President Donald Trump nominated Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Saturday, culminating a dramatic reshuffle of the federal judiciary that will resonate for a generation and that he hopes will provide the necessary boost to his re-election effort.
Republican senators are already lining up for Barrett’s quick confirmation ahead of the Nov. 3 election, as his goal is to secure conservative advances in the federal judiciary before a possible transition of power. Trump, meanwhile, hopes the nomination serves to galvanize his supporters as he seeks to defend himself from Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump praised Barrett as “a woman of remarkable intellect and character,” and said he had studied her record closely before choosing.
“I watched and studied, and you are eminently qualified,” he said as Barrett joined him in the Rose Garden.
Ideological heir to the late Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, Barrett would fill the post left vacant after the Sept. 18 death of liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in what would be the sharpest ideological turn since Clarence Thomas replaced Justice Thurgood Marshall ago. almost three decades. She would be the sixth magistrate of the nine-member court to be appointed by a Republican president, and the third in Trump’s first term in office.
For Trump, whose 2016 victory depended largely on reluctant support from conservative and white evangelicals for a promise to fill Scalia’s seat with a conservative, the latest nomination somehow completes the circle of his first term. Even before Ginsburg’s death, Trump was running for having confirmed more than 200 federal judges, fulfilling a generational target of conservative legal activists.
“This is my third such nomination after Judge Gorsuch and Judge Kavanaugh, and it’s a very proud moment,” Trump said at the Rose Garden. He encouraged Democrats to accept his nomination quickly and to “refrain from personal and partisan attacks.” The set design, with large American flags hanging between the colonnades of the Rose Garden, seemed to be modeled after the decor of the White House when President Bill Clinton named Ginsburg as his nominee in 1993.
The announcement came before Ginsburg was buried with her husband next week at Arlington National Cemetery. On Friday, she was the first woman to lie on Capitol Hill, and mourners flocked to the Supreme Court for two days before that to pay their respects.
Barrett said she was “really moved” by the nomination, adding that she would be “aware of who came before me.” She praised Ginsburg on accepting the nomination, saying, “She has earned the admiration of women across the country and indeed the world. Within hours of Ginsburg’s death, Trump made it clear that he would nominate a woman for the seat and then volunteered that he was considering five candidates. But Barrett was the first favorite and the only one to meet with Trump.
Barrett has been a judge since 2017, when Trump nominated her to the Chicago-based United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. But as a longtime University of Notre Dame law professor, she had already established herself as a trusted conservative in the mold of Scalia, for whom she worked in the late 1990s.
She would be the only judge in the current court who did not receive her law degree from an Ivy League school. The eight current judges all attended Harvard or Yale.
Trump knew the staunch conservative in large part after the bitter 2017 appeals court confirmation included allegations that Democrats were attacking her Catholic faith. The president also interviewed her in 2018 for the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, but Trump ultimately chose Brett Kavanaugh.
Trump and his political allies are eager for another fight over Barrett’s faith, seeing it as a political windfall that would backfire on Democrats. Catholic voters in Pennsylvania, in particular, are seen as a pivotal demographic in the swing state that Biden, also a Catholic, is trying to win back.
While Democrats appear powerless to stop Barrett’s confirmation in the GOP-controlled Senate, they seek to use the process to weaken Trump’s chances of reelection.
Barrett’s nomination could turn into a reckoning on abortion, an issue that has bitterly divided many Americans for nearly half a century. The idea of revoking or gutting Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion, has encouraged activists from both parties for decades. Now, with the seemingly decisive shift in the ideological makeup of the court, Democrats are hoping their voters will come out in droves because of their frustration with Barrett’s election.
Trump has also increasingly embraced the high court, which will have played a big part in the makeover, like an insurance policy in a closed election.
Increases in vote-by-mail, absentee and early voting triggered by the coronavirus pandemic have already sparked a flurry of election litigation, and both Trump and Biden have assembled armies of lawyers to continue the fight once the vote count begins. Trump has been outspoken about linking his push to appoint a third judge to the court to a potentially lengthy court fight to determine who will be sworn in on January 20, 2021.
“I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” Trump said Wednesday of the election, adding, “And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices.” (AP) CPS
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