By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday that President Joe Biden would not get a Supreme Court nominee confirmed in 2024 if Republicans regain control of the chamber and a vacancy arises during that presidential election year.
“It’s highly unlikely. In fact, no, I don’t think either party, if it were different from the president, would confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election,” McConnell told syndicated talk radio host Hugh Hewitt.
McConnell could return as majority leader if Republicans regain control of the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. McConnell, serving as majority leader, blocked Democratic former President Barack Obama from filling a vacancy left by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016, saying it would be improper to confirm a Supreme Court nominee during a presidential election year.
McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans refused to consider Obama’s nominee – Merrick Garland, who now serves as Biden’s attorney general – in a move with little precedent in U.S. history. That enabled Donald Trump, the winner of the November 2016 election, to appoint conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017.
Democrats accused McConnell of hypocrisy last year when he allowed the Senate to confirm Trump’s conservative Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September about six weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Trump, a Republican, was defeated by Biden, a Democrat, in the election and Democrats also took control of the Senate.
McConnell described his decision to keep Scalia’s seat open until after Trump was elected as “the single most consequential thing I’ve done in my time as majority leader of the Senate.” McConnell made confirmation of Trump’s conservative judicial nominees a high priority. Trump appointed three justices, also including Brett Kavanaugh, to the Supreme Court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority.
Democrats denounced McConnell’s comments, with some even using them to solicit campaign donations.
“Mitch McConnell is already foreshadowing that he’ll steal a 3rd Supreme Court seat if he gets the chance. He’s done it before, and he’ll do it again. We need to expand the Supreme Court,” Democratic Senator Ed Markey said on Twitter.
Some Democrats have proposed expanding the number of justices in order to end the Supreme Court’s conservative majority.
Some liberal activists have called on liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, at 82 the court’s oldest member, to retire now while the Senate remains in Democratic hands. Biden during the election campaign vowed to name a Black woman to the court, which would be a historic first.
The Senate was due later on Monday to vote on the confirmation of Washington-based U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to an influential federal appellate court. Jackson, among the most prominent Black women in the federal judiciary, is considered a potential Supreme Court pick for Biden.
The 100-seat Senate is currently split 50-50, with Democrats in control only because Vice President Kamala Harris wields a tie-breaking vote.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Will Dunham)
