Donald Trump appointed Conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Saturday to replace feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the United States Supreme Court, amid heightened tensions six weeks before the presidential election.
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“Tonight, I have the honor of appointing one of the country’s brightest and most gifted jurists to the Supreme Court,” the US president said from the gardens of the White House.
“You are going to be fantastic,” he said, addressing the 48-year-old judge, standing at his side, before predicting a “rapid” confirmation of this appointment by the Senate.
Barring a huge surprise, Amy Coney Barrett, a practicing Catholic opposed to abortion, will strengthen the conservative majority within this key institution which settles the great debates of American society.
The presidential choice should be quickly validated by the Senate, with a Republican majority. The hearings are due to start on October 12, for a vote expected at the end of October, a few days before the November 3 election.
“This is my third appointment,” said Mr. Trump, all smiles, who will have, in rare cases, appointed three supreme judges – out of a college of nine – in a single term.
Just minutes after the nomination was announced, Democratic White House candidate Joe Biden called on the Senate not to vote until the November 3 presidential election.
“The Senate should not decide (…) until the Americans have chosen their next president and their next Congress”, estimated the former vice-president of Barack Obama.
In the suburb of Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, where the ex-real estate mogul was to hold a campaign meeting in the evening, the announcement of the appointment, broadcast on the big screen in front of the hundreds of people already present, has was greeted with cheers and applause.
“USA, USA, USA” chanted the crowd immediately after the announcement.
Call to wait
As soon as the death of “RBG”, a progressive and feminist icon, Donald Trump quickly started the process to permanently anchor the Supreme Court in conservatism, its judges being appointed for life.
The whole Democratic camp is on the wind, arguing that it should be up to the winner of the presidential election to make such a decisive choice for American society.
The highest court is regularly called upon to decide on ultra-sensitive issues, such as abortion, the right to bear arms, positive discrimination or electoral disputes.
For Senator Kamala Harris, running mate of Joe Biden, the confirmation of this judge “would push the Court even further to the right” and “would harm millions of Americans”, notably endangering the health insurance adopted under Mr. Obama.
The powerful civil rights organization ACLU again urged the Senate on Saturday to “postpone the confirmation process” until the day after the inauguration of the next president, on January 20.
The subject will undoubtedly be at the heart of the campaign’s first televised debate Tuesday night between Joe Biden, favorite in the polls, and Donald Trump, who is partly relying on this sequence to catch up.
The choice of Amy Coney Barrett, mother of seven, law professor and magistrate known for her traditionalist religious convictions, could galvanize the conservative Christian electorate on which Donald Trump relied heavily in his surprise election there. four years.
Especially since despite a majority of judges already theoretically on the right after two appointments by the former New York businessman, the Supreme Court had inflicted at the beginning of the summer a series of setbacks on the conservative camp, on the ‘voluntary termination of pregnancy as on the rights of sexual minorities and young undocumented migrants.
The high court “spits in the faces of people proud to consider themselves Republicans or conservatives”, then cursed Donald Trump.
“ACB” after “RBG”
Amy Coney Barrett – “ACB” as some media nickname her – was already one of the favorites in 2018 for the Supreme Court when the president finally preferred Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
“I love the United States and I love the Constitution of the United States,” she said in a brief address in which she returned a man supported to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom she said. is called to replace.
“She has won the admiration of women across the country and around the world,” she said.
But a sign of the political tensions which cross America, it is under the boos of demonstrators that Donald Trump came to meditate Thursday in front of the remains of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, exposed at the entrance of the Supreme Court.
Just a week after his death, at the age of 87, “RBG” received his last solemn tributes on Friday at the United States Capitol, in the presence of Joe Biden and his running mate for the vice-presidency, Kamala Harris.
“Today, Judge Ginsburg made history one last time,” tweeted the former US vice president.
She will be buried in private next week at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington.