the people who are elected two in six years in this institution, four years in the executive branch can be fired because the justices and the judges, the men and women who serve america's people by wearing black robes,

they are insulated from politics. this is why we talk about an independent judiciary. this is why they wear robes. this is why we shouldn't talk about republican and democratic judges and justices. this is why we say justice is blind. this is why we give judges lifetime tenure and this is why this is the last job interview brett kavanaugh will ever have. because he's going to a job where he's not supposed to be a super legislator. so the question before us today is not what is brett kavanaugh think 11 years ago on some policy matter, the question before us is whether or not he has a temperament and the character to take his policy views and his political preferences and put them in a box marked irrelevant and set it aside every morning when he puts on the black robe. the question is does he have the character and temperament to do that. if you don't think he does, vote no, but if you think he does shop the charades because at the end of the day i think all of us no he that brett kavanaugh understands his job isn't to rewrite laws as he wishes they

were, he understands that he's not being interviewed to be a super legislator, he understands that his job isn't to seek popularity, his job is to be fair and dispassionate. it is not to exercise empathy. it is to follow written laws. contrary to the onion like smears that we hear outside, judge kavanaugh doesn't hate women and children. judge kavanaugh doesn't lust after dirty water and stinky air. no, looking at his record it seems to me that what he actually dislikes are legislators that are too lazy and too risk avers to do our actual jobs. it seems to me that if you read his 300 plus opinions what his opinions reveal to me is the dissatisfaction, i think he would argue a constitutionally compelled dissatisfaction with power hungry executive branch bureaucrats doing our job when we fail to do it. and in this view i think he's aligned with the founders for our constitution places power not in the hands of this city's bureaucracy, which can't be fired, but our constitution places the policy making power in the 535 of our hands because

the voters can hire and fire us and if the voters are going to retain their power they need a legislature that's responsive to politics not a judiciary that's responsive to politics. it seems to me that judge kavanaugh is ready to do his job, the question for us is whether we're ready to do our job. thank you, mr. chairman. >> the example i always use to back up what senator sasse says about congress not doing its job and delegating too much is the obamacare legislation that was 2700 pages and there was 1,693 delegations of authority to bureaucrats to write regulations because congress didn't know how to reorganize healthcare. senator coons. >> that's, mr. chairman. welcome to your family and friends that are here. as you know well we want to the same law school, with he clerked in the same courthouse in wilmington, de. i've known you and your reputation for nearly 30 years and i know well that you have a

reputation as a good friend, a good classmate, a good roommate, as a good husband and family man. that you've contributed to your community i think we will hear later today that you've even been a great youth basketball coach, but frankly we're not here to consider you as the president of our neighborhood civic association or even to review whether you've been a great youth basketball coach, we're here to consider you for a lifetime appointment to the united states supreme court where you will help shape the future of this country and have an impact on the lives of millions of americans for literally decades to come. and to make that decision to exercise our constitutional role we have to look closely at your decisions, your statements, your writings to understand how you might interpret our constitution. the next justice will play a pivotal role in defining a wide range of critical issues including the scope of the president's power in determining whether the president might be above the law. the next justice will impact a central rights enshrined in our modern understanding of the

constitution including the right to privacy, rights to contraception, intimacy, abortion, marriage, the freedom to worship as we choose, the ability to participate in our democracy as full citizens and the promise of equal protection. that's because the cases that come before the court aren't just academic or he is tear rick or theoretical, they involve real people and have real and lasting consequences. with the stakes that high i deeply regret the process that's gotten us to this point, the excesses and partisan gamesmanship in the last few years and that history bears briefly repeating. when justice scalia passed in february of 2016 i called the white house and urged then president obama to nominate a jurist who could gain support from both sides of the aisle and help build a strong center on the court and he did just that. when he nominated merrick garland, chief judge of the d.c. circuit whom i know you also admire, but my republican colleagues refused to each meet with him, much less hold a hearing or vote on his

confirmation. during '9400 days that the majority refused to fill the supreme court vacancy then president trump also released a list of potential nominees to the court, a list compiled by two highly partisan organizations, the federalist society and the heritage foundation and after our president was elected he picked from that list and nominated neil gorsuch to the supreme court. when judge gorsuch testified before this very committee he told us repeatedly how deeply he understood and understood precedent, he even cited a book on precedent he co-authored with you, but in his first 15 months of service justice gorsuch has already voted to overrule at least five important supreme court precedence and to question many others. to name just one given it was just labor day, justice gorsuch voted to gut public sector unions, overturning a 41-year-old precedent on which there were great reliance interests and impacting millions of workers across the country. my point is that justice gorsuch was confirmed to the court in one of the most concerningly

partisan processes in senate history and only after the majority deployed the nuclear option to end the filibuster for supreme court nominations this brings us, judge, to today and your nomination. when justice kennedy announced his returmt i once again called the white house and urged through white house counsel that president trump consider selecting someone for the seat who could win broad support from both sides of the aisle and, judge kavanaugh, i'm concerned you may not be that nominee. your record prior to joining the bench places you in the midst of some of the most pitched and partisan battles in our lifetimes, from ken star's investigation of president clinton to the 2000 election recount to the controversies of the bush administration, including surveillance, torture, access to justice and the culture wars. so, judge, it's critical that this committee and the american people fully examine your record to understand what kind of justice you would be. and unfortunately as we've all discussed at length here today,

that's been rendered impossible. the majority has blocked access to millions of pages of documents from your service in a critical role in the white house. for the first time since watergate the nonpartisan national archives has been cut out of the process for reviewing and producing your records. senate republicans have worked to keep committee confidential nearly 200,000 pages of documents so that the public can't view them and we can't question based on them. and your former deputies in charge of designating which documents this committee and the american people get to see. not only that, but for the first time in our history the president has invoked executive privilege to withhold more than 100,000 pages of documents on a supreme court nominee from the judiciary committee. this leads to a difficult but important question, which is what might president trump or the majority be trying to hide? mr. chairman, i want to make an appeal to work together to restore the integrity of this committee. we are better than this process.

we are better than proceeding with a nominee without engaging in a full and a transparent process. this committee is failing the american people by proceeding in this way and i fully support the motions made by my colleagues earlier in this hearing and regret that we proceeded without observing the rules of this committee. that said, judge kavanaugh, i have reviewed the parts of your record that i've been able to access and what i've been able to see from available speeches, writings and decisions and i have to say it troubles me. while serving on the bench you've dissented at a higher rate than any circuit judge elevated to the supreme court since 1980 and that includes judge bourque. your dissents review opinions that fall outside the mainstream of thought. you reference that the president has the authority to refuse to enforce the law such as the affordable care act were he to decide it's unconstitutional. you voted to strike down net neutrality rules, gun safety laws, the organization of the

consumer financial protection bureau and maybe of your dissents would undercut environmental protections or workers rights or anti-discrimination laws. you've recently praised justice rehnquist dissent in hoe. you've embraced an approach to substantive due process that would undermine the rights and protections of millions of americans from basic protections for lbgt americans to access to contraception to healthcare and the ability for americans to love and marry whom they wish. i'm concerned my writings demonstrate a hostility to affirmative action and civil rights, and most importantly i believe you have repeatedly and enthusiastically embraced an interpretation of presidential power so expansive it could result in a dangerously unaccountable president at the very time when we are most in time of checks and balances. i want to pause for a moment on this last point because the context of your nomination troubles me the most.