ICMYI: Collins 'Rubber-Stamped' Nomination of Anti-Choice Trump Judge [MSNBC]
July 15, 2025
Augusta, Maine - In case you missed it, reporting from MSNBC is detailing how Susan Collins “played [her] role and rubber-stamped” a Trump-appointed, anti-choice nominee when she voted to confirm Whitney Hermandorfer to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit yesterday.
The report includes details on Hermandorfer’s “lack of qualifications” and how she “rose to public prominence defending a Republican abortion ban.”
Read more:
MSNBC: Republicans confirm the first judge of Trump’s second term — and she’s a doozy
By Steve Benen
July 15, 2025
- As NBC News reported last month, the president settled on “a new approach to selecting judges in his second term, departing from his first-term formula of younger up-and-comers, elite credentials and pedigrees in traditional conservative ideology and instead leaning toward unapologetically combative, MAGA-friendly nominees.”
- And this week, Senate Republicans, voting along party lines, confirmed Whitney Hermandorfer, who served as director of the strategic litigation unit in the Tennessee attorney general’s office, marking the first judicial confirmation of Trump’s second term.
- The Times reported: She clerked for Justices Samuel A. Alito and Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court and for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh when he sat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. At age 38, she is part of an effort by both parties to place younger judges on the bench, where they can serve for decades given their lifetime tenure, as opposed to the previous tradition of choosing lawyers with more extensive careers.
- Hermandorfer [...] rose to public prominence defending a Republican abortion ban.
- Hermandorfer conceded that she’d never served as sole or chief counsel in any case, tried to a jury verdict; never served as sole or chief counsel in any case tried to a final judgment; never personally engaged in direct examinations in federal court; never personally engaged in cross-examinations in federal court; never taken depositions; and never defended depositions.
- Senate Republicans, including ostensible “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins, played their role and rubber-stamped Hermandorfer’s nomination.
- She is the first far-right judicial confirmation of the president’s second term, but she won’t be the last.
