Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

Following his victory in the 2016 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump took office as president on January 20, 2017, and faced an immediate vacancy on the Supreme Court due to the February 2016 death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.

[1] Leonard Leo played a crucial role in selecting Trump's appointees and helping them successfully navigate their Senate confirmation hearings.

[2][3] Following Trump's reelection to a second, non-consecutive term in the 2024 presidential election, and entering office with a solid Republican majority in the Senate, observers noted that he would likely have the opportunity to appoint several more justices.

President Donald Trump began his term in January 2017 with a vacancy to be filled as a result of the February 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

[14] On February 23, the 11 Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee signed a letter to McConnell stating their intention to withhold consent on any nominee made by Obama, and that no hearings would occur until after January 20, 2017, when the new president took office.

[15][16] On March 16, 2016, Obama nominated then-chief judge Merrick Garland (of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit), to replace Scalia.

[18] Trump rejected any move by Obama to fill the vacancy, maintaining that picking a successor to Scalia should be done by the next president.

[23][24] At the time of the nomination, Gorsuch, Hardiman, and Pryor were all federal appellate judges who had been appointed by President George W.

Kavanaugh was officially nominated on July 9, selected from among a list of "25 highly qualified potential nominees" considered by the Trump Administration.

The hearings took longer than initially expected over objections to the withholding of documents pertinent to Kavanaugh's time in the Bush administration as a lawyer, and due to the presence of protestors.

[33][34] On September 16, 2018, Christine Blasey Ford alleged a then-17 year old Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in 1982, in what she described as an attempted rape.

[42] On September 25, 2020, it was announced that Trump intended to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In the intervening years between Trump's two Presidencies, Justice Stephen Breyer retired, and was succeeded by Biden nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.