White House says Biden won’t be swayed on Supreme Court pick

President Biden’s Supreme Court selection won’t be influenced by lawmakers or other groups lobbying for a particular candidate, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday.

“He is not going to be swayed by public campaigns or public sniping or lobbying efforts,” Psaki told reporters.

Much of the public lobbying campaign for retiring Justice Stephen Breyer’s seat has centered on J. Michelle Childs, a judge on the federal bench in South Carolina. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has been outspoken that Childs get could Republican votes if she is the nominee, and House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), a staunch Biden ally, has extolled Childs’s qualifications and background.

But Psaki insisted on Wednesday that while Biden holds Clyburn in high regard and is consulting with multiple lawmakers about his eventual pick, he is not letting public campaigns for a particular candidate influence his thinking.

“The president is not interested in public griping, or in lobbying campaigns, or efforts to trash other candidates,” she said. “He is going to keep his blinders on, look at the qualifications, the cases, the backgrounds, the credentials of these eminently qualified nominees. All of the ones he’s considering would make excellent, qualified Supreme Court justices, and that’s where his focus remains.”

Biden has pledged to nominate a Black woman to replace Breyer, and he has said he will put forward a nominee by the end of the month.

The president in an interview last week with NBC said he was closely vetting four candidates, but the White House has been tight-lipped about the process.

The White House confirmed Childs is under consideration, and the other front-runners for the nomination are believed to be U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger.

Graham has argued Childs is the candidate who can win the most Republican votes, which could be important in a Senate that is divided 50-50 between Democrats and the GOP. But Jackson received bipartisan support in her confirmation hearing last year, while Kruger is considered a centrist judge on the California Supreme Court.