WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Saturday plans to name the right-of-appellate judge Amy Coney Barrett as his third U.S. Supreme Court official, starting a riot in the Republican-led Senate to reassure him ahead of election day in 5-1 / 2 weeks.
Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell has made Trump’s nominees a priority and Justice Justice Committee chairman Lindsey Graham, who angrily defended Trump’s last-choice candidate in the 2018 Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh, has indicated he expects Barrett to be vindicated as justice 3.
Barrett, 48, was appointed by Trump to the Chicago Court of Appeals in Chicago in 2017 and is a favorite of religious activists, which is an important block of Trump’s vote. Her confirmation of successor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died at the age of 87 on September 18, will make Barrett the fifth woman to serve in the U.S. Supreme Court. He also pushed most of them independent to 6-3.
Trump plans to officially launch his nominee at 5 p.m. (2100 GMT) White House Festival. Conservative activists have applauded Trump’s election, which erupted on Friday night, as freedom fighters expressed disappointment.
Democrats, who are still angry at McConnell’s refusal in 2016 to consider the nomination of President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court by Barrick Garland because it happened in the election year, would raise the opposition to Barrett but have little chance of blocking the guarantee. Democratic Alliance presidential candidate Joe Biden has said the winner should get Ginsburg’s position.
Republicans with Trump lead the Senate with a majority of 53-47, and only two Republican senators are opposed to continuing the ratification process. Democrats, however, can be expected to make the process as difficult as possible.
Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.
In the 7th Circuit, Barrett has held conservative legal positions for three years on the bench, voted for one of Trump’s strict arrival policies and demonstrated support for greater gun rights. He also wrote a resolution that made it easier for college students accused of sexual harassment in college to sue their institutions.
Like other Trump nominees, Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Kavanaugh in 2018, Barrett is young enough to work for decades, leaving a solid final record. Barrett will be the highest-ranking person in the Supreme Court since Clarence Thomas turned 43 in 1991.
A devout Roman Catholic, she and her lawyer husband have seven children, two of whom were found in Haiti. Born in New Orleans, Barrett earned his law degree at Notre Dame Law School, a Catholic center in Indiana.
One of the finalists named by Trump to fill the vacancy was Barbara Lagoa, a key Cuban and American Supreme Court judge in Florida last year.
ELECTION ISSUES
Trump said he wants his nominee to be confirmed before the election so he can participate in any election-related cases that reach judges, who are likely to vote the most. The result of the U.S. presidential election only once was decided by the Supreme Court, in 2000 when it secured the victory of Republican George W. Bush on Democrat Al Gore.
“I think it’s very important that we have nine judges,” Trump said Wednesday.
Early voting has begun in some provinces. Trump has repeatedly said without evidence that postal voting, common in the American election, would lead to voter fraud. He also declined to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost the election.
This marks the first time since 1956 that the U.S. president has moved to fill a vacancy in the Supreme Court near the election. That same year, President Dwight Eisenhower three weeks before the re-election put William Brennan in court using a process called “vacation appointments” that violated the Senate, a no-nonsense tactic of appointing judges.
Filling the court space has given Trump, who follows Biden to the polls, the opportunity to divert voters’ attention away from his coronavirus epidemic.
An active Supreme Court can move the United States right into hot-button issues, among other things, restricting abortion rights, increasing religious rights, enacting gun control laws, and approving new voting rights restrictions.
If re-elected, Trump will increase the Supreme Court nomination if there are more vacancies. If he gets the position of the oldest court member, 82-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer, Trump could extend the majority of conservatives to 7-2.