WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is expected to name his pick Saturday night for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court, a move that could further shift the high court to the right and reshape American law on abortion, healthcare, religion and guns for a generation.
U.S. Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett has emerged as Trump’s leading candidate, with multiple Republican officials saying they are confident that she would be named. A vote could likely occur before the election.
The announcement comes just eight days after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had become a liberal icon in her decades on the bench, and 38 days before the presidential election. Voting has already begun in dozens of states.
Never before has a Supreme Court justice been nominated or confirmed so close to a presidential election.
If Trump succeeds in replacing Ginsburg with a conservative, the new justice will join five other Republican appointees, including two named by Trump.
Barrett, a 48-year-old former law clerk for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was a longtime law professor at the University of Notre Dame before Trump chose her for the circuit court in 2017. She was previously vetted for the vacant Supreme Court seat in 2018 that was filled instead by Brett M. Kavanaugh, causing Republicans to believe she can move quickly through the process.
Also in consideration is Barbara Lagoa, 52, a former federal prosecutor who was the first Cuban American to serve on the state Supreme Court in Florida and now sits on the 11th Circuit.
The Republican-controlled Senate is expected to waste no time in confirming Trump’s pick. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., pledged to hold a vote on the floor this year, and it is likely to occur before the Nov. 3 election.
“She will be judged on her own merits by the American people,” McConnell told Fox News this week. “I’m confident he’s going to make an outstanding nomination. The American people are going to take a look at this nominee and conclude, as we are likely to conclude, that she well deserves to be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is expected to announce the schedule for confirmation hearings after the announcement Saturday. They are expected to begin the week of Oct. 12. Senators will begin sitting down with the nominee for private one-on-one discussions this week. And some Senate Republicans are floating holding a vote Oct. 29.
Trump said this week that it’s important for the Senate to move quickly to install a ninth justice because the results of the 2020 election may be challenged in court. If a 4-4 split were to occur in the Supreme Court, the lower court ruling would stand.
Only two of 53 Republican Senators — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — have said they don’t think the Senate should vote on a Supreme Court nominee before election day, leaving McConnell with the simple majority needed to approve a justice without Democratic support.
Moving on the nomination before the election avoids potential risks of a confirmation in the lame duck period before the president is sworn in, such as losing a Republican seat in the Arizona special election. Under Arizona law, the winner can be sworn in before the next Congress starts, narrowing Republican’s majority.
Ginsburg dictated a statement to her granddaughter in the days before her death that it was “my most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
Democrats have lambasted what they call a rush to fill the seat, especially after Senate Republicans blocked President Barack Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, from having a hearing or a vote when he was nominated in February 2016 because it was an election year.
“The American people deserve a voice in such a momentous decision,” McConnell said then. McConnell has said the 2020 situation is different regardless of proximity to the election because the Senate and the White House are controlled by the same party.
Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., called it a “blatant power grab” meant to subvert the will of voters.
“Just four years ago, Leader McConnell held open a Supreme Court seat for ten months before a presidential election because he said time and again that, in an election year, we must let the American people decide. If confirming a Supreme Court justice ten months prior to a presidential election would have denied the American people a voice, then isn’t he now denying the American people a voice by rushing to confirm a justice just weeks before a presidential election?” Jones said in a statement.
Democrats are expected to use a series of procedural tactics to draw out the confirmation process, and keep vulnerable Republican senators in Washington in the weeks before the election, but barring a disqualifying surprise that causes two more Republicans to defect there is little Democrats can do to stop a confirmation. McConnell eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in 2017, which means it takes only 51 senators to secure a lifetime appointment to the bench.
Democrats had considered boycotting the confirmation hearings in a show of defiance, although that appears unlikely.
“I’m going to do that which will tell the public what this person is going to do — that’s strike down the Affordable Care Act and No. 2 is to go after Roe v. Wade,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii. “I think it’s very important for the American people to know that the next nominee will have those positions, even if they will do everything to say ‘no, no, no.’”
Polls in recent days show Americans of all political persuasions prefer to have the winner of the election fill the seat.
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(Los Angeles Times staff writers Jennifer Haberkorn and Noah Bierman contributed to this article.)
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