Deprecated: Optional parameter $output declared before required parameter $atts is implicitly treated as a required parameter in /var/www/clients/client0/web46/web/wp-content/plugins/td-composer/legacy/common/wp_booster/td_wp_booster_functions.php on line 1740
Deprecated: Optional parameter $depth declared before required parameter $output is implicitly treated as a required parameter in /var/www/clients/client0/web46/web/wp-content/plugins/td-cloud-library/includes/tdb_menu.php on line 251
Deprecated: Optional parameter $caller_id declared before required parameter $channel_that_passed is implicitly treated as a required parameter in /var/www/clients/client0/web46/web/wp-content/themes/Newspaper/includes/wp-booster/tagdiv-remote-http.php on line 124
President Trump said Saturday he will move “without delay” to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joining with Senate GOP leaders in committing to what is likely to be one of the most intense confirmation battles in history.
“We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices. We have this obligation, without delay!” Mr. Trump said on Twitter.
Whether the Senate GOP conference will be able to hold its ranks, though, is another question.
Justice Ginsburg made a death bed declaration that she wanted the seat filled by whoever wins the presidential election.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said just hours after Justice Ginsburg’s death that he would push ahead with whomever Mr. Trump names.
In a letter to colleagues, he urged them “to keep your powder dry” and not lock themselves into a position opposing any vote this year.
He said there’s enough time left in the year — Justice Ginsburg’s own confirmation took 50 days, he said — and he dismissed complaints that Republicans are being hypocritical by pushing ahead now, after denying President Obama a chance to pick a replacement after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016.
Mr. McConnell says in that instance the White House was controlled by a Democrat and the Senate controlled by the GOP. Now, both are held by the same party.
Democrats said that was parsing too much, and insisted Mr. McConnell and his fellow Republicans follow the precedent they set four years ago.
Liberal pressure groups are already taking that argument to the states, where a half dozen or more Republican senators face tough re-election campaigns.
Some have already committed to a vote on Mr. Trump’s pick, including Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona.
In North Carolina, Sen. Thom Tillis said Saturday that Mr. Obama was a lame duck four years ago, whereas Mr. Trump is facing voters. He said Mr. Trump should make his pick and voters can judge him for it at the ballot box.
“There is a clear choice on the future of the Supreme Court between the well-qualified and conservative jurist President Trump will nominate and I will support, and the liberal activist Joe Biden will nominate and Cal Cunningham will support, who will legislate radical, left-wing policies from the bench,” Mr. Tillis said in a statement.
A number of other Republicans in key election fights did not take a stance, instead keeping their remarks Friday and Saturday to praise for Justice Ginsburg’s legacy.
Senate Republicans hold a 53-47 edge over the Democratic Caucus, so they could lose three senators and still have Vice President Mike Pence break the tie on confirmation.
One wrinkle is that Ms. McSally is sitting in the seat once held by the late Sen. John McCain. The Arizona Republic reported Friday that should she lose in November, her Democratic successor could be sworn in as soon as the results are certified, perhaps on Nov. 30.
That could constrain the GOP’s ability to operate in a lame duck session.
The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has sparked a titanic political fight that could shape the future of US supreme court decisions on abortion rights, voting rights and other fundamental issues for a generation.
That fight could also determine the contours of American society for the next 30 to 40 years, given the central role the court plays in legislating on cultural, social and political issues.
The Senate confirmation battle to come will be a reminder of the influence the court wields within the US system of government and the impact it has on the lives of ordinary citizens.
Donald Trump has already appointed two supreme court justices – but both were conservatives replacing conservatives. If the president succeeds with a Ginsburg replacement it will fundamentally change the shape of the court, since it would replace a liberal with a conservative. This would deliver a handsome majority on the court and probably change American life in unprecedented ways.
The ability of the court to interpret legislation from abortion to voting rights and from racial segregation to LGBTQ+ issues means that a successful appointment would probably be Trump’s lasting legacy. Supreme court justices serve open-ended terms, impacting the country decades after any president leaves the White House.
