Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., asks CIA Director Mike Pompeo
questions about his beliefs during a Senate Confirmation
Hearing, April 12, 2018. | (Screenshot: NBC News)
By Samuel Smith
Christian Post
One of the nation’s leading Christian conservative advocacy organizations has called out 12 senators who have employed “unconstitutional religious tests” on Trump nominees in the past two years.
Since the Trump administration came into power in 2017, a noticeable trend has occurred in which Democrat senators have questioned Trump judicial and political nominees about their religious beliefs and religious affiliations as to suggest that such beliefs and affiliations should disqualify them for public office.
The Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council released on Wednesday a new publication that documents 10 incidents over the past two years in which senators have interrogated nominees concerning their personal religious beliefs even though Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states that there shall be no religious test for public office.
The document was written by Alexandra McPhee, the director of religious freedom advocacy at Family Research Council.
Earlier this month, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a candidate for president in 2020, questioned Trump judicial nominee Neomi Rao, who currently serves as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, during a confirmation hearing.
Christian Post
One of the nation’s leading Christian conservative advocacy organizations has called out 12 senators who have employed “unconstitutional religious tests” on Trump nominees in the past two years.
Since the Trump administration came into power in 2017, a noticeable trend has occurred in which Democrat senators have questioned Trump judicial and political nominees about their religious beliefs and religious affiliations as to suggest that such beliefs and affiliations should disqualify them for public office.
The Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council released on Wednesday a new publication that documents 10 incidents over the past two years in which senators have interrogated nominees concerning their personal religious beliefs even though Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states that there shall be no religious test for public office.
The document was written by Alexandra McPhee, the director of religious freedom advocacy at Family Research Council.
“It is important to distinguish what questions should generally be considered appropriate or inappropriate,” the document “Rebels Without a Clause: When Senators Run Roughshod Over the ‘No Religious Test’ Clause of the U.S. Constitution” explains.
“For instance, ‘[m]erely asking a nominee whether their beliefs might stop them from fulfilling their Constitutional duties is a relevant question.’ But ‘[r]ejecting someone over their faith alone is unquestionably a religious test.’”The document stresses that a senator should not deem a nominee “fit or unfit according to his or her formal affiliation with one religious group or another.”
“And as Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) explained, ‘asking [a] nominee about the particulars of his or her religious beliefs’ is inappropriate because it will ‘inevitably expose those beliefs as somehow a qualifier or a disqualifier for public office,” McPhee wrote.Neomi Rao
Earlier this month, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a candidate for president in 2020, questioned Trump judicial nominee Neomi Rao, who currently serves as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, during a confirmation hearing.
“Do you believe gay relationships are a sin?” Booker asked the nominee selected to replace Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. appellate court.Rao responded by saying: “Senator, my personal views on any of these subjects are things that I would put to one side and I would faithfully follow [the precedence of the Supreme Court].”
“Senator Booker suggested this was an appropriate line of questioning because ‘religion [has been] used as a ruse to discriminate against African Americans,” the FRC document explains.Booker’s question came during his line of questioning about Rao’s previous writings on past court rulings that favored gay marriage.
William Barr
Trump’s nominee to replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general, William Barr, who served as attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration, was questioned by Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in January.
Whitehouse brought up a 1992 speech in which, according to Whitehouse, Barr “blamed secularism for virtually every contemporary societal problem.”
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