Sen. Chuck Schumer doubles down on blocking Trump’s SCOTUS pick - potential crisis looming

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) reiterated his intention to block President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, indicating on “State of the Union” Sunday he’d rather leave the 9th seat — formerly occupied by the late Antonin Scalia — open if “the nominee is not bipartisan and mainstream.”

The seat has been open since Scalia’s death last February. Former President Barack Obama tried to fill the seat on his way out the door with appeals court judge Merrick Garland, but the Senate refused to consider Garland and declined to vote on his nomination.

Since that time, Senate Democrats have been seething over the slight and have vowed to block any Trump pick.

Meanwhile, liberal groups are gearing up for a fight and already calling Trump’s list of 20 potential nominees “very extreme.”

More from Reuters:

“We’re hearing from Senate Democrats and parallel concern among outside groups that this is going to be a major fight,” said Marge Baker, [Executive Vice President of People For the American Way]. “We’ll be arguing that Democrats use every means at their disposal to defeat the nominee. This is going to be ‘all hands on deck,’ using all means at our disposal.”

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has said it is hard for him to imagine Trump picking a nominee who Democrats could support, and said he would “absolutely” fight to keep the seat vacant rather than let the Senate confirm a Trump nominee deemed to be outside the mainstream.

“We are not going to make it easy for them to pick a Supreme Court justice,” Schumer told MSNBC on Jan. 3, adding that if the Republicans “don’t appoint someone who’s really good, we’re going to oppose them tooth and nail.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been trading barbs since early December when Schumer first began asserting his desire to keep the seat open rather than confirm a Trump SCOTUS pick Democrats considered extreme.

“Apparently, there’s yet a new standard which is to not confirm a Supreme Court nominee at all,” McConnell told reporters Wednesday at the GOP leadership’s weekly news conference. “I think that’s something the American people simply will not tolerate.”

[link to www.theblaze.com]

The nuclear option doesn't apply in the case of Supreme Court. Appointments. We still need 8 democrat votes.

"In November 2013, Senate Democrats used the nuclear option to eliminate filibusters on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments other than those to the Supreme Court."

[link to en.m.wikipedia.org (secure)]