Replacing Scalia Won’t Be Trump’s True SCOTUS Trial

President-elect Donald Trump has said he plans to name a nominee to the Supreme Court quickly, to fill the vacancy left open for nearly a year since Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016. Replacing Scalia will surely chafe Democrats, who saw Senate Republicans stage an unprecedented blockade against President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, who never received as much as a hearing. But, Tina Nguyen writes for Vanity Fair, “the fact remains that the addition of a conservative on the court will only maintain the decade-old status quo that existed before Scalia’s death.” Future openings on the Court, on the other hand, will be “a fight to the death,” according to GOP operative Curt Levey. Should a reliably progressive seat on the Court be vacated – by, say, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, currently the oldest member –  Republicans would face an uphill battle replacing her with a hard-liner. They may even go so far as to filibuster Trump’s nominee, in that case, which could force Republicans to consider the so-called “nuclear option” of moving for a simple majority vote. Nguyen reports that Trump’s team, anticipating the situation, plans to put forward their most conservative option now, “and reserve for later a list of reliably conservative judges who are still palatable enough to survive a Democratic majority, should Democrats retake control of the Senate in 2018 or beyond.”