Now, a new poll shows Americans overwhelmingly support a hearing and vote on Merrick Garland’s nomination.
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A nominee to the highest court in the land deserves a full, fair and public hearing, as the Senate has done for the last century, Leahy said Tuesday. Instead of a lame duck president and Senate nominating and confirming, a new president and Senate – elected by the people only a few months from now – should make that important decision.
Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland submitted the traditional candidate questionnaire to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, with MoveOn.org protesters gathering outside the committee’s hearing room on Capitol Hill, holding signs telling Chairman Charles Grassley: “do your job”.
Ness said Garland, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., will choose the topic.
“I think Republicans are more than justified in waiting”, Flake responded.
Judiciary Committee staff labeled Garland’s questionnaire “incomplete” on the committee website.
Sen. Tester says he only had a brief sit-down session with Judge Garland on Thursday.
When Obama introduced Garland at the White House, he referenced Garland’s commencement speech at his own Niles West graduation decades ago that made waves.
In response to an inquiry about Cruz’s position on the Supreme Court vacancy now that Trump is the presumptive nominee, the Texas Republican’s office referred to a Wall Street Journal op-ed from March, where the senator argued that the next president should fill the vacancy.
Republicans and Democrats have been at odds since Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead in his bed at the Cibolo Creek Ranch near Marfa, Texas, on the morning of February 13, 2016.
According to SCOTUSblog, no president in the past century has had a Supreme Court nominee go unconfirmed on the grounds that it was an election year.
Some Republicans are not sold on Trump’s conservative credentials.
While Flake said a “conservative jurist” should replace Scalia, Garland could be a better alternative than a potentially more liberal nominee from Clinton. “I am not done vetting Judge Garland”. Also, the Center for American Politics, a Democratic group, will release a report critical of Grassley’s stewardship of the Judiciary Committee.
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Ken Blackledge, 66, a produce farmer from Nevada in central Iowa and registered independent voter, said he has known Grassley for decades and voted for him because of the independent-minded Midwestern values he shared.
