Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday said late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s vacancy should not be filled until "we have a new president.”
Ginsburg, 87, died Friday from complications surrounding metastatic pancreatic cancer.
SUPREME COURT JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG DIES AT 87
“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice,” Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted Friday. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
Schumer’s tweet echoed the same sentiment of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in 2016 after late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed away. Republicans, though, have indicated they would push forward with a vacancy in an election year.
There was an active vacancy after the death of Scalia in 2016, but the next presidential term could be even more significant for Supreme Court nominations.
Ginsburg’s death leaves a vacancy; and several other justices are over 70, including Justice Stephen Breyer is 82; Clarence Thomas is 72; and Justice Samuel Alito is 70.
Schumer’s tweet comes after the president last week announced a list of more than 20 people he would consider nominating to the Supreme Court.
From the White House last week, Trump read off the list of names, which included Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky attorney general who recently spoke at the Republican National Convention, as well as Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri.
During the announcement, the president hit his Democratic rival Joe Biden for not releasing his own list of potential nominees, saying the decision was made because “they are so far left [they] could never withstand scrutiny.”
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The president, though, called on the former vice president to release a list of names, saying it is “very important that he do so” while warning of the consequences to the high court should Democrats win the presidency.
"Unfortunately, there is a growing radical left movement that rejects the principle of equal treatment under the law," he said. "If this extreme movement is granted a majority on the Supreme Court, it will fundamentally transform America without a single vote of Congress.”
Biden has yet to release a name of potential picks for the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Ginsburg, who passed away late Friday, was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, spent more than two decades on the bench, and is survived by her two children Jane Carol and James Steven Ginsburg.
Ginsburg battled two forms of cancer in the past, but her health began to take a downturn in December 2018 when she underwent a pulmonary lobectomy after two malignant nodules were discovered in the lower lobe of her left lung.
On Jan. 7, 2019, the Court announced she would miss oral arguments that day for the first time since she joined as she continued to recuperate from that surgery.
