Politics

Shout, arrest, echo: Inside the Kavanaugh hearing protests

A protester disrupts the proceedings as President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, appears earlier the Senate Judiciary Commission for the second day of his confirmation hearing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. five, 2018. (AP Photograph/J. Scott Applewhite) The Associated Press

By ASHRAF KHALIL, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Information technology'southward sort of a coordinated dance, but the performers are an organized grouping of protesters and a dozen or so uniformed Capitol Police officers. And the stage is this calendar week's Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

One past one, the protesters, many wearing T-shirts that say "I am what's at stake," interrupt the proceedings by shouting slogans like "You're making a mockery of democracy!" or "Senators: Do your jobs and finish this hearing!" The police then warn that he or she will exist arrested for any further disruptions. Minutes later on, the person shouts again and is hustled out a side door.

Then another person repeats the procedure.

Eventually, the back 2 rows of the hearing room, which are reserved for the public, are empty, and some other 20 or so visitors are escorted in from a line outside. They wait for their turn to shout and be arrested.

Overall, 70 people were arrested Tuesday and charged with disorderly conduct on the first 24-hour interval of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. The second twenty-four hour period of hearings on Wednesday was marked past the same sort of shout-and-abort design.

The Capitol Police can't close the room to the public and can't continue out people who look like they might disrupt the hearing. So there's no selection just to let everybody in and wait for them to misbehave before removing them.

The protesters are part of a nationwide campaign to disrupt the confirmation process. A broad coalition of activist groups, including ballgame rights groups, gun command organizations and labor unions, has converged on Washington. The demonstrators fear that Kavanaugh's confirmation would shift the Supreme Court's balance for years on issues like abortion rights, LGBT freedoms and gun command.

"My goal is for this nomination to not become through," said Alison Dreith, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, who was one of the people arrested Tuesday. "The stakes have never been college."

It may be a quixotic goal. Republicans take the votes to confirm Kavanaugh and are expected to practise so. The protesters are calculation their voices to the outnumbered committee Democrats, who tried to delay the hearings, arguing that important documents well-nigh Kavanaugh accept been withheld.

Dreith acknowledged that the numbers are on Kavanaugh's side but said she and other protesters are hoping to eternalize Democrats on the commission and perhaps sway one or two Republicans. They are also conducting phone phone call campaigns in each senator's home state.

At the very to the lowest degree, the protests managed to annoy 1 prominent Republican on the committee. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, later being interrupted by a woman in the crowd, snapped, "I remember we should have this loudmouth removed. Nosotros shouldn't have to put up with this kind of stuff."

President Donald Trump even weighed in on the interruptions. In an Oval Office interview Tuesday with The Daily Caller, Trump called the protests "embarrassing for the country" and wondered why the disruptions were allowed to keep.

"In the former days, we used to throw them out. Today, I guess they merely go on screaming," Trump said.

Dreith said she and the other arrestees were hustled down to the edifice's basement while wearing plastic cypher-tie handcuffs and kept in a garage-similar holding surface area. After about v hours, they were charged and released later waiving their right to a trial and paying a $35 fee.

A second group chose a unlike course of protestation Tuesday. 9 women were arrested in the nearby Dirksen Senate Office Building for staging a protest dressed as characters from "The Handmaid's Tale," which depicts a dystopian future where women are controlled past the government and forcibly used for convenance purposes. All protests are against the law in the Capitol and its related buildings, and the demonstrators were charged under a D.C. statute for "crowding, obstructing, or incommoding."

Lacy MacAuley, a longtime Washington-based activist and one of the people arrested, said she joined the costumed protest "to remind everyone that it can happen hither. It'southward not just fiction. Our rights could slip through our fingers unless we act now to defend them."