As expected, President Trump is nominating Conservation Amy Coney Barrett as a nominee judge to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Amy Coney Barrett is 48 years old and was also shortlisted in 2018 with possible replacements for Chief Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired. In the end, Trump chose to push Brett Kavanaugh forward.
Barrett is a devout Catholic, mother of seven children, two of whom are adopted. She has served as a judge at the court of appeal since 2017. She is an attractive candidate for Republicans because she is a fierce opponent of abortion, and because of previous rulings on gun ownership and immigration.
Trump called Barrett “a woman who has accomplished an incredible amount, with great intelligence, excellent credentials and an unyielding loyalty to the Constitution.” She will become the fifth woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court.
Senate votes
With Coney Barrett officially nominated by the president, her nomination has yet to be approved in the Senate. But it is almost certain that she will succeed the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Democrats cannot stop the vote.
Last week, prominent Trump critic Mitt Romney confirmed that he is behind the party’s stance to fill the vacancy in the Supreme Court as soon as possible. This leaves only two Republican ‘dissidents’ who find such a procedure indecent in a hurry so shortly before the elections. That guarantees Republicans that they will have at least 50 or 51 seats out of 100. So if things go fast, the nomination could be finalized before the presidential election on November 3.
Trump’s conservative legacy
President Trump has made the nomination an election theme. By nominating a conservative woman, he can lure back conservative female voters from America’s suburbs, who have turned their backs on Republicans in recent years out of displeasure with Trump.
A formidable conservative legacy now also beckons Trump. After Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, Trump gets a third Conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice during his first term, giving the Conservatives a solid six-to-three advantage. For fifty years, Republicans have dreamed of such a comfortable majority, which may survive a generation because Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are in their 50s and Barrett is only 48 years old.
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