Potential SCOTUS Picks for Donald Trump

WWhen he ran For president in 2016, Donald Trump released two lists of potential justices to assure Republicans that he would choose conservatives to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court. He issued a third decision in 2017 and another in 2020, days before Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, allowing him to consolidate conservatives’ 6-3 majority on the court.

Trump did not issue any lists this time because, as he said last month, “he no longer needs…[ed]“To support his conservative intentions. Thanks to Mr. Trump, the court has been abolished Roe vs. Wade, It strengthened gun rights, crippled administrative agencies, and destroyed the wall separating church from state and all but presidents were immune from criminal prosecution. Now, in his second term, Trump may be able to appoint at least two more judges. Justice Clarence Thomas has been on the court for more than three decades. Last summer, Justice Samuel Alito pondered the possibility of retirement. Replacing both would bring Trump to five justices and a majority on the court, a feat that only a handful of presidents have been able to achieve.

Who will they be? One contender is James Ho, whom Trump nominated in 2017 to a seat on the Court of Appeals — and who appears on his 2020 list. Judge Ho is the most combative jurist on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most conservative middle court in America.

In June, writing for a unanimous Supreme Court justice, Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed out an error in a ruling he and two of his colleagues issued that struck down access to mifepristone, an abortion drug. Judge Kavanaugh explained that doctors who challenge FDA regulations lack standing to sue because the mifepristone rules have caused them no harm. Not mentioned was Judge Ho’s bizarre argument that doctors who are “happy to work with their unborn patients” could challenge the rules on the abortion pill because they “sustain cosmetic injury” when the fetuses are aborted.

As Texas Solicitor General in 2009, Judge Ho wrote a brief describing the right to bear arms as “the ultimate guarantor of all other freedoms enjoyed by Americans.” He inserts himself into culture war battles, for example boycotting graduates of Yale and Columbia for practical training. The man who could replace the 51-year-old is Justice Thomas (76, the oldest serving justice), whom he appointed as law clerk in 2005. Both say they interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning.

It is also possible that a colleague on the Fifth Circuit could find himself in a position of prominence if the justice for whom he clerked in 2008, Samuel Alito, retires. Andrew Oldham, 46, may lack Judge Ho’s bombast, but his views are no less radical. At his confirmation hearing in 2018, he refused to say so Brown v. Board of EducationWho declared school segregation unconstitutional, It is specified correctly. He pursued a deregulation agenda in the Fifth Circuit, which found, at times, a friendly majority on the Supreme Court. With Republicans in control of the Senate, Trump will have little in the way of appointing the justices himself and Oldham, making the court even more important. Maga– Friendly for years to come. ■