The White House said early Wednesday that President Obama will tell the nation who he wants to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, at an 11 a.m. Rose Garden announcement.
“As president, it is both my constitutional duty to nominate a justice and one of the most important decisions that I — or any president — will make,” Obama wrote in an email widely distributed at 7 a.m.
“I’ve devoted a considerable amount of time and deliberation to this decision,” he continued. “I’ve consulted with legal experts and people across the political spectrum, both inside and outside government. And we’ve reached out to every member of the Senate, who each have a responsibility to do their job and take this nomination just as seriously.”
The writing was on the wall Tuesday evening.
Even with the unprecedented safety closure of the entire Washington, D.C., Metrorail system, forcing the Office of Personnel Management to put the federal government on “liberal leave” Wednesday, insiders were growing more confident throughout Tuesday evening that Obama will make the announcement Wednesday.
One tell was Vice President Joe Biden’s scheduled Wednesday evening meeting with lawmakers in his ceremonial office. Ostensibly the meeting is about his initiative to achieve 10 years’ worth of cancer research in five years, but many knowledgeable sources believed it signaled the White House’s intentions.
Less clear is who will get the nod. Just last week, Judge Sri Srinivasan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia looked most likely. He was unanimously approved, 97-0, for his current position in 2013 and would be the high court’s first Asian-American or Pacific Islander justice.
But Tuesday night, his “boss,” Chief Judge Merrick Garland, seemed to slide into a neck-and-neck race with Srinivasan. Garland, an appointee of President Clinton, was seen as the front-runner to replace Justice John Paul Stevens when he retired in 2010.
Insiders have said that Judge Paul Watford of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is the third member of the short list, which still numbered five last week.
On Tuesday, Obama nominated six people to various district courts, and named one Circuit Court nominee. Those announcements, which usually occur on Thursdays, looked like another signal from the White House that Obama was about to dare Republicans to follow through on their promise to not even hold hearings on his Supreme Court nominee.
Obama joked during the annual Friends of Ireland lunch at the Capitol Tuesday afternoon that he hopes the event’s convivial spirit extends to his forthcoming candidate for the high court.
“And while I may not possess the persuasive power of St. Patrick, I do hope the hospitality extended here today is similarly extended to my nominee to the Supreme Court when he or she arrives,” Obama said.
