NATION MOURNS By Emilie Munson
RUTH BADER GINSBURG
WASHINGTON — A key senator who will be involved in confirmation hearings, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., promised Saturday to “fight like hell” against confirming President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy before the November election.
But no matter the timing of the vote, Blumenthal said he would not support the potential nominees that Trump announced last week.
“There is no one on that list who I would support,” he said in an interview Saturday afternoon.
Blumenthal and other Senate Democrats are preparing for dogged confirmation fight as Republicans signal they will move quickly to replace the long
time, iconic Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday night at age 87. The Supreme Court battle infuses the 2020 election with another pivotal issue: the future of the nation’s highest court and an undoubtedly partisan pre-election struggle to shape it.
Trump suggested Saturday that he will move quickly to nominate a new justice and fill the vacant seat — possibly before the election. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Friday night, “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate,” declaring his intention to confirm a Trump’s pick for Supreme Court justice either prior to the election or in the weeks or months after — even if Trump loses in November.
If Republicans attempt to confirm a new justice in the next six weeks, it would controvert their insistence in 2016 that Supreme Court judges should not be confirmed close to a presidential election, when they blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for that reason.
“We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court justices,” Trump wrote Saturday. “We have this obligation, without delay.”
Timing of a confirmation vote is likely to hinge on the actions of a small group of Republicans, some of them facing re-election in 2020. In the past two years, a handful of Republican senators have said they would not support a confirmation vote within several months of an election, including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Graham, who will lead confirmation hearings for the nominee, changed his tune Saturday, saying on Twitter “I will support President (Trump) in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg.” Later Saturday, Collins said the winner of the presidential election should make the appointment.
A member of the Judiciary Committee, Blumenthal called
Graham’s comments “the height of hypocrisy” and said he has “no idea” what to expect from him in the coming weeks.
Senate Democrats held a call Saturday afternoon to discuss what to do. Blumenthal declined to share specifics about the call or Democrats’ strategy, but said “I’m certainly talking to my colleagues about how to stop a reckless and irresponsible effort to confirm a justice before the election when the American people can make their voice heard. We have been talking not only about our strategy, but also Justice Ginsburg’s legacy.”
Democrats are already warning their base that the addition of another conservative justice to the court — shifting its composition to six conservatives and three liberals — will threaten key decisions and legislation that Democrats support, including the landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade and the survival of the Affordable Care Act.
“If Republicans push through a Supreme Court nominee, within weeks the Affordable Care Act will be gone (a case is pending),” U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., wrote on Twitter Saturday. “20 million Americans will lose their health insurance and rates will skyrocket for anyone with a pre-existing condition. In a pandemic.”
Murphy said Friday night if Republicans reverse their 2016 precedent and confirm a nominee now the Senate “will be changed forever.”
McConnell argued Friday night that Republicans have the mandate to confirm a new judge — despite his previous views on the matter — because there is a Republican president and Senate majority.
“Since the 1880s no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year,” McConnell said. “By contrast, Americans re-elected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary. Once again, we will keep our promise.”
Bill Dunlap, law professor at Quinnipiac University, said in 2016, when McConnell blocked hearings on Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, Republicans never mentioned the difference in party between the Senate majority and the presidency as a justification.
“That’s irrelevant,” he said. “And also irrelevant is the time during the president’s term when the appointment is being made. The president has the authority to carry out his tasks from the moment he is inaugurated until another president is inaugurated, so the fact that the appointment comes late in the term should be irrelevant. I think it was irrelevant four years ago and I think on some level, I think it is irrelevant now. But it was the majority leader, it was the Republicans in the Senate, who appeared to institute this rule.”
Senate Democrats’ mission to torpedo another Republican appointment to the Supreme Court will first fall to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which hold hearings and the first vote on the confirmation of the nominee. Using procedural techniques and appeals to vulnerable Republicans, their strategy will undoubtedly be to delay, delay, delay — first to push a vote after Nov. 3, and then if former Vice President Joe Biden wins, to delay until after the inauguration, Dunlap said.
This Supreme Court confirmation fight will be the fourth participated in by Blumenthal, who has served in the Senate since 2011. It is likely to be the most bruising of them all.
In 2018, Blumenthal, Connecticut’s
former attorney general, helped lead the fierce Democratic opposition to the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. On the Judiciary Committee, Blumenthal used procedural tactics like moving to adjourn the hearings and demands for more documents detailing Kavanaugh’s past at the White House to try to block or slow-roll the proceedings.
Blumenthal was fore in the push for additional FBI investigations into the conduct of Kavanaugh, after a woman named Christine Blasey Ford publicly alleged that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school. Kavanaugh has denied any wrongdoing.
In hearings, Blumenthal attacked Kavanaugh’s credibility, sparred with him over abortion rights and presidential powers. He vowed to oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination before the hearings began and followed through on that.
After a rancorous battle, the Senate voted 50 to 48 to confirm Kavanaugh in October 2018, one of the closest confirmation votes in American history.
Blumenthal also opposed the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch, who Trump nominated to replace the late Justice Antonin
Scalia in 2017 after Republicans blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for the post the year prior.
Democrats filibustered Gorsuch’s nomination on the Senate floor under the previous 60-vote threshold. But Senate Republicans used a series of party line votes to change the standard a Supreme Court nomination, allowing them to approve Gorsuch with a simple majority.
That significant change was later critical to allowing Gorsuch to squeak through the Senate and will again be important in the confirmation fight to replace Ginsburg. It has created a new environment in which justices can be added to the Supreme Court for life without bipartisan approval.
In 2016, Senate Republicans opposed Garland who was nominated by Obama in March of 2016. They refused to hold Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the confirmation because it was too close to the presidential election, they said, and the people should get a chance to decide who the next justice would be with their vote for president.