A fierce political battle shaped up over the future of the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday, with President Donald Trump saying he would quickly name a successor to liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a move that would tip the court further to the right, Trend reports citing Reuters.
“We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices,” Trump said on Twitter. “We have this obligation, without delay!”
Ginsburg, the senior liberal justice, died on Friday night at age 87 of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer after 27 years on the court. Her death gives Trump, who is seeking re-election on Nov. 3, a chance to expand the court’s conservative majority to 6-3 at a time of a gaping political divide in America.
Trump’s short list of potential nominees includes two women jurists: Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa, according to a source close to the White House.
Democrats are still seething over the Republican Senate’s refusal to act on Democratic President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, in 2016 after conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died 10 months before that election. McConnell in 2016 said the Senate should not act on a court nominee during an election year, a stance he has since reversed.
Despite that anger, Democrats have little chance of blocking Trump’s pick. His fellow Republicans control 53 of the Senate’s 100 seats and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has made confirmation of Trump’s federal judicial nominees a top priority, said the chamber would vote on any Trump nominee.
Obama himself on Saturday called on Senate Republicans to honor what he called that “invented” 2016 principle.
“A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment,” Obama said in a statement posted online. “The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle.”