WASHINGTON • US President Donald Trump has selected Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the favourite candidate of conservatives, to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and will try to force Senate confirmation before the Nov 3 election, in a move that would significantly alter the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court for years.
Mr Trump was due to announce his choice yesterday, according to six people close to the process who asked not to be identified.
They said Mr Trump is not known to have interviewed any other candidates and came away from two days of meetings with Judge Barrett last week impressed with a jurist he was told would be a female Antonin Scalia, referring to the justice she once clerked for.
"I haven't said it was her, but she is outstanding," Mr Trump told reporters who asked about Judge Barrett's imminent nomination at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington after CNN and other news outlets reported on his choice.
The President's political advisers hope the selection will energise his conservative political base in the thick of an election campaign in which he has for months been trailing former vice-president Joe Biden, his Democratic challenger.
But it could also rouse liberal voters afraid that her confirmation could spell the end of Roe vs Wade, the decision legalising abortion, as well as other rulings popular with the political left and centre.
The nomination will kick off an extraordinary scramble by Senate Republicans to confirm her for the court in the 38 days before the election on Nov 3, a scenario unlike any in American history.
While other justices have been approved in presidential election years, none has been voted on after July.
In picking Judge Barrett, a conservative and a hero to the anti-abortion movement, Mr Trump could hardly have found a more polar opposite to Judge Ginsburg, a pioneering champion of women's rights and leader of the liberal wing of the court. The appointment would also shift the centre of gravity on the bench considerably to the right, giving conservatives six of the nine seats and potentially insulating them even against defections by Chief Justice John Roberts, who on a handful of occasions has sided with liberal justices.
Mr Trump made clear this past week that he wanted to rush his nominee through the Senate by election day to ensure that he would have a decisive fifth justice on his side in case any disputes from the vote reached the high court, as he expected to happen. The President has repeatedly made claims that the Democrats are trying to steal the election and appears poised to challenge any result of the balloting that does not declare him the winner.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has enough votes to push through Judge Barrett's nomination if he can make the tight time frame work. Republicans are looking at holding hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the week of Oct 16 and a floor vote by late October.
If confirmed, Judge Barrett would become the 115th justice in the nation's history and the fifth woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court. At 48, she would be the youngest member of the current court as well its sixth Catholic.
And she would become Mr Trump's third appointee on the court, more than any other president has installed in a first term since Richard Nixon had four, joining Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
She has been a judge for only three years, appointed by Mr Trump to the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017. Her confirmation hearing produced fireworks when Democratic senators questioned her public statements and Catholicism. That made her an instant celebrity among religious conservatives, who saw her as a victim of bias on the basis of her faith.
Judge Barrett and her husband, Jesse Barrett, a former federal prosecutor, are reported to be members of a small and relatively obscure Christian group called the People of Praise. The couple have seven children, all under 20, including two adopted from Haiti and a young son with Down syndrome.
NYTIMES
