The Senate’s top Democrat tried Monday to rally public opposition to any Supreme Court pick by President Donald Trump if they’re pro-life, issuing a striking campaign season call to action for voters to prevent such a nominee by putting “pressure on the Senate.”
With Trump saying he’ll pick from a list of 25 potential nominees he’s compiled with guidance from conservatives, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has already begun to obstruct the president.
And he wants help from Republican voters.
Schumer said that while Democrats don’t control the Senate — Republicans have a 51-49 edge — most senators back abortion rights. In an unusually direct appeal to voters, he said that to block “an ideological nominee,” people should “tell your senators” to oppose anyone from Trump’s list.
“It will not happen on its own,” the New Yorker wrote in an opinion column in Monday’s New York Times. “It requires the public’s focus on these issues, and its pressure on the Senate.”
Trump has said he is focusing on up to seven potential candidates, including two women, to fill the vacancy of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote on the nine-member court. He’s said he’ll announce his pick July 9.
Schumer’s column appeared a day after Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, said she would oppose any nominee she believed would overturn Roe v. Wade. Collins said she would only back a judge who would show respect for settled law such as the Roe decision, which has long been anathema to conservatives.
“I would not support a nominee who demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade because that would mean to me that their judicial philosophy did not include a respect for established decisions, established law,” Collins said.
Such a judge, she said, “would not be acceptable to me because that would indicate an activist agenda.”
Trump spent the weekend conferring with his advisers, including White House counsel Don McGahn, as he considers his options to fill the vacancy that might make precedent-shattering court decisions on abortion, health care, gay marriage and other issues.
McGahn will lead the overall selection and confirmation process, the White House said Monday. He played the same role in the successful confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch last year.
The White House said it is putting together a team for the confirmation process. Spokesman Raj Shah will take leave from his role in the press office to work full time on “communications, strategy and messaging coordination with Capitol Hill allies.” And Justin Clark, the director of the Office of Public Liaison, will oversee White House coordination with outside groups.
Trump was beginning his search in earnest this week at the White House and said the process could include interviews at his golf club before he reaches a final decision following the Fourth of July holiday.
During his 2016 campaign and presidency, Trump embraced pro-life groups and vowed to appoint federal judges who will favor efforts to roll back protections for abortions.
But he told reporters on Friday that he would not question potential high-court nominees about their views on abortion, saying it was “inappropriate to discuss.”
Without Kennedy, the high court will have four justices picked by Democratic presidents and four picked by Republicans, giving Trump the chance to shift the ideological balance toward conservatives for years to come. Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Gorsuch, Trump’s first pick to the high court, have indicated more broadly that they respect legal precedent.
On Sunday, Leonard Leo, an outside adviser to Trump on judicial nominations, said he expected Trump to select a nominee who is mindful of precedent but who is also more “originalist and textualist.” That judicial approach typically involves a more literal interpretation of the Constitution, and not reading into the Constitution language that doesn’t explicitly appear. Roe, for instance, relied on a right to privacy, which is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.
Possible nominees being eyed include Thomas Hardiman, who serves alongside Trump’s sister on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Raymond Kethledge, a federal appeals court judge who clerked for Kennedy.
Also of interest are Amul Thapar, who serves on the federal appeals court in Cincinnati; Brett Kavanaugh, a former clerk for Kennedy who serves on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.; and Amy Coney Barrett, who serves on the federal appeals court in Chicago.
The Associated Press contributed to this article