Cruz: Trump should nominate a Supreme Court justice next week

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said President Trump should nominate a Supreme Court justice to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the high court next week. 

“We have a responsibility to do our job,” Cruz told Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Friday evening. “We cannot let Election Day come and go and with a 4-4 court … we risk a constitutional crisis. I believe that the president next week should nominate a successor to the court … and I think that it is critical that the Senate takes up and confirms that successor.”

Cruz added that there would be “enormous pressure from the media” and Democrats to delay filling the vacancies Ginsburg’s death has created, but said “this nomination is why Donald Trump was elected and this confirmation is why the voters voted for a Republican majority in the Senate.” 

The Senator from Texas added that Trump should nominate a “constitutionalist with a proven record.” 

Cruz, a graduate of Harvard Law School and one of Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill, was on a short list of candidates Trump released last week as potential Supreme Court justices. 

Ginsburg, one of the court’s more liberal justices, died of pancreatic cancer on Friday at the age of 87. 

“She just died? Wow. I didn’t know that. You’re telling me know for the first time. She led an amazing life. What else can you say?” Trump said when asked by reporters about Ginsburg’s death following his campaign rally in Minnesota. “She was an amazing woman. Whether you agreed or not, she was an amazing woman who led an amazing life.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who opposed former President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the court in 2016, said the upper chamber would hold a vote on a potential Trump nominee before the November election.

“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,” McConnell said in a statement Friday. “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”