Over the last century the court has played a fundamental role in reshaping US society. In 1954, it ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional. In 1973, its Roe v Wade decision legalised abortion. In 2015, it made same-sex marriage legal. To some, there have been decisions that have malign effects. In 2010, the court removed most restrictions on political spending by corporations. In 2013, it gutted voting rights protections in place since the civil rights era.
Such are the ways the court materially impacts the lives of US citizens. It is why the battle for Ginsburg’s replacement represents such a totemic fight for the future of America.
The 87-year-old led the liberal wing of America’s highest court which, technically, is meant to be apolitical. John Roberts, the chief justice, said in 2018: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.” But that principle has suffered years of erosion – if it ever held true.
Ginsburg’s death has struck the 2020 presidential election, already described as the most important in a lifetime, like a lightning bolt. It looks set to put the court at the centre of a category 5 hurricane of partisan brawling, political machinations – and profound uncertainty.
“I think the future is unwritten and anyone who tells you they know what’s going to happen is wrong,” said Chris Hayes, a host on the MSNBC network. “We are in utterly uncharted territory.”
The court is about to start a new term and can continue to function with eight justices although in the absence of Ginsburg, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993, it has instantly been rendered more conservative.
Roberts has recently been the swing vote, usually siding with conservatives but sometimes with liberals, notably on decisions to uphold an important abortion precedent and protect so-called Dreamers (undocumented) from deportation. Now his influence may be diminished.
A week after the election, the court is due to hear a third challenge to Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law and consider the House of Representatives’ efforts to obtain secret grand-jury materials from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
It is also possible that the court may be asked to rule on a disputed presidential election, just as it was in 2000 when it tilted 5-4 in favour of Republican George W Bush over Democrat Al Gore. Jim Sciutto, national security correspondent at CNN, tweeted:“A 5-3 conservative court may have some very big decisions to make about the upcoming election.”
Ginsburg’s empty seat is will be the latest monumental struggle in a country already shaken by the coronavirus pandemic and racial unrest. Like the bitterly divisive nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and like the election itself, both sides seem likely to portray victory for the other in existential terms.
Donald Trump has frequently touted his lifetime appointments of two conservatives to the supreme court, and 200 judges to lower courts, to rally supporters on the campaign trail. Earlier this month, just as in 2016, he unveiled a new list of prospective supreme court nominees. Despite Ginsburg’s parting message – “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed” – he may decide to nominate one within days.
It would then be up to the Republican-controlled Senate to hold a confirmation hearing. On Friday night, Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, declared: “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
There was an outcry, accusing McConnell of hypocrisy. When the conservative Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, also an election year, McConnell refused to act on Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the opening. The seat remained vacant until after Trump’s victory.
McConnell argues this case is different because in 2016 the president was Democratic and the Senate majority was Republican but now the same party controls both. His opposite number, Chuck Schumer, and the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, instantly rejected the view.
Obama wrote in a Medium post: “Four and a half years ago, when Republicans refused to hold a hearing or an up-or-down vote on Merrick Garland, they invented the principle that the Senate shouldn’t fill an open seat on the supreme court before a new president was sworn in.
“A basic principle of the law – and of everyday fairness – is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment. The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle. As votes are already being cast in this election, Republican senators are now called to apply that standard.”
McConnell would have work at record speed to get a nominee through before an election just 45 days away. But Republicans could press on during the post-election “lame duck” session in November and December before the January inauguration – even if Trump has lost in a landslide. However, this could raise the prospect of a significant democratic deficit if a losing president – and potentially also a Senate that had switched to the Democrats – oversees such a key appointment. It would very likely lead to furious public protest.
Francis Boyle, a law professor at the University of Illinois, said: “The Senate majority leader, McConnell, has publicly said that he will fill this slot and I think he fully intends to carry that out. From their perspective, this is the chance of a lifetime to turn the court to the right.
“If you have a look at the opinions coming down this term, several of them were five to four, waffling on both sides of the issue, but now you’re definitely going to have six to three. So I don’t I think the Republicans will pass this opportunity.”
But McConnell is far from certain to get his way. Several Republican senators have previously said they do not think a supreme court justice should be confirmed so close to an election, and some – such as Susan Collins in Maine and Lindsey Graham in South Carolina – are facing tough re-election fights.
Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, tweeted: “Senators Collins, Graham, [Chuck] Grassley and [Lisa] Murkowski are on record as of 2018 that no justice should be confirmed this close to a presidential election. Senator [Mitt] Romney should join them. Leader McConnell’s monumental hypocrisy cannot be allowed to prevail.”
Should McConnell succeed, the appointment would tilt the court to the right in its biggest ideological shift for half a century. Many progressives fear that could undo decades of advances in social justice.
But Curt Levey, president of the conservative advocacy group the Committee for Justice, insisted that it would not necessarily spell the end of Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that effectively legalised abortion nationwide.
Tributes to Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the supreme court in Washington. Photograph: Essdras M Suarez/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock
“The Democrats have literally been that saying since the time that Sandra Day O’Connor was nominated [in 1981],” he said. “Every time there’s a Republican nomination for supreme court justice, no matter how moderate they are, the Democrats say Roe v Wade has never been in more danger and, so far, it’s not even turned out to be close to true.”
Levey added: “No matter who replaces Ginsburg, Roe v Wade is not going to be overturned. I’m not saying never in history will it be overturned, but we’re not one appointment away from Roe v Wade being overturned. So that’s just rhetoric. I don’t know if they believe it. Maybe they do.”
Others, however, warned that Roe v Wade has never been as vulnerable. Carl Tobias, Williams chair in law at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said: “It will look very bleak. They’ve whittled away at abortion ever since Roe v Wade but now I think they may well overturn it; certainly they will hollow it out even more than it is now so that almost any restrictions probably will pass muster with the supreme court with that kind of majority.
“They could even undo marriage equality, even though it would take an enormous lift to do that, it’s conceivable that could happen, or hollow that out too, restrict it as much as possible and leave it to the states or something of that sort.”
Voting rights could also be under threat, Tobias warned.
“As there’s a shrinking majority of old white people who support the Republican party, this will be the way they extend their power and that’s a real concern for many people.”
President Trump on Saturday said Republicans have an “obligation” to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “without delay.”
The president’s tweet comes after Ginsburg, 87, passed away on Friday from complications surrounding metastatic cancer of the pancreas.
“@GOP We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning.
“We have this obligation, without delay!” he added.
The president’s statement comes after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., just hours after Ginsburg’s passing, vowed that a Trump nominee to the Supreme Court “will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
“The Senate and the nation mourn the sudden passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the conclusion of her extraordinary American life,” McConnell said in a statement.
“In the last midterm election before Justice Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second term. We kept our promise,” McConnell continued. “Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year.”
McConnell added that “by contrast, Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary.”
“Once again, we will keep our promise,” he said. “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
But the nomination and confirmation process for the latest addition to the Supreme Court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, took 89 days total for confirmation. It took 57 days from Kavanaugh’s nomination to his confirmation hearing.
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday said Ginsburg’s vacancy should not be filled until “we have a new president.”
“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice,” Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted Friday. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden also said Friday that the winner of November’s presidential election should be the person to nominate a successor to Ginsburg.
“There is no doubt, let me be clear, that the voters should pick the president, and the president should pick the justice for the Senate to consider,” Biden emphasized as he spoke to reporters Friday night.
In a accompanying statement, the former vice president stressed that “this was the position the Republican Senate took in 2016, when there were nearly 9 months before the election. That is the position the United States Senate must take now, when the election is less than two months away. We are talking about the Constitution and the Supreme Court. That institution should not be subject to politics.”
Biden was referring to the Republican-controlled Senate’s refusal in 2016 — prior to the last presidential election — to consider President Obama’s nominee to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia. McConnell at the time cited the imminent presidential election for not holding any confirmation hearings or votes on the nominee, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland.
But Hans Von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told Fox News that it is not unprecedented for an incumbent president seeking re-election to nominate a judge to the Supreme Court, and be confirmed, prior to Election Day.
“Historically, since 1900, presidents have made five Supreme Court nominations in the year they were running for re-election: Taft in 1912; Wilson in 1916, in fact he had two nominations; Hoover in 1932; and the great hero of the Democratic Party, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, did it in 1940,” Spakovsky told Fox News. “All of those nominations were confirmed.”
He added: “It is not as if this would somehow be unprecedented. …The point is, prior presidents have done it, their nominees have been confirmed, and there is no reason it can’t be done this year, too.”
