Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Legacy and the Future of the Supreme Court

LIVE: What’s next for the Supreme Court now that the legendary Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has passed away?

@MadisonMills22 is joined by Bloomberg reporter@GregStohr to answer all your questions about the fate of the nation’s highest court.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death thrust the Supreme Court into the center of the presidential race just six weeks before Election Day, reshaping the showdown between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

For Trump and his Republican allies in the Senate, the vacancy lets him change the subject away from the coronavirus pandemic that has imperiled his odds for winning a second term. Now, they can offer their base a chance to tighten the conservative majority on the high court for years to come.

Yet Biden and Democrats can seize on the moment, too, invoking Ginsburg’s legacy to spur turnout on Nov. 3 and give liberals a fresh reason to vote out Trump. Democrats had contributed more than $20 million to ActBlue in four hours after Ginsburg’s death was announced.

Jim Manley, a former top aide to ex-Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, said he hopes Democrats “wake up” to the importance of the Supreme Court.

“The reality is that Republicans have always taken judicial nominations more seriously than Democrats,” he said. “My hope is that that actually changes with this shocking news. Whether it does or not remains to be seen.”

The president had already begun to make the court a campaign issue, releasing a list of potential candidates just last week. He will push ahead with another nomination in the final weeks of his first term, and if he succeeds, he will have selected three justices in just four years. “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate,” McConnell said.

Democrats said McConnell should abide by the rules he set out in 2016, when he refused to hold a hearing for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia nine months before Election Day.

“There is no doubt -- let me be clear -- that the voters should pick the president and the president should pick the justice for the Senate to consider,” Biden told reporters late Friday. “This was the position that the Republican Senate took in 2016” and “that’s the position the United States Senate must take today and the election’s only 46 days off.”