Reuters: US Senate confirms 2 Trump-picked judges in North Carolina, including former Thomas clerk
This excerpt is from a piece that originally ran on December 2, 2025.
Democrats and progressive groups opposed Bragdon, highlighting a defunct Geocities website he ran during college from 1997 to 2000 titled “DAVID BRAGDON’S RADICAL Conservative Republican, Libertarian Home page” where he posted his political views.
That website described abortion as “wrong because person or not, a fetus has just as much right to life as an infant does; said there is “enough of a logical link between the death penalty and deterrence to call for an increased use of the death penalty;” and declared “our welfare system should be a safety net and not a hammock.”
The progressive group Alliance for Justice cited those statements in arguing that confirming Bragdon “would legitimize his extreme rhetoric and pave the way for dangerous shifts in the rule of law,” and prompted lawmakers including Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, to press Bragdon on whether he stood by those writings.
“Many of my views have changed or developed over time, and there are few things I would write the same way now that I did then,” Bragdon said in a written response.