Mazie Hirono

Judge Kavanaugh, why do you rarely dissent on behalf of consumers, workers, or the powerless?

It is hard to find a Federal judge more conservative than Brett Kavanaugh.

You talked about the importance of precedence.

I think that my colleagues from Alaska should be deeply troubled by your views.

Your view is that Native Hawaiians do not deserve protections as indigenous people under the Constitution.

They do not have their own government. They do not have their own elected leaders. They do not live on reservations or in territorial enclaves. They do not even live together in Hawaii.

Perhaps if all those situations or those processes had been in place over the 30 years that Judge Kozinski was engaging in this kind of behavior, maybe he would have stopped, but he did not.

I do not think this was a coincidence.

Judge Kozinski's behavior was egregious and pervasive. It went on for more than 30 years.

I started asking these questions about sexual harassment because it is so hard to hold lifetime appointees to the Federal bench accountable, and because I did not want the #MeToo movement to be swept under the rug.

Your failure to do so would reflect a fundamental mistrust of the American people.

We owe it to the American people, and to all of the independent-minded judges I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, to preserve the integrity of our Constitution and the fairness and order of a system that has served us well for so…

I expect Judge Kavanaugh to make similar promises over the next few days, only to do, sadly, the exact opposite if confirmed.

A lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, of someone who will provide the fifth vote on issues impacting the lives of every working American, is a battle worth fighting.

I pointed to an op-ed that had been written by two former White House staff secretaries, John Podesta and Todd Stern, entitled 'Staff Secretaries Aren't Traffic Cops: Stop Treating Kavanaugh Like He Was One.'

We do not have the documents.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I do not think it has ever been the case in a hearing like this that the Members of this Committee have to pre-clear what we propose to query the nominee about. I think that is totally unprecedented.

That is unprecedented. That is not regular order.

It is regular order for us to receive all the documents that this Committee is entitled to.

On June 1st President Trump directed Secretary Perry to take, and I quote, ``immediate steps to prevent the loss of fuel secure power plants.''

You are going to need to become a very strong voice and advocate because the President wants to cut back or wipe out ARPA-E.

I would be interested in how the Administration intends to proceed with this, basically subsidizing coal and nuclear plants.

We want to be 100 percent energy self-sufficient in electricity by 2045 and we rely on ARPA-E for a lot of the cutting-edge support that we want to move forward on.

You said in your testimony that in order to interpret the statute, a relevant statute, then your job is to provide advice.