Kennedy is 81 year old…..
He has been the swing vote on a court that now is already leaning conservative ….
His retirement will enable Trump to appoint another right leaning judge to the court….Though Kennedy is a conservative…He had become a swing vote in his later years on the court…
Look for Senate Majority Leader McConnell to change the rules to get a Trump pick thru on a simple majority, not the traditional 60 vote …..
Democrats may like to push doing the ‘right thing’….
But Republicans are straight out gangster in doing what THEY WANT….
A year and half after America lived thru 8 years of it’s first mixed race President?
The minority right continues to recoil from a 21st Century America….
Elections DO have consequences….
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Supreme Court centrist who for a generation has cast the deciding vote in the biggest cases, plans to retire, giving President Trump a chance to shift the court sharply to the right.
Kennedy, 81, will leave the court effective July 31, the court said in a statement Wednesday.
Kennedy’s decision to step down offers conservatives the opportunity they have long sought to lock in a reliable five-member conservative majority on the high court. And for them, it comes at an ideal time, since Republicans control the Senate and have voted in unison to confirm Trump’s conservative court nominees.
With five solid conservatives, the justices could repeal the right to abortion, expand protections for gun owners, narrow gay rights and strengthen the president’s power to arrest and deport immigrants who are here illegally.
Since ascending to the high court 30 years ago, Kennedy has been its pivotal figure, splitting his votes between its conservatives and liberals in a way that has made him arguably the court’s most influential justice. For years, his presence as a moderate has prevented both sides from pressing too far in one direction….
image…nbcnews
The rule has always been a simple majority. Always. Check the facts and the history. That’s how Clarence Thomas was approved.
Nonetheless, the Democrat desire to filibuster judicial nominations is now null and void because Schumer wasted it on Gorsuch. So, yeah, it’s over. There will be a new Justice confirmed before the November elections.
(It might have been better for Republicans to hold off until after the elections as a enticement method to make sure conservatives show up to vote, especially in the Red States that Democrats are defending, but I assume they just don’t want to leave anything to chance.)