WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump praised Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Friday but refused to confirm that she will be his Supreme Court nominee.
"She's outstanding," Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland upon returning from two campaign stops in Georgia and Florida when pressed to confirm media reports that he will nominate Barrett for the country's highest court.
"Well, I haven't said it was her," the president responded, only acknowledging that he has made the decision in his mind.
A conservative judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, Barrett is among five female jurists that Trump have been considering to fill the seat left open by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court's leading liberal voice.
"They're all very outstanding people -- top of line academically and every way possible," Trump said on Friday. "They are all great. It could be any one of them. It could be, actually, anyone on the list."
Trump, who has reportedly told U.S. lawmakers that he will select Barrett to replace Ginsburg, will make the announcement at the White House on Saturday afternoon.
Barrett was nominated by Trump for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in 2017 and was later confirmed by the Senate with a 55-43 bipartisan vote.
The judge was a member of faculty of the Notre Dame Law School, teaching constitutional law, civil procedure and statutory interpretation. Before that, she clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump successfully appointed two conservatives on the Supreme Court's nine-justice bench, Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, tilting the institution to the right with 5-4 majority. At 48, Barrett would be the youngest member of the high court and cement a 6-3 advantage for the conservative wing.
U.S. Supreme Court justices, who have life tenure and can serve until they die, resign, retire, or are impeached and removed from office, play an enormous role in shaping the country's legislation and policies on issues such as abortion, LGBT rights, gun rights, climate change, and presidential powers.
Any Supreme Court nominee needs to be confirmed by the Senate with a simple majority vote. Republicans, who have a 53-47 advantage in the chamber, appear to have enough votes to confirm Trump's third pick. Only two Republican senators have said they would not support taking up a nominee prior to the November election.
Democrats oppose moving forward with a vote on Ginsburg's replacement before Election Day, pointing to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's decision in 2016 to block former President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee because it was an election year, all but ensuring a fierce confirmation battle on Capitol Hill.
McConnell and Senate Republicans have argued that this time is different because the Senate and the White House are held by the same party.
The revelation of Trump's reported intention to nominate Barrett for the Supreme Court came just hours after Ginsburg laid in state at the U.S. Capitol, becoming the first woman in the country's history to receive the posthumous honor.
A renowned champion of women's rights, Ginsburg died last week at the age of 87 due to complications related to metastatic pancreas cancer. She was appointed to the Supreme Court by then-President Bill Clinton in 1993, becoming the second woman appointed to the highest court in the United States.
"My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed," Ginsburg reportedly dictated to her granddaughter Clara Spera a few days before her death.
Trump recently suggested that it was Democratic politicians who wrote Ginsburg's dying wish, a claim that critics have called baseless. The president and the justice had traded barbs since mid-2016, when he was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
The role of the Supreme Court is likely to be more important this year, as Trump has repeatedly tried to cast doubt on the November election while refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power should he lose. He's trailing 2020 Democratic presidential nominee and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in national and swing states polls.
Trump has said he believes the Supreme Court would have to weigh in on the election and that he wants a full bench of nine justices for disputes.
In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in a disputed recount of votes in Florida with a 5-4 ruling, effectively handing that year's presidential election to the Republican presidential candidate and then-governor of Texas George W. Bush, who won 271 electoral votes, one more than a majority. However, Bush lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore.
Any election disputes would have to go through lower courts and may not even reach the high court, according to U.S. election and legal experts. Enditem
