GOP has signaled plans for a quick Supreme Court confirmation process

GOP: President Donald Trump announced a Supreme Court nominee to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Ginsburg, formally kicking off a contentious and high-stakes battle over the fate of the court that will play out in a bitterly-divided Senate. Senate Republicans, who have the majority in the upper chamber, have signaled plans to quickly move to take up the nomination in the midst of an election season where control of the White House and Congress are on the line, setting the stage for the possibility of a final confirmation vote before Election Day on November 3rd 2020. That timeline would leave no room for error and only a little more than a month for the Senate to complete the confirmation process.

In contrast, a Senate Republican Judiciary Committee memo from 2005 shows preparations for a far lengthier timeline of between 10 to 12 weeks from the Senate’s receipt of a nomination to final confirmation. That is consistent with the typical timeframe of roughly two to three months for Senate confirmation of a Supreme Court nominee. A push to confirm a high court justice with only 38 days until a presidential election would put the Senate on track for one of the quickest confirmations in modern history.

No Supreme Court nominee has ever been confirmed after the month of July during a presidential election year. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated that Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is facing a competitive reelection fight, will outline how the committee will handle the nomination. Graham has said that the committee plans to hold three days of hearings for the Supreme Court nominee in October 2020.

Both the White House and Graham are targeting the week of October 12th 2020 for the nominee’s confirmation hearing.

That would allow for a confirmation vote by October 29th 2020, hitting a pre-election timeline that the White House and congressional Republicans are increasingly coalescing behind. The stakes in the current Supreme Court fight are immense and come at a pivotal time in American politics. Trump’s ability to appoint a new justice to the court would mark the third of his tenure in office and would create the opportunity to push the court in an even more conservative direction for decades to come.

Democrats, in the minority in the Senate, have few options at their disposal to push back, but are nevertheless gearing up for a fight and the drive to install a new justice is sure to create an intense liberal backlash, which could have dramatic implications for the fight for Congress and the White House. Judge Amy Barrett, a federal appellate judge and Notre Dame law professor, was nominated by Trump as a Supreme Court justice in a ceremony at the White House Rose Garden. Until a nominee has a chance to be vetted by the Senate, it is impossible to predict precisely how the timeline will unfold and whether there will be any delays to the process along the way.

But if GOP wants to install a new justice on the court before the election, they will have to work very quickly over a matter of weeks, not months. A recently updated report from the Congressional Research Service states that on average, for Supreme Court nominees who have received hearings from 1975 to the present, the nominee’s first hearing occurred 43 days after his or her nomination was formally submitted to the Senate by the President. If hearings begin in the Senate the week of October 12th 2020, that would mean a timeline of only around 17 to 18 days between the President’s formal announcement of a nominee to the start of hearings.

A confirmation vote by October 29th 2020, if it were to happen, would mean only around 33 days between the announcement of a nominee and the vote to confirm.

The Republican Judiciary Committee memo dated March 7th 2005 states, in contrast, it believes the Senate can realistically move from receipt of a nomination to confirmation within ten to twelve weeks. The memo, which outlined a potential timeline for filing a Supreme Court vacancy, was put together in anticipation of a possible retirement announcement from then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist. As Senate Republicans and the White House race to fill the open Supreme Court seat, many have struggled to reconcile their support for confirming Trump’s nomination on the eve of an election with their steadfast opposition to even considering the nomination made by a Democratic President eight months prior to Election Day.

Party leaders are pointing to the different partisan makeup in Washington, arguing it is normal to confirm a nominee when the same party controls both the Senate and the White House and not the norm in an election year with divided government like in 2016. But four years ago, that was not the message pushed by much of the GOP as they stressed repeatedly for months that it should be the voters who get a say in effectively choosing the next Supreme Court nominee, defending McConnell’s refusal to move on the vacancy, which was later filled by Trump’s pick of Neil Gorsuch in 2017. Only two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who is facing a competitive reelection fight in Maine, have voiced opposition to taking up whomever Trump nominates to fill the open seat before November 3rd 2020.

Collins specified that she would vote against anyone Trump names if a vote is held prior to the election. But even with that opposition, McConnell appears to be on track to locking down the support of most GOP to move ahead with a vote prior to the election, though the exact vote math will not become clear until a nominee is named and senators outline their positions. GOP Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, however, signaled that he is on board with the Senate taking up a new Supreme Court nominee during the current election year, an announcement that all but ensures a nominee put forward by Trump will be confirmed barring any potential missteps by the nominee during the confirmation process.

In August 2020, Melania Trump’s speech to the GOP National Convention was a stunning contrast to the dark and divisive messaging that led up to her address in the White House Rose Garden.

The first lady delivered a stirring call for unity and understanding during a difficult time when Americans are grappling with dual crises of the pandemic and the subsequent economic collapse during her speech. The first lady was of the few speakers who offered deeply felt condolences to the families of the nearly 180,000 people who have died in the United States and expressed her gratitude for the many first responders who have been on the front lines dealing with the more than 5.7 million covid cases in the country. The first lady acknowledged the fact that since March 2020, lives have changed drastically.

The invisible enemy covid swept across United States and impacted everyone. The president sat in the front row of an audience that did not appear to be socially distanced. The first lady’s deepest sympathy goes out to everyone who has lost a loved one and her prayers are with those who are ill or suffering. The first lady knows many people are anxious and some feel helpless, she wants them to know they are not alone.

The first lady said her husband’s administration would not stop fighting until there is an effective treatment or vaccine available to everyone. The first lady gave an uplifting speech reflecting on her work with children, her “Be Best” initiative, her second-term agenda, and some of her favorite moments of the past three-and-a-half years as she made the case why Trump should be reelected. In the address, the first lady turned the page from the plagiarism controversy that surrounded 2016, when the Trump campaign acknowledged that passages from her remarks had been taken from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech to the Democratic National Convention, in what was framed as an innocent mistake by a writer who helped her with the speech.

