President Joe Biden will keep his promise to nominate his first Supreme Court justice, a black woman, by the end of February despite not yet interviewing any candidates and Russia-Ukraine tensions.
“He is on track to select a SCOTUS nominee by the end of this month,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday.
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Biden has not spoken directly to any of the four women on his short list but has discussed them with a bipartisan group of lawmakers and legal experts.
“The president continues to review materials as he considers deeply, deeply qualified candidates, as we have said, with strong experience,” Jean-Pierre said.
She did not provide any information regarding when the interviews would take place and did not commit to updating reporters on Biden’s progress.
Jean-Pierre’s comments echo Biden’s own remarks last week concerning his “deep dive” of “thorough background checks” on “about four people.”
“Whomever I pick will get a vote from [the] Republican side for the following reason: I’m not looking to make an ideological choice here,” he said.
U.S. Appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the D.C. Circuit, South Carolina-based U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs, and California Supreme Court Associate Justice Leondra Kruger are rumored to be front-runners in the race to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
With regard to another nomination, the White House remains confident that the Senate will confirm Robert Califf, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner nominee, this week, according to Jean-Pierre.
“It is critically important to have confirmed leadership at the FDA in the midst of a pandemic,” she said Monday. “He had a strong bipartisan showing coming out of committee, including from the ranking member.”
West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin is among those opposed to Califf, claiming that he failed to address the opioid crisis properly.
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“I will vote ‘no’ on Dr. Califf’s nomination, and I have never been more profoundly confident of a vote I’m going to cast than I am right now,” he said in a Senate floor speech just after Jean-Pierre’s briefing.
