In about face, GOP presses for quick vote

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pressed Senate Republicans on Saturday to confirm his choice to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “without delay,” setting up a momentous battle sure to inflame the campaign as he seeks to force through an appointment in the weeks before the election Nov. 3.

Trump said he expected to announce his nomination in the coming week and told a campaign rally that it “will be a woman,” gambling that he can scramble the dynamics of a campaign in which he is currently trailing and at the same time seal his legacy by cementing a conservative majority on the Supreme Court with his third appointment in four years.

The president did not name his finalists, but in a telephone conversation Friday night with Sen. Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., the majority leader, according to two people familiar with the call, Trump identified two women as candidates: Judges Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago and Barbara Lagoa of the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.

Trump offered praise for both judges when reporters asked about them Saturday afternoon before he flew to North Carolina for his rally. He called Barrett, who was a finalist for the last opening two years ago, “very highly respected” and said that while he did not know Lagoa, he had heard “incredible things” about her, noting that she is Latina and from Miami, in the battleground state of Florida.

The president rejected suggestions that he should wait to let the winner of the Nov. 3 contest fill the vacancy, much as Mcconnell insisted four years ago in blocking President Barack Obama from filling an election-year vacancy on the court.

It was not clear, however, whether Mcconnell has the votes to push through a nomination by Nov. 3. In a message posted on Twitter on Saturday morning, the president called on Republican senators to act “without delay,” but in speaking with reporters he did not seem certain that it would happen before the election. “I would think before would be very good, but we’ll be making a decision,” he said. “I think the process could go very, very fast.”

The White House has been working since spring on a plan to replace Ginsburg if the opportunity arose. The front-runner appeared to be Barrett, a favorite of anti-abortion conservatives, and Trump reportedly told confidants in 2018 that he was “saving her for Ginsburg.”

But as he indicated, he sees a nomination of Lagoa as a way to appeal to Hispanic voters, especially in Florida.

Mcconnell moved to stave off defections by sending a letter late Friday to Republican senators urging them to “keep your powder dry” and not “prematurely lock yourselves into a position you may later regret.” At least two Republicans have said they oppose jamming through a nominee so close to a presidential election, meaning Mcconnell, with a 53-47 majority and Vice President Mike Pence as a tiebreaker, could afford to lose only one more.

Some Republican strategists said it would make more sense for the president to name a choice right away and proceed with hearings but to wait for a Senate vote until after Nov. 3 to give Republicans who have soured on Trump because of the coronavirus pandemic or other reasons an incentive to turn out to vote.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the most endangered Republican up for election this year, said in a statement Saturday that the Senate could begin considering a nomination but should not vote before the election.

“In fairness to the American people, who will either be reelecting the president or selecting a new one, the decision on a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court should be made by the president who is elected on Nov. 3,” she said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-alaska, concurred in an interview Friday shortly before news of Ginsburg’s death. On Sunday, she said in a statement that “for weeks, I have stated that I would not support taking up” a potential nomination as the presidential election neared.

“Sadly, what was then a hypothetical is now our reality, but my position has not changed.”

Focus is growing on Sen. Mitt Romney, R-utah, who has broken with Trump before. And 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 defeats Republican appointee Martha Mcsally. Kelly would be sworn in probably by late November, meaning McConnell would have only 52 Republican senators at that point.

But other Republicans backed an early vote, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Senate Judiciary Committee chair who had previously promised not to support confirmation of a Trump nominee in a presidential election year but flip-flopped Saturday to support the president’s effort to install his choice in the midst of a campaign.

Also flip-flopping, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas agitated for quick action, arguing that a potentially messy pandemic election with the president already challenging the legitimacy of mailin voting could wind up at the Supreme Court much as the 2000 election did.

A short-handed eight-member court could deadlock at 4-4 if Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the three remaining liberals, as he has on a few occasions. “We risk a constitutional crisis if we do not have a nine-justice Supreme Court, particularly when there is such a risk of a contested election,” Cruz said Friday night on Fox News.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, 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. 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.

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.

The most recent case of a vacancy at the Supreme Court occurring so close to a presidential election came when Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, which came 269 days before the election. Mcconnell blocked President Barack Obama from filling the seat with his nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, arguing that it was too close to the election.

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice,” Mcconnell said in a statement released after Scalia’s death. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

Mcconnell later amended his rationale, saying it was not just proximity to the election that justified blocking a nominee but the fact that the president and the Senate majority at the time were held by opposite parties.

Democrats led by former Vice President Joe Biden, their presidential nominee, demanded that Republicans respect the precedent they set of not acting so close to a presidential election — in this case much closer — and threw Mcconnell’s words back at him.

As they assessed the political implications, Republican strategists said they also believed that the Supreme Court showdown could benefit their fight to hold the Senate majority since the decisive races are being waged in states that Trump is likely to carry, including Iowa, Georgia and Montana.

But it could present challenges for others facing tough races, like Collins, Graham, Mcsally and Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Graham once agreed with Collins but reversed himself Saturday. In 2016, as he helped block consideration of Obama’s choice, Graham said he would do the same if a Republican president had a vacancy in the last year of his first term, “and you could use my words against me and you’d be absolutely right.” In 2018, he reaffirmed that, saying that “we’ll wait to the next election” if an opening occurred in the last year of Trump’s term.

On Saturday, however, Graham said he had changed positions for two reasons: because Democrats eliminated the filibuster for circuit court appointments — something they actually did in 2013, three years before making his pledge — and because Democrats “conspired to destroy the life of Brett Kavanaugh” when he was appointed to the Supreme Court two years ago.

“In light of these two events, I will support President @realdonaldtrump in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg,” Graham wrote on Twitter.

Other Republicans were not quite as definitive. Loeffler said Trump “has every right to pick a new justice before the election” but did not say whether the Senate should vote by then. Mcsally said, “This U.S. Senate should vote on President Trump’s next nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court,” but did not commit to timing. Likewise, Tillis said that he “will support” whoever Trump nominates without saying when a vote should happen.

Information from the Associated Press was included in this story.