A look at Justice Kennedy’s key opinions.
Both sides of issue are readying for fight in Senate
WASHINGTON — Democrats have a very limited ability to block President Donald Trump’s second nominee for the Supreme Court in the Republican-controlled Senate, yet they do have some chance — and they quickly began mobilizing for it on Wednesday.
Whether Trump’s nominee wins will likely turn on one of the most divisive issues in American politics — abortion rights.
For decades Republicans succeeded where Democrats have failed, in making court nominations a motivating force at election time — turning out religious conservatives with the promise that Republican candidates would support Supreme Court justices opposed to Roe v. Wade, the decision that guaranteed a nationwide right to abortion. Now, with Trump poised to tip the Supreme Court’s balance decidedly rightward, Democrats’ hope lies in shaking voters’ complacency about the ruling.
Democratic strategists hope that the pressure to oppose Trump’s nominee over that issue will not only keep the Democratic senators facing re-election in pro-Trump states in the party fold, but also could persuade the two Republican senators who favor abortion rights, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
The Senate majority is narrow — Republicans hold 51 seats, 50 if Sen. John McCain, who is battling brain cancer and has been absent from Washington for months, is not available to vote. That presents the president with a challenge. He must nominate someone from his list of 25 names whose views give anti-abortion voters confidence without being so strident as to alienate the moderates.
“There’s not much that Senate Democrats can do to stop this, even if they hold together,” said James P. Manley, a Democratic strategist and former top aide to Sens. Harry Reid and Edward Kennedy. “It’s all going to come down to what’s left of the moderate Senate Republicans.”
Whether all the Democrats would stick together, however, remains uncertain. Trump’s first nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed last year by a 54-45 vote. Three Democrats joined all Republicans in support: Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
All three face re-election this year.
Yet the stakes are arguably higher now: Gorsuch replaced a like-minded conservative, Justice Antonin Scalia. The next nominee replaces the court’s longtime swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy.
“A woman’s constitutional right to access legal abortion is in dire, immediate danger,” Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL ProChoice America, said in a statement.
Stoking Democrats’ anger are the still-raw memories of McConnell’s refusal through most of 2016 to let the Senate act on President Barrack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the court after Scalia’s death that February. His insistence that voters must first speak kept the seat open for Trump to fill it with Gorsuch.