This is representative of the Left-Column commentary The Hustings will soon present from among a collection of contributing pundits.

Four of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have been nominated by presidents (George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump) who lost the popular vote for their first terms, but won via the Electoral College. There will be five, more than half the court, if the Senate votes to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Trump’s choice, which would be his third nominee. 

“To jam this nominee through the Senate is just a raw exercise in political power,” Biden said Sunday. 

The certain hard-right conservative majority on the Supreme Court that surely would result with the nomination of someone like Amy Coney Barrett or Barbara Lagos would be chosen by a minority of voters; both of President Trump and of the 53-member majority from predominantly low-population states. Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) have said they will not vote for Trump’s nominee before the election, but it is time for two more Republicans to join them. 

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By Todd Lassa

Lines have been drawn in what could be the biggest political battle since The Reconstruction, following the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Friday. President Trump says he will nominate a woman to Ginsburg’s seat this week and expects the Senate to approve his choice before the presidential election, just 43 days away. 

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called on the Senate to honor Ginsburg’s wishes, as the progressive icon told her granddaughter, Clara Spera, before her death, as NPR reported. 

Ginsburg told her granddaughter she requests that “I will not be replaced until a new president is installed,” NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported. 

But by Sunday, NPR was reporting that Trump followers’ “Build the Wall!” t-shirts had been supplanted with “Fill the Seat!” shirts. The argument that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who blocked President Obama’s nominee to replace the late Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, with Merrick Garland for nine months leading up to the 2016 election was being hypocritical in pushing Trump’s expected 2020 nominee seemed resolved by Sunday as representative of the state of our Red and Blue political gulf. 

Even if the Senate fails to approve Trump’s nominee before the election, there is a very good chance the Republican majority could push her through before the January 20, 2021, inauguration.

Thus the November 3 presidential election, which is already underway in various states with early and mail-in voting, appears to hinge on Trump’s replacement for Ginsburg. The U.S. Supreme Court begins its new session on October 5, when it will take up a case on a Trump administration challenge to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and may even have to consider challenges to the outcome of the presidential election, which most analysts and pundits agree will not be settled on November 3.

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This is representative of the Right-Column commentary The Hustings will soon present from among a collection of contributing pundits.

President Trump says he will name a woman to the Supreme Court to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg this week, The Wall Street Journal reports on its front page. A commentary on the Journal’s op-ed page argues that the 2016 presidential and 2018 midterm elections, the latter of which retained a Republican majority in the Senate, negates Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s alleged hypocrisy regarding the chamber’s handling of the nominee. 

Voters “showed clear preference for Trump’s nominees,” the editorial posits. 

Meanwhile, The New York Times Sunday quoted a voter on how Trump’s support for anti-abortion judges has built support by evangelical voters.

“This is why we wanted this guy,” the evangelical voter said.

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