The first lady offered her thanks to all of the health care professionals, front-line workers, and teachers who stepped up in these difficult times.

While many speakers argued that Joe Biden would destroy American ideals and values, bringing the United States into an apocalyptic future, the first lady did not want to use the precious time she had been allotted to attack the other party because that kind of talk only serves to divide United States further. Instead, the first lady addressed the protests and racial unrest in United States after the death of George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for more than seven minutes following a routine call to police about a $20 counterfeit bill. The racial unrest in United States is a harsh reality that Americans are not proud of.

The first lady encouraged people to focus on the future while still learning from the past. Rather than vilifying the demonstrators, as her husband has done so many times, the first lady urged United States to come together in a civil manner so Americans can work and live up to the standard American ideals. The first lady also ask people to stop the violence and looting being done in the name of justice, and never make assumptions based on the color of a person’s skin.

GOP hopes that the first lady’s enormous popularity will help address one of the biggest challenges Trump is facing in the upcoming election 2020, his enormous deficit with female voters. Trump trailed Biden by more than 20 points among women in polls, creating the possibility that he will lose female voters by historic margins. The high disapproval of his handling of the pandemic has placed an even greater drag on those numbers and his appeals to the “suburban housewives” of America – a term that fell from favor in the 1960s – do not seem to be helping him gain any traction. On the second night of the convention, organizers sought to broaden Trump’s appeal by touting economic progress under his presidency, but then zigzagged into efforts to inflame the culture wars in a series of speeches.

But among the messages of economic hope were also appeals to the party’s base on issues like religious freedom and abortion.

A scheduled speaker was pulled from the program just before it went to air after it came to light that she had retweeted a Twitter thread espousing an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. The original tweets sent are deleted. Mike Pompeo’s address overlooking Jerusalem was yet another lurch away from official decorum, an example of the kind of move that the Trump team prizes. In previous administrations, the top United States diplomat often avoided the conventions to shield the continuity of American foreign policy from the fury of partisan politics.

Yet Trump’s diplomacy, from North Korea to the Middle East and from China to climate change, has often appeared mostly designed to satisfy promises he made to his base. Officials said Pompeo was not breaking laws, but his decision to speak to the convention is being investigated by Democrats in the House to see if the speech violates the Hatch Act, which prevents federal employees from engaging in partisan politics while on duty, in a federal room or building, wearing an official uniform, or insignia or using a government vehicle. Kanye West has been helped by Republican operatives and welcomed by the GOP state authorities.

Democratic operatives do not think Trump’s technique will work. It is not unexpected at all that the GOP would fall under racist tropes and stereotypes about Black voters, who are not a monolith. It represents the GOP’s misunderstanding of what is taking place in Black culture due to the fact that West has been disinvited from the cookout for a very long time now.

West’s fan base is not an agent of the whole black community.

The community has had some concerns with the way West has engaged himself, especially when it comes to Trump. People are not fooled by what the GOP is doing. Black Democratic officials and progressive activists in Wisconsin responded with disgust to West’s efforts in the most important swing states in November 2020’s election. Some expressed trepidation that West earning even a fraction of the 188,000 votes that went to independent candidates 4 years ago might end up being a considerable factor.

West’s existence on the tally could require describing to voters that casting a tally for him would assist Trump. This is 2020, so the outrageous happens. It is absolutely something that Democratic is focusing on since it understands the numbers, and it knows that Trump won the state of Wisconsin by 22,748 votes. Democratic is playing it by ear, looking at it very carefully.

The other reaction is, how incredibly offending and racist it is to really just think that Black voters are not going to comprehend the tricks that GOP is trying to play. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that a GOP source stated the objective was for West to draw 107,000 votes there, the same as Libertarian Gary Johnson earned in 2016. West’s presence on the tally could work a little bit simply on the strength of who he is.

That is why progressives need to interact to voters that West’s candidacy is a spoiler created to increase Trump’s possibilities.

As long as people comprehend what is going on, it is not going to work. The GOP technique takes on a viewed absence of support for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden among young black citizens. Biden largely won the Democratic primary because of his deep assistance among black voters. The GOP presumes Black guy, rap artist, is the only association with Black people, color of skin and hip-hop music.

To date, West is on the ballot in Illinois, Oklahoma, and Vermont. West, with the assistance of GOP attorneys and operatives, has filed petition signatures and documents to run for president as an independent candidate in several states. In Arkansas, Missouri, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, West has actually made the ballot. However the signatures West sent have not yet been verified.

West’s project likewise submitted signatures to get on the ballot in Colorado and Ohio. 2020 presidential election polling Ballot reveals that Biden enjoys a massive lead with Black voters. An analysis of 10 surveys in July 2020 found Biden leads among Black citizens by an 83% to 8%, a 75-point margin. That lead, however, is a slight improvement for Trump, who trailed Clinton by 79 points amongst Black voters in pre-2016 election ballot.

But Biden’s assistance among Black people is not monolithic and far more powerful with older Black people.

A recent poll found that 87% of Black senior citizens stated Biden is considerate to the problems of Black people in America, while it is only 66% with Black people under 40. West’s candidacy is a clear attempt to play into that dichotomy, mimicking the Trump project’s two-fold method to court younger Black men and suppressing assistance for Biden. Black Democratic leaders in Wisconsin, where Democrats hope a more powerful Black turnout, specifically in Milwaukee, will improve Biden’s possibilities.

The concept that West would earn that much assistance from Black voters just because of his status as a celebrity without revealing any policy platform stank.