Live updates: President Obama nominates Merrick Garland to Supreme Court

Earlier today, President Obama officially nominated Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. Here are three things you need to know:

President Obama nominates Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court
The nomination Wednesday is sure to set up a protracted political fight on Capitol Hill, as Republicans have vowed to block any candidate picked by Obama in his final year in office.

In announcing the selection, Obama said he followed “a rigorous and comprehensive process” and praised Garland as “a serious man and an exemplary judge.” Obama also urged Senate Republicans to take up the nomination. Read more about the selection here.

Meet Merrick Garland
The 63-year-old man nominated on Wednesday has spent nearly two decades on the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia, the last three as the court’s top judge.

A native of suburban Chicago, Garland had worked in a prestigious law firm before going to the Justice Department, where he oversaw the prosecution of the men who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

Garland spoke about his family on Wednesday in the Rose Garden, which included a note about how one of his daughters was “hiking in the mountains, out of cell service range,” when Obama called to tell him he would be the nominee. Read more about Garland’s life story here.

Republicans refuse to budge following Garland nomination to Supreme Court
Before Wednesday, Republican Senators had said they were agreed in their opposition to Obama’s nominee, whoever that wound up being. On Wednesday, after Garland was named, this opposition did not change.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave a speech to reiterate this stance, insisting that the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat should only be filled by the person elected in November. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) weighed in and said he fully supported this stance. While some Senate Republicans spoke with Garland or said they would meet with him, they said this would not change their stance.

“It isn’t about the person, it’s about the process, it’s about the principle,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee charged with considering Garland’s nomination, who said he would speak to Garland. :I think we’ve laid down a principle that’s pretty sound…it should go over to a new president.”

Read more about this stance here.

The White House also released a video introducing Garland to the public:

According to the White House, Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will also meet with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

While this appears to be a very unusual Supreme Court nomination process, Sen. Susan Collins insists that for her, it will be business as usual.

Collins, a Republican from Maine, said she plans to meet with Garland because that is what she does when people are nominated to the Supreme Court.

“Judge Garland is a capable and accomplished jurist,” Collins said in a statement. “The White House has requested that I meet with him, and I look forward to doing so, as has been my practice with all Supreme Court nominees.”

She said she would evaluate the nomination by looking at his record as well as other aspects, including his “intellect, integrity, qualifications, experience, temperament, and respect for the Constitution and the rule of law.” This, she said, is also what she has done for other judicial nominees.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has said that he would not consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, made that point again Wednesday through official statements, social media postings and a speech on the Senate floor.

After Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to the court, McConnell spoke with him. In what the senator’s office described as a “more considerate” use of Garland’s time, McConnell spoke with him by phone to avoid “more unnecessary political routines orchestrated by the White House.”

McConnell’s office said in a statement that he again said he thinks the seat should only be filled after the presidential election. And because the Senate won’t be considering the nomination, McConnell’s office said, the majority leader “would not be holding a perfunctory meeting, but he wished Judge Garland well.”

For Judge Merrick Garland to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, he will  have to go through a rigorous process. This graphic offers a helpful explanation of how it works.

President Obama’s selection of Judge Merrick Garland as a Supreme Court nominee comes in the face of Republican leaders saying they have no intention to consider the nomination. So why would Obama select Garland? In this video, The Washington Post’s Jerry Markon explains the possibilities:

Senate Republicans are not budging in their refusal to consider President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court after the president nominated Merrick Garland to the job, The Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian reports.

This hard-line stance — which began to take shape in the hours after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death — has not wavered in the wake of Garland’s nomination. After Garland was officially put forth as the nominee on Wednesday, Republicans remained united in their opposition. PowerPost has more on what Republican leaders had to say.

Who is Merrick Garland, the federal appellate judge nominated by President Obama to join the Supreme Court?

Garland is a longtime judge who left a lucrative career at a law firm to become a federal prosecutor. He went on to lead one of the most high-profile prosecutions in recent memory — the case against the men who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

A native of suburban Chicago, Garland has twice before been considered by Obama for Supreme Court openings. Head here for more on Garland’s life and background.

Since 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court has not had a Protestant justice, a remarkable fact considering the court was dominated by them for much of its history.

But if President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, is confirmed, the court would shift to an even more fascinating makeup: conservative Catholics (with the exception of the more liberal Catholic Justice Sonia Sotomayor) and liberal Jews.

