Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned President Joe Biden not to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer with a nominee pushed by the “radical left.”
“Looking ahead — the American people elected a Senate that is evenly split at 50-50. To the degree that President Biden received a mandate, it was to govern from the middle, steward our institutions, and unite America,” McConnell said in a statement Thursday afternoon.
“The President must not outsource this important decision to the radical left. The American people deserve a nominee with demonstrated reverence for the written text of our laws and our Constitution.”
News of Breyer’s retirement broke Wednesday and was made official in a press conference on Thursday with Biden and Breyer. Biden pledged to announce his pick by the end of February and reiterated his pledge to nominate a black woman to the court.
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Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. John Cornyn echoed McConnell’s warnings to choose a nominee with more centrist jurisprudence.
“My decision on any Supreme Court nominee will be based on the individual’s commitment to original intent and understanding that the Supreme Court is a ‘trier of law’ appellate court and not a ‘trier of fact’ trial court,” Rubio said. “This is critically important because too many in the federal judiciary today believe it is appropriate for judges to craft new policies and create rights instead of interpreting and defending the Constitution as written.”
“There will be immense pressure from the radical left to replace Justice Breyer with a partisan who will legislate from the bench, and I hope President Biden will not cave to their demands the way he has on nearly everything else over the past year,” Cornyn said in a statement. “President Biden should honor the legacy of Justice Breyer and nominate another experienced jurist who respects the current structure and limited role of the Supreme Court.”
The 50-50 Senate means that Democrats could theoretically confirm a Biden nominee without any Republican support, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaking vote.
A tie has never occurred on a Supreme Court confirmation vote. Recent Supreme Court confirmations have mostly been on partisan lines, with a handful of senators crossing over to join the other party.
McConnell oversaw speedy confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett in 2020 after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg despite blocking movement on now-Attorney General Merrick Garland’s nomination to the court in 2016, arguing that a confirmation should not occur in an election year with a Senate controlled by the opposite party from the president.
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Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins was the only Republican to oppose Barrett’s confirmation in 2020 because it was too close to the election.
Collins told reporters on Wednesday that she hopes the Senate will “take our time” to evaluate Biden’s nominee. Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin called her, she said, “to tell me that he will help to facilitate access not only to the nominee, but to materials or anything I need to guide my decision-making, and we talked a little bit about the timetable.”
