The White House on Tuesday talked up President Trump’s upcoming announcement of his pick for the Supreme Court, saying the person nominated would make “every American proud.”
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the announcement scheduled for 8 p.m. would mark a “very historic night for the president and the nation.”
Mr. Trump took the selection process seriously, he said, consulting Senate Democrats and Republicans and taking “careful steps to make sure the process transparent and inclusive.”
Mr. Spicer noted that polls showed that 70 percent of Americans said that the selection of the next Supreme Court justice was important in their decision in the presidential election in November.
Indeed, a top argument for Republican voters leery of Mr. Trump was that he would pick a conservative justice to fill the vacancy left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the strongest conservative voices on the high court.
Mr. Trump, who campaign on a promise to select a Supreme Court nominee from a list of 21 conservative jurists, is believed to have narrowed the list to three: Judge William Pryor in Alabama, Judge Neil Gorsuch in Colorado and Judge Thomas Hardiman in Pennsylvania.
Some Senate Democrats have already vowed to oppose the nominee in protest to Mr. Trump’s policies and Senate Republican’s refusal to act on President Obama’s nomination last year of Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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