A Trump judicial nominee "smeared" as unqualified by the American Bar Association advanced to the full Senate after being voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

At a committee business meeting to vote on multiple judicial nominees, Lawrence VanDyke's nomination to a seat the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals passed out of the Republican-controlled panel on a party-line vote of 12-10.

Ahead of his confirmation hearing last month, VanDyke was attacked by the American Bar Association as "not qualified" for the job. Going a step further, the national lawyers' group's letter attacked the nominee's character, saying that his numerous professional accomplishments "are offset by the assessments of interviewees that Mr. VanDyke is arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules.”

The nominee even broke down in tears during his Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing as he disputed a part of the letter that claimed he “would not say affirmatively that he would be fair to any litigant before him, notably members of the LGBTQ community.”

“I did not say that," VanDyke told Judiciary Committee member Josh Hawley, R-Mo. "I do not believe that. It is a fundamental belief of mine that all people are created in the image of God. They should all be treated with dignity and respect.”

In an interview with Blaze Media following VanDyke's confirmation hearing, Judiciary Committee member Mike Lee, R-Utah, said that due to the ABA's history of liberal bias, lawmakers ought to reconsider its privileged role in the judicial confirmation process. Committee member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called the ABA's move an attempt "to smear the qualifications of an impressive and qualified judicial nominee."

Constitutional law professor Josh Blackman later explained that the ABA broke its own rules in how it put the evaluation together.

Ahead of Thursday's vote, VanDyke's law school friend Jesse Panuccio penned an op-ed in the nominee's defense, saying, "For those of us who really know VanDyke — know him far better than the ABA’s vetter — the ABA’s accusations were as stunning as they were defamatory."

So what are VanDyke's qualifications? According to his bio, he currently serves as a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department and previously served a term as Nevada's solicitor general. Before that, he was Montana's solicitor general. He also graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.

With news coverage focused on President Trump’s 2019 State of the Union Tuesday, the fireworks at D.C. circuit nominee Neomi Rao’s Senate confirmation hearing flew way under the radar.

This is one of President Trump’s most important judicial vacancies to fill, right behind those on the Supreme Court. This is because the D.C. Circuit handles a high-profile caseload, and the court is something of an incubator for future “supremes.” Brett Kavanaugh was a judge on the D.C. Circuit before his nomination to SCOTUS.

Rao, a professor at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School and White House deregulation chief, is currently Trump’s third most important judicial nominee behind his two Supreme Court appointments, and Democratic opposition to the nominee definitely marked the seat’s significance.

First, Sen. Cory “Spartacus” Booker, D-N.J., lived up to his reputation as a grandstander in committee hearings with an attempted “gotcha” question that backfired pretty hard. In short, Booker asked if Rao had ever had any gay or transsexual law clerks. She responded that since she’s worked as a law professor instead of a judge, she hasn’t ever had any law clerks.

Democrats have also tried a tactic to sink Rao similar to one they used against another judicial nominee: Weaponizing a nominee’s college writings.

You may remember when Republican Sens. Tim Scott, S.C., and Marco Rubio, Fla., sided with Senate Democrats to kill Ryan Bounds’ nomination to the Ninth Circuit over some things he wrote about political correctness as an undergraduate.

Now, the attacks are leveled at Rao’s writings about issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation while an undergraduate at Yale University.

Only time will tell if anyone on the right side of the aisle will take the bait this time around. But in the meantime, those writings spurred this line of questioning from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill:

Yes, you’re watching Durbin, a white male, lecture an Indian-American woman on issues of sex and gender. Just let that sink in for a couple of moments.

Furthermore, following an exchange with Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, in which Rao said that she regretted some of the things she wrote about date rape at Yale a quarter-century ago, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif, attempted to corner the nominee on the issue.

Harris grilled Rao for suggesting that women take “commonsense” steps to avoid becoming a victim of sexual assault, such as not drinking to excess, and asked if victims should be blamed for what happens if they don’t take those steps. Rao responded in the negative but emphasized the “significance” of taking those steps “of trying to avoid becoming the victim of any crime.”

Harris later called those answers “deeply troubling.”

So Harris says that it’s “deeply troubling” to not hold victims responsible for the crimes committed against them but to simultaneously believe that people should take steps to avoid becoming victims of crimes.

These tactics, naturally, drew criticism from conservative figures and groups.

A statement from Concerned Women for America CEO Penny Nancy accused "[e]xtreme liberals in the U.S. Senate” of trying to “bully Professor Rao, despite her sterling credentials.”

A tweet from the Judicial Crisis Network, which recently took out a large ad campaign in support of Trump’s judicial nominees, said that it’s “obvious” that Senate Democrats tried to sink the nominee with “smear tactics.”

At this writing, the committee has not yet scheduled a vote on Rao’s nomination.

With the start of a new Congress on Thursday, nominations President Trump sent to the last Congress have expired, including a highly controversial one that a conservative senator hopes won’t be nominated again in the new year.

The re-nomination of Commissioner Chai Feldblum to another term in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has been opposed by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, for months. Lee has long said that Feldblum’s views on marriage and LGBT issues are dangerous to the First Amendment.

As early as February, Lee warned that the nominee “wants to use the federal agency’s power to undermine our nation’s founding principles,” and effectively blocked Feldblum from being confirmed again during the 115th Congress.

“And don’t think for a second that you, your family, and your neighbors will be left alone if Feldblum gets her way,” reads a press release from the senator’s office highlighting the nominee’s more radical statements. “Feldblum believes her radical agenda ‘cannot be adequately advanced if pockets of resistance… are permitted to flourish.’ She therefore has argued that ‘no individual exceptions based on religious beliefs’ should ever be allowed if they conflict with ‘the goal of liberty for gay people.’”

Feldblum was first nominated by President Barack Obama in 2009. When she didn’t get a floor vote, Obama appointed her during a Senate recess, after which the Senate confirmed her by a vote of 54-41, with only two Republicans voting to confirm: Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

Lee also highlighted several of these positions in a recent floor speech. Feldblum responded in a Medium post saying that she “did not recognize the person Senator Lee was talking about” because the “quotes were either misconstrued or taken out of context.”

“Ms. Feldblum’s views on using government power to undermine religious liberty are too extreme and contrary to existing law,” Lee said in a statement to BlazeTV. “I hope President Trump chooses a different nominee this year.”

Back in March, Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro called Feldblum “President Trump’s worst federal nomination” and referred to her views as “fully radicalized stuff.”

“We need a conservative, now, to lead the EEOC and push back against the radical courts,” Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz wrote in late 2017, “not maintain Obama’s personnel to encourage the courts to be even more radical.”

Since Lee blocked the slate of nominees, which also included two others, the commission does not have a quorum going into this year, a paywalled article at Law360 explains. This means that while the body will be able to continue investigating and bringing suits in harassment cases, it will not be able to make policy.

The EEOC and other government bodies like it are part of what many constitutionalists refer to as the “fourth branch” of the federal government, so a temporary hiccup in the commission’s operations shouldn’t bother too many on the Right anyway.