“We will have a nominee very soon,” Trump said. (Proceedings)
Washington:
President Donald Trump said Saturday that he will nominate a woman to serve on the US Supreme Court, a move that would tip the court more to the right following the death of liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“I will present a nominee next week. It will be a woman,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. “I think it should be a woman because I actually like women a lot more than men.”
As Trump spoke, supporters chanted, “Fill that seat.”
He praised Ginsburg as a “legal giant … His landmark failures, fierce devotion to justice, and courageous battle with cancer inspire all Americans.”
Previously, he praised two women as possible replacements: Conservatives who he elevated to federal appeals courts.
Trump named Amy Coney Barrett of the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit and Barbara Lagoa of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit as potential nominees for a lifetime office to the highest court in the United States. It would be his third appointment during his first term.
Trump said it was his constitutional right to name a successor to Ginsburg, and that he would, citing similar moves by presidents dating back to George Washington. “We have a lot of time. You’re talking about January 20,” Trump said, referring to the date of the next inauguration.
Ginsburg’s death Friday from cancer after 27 years on the court gave Trump, who is seeking reelection on November 3, the opportunity to expand his conservative majority to 6-3 at a time of enormous political division in America. .
Any nomination would require approval by a simple majority in the Senate, where Trump’s Republicans have a 53-47 majority.
Not all Republican senators supported the measure: Susan Collins of Maine said Saturday that a nomination should wait.
“In fairness to the American people, who will either re-elect the president or select a new one, the decision on a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court must be made by the president who is elected on November 3,” Collins said, facing a tough race. for reelection herself, she said in a statement.
Democrats are still furious about the Republican Senate’s refusal in 2016 to act on Democratic President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland to replace Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died 10 months before those elections.
At the time, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate should not act on a nominee during an election year, but he and other top Republican senators have reversed that stance.
Even if Democrats win the White House and a Senate majority in the November election, Trump and McConnell could push their election before the new president and Congress are sworn in on January 20.
Senior Congressional Democrats raised the possibility of adding more judges next year to counter Trump’s nominees if they gain control of the White House and Senate.
“Let me be clear: If Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans move forward with this, then there is nothing off the table for next year,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told fellow Democrats at a conference call on Saturday, according to a source who heard the call.
McConnell, who has prioritized the confirmation of Trump’s federal judicial nominees, said the House would vote on any Trump nominees. Democrats, with few tools to block the passage of a nominee, plan to try to rally public opposition.
“The focus should be to show the public what is at stake in this fight. And what is at stake is really people’s access to affordable health care, workers’ rights and women’s rights,” she said Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen in a telephone interview.
Obama on Saturday called on Senate Republicans to respect what he called McConnell’s “made up” principle in 2016.
“A basic principle of the law, and of daily justice, is that we apply the rules consistently and not based on what is convenient or advantageous at the time,” Obama said in a statement posted online.
AMY CONEY BARRETT AND BARBARA LAGOA
Even before Ginsburg’s death, Trump had published a list of possible nominees.
Barrett has generated perhaps the most interest in conservative circles. A devout Roman Catholic, she was a legal scholar at Notre Dame Law School in Indiana before Trump appointed her to the Seventh Circuit in 2017. Abortion rights groups have pointed to Barrett’s conservative religious views and have said that, As a judge, he would likely vote to overturn the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade who legalized abortion across the country.
Lagoa has served on the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for less than a year after she was appointed by Trump and confirmed by the Senate in a vote of 80-15. Before that, less than a year in her previous position as the first Latina on the Florida Supreme Court, after more than a decade as a judge in an intermediate court of appeals.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised to appoint justices who would revoke Roe v. Wade, a longtime target of conservative activists. Even with the current conservative majority, the court voted 5-4 in July to repeal a restrictive abortion law in Louisiana.
Cristine Crispell, who works in special education in Reedsville, Georgia, drove five hours to attend the rally with her two teenage daughters. She said Trump had “absolutely” the right to nominate a new judge, even this close to the election.
“I would like Roe v. Wade to be overturned. Absolutely,” he said. “The sanctity of life is a huge thing.”
Trump has already appointed two justices: Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. Kavanaugh was shortly confirmed after a heated confirmation process in which he angrily denied allegations by a California university professor, Christine Blasey Ford, of assaulting her. sexually in 1982, when the two were high school students in Maryland.
SENATE RACES FOCUS
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said on Saturday that rushing a court election if Democrats win in November would be “undemocratic.”
He said on Twitter: “Congress would have to act and expanding the court would be the right place to start.”
With Democrats fighting hard to win control of the tightly divided Senate, confirmation votes could also add pressure to sitting Republican senators in competitive electoral races, including Collins and Martha McSally of Arizona.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a Republican not ready for reelection this cycle, told local media on Friday, before Ginsburg’s death, that she would not vote for a Supreme Court candidate this close to the election. .
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated channel.)
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