Trump Announces Potential SCOTUS Nominees
Image courtesy of CBS News
By Eva Lynch
President Donald Trump gave an impassioned speech on Wednesday, Sept. 9, regarding the significance of the president’s job to nominate Supreme Court Justices, during which he revealed a comprehensive list of potential nominees should he be reelected.
During his first term, Trump has had the opportunity to appoint over 200 federal judges, including two Supreme Court Justices, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, whom he praised during Wednesday’s speech as “very spectacular” and “outstanding,” respectively.
The list that was released included 20 names, the more controversial of which included Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO.).
Senator Hawley declined the job in a Tweet following Trump’s remarks.
“I appreciate the President’s confidence in listing me as a potential Supreme Court nominee. But as I told the President, Missourians elected me to fight for them in the Senate, and I have no interest in the high court,” the Tweet read.
In his own Tweet minutes after Trump’s announcement, Senator Cotton made his priorities clear should he be appointed and incited extreme reactions from both sides of the coin: “It’s time for Roe v. Wade to go.”
Senator Cruz also responded via a statement released on Wednesday.
“I am grateful for the president’s confidence in me and for his leadership in nominating principled constitutionalists to the federal bench over the last four years,” Cruz said. “As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I’ve been proud to help confirm to the bench over 200 of President Trump’s judicial nominees, including two to the Supreme Court. It’s humbling and an immense honor to be considered for the Supreme Court.”
Cruz added that it is not his “desire” to serve on the Supreme Court and would decline the nomination should it come to fruition.
It is unknown and not easy to predict how many justice seats will be vacated during the next presidential term, though there are two justices over the age of 80 and four total over the age of 70. Regardless of the finite number, it is clear that the issue of Supreme Court nominations is one to consider during this election cycle. Trump released a similar list during his 2016 campaign, when the late Chief Justice Antonin Scalia’s replacement was a divisive issue, and enticed voters with an all-white, mostly-male list of nominees. Voters are enticed by a completely different composition this time around, though the intention behind this more diverse list has been widely contended. CNN legal analyst and Supreme Court biographer Joan Biskupic calls it a “bluntly political move designed to keep conservatives from abandoning him.” Further, many have pointed out that Kavanaugh, arguably the more controversial of Trump’s two appointees, was not included on Trump’s original list of nominees in 2016, which certainly shows voters may not actually get who they signed up for.
Beyond releasing his list of nominees, Trump’s speech served as yet another harrowing prognosis of “Joe Biden’s America,” in which a Democrat-majority Supreme Court “will fundamentally transform America without a single vote of Congress.”
Following his personal prediction that the next president will be tasked with nominating up to four Supreme Court justices, Trump labeled Biden’s decline to release a similar list a concession that those he would nominate “are so extremely far left that they could never withstand public scrutiny or receive acceptance.”
Apart from his promise to nominate a Black woman to the court, former Vice President and Democratic nominee Joe Biden has not released a list of potential nominees, though one is expected soon in light of Trump’s pressurizing announcement. Biden has not commented in reaction to the list.