Sen. Ted Cruz on Friday urged his fellow lawmakers to nominate and confirm a Supreme Court justice before the Nov. 3 presidential election following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, warning of a looming “constitutional crisis” if the seat remains vacant.
“We cannot have Election Day come and go with a four-four court,” Cruz said during an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “A four-four court that is equally divided cannot decide anything. And I think we risk a constitutional crisis if we do not have a nine-justice Supreme Court, particularly when there is such a risk of a contested election.”
The Texas Republican — one of President Trump’s 20 potential nominees to the court, according to a list issued last week by the White House — called on Trump to nominate Ginsburg’s successor next week. Ginsburg died Friday due to complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer. She was 87.
“I think it is critical that the Senate takes up and confirms that successor before Election Day,” he said. “There’s going to be enormous pressure from the media, there’s going to be enormous pressure from the Democrats to delay filling this vacancy. But this election, this nomination is why Donald Trump was elected. This confirmation is why the voters voted for a Republican majority in the Senate.”
Cruz continued: “I’ll tell you one reason in particular why I think it is tremendously important that not only does the nomination happen next week, but that the confirmation happen before Election Day. Democrats and Joe Biden have made clear they intend to challenge this election. They intend to fight the legitimacy of this election. As you know, Hillary Clinton has told Joe Biden ‘under no circumstances should you concede. You should challenge this election.'”
Earlier in the night, before learning of Ginsburg’s death, Trump told supporters at a Minnesota rally that he was “putting Ted Cruz as one of the people for the Supreme Court.”
“Ted’s the only man I know who could get 100 votes from the Senate,” he said. “Every single senator is going to vote for him. But he’s a great guy, and he’s a brilliant guy.”
Cruz has said that he would not accept a nomination to the Supreme Court.
“It is deeply honoring, it is humbling to be included in the list,” he said during an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “But it’s not the desire of my heart. I want to be in the political fight.”
Ginsburg’s death, less than seven weeks before the Nov. 3 election, sets up a fierce partisan battle over the future of the court.
Conservatives outnumbered liberals on the court 5-4 before the death of Ginsburg, a liberal stalwart. With a new right-leaning justice, conservatives could hold a solid 6-3 majority.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., pledged on Friday that “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
“Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary,” McConnell said in a statement. “Once again, we will keep our promise. President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
Republicans hold a slim 53-47 majority in the Senate, and it’s unclear that they have the necessary votes to nominate and confirm a new justice. A simple majority of senators present and voting is required for the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has already said the open seat should not be filled until after the Nov. 3 election.
“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted on Friday.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has vowed to nominate a Black woman to the nation’s highest court system, though he has not released specific candidates.
In a statement Friday night, the former vice president said the Senate should wait until after the election to nominate and confirm a new justice, citing Republicans’ opposition in 2016 to former President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill Scalia’s seat.
“The voters should pick a president, and that President should select a successor to Justice Ginsburg,” Biden said. “This was the position that the Republican Senate took in 2016, when there were nearly nine months before the election. That is the position the United States Senate must take now, when the election is less than two months away.”
President Trump paid tribute to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a “titan of the law” after her passing Friday night at age 87.
“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg served more than 27 years as an associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States—notably just the second woman to be appointed to the Court,” the president said in a statement released overnight by the White House. “She was a loving wife to her late husband, Martin, and a dedicated mother to her two children.”
“Renowned for her brilliant mind and her powerful dissents at the Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg demonstrated that one can disagree without being disagreeable toward one’s colleagues or different points of view,” the president said. “Her opinions, including well-known decisions regarding the legal equality of women and the disabled, have inspired all Americans, and generations of great legal minds.”
“A fighter to the end, Justice Ginsburg battled cancer, and other very long odds, throughout her remarkable life. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Ginsburg family and their loved ones during this difficult time. May her memory be a great and magnificent blessing to the world,” Mr. Trump said.
The president, who said in August that he would “move quickly” to fill any vacancy on the high court, did not address the issue in his statement.
