President Donald Trump named Brett Kavanaugh as his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. The pick will fill the seat vacated by retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Trump made the announcement during a nationally televised speech Monday at 9 p.m. ET, CBS News reported, with Kavanaugh and the judge’s family by his side.
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Ahead of the announcement, three names surfaced as the contenders — Amy Coney Barrett, Kavanaugh and Raymond Kethledge. CBS News reported that Judge Thomas Hardiman, who was the runner-up to Neil Gorsuch, was also a finalist.
Hardiman, the first person in his family to go to college, earned his law degree at Georgetown University and has been a federal judge since 2007. The 53-year-old was born in Massachusetts, but started his career in Pittsburgh. He has a solid conservative voting record and supported gun rights in cases.
Barrett, 46, could become the court’s lone female conservative voice. The other female justices — Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — were all nominated by Democratic presidents and have liberal voting records. If Barrett is nominated, she could face a difficult confirmation process. During her confirmation hearings last year after she was nominated for U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, she was pressed about the impact her Catholic religious beliefs have on her decisions.
Kavanaugh, 53, has been a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit since 2006. He previously served as a clerk for Kennedy and worked for Ken Starr during Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton. More recently, Kavanaugh was a dissenting vote when the Court of Appeals upheld Obama net neutrality regulations. In December, the FCC repealed net neutrality.
The fourth and final top candidate was Kethledge, 51. Another former Kennedy clerk, Kethledge is known for his strong defense of the Second Amendment. He has also been described as an “originalist” or “textualist,” a judge who sticks with the Constitution as written.
Since this is Trump’s second Supreme Court justice, he will already have as many picks on the court as Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who all served two terms. Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to replace the late Antonin Scalia, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a vote on Garland’s nomination. This allowed Trump to nominate Gorsuch, who was approved by the Senate in April 2017.
One concern among Democrats is that the choice will give conservatives an unbeatable advantage in the Court for generations to come, since Supreme Court justices serve for life or until they chose to retire. Aside from Ginsberg, Sotomayor, Kagan and Gorsuch, the other justices on the court are conservatives John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas and liberal Stephen Breyer.
Liberals also fear that a new conservative justice will help overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which protects a woman’s right to an abortion. However, Trump told Fox Business Network he would “probably not” ask candidates specifically about the case.
“That’s a big one … and probably not,” Trump said. “They’re all saying, ‘Don’t do that — you shouldn’t do that,’ but I’m putting conservative people on (the court) and I’m very proud of Neil Gorsuch, who has been outstanding. His opinions are so well-written and so brilliant. I’m going to try and do something, but I don’t think I’ll be so specific.”
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