Republicans race to fill Ginsburg’s seat
What happened
Just days after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Trump prepared this week to announce his nominee for her seat and Republicans appeared to have lined up the votes needed for a speedy confirmation. Trump, who said he’d name his pick Saturday, pushed for a vote before Election Day, citing the possibility that a dispute over mail-in ballots might reach the Supreme Court. “We need nine justices,” he said. “You need that with the unsolicited, millions of ballots they’re sending.” Any doubts that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could get 51 votes to confirm Trump’s nominee ended when only two of the 53 Senate Republicans—Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—said they’d oppose a confirmation vote. Democrats had called on Republicans to honor the principle McConnell laid out in 2016, when he refused to hold hearings on Obama nominee Merrick Garland in an election year on the grounds that voters should decide which party got to fill the seat. Some Democrats spoke of ending the filibuster and expanding the court in retaliation should they win the Senate and presidency; Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said “nothing is off the table for next year” if Republicans rush through a nominee.
Trump met Monday and Tuesday with federal appeals court Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a favorite of religious conservatives who has emerged as the clear front-runner. Appeals court Judge Barbara Lagoa, a Cuban-American from swing state Florida, was also said to be under serious consideration. (See Talking Points.) Republicans said they expected to approve the nominee before the election.
Mourners honored Ginsburg, a liberal icon and pioneering women’s rights advocate who was scheduled to become the first woman in history to lie in state in the Capitol on Friday. (See Obituaries.) In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 62 percent of respondents said the seat should be filled by the president who takes office on Jan. 20. Republicans, however, have long dreamed of cementing a conservative majority on the nation’s highest court and overturning Roe v. Wade. “God created Republicans to do three things,” said Republican strategist Brad Todd. “Cut taxes, kill foreign enemies, and confirm right-facing judges.”
What the editorials said
Republicans won the right to fill Ginsburg’s seat when voters gave them control of both the Senate and the presidency, said National Review. “It would be perverse to give up the chance” to reverse the liberal activism through which the court has “strayed so far” from its proper constitutional role. In Roe v. Wade, the court overruled state laws and “trampled on the most fundamental of human rights,” without any constitu
What next?
This court fight “will test how fragile American democracy really is,” said John Harris in Politico.com. McConnell, who announced he’d fill Ginsburg’s seat 90 minutes after her death was announced, is waging a battle “exclusively about power, with no whisper of pretense that anything else matters.” America is bitterly divided and facing an election whose very legitimacy is likely to be questioned, and McConnell’s shameless power play may inflict “more trauma than an already splintering country can withstand.”
“Are you kidding me?” said John Podhoretz in Commentary Magazine.com. “This is maybe the most uncontroversial thing that has happened during the Trump presidency this entire year.” Both parties practice “power politics when it comes to the judiciary,” and “there’s one basic and unignorable fact here.” The Constitution spells out how this is supposed to work: “Trump nominates and the Senate advises and consents.” That’s exactly what the Republicans are doing.
Pack the court, said David Faris in NewRepublic.com. If the Democrats “win resoundingly” in November, they should end the filibuster and add four justices. Yes, it’s a “radical gambit,” but it’s “gloriously legal,” and “justified by the fact that America’s political institutions this century have consistently translated minority support for Republicans into political majorities.” Keep in mind that public support for the now-endangered Roe v. Wade is “at record highs,” said Christina Cauterucci in Slate.com. A June CBS poll showed that only 29 percent want it overturned.
With Senate control hanging in the balance in November, the court fight will certainly have an impact—but nobody’s sure exactly how, said Amber Phillips in WashingtonPost.com. Republicans who’ve been dragged down by sour views of Trump’s handling of the pandemic hope the court flap will change the subject, and remind anti-Trump Republicans what’s at stake. It “should juice our base,” said a Republican strategist. On the flip side, in purple states where Trump is unpopular, including Colorado and Maine, the issue could boost Democrats who’ve “spent months trying to tie GOP senators to the president.” That could doom Sens. Cory Gardner and Susan Collins. Democrats might benefit from “a surge of enthusiasm among progressives alarmed by the conservative hijacking of the court,” said Tom McCarthy in TheGuardian .com. But Trump and Republicans may also benefit from energizing evangelicals and conservative Catholics. It’s simply too early to tell “which way the politics will break.” tional justification. That overreach must be reeled back.
Republicans are making a naked “grab for partisan advantage” built on “contrived and hypocritical logic,” said The Washington Post. When Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, the election was 10 months away. Now the election is only six weeks away. By casting principle to the wind, McConnell and the Republicans stand to “undermine public confidence in the Supreme Court” and worsen “already toxic relations” on Capitol Hill.
What the columnists said
This won’t end well, said David French in TheDispatch.com. The bond Ginsburg shared with political adversary Scalia “reminds us of a time when deep friendship could flourish across profound disagreement.” But now “enmity rules,” and a polarized country faces “a cascading series of events that could strain the constitutional and cultural fabric of this nation.” Every American has to wonder: “How much more tension and division can this nation take?”
“Democrats often say they want to emulate Europe,” said The Wall Street Journal. “We can only hope this time they mean it.” Because while Covid-19 is again surging in Spain, France, Germany, and the U.K., these countries aren’t shutting down their economies. With death rates lower than in the spring and hospitals coping better, governments are “adopting narrow, local lockdowns” and trusting individuals to behave responsibly. We should aim to be “similarly adaptable in the face of an evolving pandemic.”
What the columnists said
The Trump administration is letting “politics distort science,” said Claudia Wallis in ScientificAmerican.com. Leaked emails have revealed how political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services have tried to slow the release of data that contradict Trump, including a negative report on hydroxychloroquine—the malaria drug the president touted as a Covid-19 therapy—and information on children spreading the virus. With scientific findings being run “through a political distortion field,” will the public be able to “trust federal assessments of coronavirus treatments and vaccines?”
Fear-mongering liberals are the real health threat, said Michael Brendan Dougherty in NationalReview.com. Democrats such as vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris are fueling distrust in a future vaccine by claiming that Trump is unsafely rushing the approval process. But “Trump is not a pharmaceutical manufacturer,” and he cannot stop “medical authorities from giving their opinion on it.” If and when a vaccine becomes available, it will be those authorities that are “demanding your trust.”
The U.S. is trapped in a pandemic “death spiral,” said Ed Yong in TheAtlantic.com. Flu season is approaching, which will make it harder to identify Covid-19 symptoms, and winter is not far away, which will pack people indoors. Our failure to build testing capacity and hire enough contact tracers means that many parts of the U.S. could see a repeat of the horror that New York City suffered this spring. Tragedy-numbed Americans might “stop treating the pandemic as the emergency that it is,” and instead accept thousands of daily deaths as “the unthinkable normal.”