Vice President Mike Pence called Justice Ginsburg “a true public servant.” “Justice Ginsburg led an inspiring life, and her storied career paved the way for women in the law,” Mr. Pence said. “As an advocate and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, she was a champion for women whose tireless determination reshaped our national life.”
He said she “will always be remembered as a jurist who respected and commanded the respect of all her colleagues. Karen and I offer our prayers and condolences to the family, friends, and many admirers of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the U.S. Supreme Court justice who broke gender barriers, told her granddaughter before she died that her wish was not to have her seat filled until a new president is elected.
“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed,” Ginsburg told Clara Spera in the days before her death, NPR reported.
Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.
Her passing leaves a pivotal vacancy that could dramatically shape the nation’s highest court for years to come. The scramble to fill her seat will be especially tense with less than two months until the presidential election.
Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 and repeatedly vowed to remain as long as her health allowed. She championed women’s rights and was revered by many as a feminist icon.
Replacing her will be no small task. In 2016, during President Barack Obama’s final year, a political fight erupted after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Senate Republicans staved off Obama’s pick, Merrick Garland, despite fierce opposition from the Democrats.
“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” Sen. Mitch McConnell famously said at the time.
On Friday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer echoed those words. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski vowed to not vote for a new justice until after the November election, Alaska Public Media reported.
But McConnell indicated Friday that selecting Ginsburg’s replacement will be very different than replacing Scalia. In a statement, he both praised Ginsburg’s legacy and promised to have Trump select her replacement.
“In the last midterm election before Justice Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second term,” McConnell’s statement read in part. “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
Alicia Victoria Lozano
Alicia Victoria Lozano is a Los Angeles-based digital reporter for NBC News.
President Trump on Friday called late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “an amazing woman who led an amazing life” and said he was “sad” to learn of her passing, but didn’t say anything about plans for nominating a replacement.
The president, on the tarmac after finishing a rally in Minnesota Friday night, had just learned that Ginsburg, 87, had died from complications surrounding metastatic pancreas cancer.
“Wow, I didn’t know that,” Trump told reporters. “She led an amazing life. Whether you agree or not, she was an amazing woman who led an amazing life.”
He added: “Sad to hear that.”
The president didn’t discuss any plans for nominating a replacement. But just earlier, during the Minnesota rally, the president vowed to “nominate judges and justices who will interpret the Constitution as written,” and called the Supreme Court “so important.”
“The next president will get 1, 2, 4, or 4 justices,” he said, noting that associate justices are “appointed for a long time.
“That will change life, the Second Amendment, going to be stuck for 30 years, 45—a long time,” Trump said. “This is going to be the most important election in history.”
He added: “If you don’t get it right, we will not have a country anymore.”
The president on Friday night vowed to protect the Second Amendment, “defend the dignity of work and the sanctity of life.”
During the rally, the president touted his administration, saying by the end of his term, there will be “300 federal judges” confirmed to courts across the nation.
The president, last week, announced a list of potential nominees to the Supreme Court, should he be re-elected. Included on the list were a number of federal judges, and three Republican senators—Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
The president described those on the list as “the smartest, the best, the absolute ‘creme de la creme,’” adding that they are all “conservative” and “believe in the Constitution.”
“You know, the little things, little things like that,” he said.
During the rally, the president joked about including Cruz on his list of potential picks, saying that he “wanted to make sure” he had someone who could get approved in the Senate.
“Ted is the only guy I know who could get 100 votes from the Senate,” Trump joked. “They’ll do anything to get him out of the Senate.”
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said unequivocally Friday night that the president’s Supreme Court nominee to fill the vacancy of Ginsburg “will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
But the nomination and confirmation process for the latest addition to the high court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, took 89 days total for confirmation. It took 57 days from Kavanaugh’s nomination to his confirmation hearing.
There are 45 days until Election Day.
Top contenders, prior to Ginsburg’s passing, included Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals; Judge Britt Grant of the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals; Judge Amul Thapar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit; Judge Steven Colloton of the 8th Circuit U-S Court of Appeals; Judge Allison Eid of the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals; Judge Raymond Gruender of the 8th Circuit U-S Court of Appeals; Judge Thomas Hardiman of the 3rd Circuit U-S Court of Appeals; Judge Raymond Kethledge of the 6th Circuit U-S Court of Appeals; Judge Joan Larsen of the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals; Judge Barbara Lagoa of the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals; Justice Thomas Lee of the Utah Supreme Court; Judge David Stras of the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals; Judge Allison Jones Rushing of the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals; and Judge Don Willett of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Friday night said Ginsburg’s vacancy should not be filled until “we have a new president.”
