Supreme Court nominee to be announced by President Trump on Tuesday
President Donald Trump will make his national prime-time address to the nation on Tuesday (the announcement is being moved up from Thursday) night. He will use the bright lights of the White House to announce his Supreme Court nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. But before President Trump announces his choice the Democrats in the Senate are saying no matter who he nominates they will block the candidate on principle.
Democrats, had to sit on the sidelines for eight months and watch as former President Barack Obama’s choice for the opening, Judge Merrick Garland was denied even a single interview by the GOP controlled senate. Garland went nearly a year without being interviewed, prompting many Democrats, to say that the Republicans have “hijacked the high court opening.”
Don’t think that President Trump is not going to fight. The Republican Senate Leadership Committee is poised to spend at least $10 million in ads backing the nominee — much of it directed at Senate Democrats up for election in 2018 in states carried by the president.
So, who is the person that President Trump wants to be his Supreme Court nominee?
The smart money is on one of these four candidates. Two federal judges — Neil Gorsuch, of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, and Thomas Hardiman, of the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia — are frontrunners for the nomination, according to CBS News. “Gorsuch has a slight edge,” CBS claims. Other outlets, such as Bloomberg and the Washington Post, lengthen Trump’s reported shortlist a bit to also include William Pryor and Raymond Kethledge, federal judges on the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit and Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit, respectively.
All four men were appointed to their current judgeships by George W. Bush. All four are conservative enough to make the base happy, at least till they make their first decision.
The nomination of Gorsuch, Pryor or Kethledge would probably lead to the addition of a solid, reliably conservative voice and vote on the court, Gorsuch and Kethledge may be somewhat more so. None of the rumored justices, however, would likely be to the right of the court’s most conservative voice, Justice Clarence Thomas.
Video used in this story from CBS News.
