Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) made the most of his five minutes of questioning Thursday during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for President Trump's judicial nominees — much to the detriment of Matthew Spencer Petersen, a nominee for the U.S. District Court judgeship for the District of Columbia.
Kennedy's first question seemed pretty innocuous: "Have any of you not tried a case to verdict in a courtroom?" Petersen was the only one of the five nominees to raise his hand, thus inviting 10 seconds of brutal, rapid-fire questioning from Kennedy, as the Louisiana senator confirmed that Petersen had not tried a case in any of the following instances: a jury trial, a civil trial, a criminal trial, a bench trial, a state court, or a federal court.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
The origins of the IDFIn Depth The IDF was formed by uniting Zionist paramilitary groups, WWII veterans and Holocaust survivors
-
Deadly fungus tied to a pharaoh's tomb may help fight cancerUnder the radar A once fearsome curse could be a blessing
-
Sudoku medium: June 27, 2025The Week's daily medium sudoku puzzle
-
Trump plans Iran talks, insists nuke threat goneSpeed Read 'The war is done' and 'we destroyed the nuclear,' said President Trump
-
Trump embraces NATO after budget vow, charm offensiveSpeed Read The president reversed course on his longstanding skepticism of the trans-Atlantic military alliance
-
Trump judge pick told DOJ to defy courts, lawyer saysSpeed Read Emil Bove, a top Justice Department official nominated by Trump for a lifetime seat, stands accused of encouraging government lawyers to mislead the courts and defy judicial orders
-
Mamdani upsets Cuomo in NYC mayoral primarySpeed Read Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani beat out Andrew Cuomo in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary
-
Supreme Court clears third-country deportationsSpeed Read The court allowed Trump to temporarily resume deporting migrants to countries they aren't from
-
Judges order release of 2 high-profile migrantsSpeed Read Kilmar Ábrego García is back in the US and Mahmoud Khalil is allowed to go home — for now
-
US assessing bomb damage to Iran nuclear sitesSpeed Read Trump claims this weekend's US bombing obliterated Tehran's nuclear program, while JD Vance insists the US is 'not at war with Iran'
-
Trump's LA deployment in limbo after court rulingsSpeed Read Judge Breyer ruled that Trump's National Guard deployment to Los Angeles was an 'illegal' overreach. But a federal appellate court halted the ruling.
