Trump says he’ll fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat “immediately”

President Donald Trump vowed in a tweet Saturday morning to interchange Supreme Courtroom Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday, “immediately.”

“We have been put on this place of energy and significance to make selections for the individuals who so proudly elected us, an important of which has lengthy been thought of to be the choice of United States Supreme Courtroom Justices,” Trump tweeted. “We’ve got this obligation, immediately!”

Ginsburg’s demise offers Trump the chance to cement a six-justice conservative majority on the Supreme Courtroom, a legacy that may far outlast one or two phrases in workplace. Senate Majority Chief Mitch McConnell — who refused to carry a vote on a justice to interchange Antonin Scalia after Scalia’s demise in an election yr — has already given his assurance that Trump’s nominee will get a vote.

Ginsburg’s dying want, as instructed to her granddaughter, was that “I cannot get replaced till a brand new president is put in.” However Trump and Senate Republicans are seemingly decided to push forward.

The query is whether or not Trump will in a position to get a justice confirmed if he loses the presidency or management of the Senate on Election Day. And this query has many Republican lawmakers urgent the president to pick a brand new justice shortly.

To cease a justice from being confirmed, Senate Democrats would want 4 Republicans to hitch them in blocking a nominee. And it’s removed from sure they’ll be capable to do this, as Vox’s Andrew Prokop writes. Whereas some Republican senators, together with Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME), are on file as opposing a vote on a hypothetical Supreme Courtroom nominee simply earlier than an election, it’s not clear if there are sufficient of those senators to truly stop a affirmation:

Just a few GOP senators are on the file saying they’d oppose filling a Supreme Courtroom emptiness this yr. (The query has usually been posed given McConnell’s refusal to carry a vote to interchange Justice Antonin Scalia after he died in 2016, whereas Barack Obama was nonetheless president.) However, in fact, these assurances got when the query was hypothetical, and it’s removed from clear whether or not these senators will keep on with them within the face of what’s sure to be intense strain from the fitting.

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