Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately drew the battle lines by categorically rejecting President Obama's constitutional authority to nominate a new justice -- just an hour after news of Justice Scalia's passing. At last night's GOP debate, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio then vowed to block any person nominated by the president, no matter their qualifications. Donald Trump piled on, prodding his fellow Republicans to "delay, delay, delay."
Today, Sen. Elizabeth Warren strongly reacted to this unprecedented Republican obstructionism:
"Senator McConnell is right that the American people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice. In fact, they did — when President Obama won the 2012 election by five million votes.
"Article II Section 2 of the Constitution says the President of the United States nominates justices to the Supreme Court, with the advice and consent of the Senate. I can't find a clause that says "'...except when there's a year left in the term of a Democratic President.'"
"Senate Republicans took an oath just like Senate Democrats did. Abandoning the duties they swore to uphold would threaten both the Constitution and our democracy itself. It would also prove that all the Republican talk about loving the Constitution is just that — empty talk."
President Obama's decision will determine who controls the Supreme Court, potentially for a generation or more. It will decide whether we end decades of conservative dominance that brought us rulings like Citizens United and undermined the Voting Rights Act, or whether we turn the Supreme Court in a more progressive direction.
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