Trump Tells Group He’s Decided on SCOTUS Nominee

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is another Republican who has supported abortion.

Hardiman has a personal connection to the president, having served with Trump’s sister on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

“I think that we probably have never seen an appointment process that will be as contentious as this one given the importance of Kennedy’s position on the court and the increasingly polarized state of the nation”, said George Washington University legal analyst Paul Schiff Berman via Skype.

Democrats are hoping to prevent Trump from tilting the court to the hard right by tapping an ultra-conservative to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, the tie-breaking vote between the liberals and conservatives on the nine-seat bench who retires at the end of July.

President Trump has completed the interview process for Supreme Court candidates after speaking with six judges, a source with knowledge of the selection process tells Fox News.

Democrats can not block Trump’s nominee without help.

The eventual nominee will only need 50 votes to be confirmed, thanks to rules adopted by Senate leadership in 2017.

Three Democratic senators voted for Gorsuch previous year: Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Collins also urged Trump to “broaden his list” of potential candidates, referring to the 25 potential picks he unveiled during his presidential campaign.

Their states’ conservative voters would be uncomfortable with a senator voting “no” based on abortion rights.

A late-June decision by the Iowa Supreme Court to strike down a required 72-hour waiting period before an abortion sparked outrage among Christian conservatives, a potent force in the Iowa GOP.

Trump is not naming names, but says he’ll decide by the weekend and announce his pick Monday night at 8PM CST. A vote against one of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees could add a lot more fuel to the fire.

“Yale seeks to create a vibrant and varied academic community where our students interact with people of different backgrounds and points of view”, Conroy told the Yale Daily News. “You’re going to have to do some outreach to people across the aisle if you’re going to have any chance of defeating anyone outside the judicial mainstream”. Larsen said she stepped aside even though she hadn’t asked to be on Trump’s list, had no prior notice that he had chosen her and had no contact with Trump or his campaign.

What will the post-Kennedy Supreme Court look like? It has 500 door-to-door canvassers on the ground in Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, and Florida, and it will soon expand to West Virginia and North Dakota – all states that Trump won and where Democrat senators are up for reelection. That list included two contenders from Alabama – Justices Kevin Newsom and William “Bill” Pryor of Alabama, both with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11 Circuit.

Mom-of-seven Judge Amy Coney Barrett, 46, a former Notre Dame law professor, became a right-wing heroine a year ago when she stood up to grilling from Senate Democrats over her religious faith.

Yet according to a poll by the health-oriented Kaiser Family Foundation, some two thirds of Americans don’t want Roe v. Wade reversed.

Democrats say that a Barrett nomination would simplify the task of opposition research.

One of them, Susan Collins, has already signaled the possibility she could oppose a conservative nominee.

Now, we are down to just a handful of names.

While final nominees will be known only when Mr. Trump makes the announcement, this would be for the second time that Mr. Thapar was not able to make the final cut after being interviewed by Mr. Trump.