Trump says he will announce his Supreme Court choice on Saturday.
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Version 0 of 1. President Trump will announce his Supreme Court nominee on Saturday, he wrote in a tweet on Tuesday morning. “I will be announcing my Supreme Court Nominee on Saturday, at the White House! Exact time TBA,” Mr. Trump wrote. Mr. Trump had said Monday that he would wait until after funeral services for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had ended before naming her replacement, but that it could come as soon as Friday. Even ahead of Mr. Trump’s announcement, Senator Mitch McConnell has started locking down Republican votes — all as Election Day looms in six weeks. The three Republican senators seen as possible holdouts in the push to quickly fill Justice Ginsburg’s seat, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Mitt Romney of Utah, all signaled they were unlikely to stand in the way of replacing her. But one of the thorniest questions is on timing. Mr. Trump himself declared that there was “a great deal of time before the election” before departing for a campaign trip to Ohio on Monday. But he notably deferred to Mr. McConnell about when any vote would be set. “Up to Mitch in the Senate,” he said. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump suggested he might favor an even faster process, retweeting a segment from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show in which the conservative host suggested “it would be great” if Republicans “skipped” committee hearings on the pick altogether. Republicans have watched as Democratic Senate candidates and incumbents have experienced a tremendous outpouring of donations in recent days. Pressing through a nominee in the lead-up to the election could even further inflame the Democratic grass-roots and put at risk Republican senators who will face voters in battleground states, including Mr. Gardner, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who is up for re-election this year, is one of two Republicans who have objected to a pre-election vote, leaving Mr. McConnell with limited room to maneuver. Waiting has severe risks, too, especially if Mr. Trump is defeated or Republicans cede their majority. But while the Supreme Court fight consumes Washington, the Democratic nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., made no reference to it in a speech in Wisconsin on Monday that he delivered while wearing a face mask. He addressed the deaths of nearly 200,000 Americans from the coronavirus. “I worry we’re risking becoming numb to the toll that it has taken on us and our country and communities like this,” he said. “We can’t let it happen.” |