Trump vows to pick a woman for Ginsburg’s supreme court seat
● President ready to defy Biden call to suspend decision until after election
Donald Trump has promised to put forward a female nominee to fill the supreme court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Ginsburg, 87, died on Friday, just weeks before the presidential election.
Her replacement, like all Supreme Court justices, will be appointed for life and so the ideological balance of the nine-member co ur ti sc rucial to its rulings on the most important issues in US law.
Mr Trump’ s Democratic rival, Joe Bid en, insists the decision on her replacement should wait until after the vote. But Mr Trump has vowed to swear in Ginsburg’s successor “without delay”.
Taking the stage at a North Carolina rally to chants of “Fill that seat”, the president said he would nominate his selection despite Democrats’ objections.
And, after conducting what he joked was a“very scientific poll” of the Fayetteville crowd as to whether supporters wanted a man or a woman, he declared the choice would be“a very talented, very brilliant woman ”.
He added that he did not yet know whom he would choose.
“We win an election and those are the consequences,” said the president, who then seemed to signal that he’d be willing to accept a vote on his nominee during the lame duck period after the election. “We have a lot of time. We have plenty of time. We’ re talking about January 20th.”
Senate majority leader Mitch Mcconnell vowed on Friday night, just hours after Ginsburg’s death, to call a vote on whomever Mr Trump nominated.
But Mr Bid en said any vote should come after the 3 November election. “Voters should pick the president and the president should pick the justice to consider,” Mr Biden said.
Ginsburg, a towering wom
en’ s rights champion who became the court’ s second female justice, died aged 87 at her home in Washington.
The court said Ginsburg died as a result of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer.
Former president Bar a ck Obama was among those paying tribute to her.
He said: “Over a long career on both sides of the bench, as a relentless litigator and an incisive jurist, justice Ginsburg help ed us see that discrimination on the basis of sex
isn’t about an abstract ideal of equality; that it doesn’t only harm women; that it has real consequences for all of us. It’s about who we are and who we can be.”
US chief justice John Rob - erts also mourned Ginsburg’s passing, saying: “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.”
G ins burg announced in July that she was undergo - ing chemotherapy treatment for lesions on her liver, the latest of several battles with cancer.
She spent her final years on the bench as the unquestioned leader of the court’ s liberal wing and became something of a star to her admirers.
Young women especially seemed to embrace the court’s Jewish grandmother, affectionately calling her the Notorious RB G, for her defence of the rights of women and minorities and the strength and resilience she displayed in the face of personal loss and health crises.
She resisted calls by liberals to retire during Mr Obama’s presidency at a time when Democrats held the senate and a replacement with similar views could have been confirmed.
Instead, Mr Trump will almost certainly try to push her successor through the Republican- controlled senate and move the court even more to the right.