Democratic Senator Al Franken indicates he’ll block in a key committee President Trump’s nomination of Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras to the federal bench on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Franken says Stras’ statements indicate he would be “a deeply conservative jurist” in the mold of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who Franken says “embraced a rigid view of the Constitution that favored powerful corporate interests, was blind to the equal dignity of LGBT people” and refused to acknowledge laws that perpetuate the racial divide. Minnesota Republican Party Chair Jennifer Carnahan calls Franken’s actions “the worst form of partisanship” and that he’s being “defiant and childish” by objecting that President Trump chose Stras as his nominee without first consulting Franken.