They left 40 minutes later with no hints of progress, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. and Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sticking to their position that the next president should fill the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death last month. And they did so at a meeting with Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama at the White House. “They think that… they’re going to wait and see what President Trump will do, I guess, as far as a nomination”.
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Really regretting this idea.
Earnest said that the president would continue to consider potential nominees. In 2014, voters signaled they wanted a departure from President Obama’s policies when they revoked the Democrats’ Senate majority and expanded Republican ranks in the House of Representatives.
The GOP senators responded after the sit-down by seeming to dig in their heels even deeper.
Both of the state’s USA senators, Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, oppose a vote on a Supreme Court nominee this year, arguing that the vacancy should remain until after a new president is elected.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest confirmed to reporters that the president solicited names from Grassley and McConnell, but did not comment on their response. Grassley issued a written statement this afternoon, saying a drawn-out senate fight over an Obama nominee to the supreme court would be “bad for the nominee, bad for the court, bad for the process, and ultimately bad for the nation”.
“But unfortunately, this step, refusing to hold any meetings or hold any hearings for the nominee, I would spread that dysfunction into the third branch of government, into the very highest court, and into our judicial branch”. McConnell is to meet with the president on Tuesday.
“We killed a lot of time talking about basketball and other stuff”, Reid said.
During Grassley’s 35 year career in the U.S. Senate, he has voted to confirm all but two nominees to the Supreme Court. The White House session yielded no breakthrough on how to handle the vacancy. “Maybe they won’t be, and if they aren’t, then maybe it will be a shorter-than-expected meeting”. The president might have floated potential candidates; Senate opposition might have come armed with their own preferred names.
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“Brian will ensure that the full capacity of the White House is trained on this effort, even while the rest of the White House continues its important work on other presidential priorities”. He also published an op-ed Tuesday morning reiterating his argument for blocking the nomination process until a new president is inaugurated. Those words, in Article III, Section 2, are simply that [the President] “shall nominate, and by and with the Advise and Consent of the Senate shall appoint…” Besides Reid, Obama was joined by Sen.
