Democratic lawmakers in New England on Saturday slammed President Donald Trump for what they called a rushed process to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, after Trump announced his selection of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to take her seat.
After Trump announced the pick in the Rose Garden, Democrats doubled down on their assertion that the Senate should not hold a confirmation vote until after the Nov. 3 election, saying issues such as abortion rights and health care were hanging in the balance.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren called Trump's nominee "illegitimate" in the first tweet of a thread posted shortly after the president's announcement.
Warren posted several articles in the thread outlining the different statements Trump has made on potential nominees during his term, including his desire for a judge to be pro-life and against the Affordable Care Act.
Soon after, Warren published a four-minute video repeatedly echoing a claim that Republicans' efforts to install Barrett on the Court does not reflect the opinions of a majority of Americans. She also urged her colleagues and supporters to keep fighting the nomination.
"Right now, Trump and [Sen. Mitch] McConnell are trying to break our democracy, and it's going to take all of us to rebuild it," she said.
In an interview, Sen. Ed Markey spoke out against the decision to move forward with a nomination, saying "If we don't fight this with every fiber, politically, that we have, then we will have allowed a heist, a political heist, of a historic nature that the Republicans will have perpetrated on the American people."
Markey added that if the nomination goes through, he will vote to end the fillibuster and seek to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court.
Rep. Ayanna Presesley released a statement criticizing Barrett's history on reproductive and LGBTQ rights, and decried any nomination or confirmation before the January inauguration.
"This is a rushed process and any candidate will no doubt be inadequately vetted and unqualified for a lifetime appointment to the highest court ... . Judge Barrett is a dangerous, far-right ideologue who does not belong on our nation’s highest court," Pressley said in the statement.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh created a petition online to send a message to McConnell, calling on him "to wait until a new president is inaugurated before holding hearings on a SCOTUS replacement."
In a tweet, Walsh wrote that Barrett's "previous decisions make clear she would rip away health care from millions of Americans - during a pandemic."
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in a statement called on Sen. Mitch McConnell to avoid "wrongly trying to ram through a nominee during an election," and instead focus on passing coronavirus relief legislation.
"There is no need to rush this nominee," her statement reads. "Judge Barrett’s record of opposing Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act is extremely troubling and demonstrates that the President is trying to advance his own partisan agenda with this nomination, at the expense of the people of New Hampshire."
New Hampshire’s other U.S. Senator, Maggie Hassan, tweeted that Trump and McConnell aimed to push Barrett’s nomination through in order to overturn the Affordable Care Act, and saying “This process should not move forward.”
Rep. Jim McGovern tweeted a similar message in the hours before Saturday’s press conference.
Hours before Trump made the pick official in a Rose Garden press conference, Warren tweeted, "This sleazy Supreme Court double-dealing is the last gasp of a corrupt Republican leadership, numb to its own hypocrisy. The last gasp of a billionaire-fueled party that's undemocratically over-represented and desperately clinging to power in order to impose its extremist agenda."
