Senator Minority leader Mitch McConnell suggested he may block a SCOTUS vacancy that were to come up in 2024 if Republicans re-take the Senate in 2022.
Hugh Hewitt asked McConnell “If you regain the majority in 2022 for the Republicans … would the rule that you applied in 2016 to the Scalia vacancy apply in 2024 to any vacancy that occurred then?”
McConnell replied “Well, I think in the middle of a presidential election, if you have a Senate of the opposite party of the president, you have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy was filled.”
“So I think it’s highly unlikely. In fact, no, I don’t think either party, if it controlled [the Senate], if it were [a] different [party] from the president, would confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election. What was different in 2020 was we were of the same party as the president,” he added.
Asked the same question about a nominee from Biden in 2023, McConnell said “Well, we’d have to wait and see what happens.”
Democrats were furious when Republicans, holding both the Presidency and the Senate, forced through Trump’s nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett just days before the 2020 general election.
