President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday morning that he will announce a “truly great” Supreme Court pick next week to replace the late Antonin Scalia.
Trump’s nomination will be the culmination of a very risky political calculus set in motion last February by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who refused to hold a hearing on then-President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland.
Sen. McConnell said it was up to the “next president” to nominate Scalia’s replacement and seems to have suffered no political punishment at the ballot box for such a risky move.
In fact, it paid off and Republican President in Donald Trump told reporters today he will be making the ‘truly great’ pick “some time next week. I’ll be making my decision this week, we’ll be announcing next week.”
As LawNewz.com reported earlier today, several reports are now suggesting Judge Neil Gorsuch is Trump’s leading candidate to be the nominee.
Gorsuch, 49, is a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals where he was nominated by President George W. Bush in 2006. According to an academic paper called “Searching for Justice Scalia: Measuring the ‘Scalia-ness’ of the Next Potential Member of the U.S. Supreme Court, Gorsuch ranks pretty high in several categories including “originalism” which was one of Scalia’s core beliefs. Gorsuch earned his J.D. at Harvard Law School, and went on to study legal philosophy at Oxford University. He served as a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy from 1993–1994.
The other possible considers being reported are judges Bill Pryor, Diane Sykes, and Thomas Hardiman.
Rachel Stockman contributed to this report.
