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Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg in August 2019.
- US President Donald Trump has expressed his intention to shortly nominate a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away on Saturday.
- Trump was criticized by Democrats for wanting to use the issue to boost his election campaign and Republicans for being hypocritical.
- Republicans kept Barack Obama from filling a court vacancy for most of the 2016 election year.
US President Donald Trump on Saturday urged Republican lawmakers to back his upcoming Supreme Court nomination “without delay,” as the issue upended the election just one day after the stalwart’s death. liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The 87-year-old judge, immensely popular with Democrats, died Friday after a long battle with cancer.
Shortly before the Nov. 3 election, in which Trump follows his Democratic rival Joe Biden in the polls, the vacancy offers Republicans a chance to secure a conservative majority in court for decades.
The election of a new judge would likely affect wide-ranging controversies such as abortion, health care, gun control and gay rights.
The president’s tweet pushing for the Ginsburg vacancy to be filled quickly fueled speculation of a fierce partisan nomination battle at the height of the election campaign.
The prospect of a Senate confirmation vote before the election has already brought an explosive response from Democrats, still furious at Republicans preventing Barack Obama from filling a court vacancy for most of the 2016 election year.
“The Democrats are going crazy about this, not just a little crazy,” University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato told CNN.
Biden made clear on Friday that any nomination must await the election results.
“Voters must choose the president and the president must choose the judge for the Senate to consider,” he said.
The Supreme Court is on the ballot. And the result will affect everything from health care to civil rights, affecting generations to come.
Vote. Our future depends on it. https://t.co/Hy8C4mIL2M
– Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 19, 2020
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said “this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” carefully repeating the words of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in 2016 when he blocked Obama’s candidate, Merrick Garland.
In theory, Republicans have the Senate votes to approve a Trump nominee, but they could only be blocked by a handful of defections.
Analysts predicted that Democrats would do everything they could to prolong the process while stoking public outrage over what Democrats called Republican hypocrisy.
“His option is to build a wave (of public opposition) … to try to convince at least four Republican senators to vote no for whoever the president is running,” said Amy Howe, co-founder of a Supreme Court blog. , on CNN.
A handful of moderate Republican senators, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, have already expressed doubts about a hasty vote.
Other Republicans facing tough re-election races in tightly divided states may be reluctant to take a position before the election.
Democrats will surely use the last words of some Republicans against you.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Republican ally of Trump, said in 2018 that “if a vacancy occurs in the last year of President Trump’s term and the primary process has begun, we will wait for the next election.”
Graham chairs the Senate judicial committee, which will conduct the confirmation hearings, and on Saturday he tweeted: “I fully understand where President @realDonaldTrump is coming from.”
A confirmation vote before November 3 would be unusually quick.
The average period from nomination to confirmation is around 70 days.
But Trump has a powerful incentive to keep going, and not just to provide an electrifying jolt of enthusiasm among his evangelical and anti-abortion supporters.
The court could play a decisive role in the legal dispute over a contested election, such as when the court decided in favor of George W. Bush in the bitter 2000 election fight.
Trump has already appointed dozens of conservatives as federal judges, and Democrats are eager for the lasting impact of a profound shift in the balance on the Supreme Court.
“If he is allowed to bring in more conservatives, this will be disastrous for the next 40 to 50 years,” Gloria Browne-Marshall, a civil rights attorney, said on CNN.
Some Democrats have mused that if Biden is elected and the Democrats control both houses of Congress, they could expand the court from nine seats to 11, allowing the new president to appoint two more liberal justices.
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