Hillary Clinton will make the case that the Supreme Court is at the center of the 2016 election in a speech Wednesday, warning what will happen if Donald Trump becomes president and is allowed to choose new justices.
“Based on his positions on a number of issues, there is good reason to believe a Trump nominee would seek to roll back our rights, further empower corporations, and undo so much of the progress we’ve achieved,” a Clinton aide said in an email, providing an advance look at the remarks the Democratic presidential candidate is set to deliver at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The former secretary of state will argue that the “core pillars of the progressive movement” are at risk of being overturned by the court during a single term if a Republican wins the White House in November.
Clinton will specifically call out Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who refuses to hold a hearing for Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to the high court.
Grassley and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), joined by the vast majority of their caucus, have said the position left vacant by the late Justice Antonin Scalia should remain empty until there is a new president — hoping, of course, that the next president is a Republican who will choose a conservative justice.
Clinton will also name Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who recently told a Wisconsin radio station that Republicans “absolutely will not allow the Supreme Court to flip,” underscoring the political nature of the GOP obstruction. Johnson is considered one of the party’s most vulnerable senators up for re-election in 2016. He’s facing off against Democrat Russ Feingold, who lost to Johnson in 2010.
Clinton’s speech will also include a bit of a dig — although perhaps not by name — at Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), her opponent in the Democratic primary. According to her aide, she will argue that the “breadth of progressive issues” likely to come before the court are “another reason why we’re not a single issue country and we can’t afford a single issue President.”
Both Clinton and Sanders praised Obama’s choice of Garland, who is known as a moderate on the D.C. Circuit Court. Sanders, however, has said that if he wins in November and Republicans still haven’t approved Garland, he would ask Obama to withdraw his nomination.
