AP Explains: Why the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has thrust the Senate into uncharted political terrain. There’s no recent precedent for a Supreme Court vacancy so close to an election.
People gather at the Supreme Court Friday, Sept. 18, 2020, in Washington, after the Supreme Court announced that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died of metastatic pancreatic cancer at age 87.
Supreme Court nominations used to need 60 votes for confirmation if any senator objected, but McConnell changed Senate rules in 2017 to allow the confirmation of justices with 51 votes. He did so as Democrats threatened to filibuster Trump’s first nominee, Justice Neil Gorsuch.Republicans are defending 25 of the 38 seats that are on the ballot this year, and many of their vulnerable members have been eager to end the fall session and return home to the campaign trail.
Reached by phone late Friday, the Judiciary chairman, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., declined to comment on the plans. Graham is another Republican up for reelection.He did. McConnell stunned Washington in the hours after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016 when he announced the Senate would not vote on then-President Barack Obama’s potential nominee because the voters should have their say by electing the next president.
Certainly politics are different now, with the country in the grips of a deadly pandemic. The U.S. Congress has not been operating at full speed since the spring, with much of the usual work — including on committees — being done remotely to avoid spreading the virus.
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