President Donald Trump, in the wake of two stinging losses at the Supreme Court, is returning to his 2016 campaign tactic of trying to rally Republicans with promises of conservative justices.
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The court on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation. The ruling, in a 5-4 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, came three days after a 6-3 opinion backed by a Trump appointee, Neil Gorsuch, in which the court said LGBTQ Americans are protected under the Civil Rights Act.
Trump reacted to the rulings with a string of tweets, saying on Thursday they were a „shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives,“ and said Americans‘ Second Amendment right to bear arms and the country’s borders were under assault in the judicial system.
„I will be releasing a new list of Conservative Supreme Court Justice nominees, which may include some, or many of those already on the list, by September 1,2020. If given the opportunity, I will only choose from this list, as in the past, a Conservative Supreme Court Justice,“ Trump tweeted.
It’s the same playbook Trump used in 2016, when he released an initial list of 11 people he would consider for the Supreme Court vacancy created by Antonin Scalia’s death.
Neither of the justices Trump has appointed, Gorsuch nor Brett Kavanaugh, was on that initial list — though Gorsuch was added later in the campaign and Kavanaugh was included on a new version of the list in 2017.
