Daily US Times: President Trump has said he will nominate a woman to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg next week, escalating a political row over her successor.
Justice Ginsburg, 87, died on Friday, just weeks before the presidential election.
Joe Biden, Mr Trump’s Democrat rival, insists the decision to nominate her replacement should wait until after the vote.
The ideological balance of the nine-member court in the Supreme Court is crucial to its rulings on the most important issues in US law.
But the President has vowed to swear in Ginsburg’s successor “without delay”, a move that has outraged Democrats, who fear Republicans will vote to lock in a decades-long conservative majority on the country’s highest court.
At a campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina on Saturday, Mr Trump said: “I will be putting forth a nominee next week. It will be a woman.”
“I think it should be a woman because I actually like women much more than men,” he said.
Some supporters chanted “Fill that seat!” as President Trump spoke, urging him to take the rare opportunity to nominate a third justice in the Supreme Court during one presidential term to a lifetime appointment.
Earlier, President Donald Trump praised two female judges on city appeals courts as possible choices. Both judges – Barbara Lagoa and Amy Coney Barrett – are conservatives who would tip the balance of the Supreme Court in favour of Republicans.
Democrats have vigorously opposed any nomination before election, which is just weeks away, arguing that Senate Republicans blocked Democratic President Barack Obama’s choice for the US top court in 2016.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell justified the move at that time on grounds that it was an election year. But on Friday Senator McConnell said he intended to act on any nomination Mr Trump made and bring it to a vote in the Senate before election day.
You may read: Republicans vow to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Trump pick