This is the most egregious insult to democracy in the history of Supreme Court nominations. Tonight, NOW proudly stands with coalition partners and allies, at the highest court in the land to protest this illegitimate nomination.
As Senator Merkley has said, this is a stolen seat. The theft began when Mitch McConnell stacked the deck against President Barack Obama’s right to fill a vacancy on the Court by refusing to even hold hearings on Judge Merrick Garland.
He concocted, out of whole cloth, the fiction that it was standard practice not to confirm Supreme Court nominations during a presidential election year. As was widely reported last year, about 14 justices were confirmed during election years, including Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Anthony Kennedy in 1988.
What was unusual about the nomination of Merrick Garland was not that it occurred during an election year, but that for the past eight years white male supremacist ideology has driven so many Republican senators to feel entitled to obstruct the nation’s first African American president at every turn, including filling a vacant Supreme Court seat.
Mitch McConnell short-circuited the democratic process in order to give Donald Trump an unearned shot at picking the next Supreme Court Justice. We say no. This week, Donald Trump has shown all too clearly his contempt for the rule of law. He cannot be allowed to continue his larcenous assault on the Constitution with an illegitimate nomination to the Supreme Court.