Head to Acts of Faith for more.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, said on Wednesday that it would be “unprecedented” for his GOP counterparts to refuse to hold hearings for Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.

“Judge Garland is a strong nominee with decades of experience on the bench,” Sanders said in a statement. “My Republican colleagues have called Judge Garland a ‘consensus nominee’ and said that there is ‘no question’ he could be confirmed. Refusing to hold hearings on the president’s nominee would be unprecedented.”

Sanders said that Obama is doing his job and that Republican senators should do the same.

In a series of recent remarks, Democratic senators have decried their Republican counterparts for saying they would refuse to consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. Several of these Democratic lawmakers have specifically invoked the Constitution, arguing that GOP legislators are ignoring their duties.

All of which is to say: Do they have to actually consider the nomination, and is there any precedent for this? As The Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler explains:

As you can see, there is no recent parallel to the current situation: a president filling a sudden vacancy on the court in an election year when the Senate is controlled by the opposition party, particularly when the vacancy occurred with nearly a year left in the presidential term.

But it is also clear that politics has always played a role — and the Senate has set the rules to act as it wants….Indeed, the patterns don’t suggest the Senate used procedures out of constitutional duty, out of deference for what the Constitution says or what previous Senates have done. Instead they used procedures based on the political circumstances of each confirmation.

Head to the Fact Checker for more.

Watch Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) deliver his Senate floor response to President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination:

A leading small-business group, the National Federation of Independent Business, said in a statement that it will throughly investigate the record of any nominee, with plans to support or oppose their confirmation — a first for the 73-year-old group.

“The stakes are far too high for small businesses to watch this process from the sidelines,” president and CEO Juanita Duggan said. She said she has “grave concerns” about Garland.

“A cursory examination of his record points to a judge who nearly always sides with regulators, labor unions, and trial lawyers at the expense of small businesses,” she said. “That’s very discouraging. Small business has been under heavy pressure from the EPA, the DOL, the NLRB, and the rest of the alphabet soup of regulators that have expanded their power over the private sector.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who had warned potential Supreme Court nominees that they would become a “pinata” if they become the president’s pick, said that he did not believe that Merrick Garland was Obama’s first choice.

“With the certainly that you’re not going to be confirmed, because we’re not going to consent to the president’s nominee, I think a lot of the potential candidates would say, ‘Count me out,'” said Cornyn, who is the Senate majority whip and a Judiciary Committee member.

Cornyn said Republicans remained resolved to block any Obama nominee, and he would not address speculation about a lame duck session: “This person will not be confirmed, so there’s no reason going through some motions and pretending like it will happen, because it’s not going to happen.”

At least one Republican senator acknowledged discussions of whether the GOP-led Senate might confirm an Obama nominee in a “lame duck” session after the November election should Hillary Clinton be elected president.

“If the election doesn’t go the way Republicans want it, there will be a lot of people open to that I’m sure,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who sits on the Judiciary Committee. 

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Twitter on Wednesday that the Senate should wait until “this toxic presidential election season is over” before consideration a Supreme Court nominee.

Watch Obama explain in the video below why he nominated Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court:

Leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that the “American people deserve” a vote on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.

The president fulfilled his obligation by making a nomination, which the Senate must do its duty to consider, she said.

Evaluating and confirming a Justice to sit on this nation’s highest court should not be an exercise in political brinkmanship and partisan posturing. It is a serious obligation, performed on behalf of the American people, to ensure a highly qualified candidate fills a vacancy on the Court. That obligation does not depend on the party affiliation of a sitting president, nor does the Constitution make an exception to that duty in an election year.

The Senate has never taken more than 125 days to vote on a Supreme Court nominee, and on average, a confirmation or rejection has taken just two months. This Senate has almost a full year to consider and confirm Judge Garland. It should begin that work immediately by giving Judge Garland a full and fair hearing followed by a vote. That is what the American people deserve, it is what our Constitution demands, and with millions of people’s lives in the balance, anything less is entirely unacceptable.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said on Twitter Wednesday that he would support President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee if he were nominated again by the next president.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that President Obama’s decision to provide a Supreme Court nomination is a “disservice to voters:”

President Obama’s decision to nominate a Supreme Court Justice denies the American people a voice in this process. For more than eighty years, there has not been a nomination and confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice in a presidential election year and now is not the time to break with bipartisan practice. Democrats’ willingness to cast aside nearly a century of precedent only exposes how eager they are to advance the political agenda of a lame duck president. When Americans head to the polls in a few short months, they will have a unique opportunity to determine the direction of the court – President Obama is doing a disservice to voters with this attempt to tip the balance of the court with a liberal justice in the eleventh hour of his presidency. We will not stand by idly while President Obama attempts to install a liberal majority on the court to further undermine our Constitution and protect his lawless actions.

