Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement announcement this week placed President Trump in the familiar position of having to find a reliably conservative Supreme Court nominee and guide the person through a grueling confirmation battle.
Because the Trump White House has done this before, it’s expected to follow the same model: Bring in the same helping hands, and ensure the process goes just as smoothly as it did last spring for Justice Neil Gorsuch.
But the political landscape is different this time around, and some Republican allies have privately expressed concerns about the president’s ability to navigate the situation.
[Related: Meet the contenders to fill Justice Anthony Kennedy’s seat on the Supreme Court]
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has been battling cancer back home for months and could leave the GOP in a bind if he doesn’t make it back to Washington for a vote that is expected to take place this fall. A slew of vulnerable Senate Democrats are facing pressure from progressives to oppose Trump’s nominee, even though a show of bipartisanship could boost them in their re-election races. And with anti-abortion conservatives itching to undo abortion protections, at least two centrist Republican senators — Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine — are expected to be a tough sell on any pro-life nominee.
“That’s not a question I’ll be asking them,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, when pressed about Roe v Wade, a landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized access to abortion.
A source closely involved in the nomination process last year said questions about key abortion rulings were posed to candidates then and are even more likely to come up now, even if Trump isn’t the one asking them.
According to this person, the final three candidates will likely be asked to submit a questionnaire to the White House counsel’s office outlining their opinions on cases involving hot-button topics like abortion, LGBT protections, civil rights, and religious freedom — issues some Senate Democrats have already alluded to while criticizing Trump’s pool of candidates.
Trump told reporters he has already narrowed down his list of 25 possible nominees to a shortlist with four to five names, including two women and some whom he expects to meet with one-on-one at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club this weekend.
“Outside of war and peace, of course, the most important decision you make is the selection of a Supreme Court judge,” he said Friday en route to New Jersey. “I may have two of them come up, like the old days at Bedminster. It is exciting.”
The president, who intends to announce his nominee on July 9, has already met with three Senate Democrats who supported Gorsuch last April and face difficult re-election races in red states this fall.
One of the three — Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly — said he had a “good conversation” with the president about the qualifications and judicial philosophy of potential nominees. Donnelly was joined by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., for the Wednesday night meeting at the White House.
A few candidates thought to be frontrunners for the nomination include U.S. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a former Kennedy clerk and the name most widely circulated by sources close to the White House; Amy Coney Barrett, a former Notre Dame law professor who sparred with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., during her confirmation hearing for an appellate judgeship last September; U.S. Circuit Court Judge Thomas Hardiman, whom Trump came close to picking last year; Amul Thapar, a favorite of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; and Raymond Kethledge, another former Kennedy clerk who currently sits on the Sixth Circuit.
Once Trump selects a nominee, he or she will work with a guide, or sherpa, to set up courtesy visits with dozens of senators. Gorsuch participated in 72 such meetings before his confirmation hearing last March, during which he was accompanied by former GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte.
Ayotte told a local New Hampshire media outlet earlier this week she would be open to assisting Trump’s second nominee through the same process.
“I think it is an important position for the country, and I’m sure that the White House has a strong plan, having already gone through one of those confirmation processes,” she said in an interview with WMUR.
Some former White House officials and outside advisers are less convinced that Trump and his aides have a firm plan in place, following reports that the administration did not receive advance notice of Kennedy’s retirement.
“They’ve been so caught up in trade, North Korea, and recently immigration. This was not on their radar and McGahn is overwhelmed,” a source familiar with the situation told the Washington Examiner, adding that the White House “will no doubt figure things out.”
Trump is scheduled to depart on an overseas trip to Europe a day after he announces his Supreme Court nominee, leaving much of the heavy-lifting to the White House counsel’s office, McConnell, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. McConnell said in a floor speech earlier this week he hopes to have the nominee confirmed by the start of the new court term on Oct. 1, just over a month before the November midterm elections.
