BOSTON (AP) - Some members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation and the Republican governor are mourning the loss of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and urging the Senate to wait to vote on a replacement until the election.
“Any attempt by the GOP to push through a rushed appointment process” before the presidential election “would be a calloused affront to her notorious legacy,” said U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat, in a written statement Friday night. “To honor Justice Ginsburg and protect our Democracy, we will turn our collective grief into action.”
Ginsburg, who was the court’s second female justice, died Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87. Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court said.
President Donald Trump on Saturday urged the Republican-run Senate to consider “without delay” his upcoming nomination to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by Ginsburg just six weeks before the election. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., vowed on Friday night to call a vote for whomever Trump nominated. Democrats said Republicans should follow the precedent they set in 2016 by not considering a Supreme Court choice in the run-up to an election.
In a tweet on Saturday, Republican Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker urged President Trump and the U.S. Senate “to allow the American people to cast their ballots for President before a new justice is nominated or confirmed. The Supreme Court is too important to rush and must be removed from partisan political infighting.”
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat, called Ginsburg “a pioneer in the fight for equal rights” and “a trailblazer from beginning to end.”
Over the weeks leading up the election, the country must fight for Ginsberg’s legacy, Markey said.
“We must mobilize, organize, and remove Donald Trump from office to ensure that her service to our country and her commitment to justice and equality are never lost or forgotten,” he said.
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