Vice President Joseph Biden said Wednesday on Twitter that he “made sure” that every Supreme Court nominee was considered when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In his Senate floor speech, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) repeatedly invoked what he called the “Biden rule” in explaining his decision to continue blocking consideration of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.

“It seems clear that President Obama made this nomination, not with the intent of seeing the nominee confirmed,  but in order to politicize it for purposes of the election,” he said, before making reference, as he has done repeatedly in recent weeks, to the 1992 remarks of Vice President Biden. 

Biden, then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued in those remarks against the consideration of a Supreme Court nominee in the final year of a president’s term. He spoke on the Senate floor in anticipation of a retirement that year, one that never came to pass.

“The American people are perfectly capable of having their say — their say — on this issue,” McConnell said. “So let’s give them a voice. Let’s let the people decide.”

“I commend President Obama on his nomination of Chief Judge Merrick Garland as an associate justice on the Supreme Court,” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said in a statement Wednesday. “In all of his prior work – from his time at the Department of Justice, where he prosecuted terrorists like Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh, to his 19-year service on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit – Judge Garland has earned a reputation for fairness and the respect of colleagues across the ideological spectrum.”

Lynch also praised Garland’s “impeccable credentials, steadfast fidelity to the law and firm devotion to the public interest.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) repeatedly said during a Senate floor speech that his decision not to consider President Obama’s nomination to the Supreme Court was “about a principle and not a person.”

He said he wanted to avoid “what would assuredly be a bitter fight no matter how good a person is nominated by the president” and that he would rather discuss issues of agreement than spend “more time debating an issue where we can’t agree.”

He also cast the decision as one that would give Americans “a voice” in the process by allowing them to elect a president who would choose a nominee they support. That argument, repeatedly made by opponents of considering Obama’s nominee is often countered by the argument that Americans already made a choice in electing Obama.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday that he completely agreed with the Senate GOP leaders who said they would not consider Garland’s nomination to the high court.

“This has never been about who the nominee is,” Ryan said. “It is about a basic principle. Under our Constitution, the president has every right to make this nomination, and the Senate has every right not to confirm a nominee. I fully support Leader McConnell and Chairman Grassley’s decision not to move forward with the confirmation process. We should let the American people decide the direction of the court.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) repeated what he has been saying for weeks, insisting Wednesday that lawmakers were not going to consider Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

In a series of tweets Wednesday — posted while McConnell was speaking on the Senate floor, denouncing the nomination — McConnell criticized the selection, claiming that President Obama had only nominated Garland “to politicize it for the purposes of the election.”

McConnell, along with Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote in The Washington Post last month that approving Obama’s nominee would result in Americans being “robbed of this unique opportunity” to weigh in through the election.

The president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund — the political arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America — called on the Senate to vote on Garland’s Supreme Court nomination.

“Judge Garland is ​an intelligent, highly accomplished judge who has secured bipartisan support in his previous appointments,” Cecile Richards said in a statement. “Now that the President has upheld his constitutional duty, it is time for the Senate to uphold theirs. The American people deserve a full court and a justice appointed by the President they elected for four years — not three. It is time for the Senate to do their job and give Judge Garland a fair hearing and up or down vote.”

In wrapping up his remarks, Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland noted that it was “a great privilege to be nominated by a fellow Chicagoan.”

Garland said that he has sought “fidelity to the Constitution and the law,” and described it as the hallmark of his tenure on the bench.

“If the Senate sees fit to confirm me to the position for which I have been nominated today, I promise to continue on that course,” he said.

Garland described himself as “grateful beyond words” in his final remarks. After that, he was guided inside by President Obama, with Vice President Biden trailing closely behind.

In his first comment on the nomination, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) did not mention Garland by name in a lengthy statement, instead defending the Senate’s right under the constitution to withhold its consent. 

