Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) joined a rally on the grounds of the Capitol on Wednesday staged by MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood, and other left-wing groups to oppose Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court, calling him “a clear and present danger to women’s privacy.”
“He would take up back to the days when the government told women what they could do with the bodies,” Wyden said from a stage filled with activists holding placards distributed by Planned Parenthood.
“We’re going to fight turning back the clock,” Wyden said. “His extreme views are a threat to choice.”
“They’re a threat to contraception,” Wyden said. “They’re a threat to all of our priorities for women in this country.”
Wyden vowed to stop President Donald Trump’s nominee and boasted about the left successfully forcing the withdrawal of the nomination of a “far-right” judge in July. Wyden was referring to the proposed elevation of Assistant U.S. Attorney for Oregon Ryan Bounds to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that ended because of his writings in college about multiculturalism and homosexuality.
The Willamette Week reported:
Ultimately, Wyden and his colleague and fellow strident Bounds critic, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) were able to focus the Senate’s only black GOP member, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) on opinion pieces Bounds wrote 25 years ago as an undergraduate at Stanford.
Those writings, which contained opinions dismissive of multiculturalism, gay rights and other equity issues, caused Scott and then his colleague Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to withdraw support Thursday just before a scheduled floor vote on Bounds.
Wyden said Bounds “mislead everybody,” and, “We said we want it more and we won.”
“We’re going to be with you every step of the way,” Wyden told the protestors.
Protesters at the anti-Kavanaugh rally on Wednesday on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol held signs distributed by the left-wing groups who promoted the rally, including Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign. (Penny Starr/Breitbart News)
Aside from Wyden, other Democratic lawmakers who spoke included Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Tom Carper (D-DE), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
Representatives for the League of Conservation Voters, People for the American Way, and the Sierra Club also spoke at the rally, which drew a couple of hundred people.
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