“Judge Brett Kavanaugh two years ago expressed his desire to overturn a three-decade-old Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of an independent counsel, a comment bound to get renewed scrutiny in his confirmation proceedings to sit on the high court,” CNN reports.

Speaking to a conservative group in 2016, Kavanaugh bluntly said he wanted to “put the final nail” in the 1988 Supreme Court ruling.

“Whether that means Kavanaugh views Mueller’s appointment and investigation itself as unconstitutional is unclear, given the special counsel works directly for the Justice Department under a different set of rules that governed the independent counsel.”

A new Pew Research poll finds 41% think the U.S. Senate should confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, while 36% say they should not and 23% do not offer a view on the question.

“Opinions of his nomination are already deeply polarized: 73% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents think he should be confirmed. By contrast, 63% of Democrats and Democratic leaners  say the Senate should not confirm him.”

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh “incurred tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt buying baseball tickets over the past decade and at times reported liabilities that could have exceeded the value of his cash accounts and investment assets,” the Washington Post reports.

The White House said Kavanaugh “built up the debt by buying Washington Nationals season tickets and tickets for playoff games for himself and a ‘handful’ of friends.”

“Kavanaugh’s most recent financial disclosure forms reveal assets between $15,000 and $65,000, which would put him at the bottom of the financial ranking of justices, most of whom list well over $1 million in assets.”

“The White House on Monday immediately played up Brett Kavanaugh’s pro-business, anti-regulation record and is asking industry trade groups for help pushing his confirmation through the Senate… In the one-page document, which was obtained by Politico, the White House wrote that Kavanaugh has overruled federal regulators 75 times on cases involving clean air, consumer protections, net neutrality and other issues.”

“Brett Kavanaugh could add a powerful new voice on the Supreme Court to restrain what government agencies can do, ushering in a new era of tougher scrutiny of federal regulations loathed by businesses,” Bloomberg reports.

“In a dozen years on the U.S. appeals court that handles most challenges to rules issued by federal bureaucrats, the Supreme Court nominee’s record reveals views closely aligned with conservatives who seek to rein in agencies on issues from climate change to net neutrality and financial oversight.”

Politico: “Kavanaugh’s paperwork predicament — stemming from two years he spent in President George W. Bush’s White House Counsel’s office and just over three as Bush’s staff secretary—is not completely unique.”

“But the quantity of files potentially at issue in Kavanaugh’s case could be unprecedented. Former officials believe millions of pages of emails and other documents circulated through Kavanaugh’s office during his time as staff secretary. If Senate Democrats insist on receiving every page, the confirmation process could grind to a crawl.”

President Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, NBC News reports.

“If confirmed, he would make the Supreme Court solidly conservative, joining Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch — providing a five-vote majority. He would be sure to join the conservatives more often than Kennedy, who sometimes voted with the court’s liberals in cases raising hot-button social issues.”

New York Times: “Judge Kavanaugh’s long history of legal opinions, as well as his role in some of the fiercest partisan battles of the last two decades, will give Democrats plenty of ammunition for tough questions.”

Washington Post: “Brett Kavanaugh’s career had traveled a most unusual path through Washington’s scandals. He had overseen an investigation into whether President Clinton’s deputy counsel, Vincent Foster, had been murdered or committed suicide. He had laid out the grounds for impeaching Clinton in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky affair.”

“After working on the recount that put George W. Bush in the White House, Kavanaugh played a central role in Bush’s administration and was rewarded when his boss nominated him to a federal circuit court. But Democrats held up his nomination, concerned he was too partisan, and his meteoric rise stalled.”

“As Kavanaugh’s nomination languished for a second year, Bush came to him with a question: What type of person should be nominated to the Supreme Court? Kavanaugh said the ‘tiebreaker’ should be someone who is ‘capable of convincing his colleagues through persuasion and strategic thinking,’ Bush wrote in his memoir. Based partly on that advice, Bush picked John G. Roberts Jr., who today is Chief Justice. A year later, Kavanaugh garnered enough votes to become a federal judge.”

New York Times: “According to a person close to the president, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who has served 12 years on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is the leading candidate in the president’s mind, followed by Judge Amy Coney Barrett and then Judge Raymond Kethledge.”

“Mr. Trump believes Judge Kavanaugh has been on the bench long enough to give the president a sense of where he stands on various issues and that Judge Barrett is fairly young and could use more judicial experience. The administration might want to keep her in reserve should Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 85, leave the court.”

Washington Post: “An intensifying debate over Judge Brett Kavanaugh… gripped Republicans on Tuesday, with conservative critics highlighting past rulings and his links to GOP leaders while his allies — including inside the White House — forcefully defended him.”