President expected to announce pick to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Saturday, setting stage for rightward shift
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“All sources cautioned that until it is announced by the president, there is always the possibility that Trump makes a last-minute change,”
the network said.
Coney Barrett is a strict conservative whose position on abortion rights particularly worries Democrats and progressive groups.
Democrats also charge that no new justice should be confirmed so close to a presidential election given that Republicans refused to grant Barack Obama’s supreme court nominee Merrick Garland a hearing in early 2016.
Public polling, including a new survey by the Washington Post and ABC Newson Friday, has shown the public agrees, with consistent majority support for Ginsburg’s replacement being decided after 3 November.
But Republicans, under the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, have shown no such compunction, conjuring up the argument that in the Garland case they held the Senate while Democrats held the White House, but now unified control means a confirmation should proceed.
In fact, no such precedent exists.
Though the moderate senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have dissented, McConnell has the votes he needs to proceed.
“I’m confident [Trump’s] going to make an outstanding nomination,” the majority leader told Fox News, speaking before reports emerged that Coney Barrett would be the pick but after Trump had said he would choose a woman.
“The American people are going to take a look at this nominee and conclude, as we are likely to conclude, that she well deserves to be confirmed to the US supreme court.”
Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate Democratic whip, said: “They’re hell-bent on getting this done as fast as possible. They think it helps Donald Trump get re-elected.”
The effect on the polls remains to be seen. Currently, Joe Biden leads in national and most swing state surveys.
Barrett is a rising conservative star. In 2018, when Trump named the conservative Brett Kavanaugh to replace the retiring Anthony Kennedy, he reportedly told aides of Barrett: “I’m saving her for Ginsburg.”
When Barrett was confirmed as an appeals court judge, in 2017, the California Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein told her: “The dogma lives loudly in you.”
Barrett said: “I would stress that my personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge.”
Asked if Barrett’s affiliation with People of Praise, a strict religious community, might affect her decisions, Vice-President Mike Pence sprang to her defense.
“I must tell you the intolerance expressed during her last confirmation about her Catholic faith, I really think, was a disservice to the process and a disappointment to millions of Americans,” Pence, who has called himself an evangelical Catholic, told ABC.
Barbara Lagoa, a Cuban American from Florida, was also reported to be in contention, possibly a politically potent choice given Florida’s status as a key swing state. But it was also reported that Trump had not even met her.
Supreme court justices can serve for life and have the power to shape American society itself over a decades-long career. Barrett, once a clerk to the late conservative hardliner Antonin Scalia, is 48 years old.
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