There was an active vacancy after the death of Scalia in 2016, but the next presidential term could be even more significant for Supreme Court nominations.
Ginsburg’s death leaves a vacancy; and several other justices are over 70, including Justice Stephen Breyer is 82; Clarence Thomas is 72; and Justice Samuel Alito is 70.
Ginsburg died on Friday last the age of 87 from complications surrounding metastatic pancreas cancer.
The late Supreme Court justice, who was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, spent more than two decades on the bench, and is survived by her two children Jane Carol and James Steven Ginsburg.
Ginsburg battled two forms of cancer in the past, but her health began to take a downturn in December 2018 when she underwent a pulmonary lobectomy after two malignant nodules were discovered in the lower lobe of her left lung.
On Jan. 7, 2019, the Court announced she would miss oral arguments that day for the first time since she joined as she continued to recuperate from that surgery.
A large study finds a dramatic increase in the number of adults in the United States reporting symptoms of depression during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Share on PinterestRecent data indicate that the number of adults with depression symptoms in the U.S. has increased threefold during the pandemic.
The number of adults experiencing depression in the U.S. has tripled, according to a major study. Researchers estimate that more than 1 in 4 U.S. adults now report experiencing symptoms of depression.
Before the pandemic, 8.5% of U.S. adults reported being depressed. That number has risen to 27.8% as the country struggles with COVID-19.
Prof. Sandro Galea, a dean at Boston University (BU) School of Public Health, MA, is senior author of the study.
Stay informed with live updates on the current COVID-19 outbreak and visit our coronavirus hub for more advice on prevention and treatment.
“Depression in the general population after prior large-scale traumatic events has been observed to, at most, double,” he notes.
While reports of depression have increased in response to earlier crises, such as the 9/11 attack and the spread of Ebola in West Africa, the extent of this recent finding is something new.
The study features in the journal JAMA Network Open. The Rockefeller Foundation–Boston University 3-D Commission and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provided funding for the research.
The BU study is the first large-scale investigation into America’s mental health in response to COVID-19.
To measure the prevalence of depression symptoms among the population, the researchers worked with mental health professionals’ leading tool for this purpose: the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9).
They compared these data with the findings of the COVID-19 and Life Stressors Impact on Mental Health and Well-being (CLIMB) study, which surveyed 1,441 U.S. adults between March 31 and April 13, 2020. This study also used PHQ-9, facilitating the comparison of changes in the prevalence of depression among the population.
Although the 2020 survey took place relatively early in the pandemic, by the time it was complete, stay-at-home advisories and shelter-in-place orders were in place for about 96% of the public.
The CLIMB survey also questioned participants regarding the various stressors associated with the pandemic. These stressors included the death of a friend or loved one and financial worries, such as the loss, or potential loss, of personal income.
The survey found that symptoms of depression had risen in response to the pandemic across all demographic groups.
According to the survey participants, the predominant driver of depression was concern regarding personal financial well-being. Lead study author Catherine Ettman says, “Persons who were already at risk before COVID-19, with fewer social and economic resources, were more likely to report probable depression.”
Specifically, the team found that individuals with less than $5,000 in savings were 50% more likely to be experiencing symptoms of depression than those who had more.
Ettman says that the study underscores the value of a society “where a robust safety net exists, where people have fair wages, where equitable policies and practices exist, and where families can not only live on their income but can also save money toward the future.”
As for what the authorities can do now to lessen the emotional toll of the ongoing pandemic in the U.S., Ettman suggests:
“There may be steps that policymakers can take now to help reduce the impact of COVID-19 stressors on depression, such as eviction moratoria, providing universal health insurance that is not tied to employment, and helping people return to work safely — for those able to do so.”
Ettman hopes that her study can, at the very least, deliver some comfort to people struggling with depression by making them realize that they are far from alone.
For live updates on the latest developments regarding the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, click here.
