MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Members of Vermont’s congressional delegation and the state’s Republican governor are mourning the loss of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and calling for the Senate to wait until the new year to make their decision on a replacement.
“The passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a tremendous loss to our country. She was an extraordinary champion of justice and equal rights, and will be remembered as one of the great justices in modern American history,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, said in a written statement Friday night.
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.
U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, a Democrat, said “there can be no vote in the Senate until the American people have voted to decide who will nominate and confirm the next Supreme Court Justice.”
He called the Ginsburg “a titan of jurisprudence” and her death devastating for the country.
Republican Gov. Phil Scott also said the country must follow precedent and Ginsburg’s “dying wishes, and delay the appointment process until after Inauguration Day.”
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