Trump joins hundreds in paying tributes to Ginsburg
WASHINGTON: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a towering women’s rights champion who became the court’s second female justice, died on Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87.
Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court said.
Several hundred people clutching candles, flowers and signs quietly gathered on the steps of the US Supreme Court to mark Ginsburg’s death.
Trump, who called Ginsburg “an amazing woman,” made his view clear on Saturday.
He urged the Senate to consider “without delay” his upcoming pick for the high court.
“We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us,” Trump tweeted, “the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices. We have this obligation, without delay!”
Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell said late Friday that the Senate would vote, even though it’s an election year.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said the winner of the November election should choose Ginsburg’s replacement.
“There is no doubt - let me be clear - that the voters should pick the president and the president should pick the justice for the Senate to consider,” Biden told reporters ater returning to his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, from campaign stops in Minnesota.
Chief Justice John Roberts mourned Ginsburg’s passing. “Our Nation has lost a jurist of historic stature. We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn, but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her - a tireless and resolute champion of justice,” Roberts said in a statement.
Ginsburg announced in July that she was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for lesions on her liver, the latest of her several batles with cancer.
Ginsburg spent her final years on the bench as the unquestioned leader of the court’s liberal wing and became something of a rock star to her admirers.