SCOTUS: What If The Worst Happens?

Pray RBG outlives McConnell and Trump

I often talk about how I went to the same high school as Bernie-- James Madison in Brooklyn. Bernie graduated in 1959, a couple of years before I started. And a few years before Bernie started, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a student there. I was just 2 years old when RBG graduated from Madison but somehow the school seems more worthwhile because she was a student there. (Carole King too.)

RBG, one of the most admired women in America, was born in 1933. She'll turn 88 next March 15th. Unless Mitch McConnell's and John Thune's and their Senate cronies' Satanic prayers are answered. CNN reported that the Senate Republicans are sitting around hoping they can fill another Supreme Court seat before they are swept out of power in November, even talking about confirming a neo-fascist between November, when they are defeated at the ballot box, and January when the new Senate is sworn in!

CNN's Ted Barrett and Manu Raju: "Senate Republican leaders, undeterred by the scathing criticism leveled against them for blocking President Barack Obama's election-year Supreme Court nominee in 2016, are signaling that they are prepared to confirm a nominee by President Donald Trump even if that vacancy occurred after this year's election. The push comes despite ample apprehension from influential Republicans that the GOP could pay a political price for treating a nominee under Trump differently than they did under Obama. It also comes as Democrats are increasingly worried about the fragile health of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the 87-year-old liberal jurist who recently made public a new bout with cancer, and the possibility of other retirements. 'We will,' said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Republican leader, when asked if the Senate would fill a vacancy, even during the lame-duck session after the presidential election. 'That would be part of this year. We would move on it.'" Thune is not up for reelection this year. But McConnell is... and so is Senate Judiciary Committee chair Lindsey Graham.

[T]he veteran Iowa Republican who chaired the Judiciary Committee in 2016 and helped block Judge Merrick Garland-- Obama's nominee -- by refusing to schedule election-year confirmation hearings, said he would not fill a fill a vacancy now for the same reason.

"My position is if I were chairman of the committee I couldn't move forward with it," Sen. Chuck Grassley told CNN.

The current Judiciary Committee chair, Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has professed differing views about whether he would try to confirm a nominee during the last year of Trump's term.

Asked about his past opposition to moving a nominee in a presidential election year after the primary season, Graham said: "After Kavanaugh, I have a different view of judges," referencing the brutal 2018 confirmation process of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

"I'd like to fill a vacancy. But we'd have to see. I don't know how practical that would be," Graham told CNN Monday. "Let's see what the market would bear."

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who's a member of the Judiciary Committee, said that if a vacancy were to occur, he would like to get a nominee confirmed before the court's term begins in October.

Hawley said he would be "shocked" if Trump didn't try to fill a vacancy despite GOP arguments in 2016 that voters should decide which president selects a nominee during an election year.

Hawley said the difference between then and now is that Obama couldn't run again but Trump is on the ballot trying to win a second term.

"I think we have a different set of circumstances. We have a President who is very actively running for reelection," Hawley said. "He's going to be on the ballot. People are going to be able to render a verdict on him like they couldn't on Obama. My guess is he would absolutely nominate somebody. I would be shocked if he didn't."

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who is running for reelection, told Iowa PBS last week she supports confirming a potential nominee this year, according to the Des Moines Register.

"(If) it is a lame-duck session, I would support going ahead with any hearings that we might have," she said. "And if it comes to an appointment prior to the end of the year, I would be supportive of that."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has repeatedly vowed to fill a vacancy this year and has said the difference between now and 2016 is that by the time Obama, a Democrat, nominated Garland to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Republicans controlled the Senate. Right now, Republicans control both the White House and the Senate.

A vacancy could put some GOP senators in a tough spot. Asked if he supported filling a vacancy this year, Sen. Thom Tillis, a vulnerable Republican running for reelection in North Carolina, said, "I am praying for Justice Ginsburg's health. That's all I'm really focused on right now."

Asked about filling a vacancy caused by retirement, not death, he downplayed the likelihood that would happen.

"I don't think there are many indications that there are. Normally those moves are made back in June over the session. I don't see any real possibility that there will be one," Tillis said.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee include-- besides Graham, Grassley, Ernst and Tillis-- John Cornyn (TX), Mike Lee (UT), Ted Cruz (TX), Ben Sasse (NE), Josh Hawley (MO), Mike Crapo (ID), John Kennedy (LA) and crackpot neo-fascist Marsha Blackburn (TN). Instead of plotting to replace RBG, maybe they should be considering why Trump has set a pack of extrajudicial facsist goons loose on Portland and is threatening to do the same thing in Chicago and Detroit.

Or, in the words of David Graham (at The Atlantic): America Gets an Interior Ministry. "For decades, conservative activists and leaders have warned that 'jackbooted thugs' from the federal government were going to come to take away Americans’ civil rights with no due process and no recourse. Now they’re here-- but they’re deployed by a staunchly right-wing president with strong conservative support. In Portland, Oregon, federal agents in military fatigues have for several days been patrolling the streets amid ongoing protests about police brutality. These forces, employed by the Department of Homeland Security, have snatched people off the streets of the city, refused to identify themselves, and detained people without charges. Ostensibly, they are present to protect federal buildings from protesters. In practice, they seem to be acting on a much wider mandate, either to suppress protests or (more cynically) to provoke confrontation on behalf of a flailing White House that sees it as electorally beneficial." What can citizens do? Vote to defeat every single politician who doesn't speak out forcefully against this, on every single ballot, in every single constituency.