The White House was asked Monday about President Joe Biden‘s plans to nominate an anti-abortion judge in Kentucky as a “personal friendship gesture” to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) ultimately scuttled a deal between McConnell and the White House to nominate anti-abortion lawyer Chad Meredith to a federal court seat, a deal McConnell said Biden had agreed to as a gesture of friendship to him.
GOP SENATOR SCUTTLED DEAL TO APPOINT ANTI-ABORTION LAWYER TO FEDERAL BENCH
“What I’ll say on that is that as you heard from Rand Paul, he was not ready to move forward with the blue slip in that process in the Senate,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “And so we are not going go be nominating Chad Meredith.”
News of Meredith’s pending nomination to the bench for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky upset abortion rights advocates, but the president was bailed out when the plan fell apart after Paul said he wouldn’t offer a blue slip to confirm Meredith.
The White House did not confirm or deny McConnell’s account that Biden had agreed to the deal.
“Was it initially a friendship gesture, as Sen. McConnell said?” a reporter asked.
Jean-Pierre responded that “that part of your comment is not something that I’m aware of. I’m just telling you where we are currently at this time.”
The rejection undermines McConnell’s long-standing effort to shape the federal judiciary into a conservative juggernaut. The GOP leader infuriated Democrats by holding open a seat on the Supreme Court during President Barack Obama’s final months in the White House, eventually handing President Donald Trump three bites at the Supreme Court justice nominee apple.
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Biden was prepared to hand McConnell a win on the nominee after the senator argued the president wasn’t giving away a seat but was instead replacing one Republican with another, according to the New York Times.
Jean-Pierre finished responding to the question by reiterating Biden’s commitment to protecting abortion rights.
“He wants to make sure that women’s rights are protected,” she said. “We just talked about what could happen next, which is a national ban on abortion, which would be devastating for so many women across the country. We talked about what else Republicans are thinking about doing when it comes to contraception, when it comes to privacy, when it comes to marriage equity. This is a very serious time, and we need to make sure that we are paying attention to what potentially could be happening next.”
