Republican McConnell signals blockade of any 2024 Biden high court nominee

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday that President Joe Biden would not get a Supreme Court nominee confirmed in 2024 if Republicans regain control of the chamber and a vacancy arises during that presidential election year.

“It’s highly unlikely. In fact, no, I don’t think either party, if it were different from the president, would confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the middle of an election,” McConnell told syndicated talk radio host Hugh Hewitt.

McConnell could return as majority leader if Republicans regain control of the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. McConnell, serving as majority leader, blocked Democratic former President Barack Obama from filling a vacancy left by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016, saying it would be improper to confirm a Supreme Court nominee during a presidential election year.

McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans refused to consider Obama’s nominee – Merrick Garland, who now serves as Biden’s attorney general – in a move with little precedent in U.S. history. That enabled Donald Trump, the winner of the November 2016 election, to appoint conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017.

Democrats accused McConnell of hypocrisy last year when he allowed the Senate to confirm Trump’s conservative Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September about six weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Trump, a Republican, was defeated by Biden, a Democrat, in the election and Democrats also took control of the Senate.

McConnell described his decision to keep Scalia’s seat open until after Trump was elected as “the single most consequential thing I’ve done in my time as majority leader of the Senate.” McConnell made confirmation of Trump’s conservative judicial nominees a high priority. Trump appointed three justices, also including Brett Kavanaugh, to the Supreme Court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority.