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US President Donald Trump at the White House.JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS
US President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday 20 new candidates that he would consider to fill eventual vacancies in the Supreme Court if he is reelected in November.
The list includes three Republican senators: Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley.
Less than two months before the presidential elections, the announcement has an undisguised electoral tinge, intended to appeal to Christian conservatives, eager to consolidate the right-wing bias in the highest judicial instance of the country, where substantive battles are fought on important social issues like abortion.
“It's time for Roe vs.
Wade, ”Cotton tweeted shortly after the president's announcement, referring to the Supreme Court ruling on which federal protection of the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy is based.
Trump already played the Supreme Court's trump card successfully in the 2016 campaign, taking the unusual step of publishing the names of potential candidates, to convince wary conservative voters to support a heterodox candidate like him.
He did so when a court seat had been vacant for much of that election year, as Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to celebrate the confirmation process for President Barack Obama's candidate to replace the late Antonin Scalia. .
The positions of the magistrates of the high court are for life and, when a vacancy occurs, it is the sole responsibility of the president to nominate the new judges, who must be approved by the Senate.
Ultimately Scalia's seat would be filled by Trump-nominated Neil Gorsuch, as well as Brett Kavanaugh, who filled the spot vacated by Anthony Kennedy in 2018.
Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, who were on that 2016 Trump list, would end up consolidating a conservative majority of five judges to four.
This summer, progressive judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 87, has announced that she is in treatment for cancer.
Another progressive Supreme Court justice, Stephen Breyer, is also over 80 years old.
Trump, who usually presents as one of the greatest successes of his first term the appointment of two conservative Supreme Court justices and more than 200 lower federal instances, has ventured that the next president may nominate “one, two, three and up to four judges of the Supreme Tribual ”.
And he has challenged his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, to publish his candidates as well.
"You should publish your list of judges so that people can make a decision about who they will vote for," he said.
The electoral background of Trump's announcement on Wednesday has been made clear in the attacks he has directed at Democrats.
“There is a growing radical left movement that rejects the principle of equality before the law.
If that extreme move gets a majority in the Supreme Court it will fundamentally transform America without a single vote from Congress, "he said.
“Radical justices will erase the Second Amendment, silence political discourse, and require taxpayers to fund extreme abortion.
They will unilaterally declare the death penalty unconstitutional, even for the most depraved mass murderers ”.
"They will erase national borders," he continued, "and they will guarantee new protections to anarchists, rioters, violent criminals and terrorists."
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