Quick call on judge
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump vowed on Saturday to quickly nominate a successor, probably a woman, to replace late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, only a day after the death of the liberal stalwart.
The President’s desire “to move quickly” on the process, despite Democrats’ vehement opposition, is likely to dominate the campaign — alongside other hot-button issues such as the coronavirus and America’s ongoing racial reckoning — ahead of the November 3 election.
“I think it’s going to move quickly actually,” Mr Trump said on Saturday, adding that he thought his choice would be made “next week”. The 87year-old Ginsburg, immensely popular among Democrats, died on Friday after a long battle with cancer, prompting an outpouring of national grief.
Ms Ginsburg’s death, weeks before the election, offers Republicans a chance to lock in a decades-long conservative majority on the court, where justices are appointed for life.
The stakes are high as the decision could affect such issues as abortion, healthcare, gun control and gay rights. They are pushed even higher in a bitter election year when the justices can play a decisive role in legal wrangling over a contested result.
Mr Trump has already named two justices during his first term, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, giving conservatives a 5-4 majority before Ms Ginsburg’s death, though that does not guarantee rulings in Mr Trump’s favour — there have been several recent examples of conservatives siding with their progressive colleagues.
Mr Trump, lagging in the polls behind Joe Biden, has another powerful incentive to move ahead: providing a jolt of enthusiasm among his anti-abortion and evangelical supporters.
At a rally in North Carolina later on Saturday, he took an impromptu crowd poll, asking them to cheer for a woman or a man to be his pick. The crowd cheered considerably louder for a woman. “That’s a very accurate poll because that’s the way I feel,” he said. “It will be a woman. A very talented, very brilliant woman.