Surveillance is one of Kavanaugh’s four hurdles to the Supreme Court

On his first day as a newly minted nominee to the Supreme Court, more than a half-dozen swing senators made clear that Judge Brett Kavanaugh will have to say the right things on their policy priorities if he wants to get confirmed. Judge Kavanaugh will have to work to gain the vote of a skeptical Sen Rand Paul (R-KY) over the government’s surveillance powers. Sen Paul is never one to give up his vote easily. And he has serious concerns with Kavanaugh’s views on government surveillance. Sen Paul has long been against sweeping collection of data from US spy agencies, even briefly shutting down portions of the Patriot Act in 2015. On the DC Circuit, Judge Kavanaugh wrote that the “the government’s metadata collection program is entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment.”

“Critical national security need outweighs the impact on privacy occasioned by this program. The government’s program does not capture the content of communications, but rather the time and duration of calls, and the numbers called. In short, the government’s program fits comfortably within the Supreme Court precedents,” Judge Kavanaugh wrote. Sen. Paul is a wildcard: He voted against CIA Director Gina Haspel but for Secretary of State Pompeo. On Judge Kavanaugh, he isn’t tipping his hand early and insists he’ll keep an “open mind.” He refused to even answer specific questions about Kavanaugh’s record