Kennedy is retiring. Who will Trump nominate to replace him? I’m thinking Milo Yiannopoulos.
I don’t think Congress will hold hearings, after all, we should wait until the next Presidential election to allow the voters to have their say. Right?
Apparently Kennedy is retiring in the next 5 days.
Or Joe Arpaio. Or Roy Moore. Or himself.
Michael Cohen. Rudy Giuliani. Jeanine Pirro. Andrew Napolitano. Legal All-Stars!
Hell, I think he’d nominate Ivanka, if he could.
Edit: damn, I blanked out on Roy Moore. Best answer yet.
My only question is do the Democrats try to fight this or just roll over and play dead. If would be nice if they were competent enough to be able to use this to motivate voters and help them take the Senate back but I very much doubt they will come up with an effective strategy to do so.
Will the threat of Roe, Obergefell and Lawrence v Texas being overturned get people to the polls or will American democracy just die a little more?
Pardon me while I do some somersaults.
I suspect the nominee will come from the list of names he recently updated. He followed through on that campaign promise the first time, and I suspect he will again.
Michael Cohen.
I expect the GOP to try to rush his replacement through before the midterms, even though there’s still a decent chance the Republicans hang on to a majority in that house.
Personally, I’m glad. I read an article a while back (~15 years ago) saying that Kennedy and O’Connor were messing up the court by forcing these super-narrow compromise decisions (like the current bigot cake shop vs gay couple one) rather than deal with the bigger issue. An analogy was made that had O’Connor and Kennedy been around during the Brown vs The Board of Education case, the decision would have been that only elementary schools in Topeka, Kansas only would have had to integrate. I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know how accurate that is, but it does seem to me that Kennedy has forced stupid compromises on the sort of fundamental issues that it’s the Supreme Court’s job to actually rule on.
He will offer Judge Judy but she says no because she makes $40 mil a year on TV.
Per the press release posting on the Supreme Court’s website his retirement is effective July 31.
Last time, three Democratic senators still voted for Gorsuch. Think it’s going to be unanimous against the Trump nominee this time?
Justice Sarah Palin!
Fight in what way? There’s nothing they can legally do to stop whoever Trump nominates. The best that the Democrats can hope for is that senators like Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins oppose the nominee if it turns out to be a whacko like Roy Moore.
ETA. I suppose there’s also the small hope that due to his incompetence that Trump picks the next David Souter, but that’s a very slim hope.
No doubt. Supreme picks is the bone he holds out to keep the establishment Rs on team He’ll definitely stick to the conservative favourites list so they don’t hassle him over starting trade wars with long time allies and other populist crap.
Rush? There’s no need to rush. According to Wikipedia:
Kennedy was confirmed 65 days after his nomination. Thomas was confirmed 99 days after his. For Ginsburg it was a mere 50 days. Breyer was 73. Roberts (a bit odd because it shifted from Associate to Chief Justice partway through) was 23 or 39 days. Hell, let’s add them together and call it 62 days. Alito was 82. Sotomayor was 66, Kagan was 87 and Gorsuch was 65.
The midterms are in 132 days. President Trump could spend an entire month contemplating who from his list he’d like to select and the Senate could give that person a longer nominating process than any of the currently-serving justices, and it could still all be wrapped up before the midterms.
You know all those times in prior threads when other posters mocked me for being so sure of a future Democratic Court-packing movement?
All of those calls are going to get fucking HUGE starting today.