Democrats and Republicans have begun a fierce battle over the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Following Ginsburg’s death, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said whichever candidate wins the November election should select her replacement.
“The voters should pick a president, and that president should select a successor to Justice Ginsburg,” the former vice president said in a statement.
Former President Barack Obama shared the same view, pointing to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blocking his nominee, Merrick Garland, in 2016.
Garland was nominated to replace Justice Antonin Scalia after he died.
Republicans said that they wouldn’t consider Obama’s nominee because they felt the vacancy should be filled by whomever won the 2016 election.
“President [Donald] Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate,” he said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) didn’t say when the vacancy should be filled. In a statement, she said Ginsberg’s successor should uphold “her commitment to equality, opportunity, and justice for all” to honor the late justice’s legacy.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Senate Democrats to use every possible procedural obstacle to stop the GOP’s efforts to replace Ginsburg.
“The Democrats who are in the Senate will have to use every single possible maneuver that is available to them to make it clear that they are not going to permit Mitch McConnell to enact the greatest travesty, a monument to hypocrisy that would arise from him attempting to fill this position,” she said during an interview with MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
Some Republicans rallied behind McConnell to push filling the Supreme Court vacancy before the Election Day.
“This U.S. Senate should vote on President Trump’s next nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court,” Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) wrote in a statement.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) warned that there will be a constitutional crisis if Republicans fail to do this.
“We cannot have Election Day come and go with a four-four court,” Cruz said during an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity. “A four-four court that is equally divided cannot decide anything. And I think we risk a constitutional crisis if we do not have a nine-justice Supreme Court, particularly when there is such a risk of a contested election.”
Trump hailed Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a “brilliant mind” in a statement Friday evening, praising her for demonstrating “that one can disagree without being disagreeable toward one’s colleagues of different points of view.”
He didn’t mention filling the vacancy in his statement.
The views of some key Republican players in this battle are still unclear.
Several top Republicans and some swing votes in the Senate, including Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), haven’t said whether they support replacing Ginsburg before the election.