Obama, congressional leaders talk high-court vacancy

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

After an Oval Office sit-down Tuesday did nothing to move Republican Senate leaders off their hard line against a Supreme Court nomination, Democrats pulled out another weapon in the heated election-year fight: Donald Trump.

In a White House meeting that lasted less than an hour, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told President Barack Obama that any confirmation process during a presidential campaign would politicize the court. They offered up no potential candidates who would win their backing and no route to filling the seat.

“This vacancy will not be filled this year,” McConnell told reporters after the meeting.

Democrats accused Republicans of trying to hold the seat open so that a Republican president can fill it. That president could be Trump, they noted, hoping to needle a GOP establishment uncomfortable with the prospects of Trump presidency.

The meeting – which also included Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the ranking Democrat on the judiciary committee – was the first time the leaders have met since Justice Antonin Scalia’s death last month set off a high-stakes clash over the Supreme Court vacancy.