Washington, DC – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the following statement on President Donald Trump’s selection of a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just weeks before the November 3 Election:
“It doesn’t matter who the nominee is; it matters who’s behind this pick. The American people overwhelmingly want the president sworn in in January to replace Justice Ginsburg. We do not know who that president will be. Justice Ginsburg hasn’t even been buried. Why would Mitch McConnell and Republicans rush to jam Trump’s pick through the Senate in the midst of a pandemic, having failed to pass a COVID relief bill and while health care for millions of Americans is at stake before the Court, and all with votes for president already being cast?
“The answer is the special interests out to capture our courts. We know that a small group of big donor interests wield an enormous apparatus to control every bit of the selection, confirmation, and rulings of President Trump’s court picks. We know that apparatus was ‘in-sourced’ to the White House to guide Trump’s judicial selection, and that every candidate on Trump’s shortlist comes with big Republican donors’ seal of approval. We know the apparatus spends hundreds of millions in dark money to prop up those picks and then lobby them when they take the bench. The right-wing court-capture machine wants nothing more than another life-tenured Justice on the highest court in the land.
“The stakes of this fight are enormous. The special interest donors only care about their own agenda. Why else would they pick a replacement for Justice Ginsburg who wants to tear down the Affordable Care Act and its protections for Americans with preexisting conditions in the midst of a pandemic?
“My Republican colleagues must remember that the legitimacy of the Senate and our judiciary are on the line. They ought to think twice about forcing this nomination through.”
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