Biden slams Trump over plan to replace Justice Ginsburg before Nov. election
WASHINGTON — A second Republican senator came out in opposition to filling a vacant Supreme Court seat before the Nov. 3 election while Speaker Nancy Pelosi asserted without details that the Democratic-led House has “options” for stalling or preventing President Donald Trump from quickly installing a successor to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said in a statement that “forweeks, I have stated that Iwould not support taking up” a potential nomination as the presidential election neared. “Sadly, what was then a hypothetical isnowour reality, but my position has not changed.”
Murkowski joins Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who said replacing
Ginsburg should be the decision of the election winner — Trump or Democrat Joe Biden. Republicans hold a 53-47 edge in the Senate. If there were a 50-50 tie, it could be broken by Vice President Mike Pence.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has pledged tomove forward but hasn’t set a timetable.
Focus is growing on Sen. Mitt Romney, RUtah, who has broken with Trump before. There is another potential wrinkle: Because the Arizona Senate race is a special election, that seat could be filled as early as Nov. 30, which would narrow the window for McConnell if Democrat Mark Kelly wins.
Biden, speaking later on Sunday from the battleground state of Pennsylvania, slammed Trump and leading Senate Republicans for trying to jam through a replacement for Ginsburg and urged more senators to stand Murkowski and Collins.
Biden acknowledged that those Republicans and others like them were his target audience when he warned that Trump’s plan was an “abuse of power.”
“Uphold your constitutional duty, your conscience,” Biden said. “Let the people speak. Cool the flames that have engulfed our country.”
The House has no formal say in presidential nominations, a role the Constitution assigns to the Senate, and Pelosi, D-Calif., refused in a television interview to detail the “arrows in our quiver,” even when asked about trying to impeach Trump for a second time.
Ginsburg’s death Friday has injected new ferocity into the election-year battle for the presidency and control of Congress, in a nation already struggling with the coronavirus pandemic, economic collapse and racial tension. The talk on the Sunday news shows gave a glimpse of the power tug over the timing of any vote to fill Ginsberg’s seat 43 days fromthe election.
Trump says he is obligated to act as soon as possible and had at least two women in mind for the seat. Most Republicans concurred on the need for speed and one named a practical reason: The nine-seat member, argued Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, must be full if called upon to decide the outcome of a disputed presidential election.
Democrats urged the GOP Senate majority to heed its own advice against filling the court’s lifetime slots so close to elections. “The people pick the president. The president picks the justice,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
Pelosi was asked whether she would be open to the House undertaking impeachment proceedings against Trump or Attorney General William Barr, as a way of trying to stall the confirmation process. She did not rule out doing so.
“We have our options. We have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to discuss right now,” she said.
The next justice, Pelosi said, would help determine the survival of the Affordable Care Act. The court is scheduled to hear a lawsuit involving Obamacare on Nov. 10, which could affect the law’s protection of people with preexisting conditions.
“Those are the people the president wants to crush when he says he wants to replace the justice in this short period of time,” Pelosi said.
Nonetheless, the process was moving ahead. On a call with McConnell late Saturday, Trump mentioned two federal appeals court judges: Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa, according to a person familiar with the private conversation who was not authorized to publicly discuss the call and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Cruz said all nine seats need to be filled by the election.
“An equally divided court, four-four, can’t decide anything,” Cruz said. “We need a full court on Election Day.”
The next pick could shape important decisions beyond abortion rights, including the fate of Obama’s health care law any legal challenges that may stem from the 2020 election. In the interim, if the court were to take cases with eight justices, 4-4 ties would revert the decision to a lower court; for instance, the Affordable Care Act could then be struck down by a lower Texas court.
Pelosi and Cruz spoke on ABC’s “This Week” and Klobuchar was on CNN’s “State of the Union.”