WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Saturday urged Republican lawmakers to back his upcoming nomination for the Supreme Court “without delay” as the issue roiled the election campaign.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal stalwart, died Friday, opening a crucial vacancy on the court and setting off a fierce political battle before the November 3 vote.
Trump tweeted that the “most important” decision that Republicans had been elected to make was “the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices.”
“We have this obligation, without delay!” he added.
Coming just before the election in which Trump lags his Democratic rival Joe Biden in the polls, the vacancy offers the Republicans a chance to lock in a conservative majority at the court for decades to come.
Democrats have demanded a delay in the nomination until after the election — an uphill battle given the control Republicans have in the Senate, which must approve the president’s nominee.
Trump said in August he would have no qualms about naming a new justice so close to the election, and last week he unveiled 20 names of possible choices, all deeply conservative.
Even before Ginsburg’s death, Trump had made public a list of potential nominees. Trump’s Democratic opponent in the presidential race, Joe Biden, on Friday night said the winner of the election should be the one to make the selection and that Trump should not move forward with a nominee.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, agreed. McConnell pledged that the Senate would vote on any Trump nominee. For liberals who considered Ginsburg a heroine, the grief they have expressed over her death was tinged with fear over what happens next.
Conservative activists for years have sought to get enough votes on the Supreme Court to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalised abortion nationwide.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised to appoint justices who would overturn that decision. But the court in July, even with its conservative majority, struck down a restrictive Louisiana abortion law on a 5-4 vote.
The two justices who Trump already has appointed were Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
Kavanaugh’s confirmation process was particularly heated, as he faced accusations by a California university professor, Christine Blasey Ford, that he had assaulted her in 1982 when the two were high school students in Maryland.
Kavanaugh angrily denied those accusations and was narrowly confirmed.
Republicans risk the possibility of liberals embracing more radical proposals should Trump replace Ginsburg but Democrats win November’s election, with some activists on the left suggesting even before Ginsburg’s death that the number of justices on the court should be expanded to counter Trump’s appointees. — Reuters
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