Amy Coney Barrett: Trump selects the conservative justice to the Supreme Court
CNNCNN — President Donald Trump on Saturday said he is nominating Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative federal appeals court judge, to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the US Supreme Court, setting off a fierce partisan battle in the waning days of a hotly contested presidential election. Calling it a “very proud moment indeed,” Trump called Barrett a woman of “towering intellect” and “unyielding loyalty to the Constitution” who would rule “based solely on the fair reading of the law.” In a flag-bedecked Rose Garden designed to mimic Ginsburg’s own nomination ceremony in 1993, Trump recounted Barrett’s educational and professional background, noted her seven children and hailed her ties to another late Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia, for whom she clerked. “By nominating Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, President Trump has once again put Americans’ healthcare in the crosshairs,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a statement, adding a vote for Barrett amounted to “a vote to strike down the Affordable Care Act.” Barrett was appointed by Trump to the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017 and advocates on the right have backed her nomination because of her writings on faith and the law. If her Senate confirmation is successful before the November election, the appointment would mark Trump’s third US Supreme Court pick in one presidential term, cementing a conservative stronghold in the court for a generation.