Supreme Court decision nears
Trump to announce nominee choice today, setting high court on path farther to right
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump returned to Washington on Sunday after a weekend weighing the strengths and weakness of four leading candidates for the Supreme Court at his New Jersey golf club, mulling the likely response of key senators and his core supporters to each prospect, according to White House officials and Trump advisers involved in the discussions.
Trump — over rounds of golf with friends, meals with family, and a flurry of phone calls and meetings with aides — remained coy about his final decision, which will be announced today, but did offer clues about how he sees the four federal judges atop his shortlist: Brett Kavanaugh, Thomas Hardiman, Raymond Kethledge and Amy Coney Barrett.
Hardiman, a runner-up when Trump chose Neil Gorsuch as his high court nominee last year, received a wave of new attention in the weekend discussions, according to two people briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly about it.
But White House officials cautioned Sunday that Trump’s informal conversations with golf part-
ners and friends did not necessarily hint at whom he would ultimately select for the court, a decision that could tilt the bench to the right for decades.
Still, Trump has recounted how close he came to selecting Hardiman, who was recommended by the president’s sister and sometime confidante, retired federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry. She served with the Pennsylvania-based Hardiman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
And Hardiman’s working-class roots — his time driving a taxi during his days as a law student at Georgetown University — have been cited as an attribute inside the White House, along with his conservative rulings. His boosters, sensing this weekend that Hardiman could be ascending on the president’s list, have been busy making phone calls to friends in Trump’s inner circle.
“He’s got a story that’s compelling beyond the taxicab,” former senator Rick Santorum, R-Pa., a friend of Hardiman’s, said in an interview. “I’m talking to people about his service work with his church in West Virginia and about how he has helped people seeking asylum from communist countries. He speaks Spanish. His wife comes from a Democratic family, and he knows how to engage with all kind of people, not just Republicans.”
Santorum added that picking Hardiman could help Trump bolster his support in Pennsylvania, a crucial state in his electoral college victory in 2016 and a 2020 battleground.
Previously, the three front-runners for the nomination have been seen as Kavanaugh, who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; Michigan’s Kethledge, from the 6th Circuit; and Indiana’s Barrett, from the 7th Circuit. All three candidates remain in contention, but Trump has revived talk of Hardiman because he has not felt compelled, yet, to tap one of them.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who will lead the confirmation fight on Capitol Hill, spoke with Trump by phone on Friday, according to two Republican officials.
The officials underscored that McConnell did not push any choice on the president. But, the officials said, McConnell did note that Hardiman and Kethledge could fare well in the Senate because their reputations and records were not as politically charged as others on the president’s shortlist of nominees.
Trump is searching for a replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Kennedy’s retirement has given conservatives their first hope in decades for a court that would strike down Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that legalized abortion. But, at the moment, it is liberals who are focused on making this a galvanizing issue.
During the 2016 campaign, and in subsequent interviews, Trump repeatedly assured conservative voters that his nominees would scrap the 45-year-old decision that legalized abortion across the country. In 2016, he told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that Roe would be overturned if he got to appoint “two or three” justices, “because I am putting prolife justices on the court.” Kennedy had effectively preserved Roe by joining the controlling opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey; every judge on the Trump shortlist is seen as a likely vote against abortion rights.