President Donald Trump said on Saturday he will nominate a woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, a move that would tip the court further to the right following the death of liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“I will be putting forth a nominee next week. It will be a woman,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. “I think it should be a woman because I actually like women much more than men.”
As Trump spoke, supporters chanted: “Fill that seat.”
He praised Ginsburg as a “legal giant … Her landmark rulings, fierce devotion to justice and her courageous battle against cancer inspire all Americans.”
Earlier, he praised two women as possible replacements: conservatives he elevated to federal appeals courts.
Trump named Amy Coney Barrett of the Chicago-based 7th Circuit and Barbara Lagoa of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit as possible nominees for a lifetime appointment to the highest U.S. court. It would be his third appointment during his first term.
Trump said it was his constitutional right to appoint a successor for Ginsburg, and he would do so, citing similar moves by presidents dating back to George Washington. “We have plenty of time. You’re talking about Jan. 20,” Trump said, referring to the date of the next inauguration.
Ginsburg’s death on Friday from cancer after 27 years on the court handed Trump, who is seeking re-election on Nov. 3, the opportunity to expand its conservative majority to 6-3 at a time of a gaping political divide in America.
Any nomination would require approval by a simple majority in the Senate, where Trump’s Republicans hold a 53-47 majority.
Democrats are still seething over the Republican Senate’s refusal in 2016 to act on Democratic President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland to replace conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died 10 months before that election.
At the time, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate should not act on a nominee during an election year, but he and other top Republican senators have reversed that stance.
Even if Democrats win the White House and a Senate majority in the November election, Trump and McConnell might be able to push through their choice before the new president and Congress are sworn in on Jan. 20.
Obama on Saturday called on Senate Republicans to honor what he called McConnell’s “invented” 2016 principle.
“A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment,” Obama said in a statement posted online.
Even before Ginsburg’s death, Trump had released a list of potential nominees.
Barrett has generated perhaps the most interest in conservative circles. A devout Roman Catholic, she was a legal scholar at Notre Dame Law School in Indiana before Trump appointed her to the 7th Circuit in 2017. Abortion-rights groups have pointed to Barrett’s conservative religious views and said that as a judge, she would likely vote to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, a longtime goal of conservative activists. Even with the current conservative majority, the court voted 5-4 in July to strike down a restrictive Louisiana abortion law.
Trump has already appointed two justices: Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. Kavanaugh was narrowly confirmed after a heated confirmation process in which he angrily denied accusations by a California university professor, Christine Blasey Ford, that he had sexually assaulted her in 1982 when the two were high school students in Maryland.
