REUTERS/Leah Millis
- President Donald Trump said on Monday that he will announce his Supreme Court pick to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the end of the week.
- “It looks like we will have services on Thursday or Friday, as I understand it, and I think we should, with all due respect for Justice Ginsburg, wait for services to be over,” Trump said during a “Fox & Friends” interview.
- Republican leadership intends to hold hearings and a vote on Trump’s nominee before Nov. 3, giving them less than 40 days to complete a process that takes on average 70 days.
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President Donald Trump said on Monday that he’ll announce his Supreme Court pick to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died on Friday, at the end of the week.
The president said he’s waiting several days to make his announcement, which some White House officials initially said would come by mid-week, in order to allow time for Ginsburg’s funeral services. Republican leadership intends to hold hearings and a vote on the nominee before Nov. 3, giving them under 40 days to complete a process that takes on average 70 days.
“I think it will be on Friday or Saturday and we want to pay respect, it looks like we will have services on Thursday or Friday, as I understand it, and I think we should, with all due respect for Justice Ginsburg, wait for services to be over,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” during an interview on Monday morning.
Trump said he’d narrowed his list of potential picks down to five candidates, all of whom are women. The top three contenders are widely considered to be Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who Trump appointed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Barbara Lagoa of the 11th Circuit, and deputy White House counsel Kate Todd. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is reportedly pushing for 38-year-old Fourth Circuit Judge Allison Jones Rushing.
Republican leadership’s push to nominate and hold hearings for a new justice directly contradicts their decision to block President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia after he died in February 2016. While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Scalia’s replacement should be decided by the winner of the 2016 presidential election, he now insists that Trump should appoint a new member to the Court just weeks before the 2020 election.
"The bottom line is we won the election, we have an obligation to do what's right and act as quickly as possible," Trump said on Monday.