Trump interviews four hopefuls for high court
President will meet with ‘two or three more’ before July 9.
President WASHINGTON —
Donald Trump interviewed four prospective Supreme Court justices Monday and planned to speak with a few more, as he powered forward with a speedy selection process to fill the fresh vacancy.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said he had met with “four potential justices of our great Supreme Court. They are outstanding people and they are really incredible people in so many different ways, academically and in every other way.”
Trump added that he would meet with “two or three more” in advance of an announcement July 9 on a replacement for retir- ing Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. He con- sulted with advisers during a weekend at his Bedmin- ster golf club, and the White House has mobilized a team to manage the process.
Meanwhile, the Senate’s top Democrat tried Monday to rally public opposi- tion to any Supreme Court pick who’d oppose abortion rights, issuing a striking campaign season call for voters to prevent such a nominee by putting “pressure on the Senate.”
With Trump saying he’ll pick from a list of 25 potential nominees he’s compiled with guidance from conserva- tives, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said any of them would be “virtually certain” to favor overturn- ing Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that affirmed women’s right to abortion. They would also be “very likely” to back weakening President Barack Obama’s 2010 law that expanded health care coverage to millions of Americans, he said.
Schumer said that while Democrats don’t control the Senate — Republicans have a 51-49 edge — most senators back abortion rights. In an unusually direct appeal to voters, he said that to block “an ideological nominee,” people should “tell your sen- ators” to oppose anyone from Trump’s list.
“It will not happen on its own,” the New Yorker wrote in an opinion column in Monday’s New York Times. “It requires the public’s focus on these issues, and its pres- sure on the Senate.”
Trump has said he is focus- ing on up to seven potential candidates, including two women, to fill the vacancy created by Kennedy, a swing vote on the nine-member court. Schumer’s column appeared a day after Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she would oppose any nomi- nee she believed would overturn Roe v. Wade. Collins said she would only back a judge who would show respect for settled law such as the Roe decision, which has long been anathema to conservatives.
“I would not support a nominee who demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade because that would mean to me that their judicial philosophy did not include a respect for established decisions, established law,” Collins said.
Such a judge, she said, “would not be acceptable to me because that would indicate an activist agenda.”
Possible nominees being eyed include Thomas Hardiman, who serves alongside Trump’s sister on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Raymond Kethledge, a federal appeals court judge who clerked for Kennedy. Also of interest are Amul Thapar, who serves on the federal appeals court in Cincinnati; Brett Kavanaugh, a former clerk for Kennedy who serves on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.; and Amy Coney Barrett, who serves on the federal appeals court in Chicago.