Republicans Prepare to Move Quickly on Supreme Court Opening as Trump Weighs Top Contenders

As President Trump prepares to nominate a successor to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg this week, Republican leaders moved urgently Sunday to make the political and procedural case for bucking recent precedent and filling the vacancy before the next presidential term.
Democratic leaders, including presidential nominee Joe Biden, accused Republicans of political opportunism and hypocrisy and vowed to fight any effort to rush confirmation of a Trump nominee in the GOP-controlled Senate. With the election 44 days away, Democrats said it would be a grave injustice and a violation of conscience to advance a Trump nominee before the voters render judgment on the president.
Two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, said over the weekend that whoever is elected president in November should nominate Ginsburg’s replacement. But it would take four Republican senators joining with all 47 Democrats and independents who caucus with Democrats to block consideration of a Trump nominee.
It was not publicly known Sunday whether any other Republicans would join Collins and Murkowski, though Trump advisers saw Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) as a possible third defection, according to someone involved in White House deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. The Senate GOP dynamics should come into clearer focus later this week when lawmakers return to Washington and are able to strategize together, including at their regular Tuesday lunch.

Republican leaders said Sunday they were pressing ahead to seize a monumental chance to solidify the court’s rightward ideological shift by replacing Ginsburg, a liberal icon, with a conservative jurist.
“I can tell you what’s going to happen,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “The president is going to make a nomination. I believe it’s going to be this week. And Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will hold hearings. And there will be a vote on the floor of the United States Senate this year.”

Source: The Washington Post

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