Ohio Candidate Sherrod Brown: No Trump Judges to Be Confirmed, but No Impeachment for Trump

Far-left Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown, who is running in Ohio to return to the U.S. Senate to fill the seat vacated by JD Vance in 2025, says he and his colleagues will not confirm “Trump judges” to the federal bench.

Yet in an apparent appeal to appear more moderate to the state’s voters who gave President Donald Trump three solid electoral victories, the former senator said he was not interested in impeaching POTUS 47.

Indeed, Brown’s campaign appeal sounds much like Trump’s for the 2024 election, particularly on affordability and high prices.

No Trump Judges Confirmed

Speaking to leftist Ali Velshi on his 11th Hour podcast, Brown said Democrats must hold Trump accountable, then added a strange non sequitur.

“We’re not obviously confirming judges that are Trump judges, but there’s much we can do to help people in their daily life,” Brown said.

George Washington University law Professor Jonathan Turley pounced on Brown for saying the Senate will abandon its constitutional obligation.

“Brown is literally pledging that he will toss away the constitutional duty of ‘advice and consent’ under Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution and vote blindly against anyone nominated by President Trump because he does not like him,” Turley wrote.

“Unfortunately, it is common for senators of the opposing party to vote against a President’s nominees,” the legal scholar wrote:

However, they at least preserve the pretense of “advice and consent.” Brown is trying to win the race to the bottom by saying that Trump could nominate Louis Brandeis and he would still vote against him because he is a Trump judicial nominee.

Brown seems to be channeling Jaime West, who admitted that she does “not even talk to them” and hates Republicans.

Turley correctly noted that the pledge is “curious” given that Ohioans went for Trump in three elections. In 2024, Trump trounced Kamala Harris with 55.2 percent of the vote. In 2020, he bested Joe Biden with 53.3 percent. And he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 with 52.1 percent.

“I am old enough to remember when senators routinely voted for judges from the other party and different ideology as a matter of political integrity,” Turley said:

For many decades, senators insisted that they were bound to vote for a nominee if they were qualified even if they disagreed with their liberal or conservative jurisprudential views.

In his famous 1878 “Kin Beyond the Sea,” British Prime Minister William Gladstone referred to the U.S. Senate as “that remarkable body, the most remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics, the Senate of the United States.”

With Brown, even the pretense of deliberation is over. He is pledging not to consider the merits of nominees in fulfilling his oath to give “advice and consent” on nominations. … 

The senators now seem to be offering pure undiluted rage to voters.

No Impeachment

On the other hand, Brown said he isn’t interested in tackling another impeachment. So he’s at least containing some of his rage.

As The Hill noted, Brown twice voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges. But now his view has changed.

“I can’t speak for everybody else, but I would not support an impeachment of Trump,” he told The Columbus Dispatch:

There’s simply no reason for that, no matter what happens in the midterms.

One reason: Brown holds a slim 3.1-point lead in the RealClearPolitics average of polls on the race against GOP opponent John Husted. Alienating the voters by claiming he would vote to convict Trump would be senseless. And he can always change his mind.

No Moderate

As well, Brown’s campaign website is hardly pushing far-left social issues such as abortion and “transgender” rights.

“Life is too expensive,” it says in an appeal to young Americans who can’t afford a new car or new home:

Paychecks are too low. Costs are too high — utilities, health care, groceries… everything.

The system is rigged — but we’re fighting to fix it.

Brown would forbid insurance companies from denying claims and drug companies from charging Americans more than those in foreign countries are charged.

He also wants to cap utility bill increases and make data centers pay the full cost of utility bills that might be fobbed off on to residential customers.

Another populist-sounding appeal:

Last year, members of Congress made more than $635 million in stock trades. No wonder they’re not standing up to corporations — they’re too busy lining their own pockets. And what’s worse, I bet you’re not even surprised by that.

No one — NO ONE — who serves in Congress, or their spouse, should be able to trade stocks. They also shouldn’t be able to turn around when they leave office and become a lobbyist. If you can’t agree to that, you shouldn’t be in public office.

Trump said he would sign a bill to ban such trading, and during his 2020 campaign, emphasized high prices for gas and consumer goods under President Biden.

However moderate Brown sounds, though, he isn’t.

His lifetime Freedom Index grade is a solid F — 20 percent. He hit rock bottom in the 117th Congress at 0 percent.

In other words, he doesn’t much care about the Constitution.

Brown does care about being a politician. He began his political career in the Ohio House of Representatives in 1975 — 51 years ago, when he was 22 years old — and has been in public office ever since.

He served as Ohio’s secretary of state for eight years, 1983-1991. Then he ensconced himself in Washington, D.C., first as a congressman, 1993-2007, then as a senator. Defeated by GOP opponent Bernie Moreno in 2024, Brown, who will be 74 three days after the election, thinks voters should give him yet another six-year term.

Then he can keep fleecing the taxpayers until he’s at least 80.