“We will,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Republican leader, when asked if the Senate would fill a vacancy, even during the lame session after the presidential election. “That would be part of this year. We would move on.”
But the Iowa Republican veteran who chaired the Judicial Committee in 2016 and helped block Judge Merrick Garland, the Obama nominee, by refusing to schedule election year confirmation hearings, said he would not fill a vacancy now for the same reason.
“My position is that if I were chair of the committee, I couldn’t go ahead,” Senator Chuck Grassley told CNN.
The current chair of the Judiciary Committee, Trump’s ally, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has expressed differing views on whether he would try to confirm a candidate during the last year of Trump’s term.
When asked about his previous opposition to moving a candidate into a presidential election year after the primary season, Graham said: “After Kavanaugh, I have a different opinion from the judges,” referring to the brutal 2018 confirmation process. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who is a member of the Judiciary Committee, said that if a vacancy occurs, he would like a candidate confirmed before the court’s term begins in October.
Hawley said he would be “shocked” if Trump did not attempt to fill a vacancy despite Republican arguments in 2016 that voters should decide which president selects a candidate during an election year.
Hawley said the difference between then and now is that Obama was unable to run again, but Trump is on the ballot trying to win a second term.
“I think we have a different set of circumstances. We have a president who is actively running for re-election,” Hawley said. “He’s going to be on the ballot. People will be able to issue a verdict on him like they couldn’t on Obama. I suppose he absolutely would nominate someone. I would be surprised if he didn’t.”
“(If) it’s a lame duck session, I would support moving forward with any audience we may have,” he said. “And if it is a date before the end of the year, I would support it.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, has repeatedly promised to fill a vacancy this year and has said the difference between now and 2016 is that by the time Obama, a Democrat, nominated Garland to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the republicans controlled the Senate. Right now, Republicans control both the White House and the Senate.
A vacancy could put some Republican senators in a difficult situation. When asked if he supported filling a vacancy this year, Senator Thom Tillis, a vulnerable Republican running for reelection in North Carolina, said: “I am praying for Judge Ginsburg’s health. That is what I am really at. focused right now. “
When asked about filling a vacancy caused by retirement, not death, he minimized the likelihood of that happening.
“I don’t think there is much indication that they exist. Normally, those moves are made in June during the session. I don’t see any real possibility that there will be one,” Tillis said.
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