“A lifetime appointment that could dramatically impact individual freedoms and change the direction of the court for at least a generation is too important to get bogged down in politics,” Grassley said. “The American people shouldn’t be denied a voice.” 

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on the Senate to hold a confirmation vote by May 25 — the day Congress is set to break for the Memorial Day weekend — saying that is “more than enough time” to thoroughly vet Garland’s qualifications.

Leahy said President Obama had “chosen carefully, and well.”

“I know his decision was the result of thorough and careful consideration,” he continued. “The president also consulted with both Republican and Democratic senators before making this nomination. Now it is time for the Senate to do its job.”

Garland spoke at length about the impact of his family on his life, sharing warm words for his parents, sisters and daughters, though he noted an issue with telling one of his children about his nomination to the highest court in the country.

“I also wish that we hadn’t taught my older daughter to be so adventurous that she would be hiking in the mountains out of cell service range when the president called,” Garland said.

After being introduced to applause in the Rose Garden, Judge Merrick Garland immediately got choked up while thanking President Obama for the nomination.

“This is the greatest honor of my life,” Garland said, “other than Lynn agreeing to marry me 28 years ago.”

He called this nomination a gift, the best he said he had received other than the births of his two daughters.

“As my parents taught me, by both words and deeds, a life of public service is as much a gift to the person who serves as it is to those he is serving,” Garland said. “And for me, there can be no higher public service than serving as a member of the United States Supreme Court.”

As the president was announcing Garland’s nomination, the conservative Judicial Crisis Network circulated talking points and key decisions Garland had made as an appeals judge, calling him “a reliable fifth vote for a laundry list of extreme liberal priorities, like gutting the Second Amendment, legalizing partial-birth abortion, and unleashing unaccountable bureaucratic agencies like the EPA and the IRS.”

Carrie Severino, the network’s chief counsel and policy director, said Senate Republicans should “trust the American people” to weigh in on the next justice through their votes in the coming election: “President Obama wants to take that decision away from the American people because he and his allies are committed to pushing the court in an extreme liberal direction, and Judge Garland is a key step in that plan.”

In a sign of the broad liberal coalition preparing to promote Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination, League of Conservation Voters president Gene Karpinski attended the Rose Garden ceremony along with many legal advocacy experts.

Meanwhile, the president of the American Constitution Society, a leading group of liberal legal thinkers and practitioners, called Garland “impeccably qualified to serve.”

“His credentials cannot be questioned, he is a person of integrity and he would bring an understanding of how the world works to the nation’s highest court,” Caroline Fredrickson said in a statement.

President Obama noted the frenzied nature of the presidential campaign and the national political discussion in general in his remarks about Garland, referring to the level of noise coming out of this particular election cycle.

“Now I recognize that we have entered the political season, or perhaps these days it never ends,” Obama said. “A political season that is even noisier and more volatile than usual.”

He said he knew that Republicans would point to prior examples of Democrats saying that senators should not confirm Supreme Court nominees in an election year, most notably Vice President Biden’s suggestion in 1992 that was repeatedly cited this year. And he added that he knew Americans were “closely divided” on issues facing the court, which is now missing its most prominent conservative voice.

Citing “the squabbling that’s going on in the news every day,” Obama called on lawmakers to treat the Supreme Court process “with the seriousness and care it deserves.”

President Obama said that Garland’s life as a lawyer and judge was “devoted to protecting the rights of others,” praising his history of doing this with what he called a common touch.

“I’m proud that he will continue that work on the nation’s highest court,” Obama said. “I said I would take this process seriously and I did. I chose a serious man and an exemplary judge: Merrick Garland.”

Obama said that during his seven years in office, when he spoke to lawmakers about Supreme Court openings — including the two he has filled already — Garland’s name has repeatedly come up.

President Obama had warm words for Garland’s temperament and style, along with praise for his record as a litigator and judge.

“To find someone with such a long career in public service, marked by complex and sensitive issues, to find someone who just about everyone not only respects but genuinely likes, that is rare,” Obama said. “And it speaks to who Merrick Garland is, not just as lawyer but as a man.”

During his discussion of Merrick Garland’s history, President Obama made sure to note that Garland was easily confirmed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers to the federal appeals court. Obama said that after nearly two decades on this court, Garland has brought his diligent manner to bear on his work as a judge.

