Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., reportedly asked President Trump to select federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland as Justice Anthony Kennedy’s successor on the Supreme Court.
Schumer spoke with Trump about nominating Garland in a short phone call earlier this week, the Washington Post reported. During the call, Schumer said naming Garland, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to the Supreme Court would help bring the country together.
The Democratic leader also told Trump that selecting a nominee who opposes Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 abortion case, and the Affordable Care Act would be “cataclysmic” and hurt his legacy, the Post reported.
Garland was nominated to the Supreme Court by then-President Barack Obama after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in 2016, but Republican Senate leaders refused to hold confirmation hearings because it was a presidential election year.
Keeping the Supreme Court seat open allowed Trump to nominate Justice Neil Gorsuch to the high court after he assumed the presidency in 2017.
The president has vowed to choose Kennedy’s successor from a list of 25 candidates and has interviewed seven possible nominees this week. Garland is not on the list.
Federal appeals court judges Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Raymond Kethledge have reportedly risen to the top of the field.
[Also read: Oddsmakers favor Kavanaugh, Thapar, Sen. Mike Lee for Supreme Court]
Kavanaugh, also a judge on the D.C. Circuit, and Kethledge, a judge on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, both clerked for Kennedy. Barrett was nominated by Trump to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year and confirmed in October after a bruising confirmation battle.
Though Trump is not expected to announce his nominee until Monday, Senate Democrats and liberal advocacy groups have begun laying the foundation to oppose the president’s pick.
Trump’s political opponents are specifically focused on the future of Roe and Obamacare, and are targeting red-state Democratic senators, as well as Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who both support abortion rights.
Republicans hold a slim majority in the Senate, and opposition from any of the GOP’s 50 voting senators could tank Trump’s nominee unless there is Democratic support.
