Majority Leader McConnell promises full Senate vote on Trump nominee following Justice Ginsburg’s death

WASHINGTON (WOLO, AP) – Just over an hour after the United States Supreme Court announcement Friday night that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died, Senate leadership is promising a vote for a replacement.

Justice Ginsburg died from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer.

In a statement that also mourned Ginsburg’s death, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed that the full Senate would vote on a Trump nominee, despite it being an election year.

When conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, also an election year, McConnell refused to act on President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to fill the opening. The seat remained vacant until after Trump’s surprising presidential victory.

Here’s the statement:
“In the last midterm election before justice Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second term. We kept our promise. Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year.

By contrast, Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary. Once again, we will keep our promise.

President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”