“On a circuit court known for strong-minded judges on both ends of the spectrum, Judge Garland has earned a track record of building consensus as a thoughtful, fair-minded judge who follows the law,” Obama said.

Obama said that Garland’s record on the bench speaks to his temperament, as well as his ability to persuade others.

After nominating Merrick Garland — an announcement that drew applause from those assembled in the Rose Garden — President Obama outlined the Chicago native’s history, tracing his life from a young man in Chicago who sold his comic book collection, to becoming a lawyer and then leaving a prestigious law firm to join the Justice Department.

“He quickly made a name for himself going after corrupt politicians and violent criminals,” Obama said.

Obama particularly praised Garland’s work as principal deputy associate attorney general, when the future judge supervised the investigations into the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City. Garland supervised the prosecution that brought Timothy McVeigh, the convicted bomber, to justice, Obama said.

“Throughout the process, Merrick took pains to do everything by the book,” Obama said, adding that Garland sidestepped opportunities to quicken the investigation that could have weakened the outcome of the trial.

Obama said it was no surprise that after his work on the Oklahoma City investigation, Garland was strongly supported in his appointment to the D.C. federal appeals court.

President Obama said his selection of Merrick Garland followed “a rigorous and comprehensive process,” saying that he reached out to members of both parties, legal associations and advocacy groups in gauging opinions from “across the spectrum.”

“I’ve selected a nominee who is widely recognized not only as one of America’s sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness and excellence,” Obama, with Garland by his side, said during his remarks in the Rose Garden on Wednesday.

Obama said selecting a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia is “not a responsibility that I take lightly.”

A progressive group on Wednesday said it was disappointed in President Obama’s selection of Merrick Garland as a Supreme Court nominee, after the group had campaigned for the president to nominate a woman who is a person of color.

“It’s deeply disappointing that President Obama failed to use this opportunity to add the voice of another progressive woman of color to the Supreme Court, and instead put forward a nominee seemingly designed to appease intransigent Republicans rather than inspire the grassroots he’ll need to get that nominee through the Senate gauntlet,” Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, said in a statement.

“We believe that Senate Republicans need to do their job and give Judge Garland the fair hearing any Supreme Court nominee deserves, but this selection will make it harder to excite grassroots progressive about the slog ahead,” he said.

FreedomWorks, the conservative activist group, quickly reiterated its opposition to any nomination made by Obama:

“This debate is over the process, not the nominee,” the group said in a statement. “The Senate is not obligated to confirm or even hold hearings for a president’s nominee to the Supreme Court. These senators, many of whom have concerns about the centralization of power in the executive branch under President Obama and the administration’s disregard for fundamental freedoms protected by the Constitution, are not willing to be rubber stamps for this White House.”

In the statement, the group called efforts to say the Senate should approve the nomination “disingenuous” and called on conservative leaders to “stand firm” and refuse to consider a nominee until after a new president takes office next January.

“A once-in-a-century vacancy like this one, where the ideological balance of the Supreme Court is on the line in an election year, cries out for keeping this seat on the Court open until the American people have the opportunity to express their views on the Court’s direction this November,” the group said.

As part of its campaign to promote President Obama’s nominee — and, more to the point, make the case that the Senate should consider this nomination — the White House set up @SCOTUSnom, a Twitter account it will use to send out information.

Garland, 63, is a longtime Washington lawyer and jurist who is chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

He is a Chicago native who graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. After becoming a partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter, he joined the Justice Department, where he handled the drug investigation of then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry as an assistant U.S. attorney in the District.

Considered a moderate, Garland is widely respected in the D.C. legal community and was also a finalist for the first two Supreme Court vacancies Obama filled.

Garland was appointed to the D.C. federal appeals court by President Bill Clinton in April 1997 and confirmed on a 76-to-23 vote. In February 2013, Garland became chief judge of the D.C. federal appeals court.

Seven sitting Republican senators voted to confirm Garland in 1997: Dan Coats (Ind.), Thad Cochran (Miss.), Susan Collins (Maine), Orrin Hatch (Utah), James M. Inhofe (Okla.), John McCain (Ariz.), and Pat Roberts (Kan.).

Some conservative groups immediately rallied around their previous approach of standing on the principle of saving the nomination for the next president — but also sought to undermine the coming nominee.