President Trump said Friday that he has narrowed down a list of 25 candidates for Supreme Court to just five finalists - including two women, and that he plans to announce his nominee to replace the retiring Justice Kennedy on July 9.
This will be Trump's second Supreme Court pick, the first being Neil Gorsuch who replaced Justice Antonin Scalia after his February, 2016 death at a West Texas ranch.
“I like them all,” Trump told reporters flying with him on Air Force One. “It is a group of highly talented, very brilliant, mostly conservative judges.”
“Outside of war and peace, of course, the most important decision you make is the selection of a Supreme Court judge, if you get it,” Trump said, adding “As you know, there are many presidents who never get a choice.”
In response to Kennedy's retirement announcement, Democrats have come out in force - demanding that Trump "not consider a Supreme Court Justice in an election year," suggesting that holding up the process because of the upcoming midterm elections is somehow equivalent to doing the same during a Presidential election year, as was the case after Scalia's death.
Enter Hillary
And just like that, Hillary Clinton is back - bracing for a battle against whoever Trump nominates to the highest court in the land.
In a Friday tweet, Clinton threw her support behind Demand Justice, a leftist 501(c)(4) advocacy organization headed by her former press secretary, Brian Fallon, that intends to fight "Trump's hateful vision for America" by opposing his Judicial picks across the country - including the Supreme Court.
Given the news coming out of the Supreme Court this week, I'm excited to support @WeDemandJustice's critical work by welcoming them into the @OnwardTogether family. https://t.co/DrxSqwVn4H
"Long after Donald Trump is no longer our President, his takeover of our courts will keep alive his hateful vision for America for decades to come," their website reads. "Trump’s judges are overwhelmingly white men. Many are not at all qualified for their posts. And they consistently hold extreme, right-wing views."
"If we truly want to stop Trump, we can’t surrender this fight." -Demand Justice
Demand Justice also employs chief counsel Christopher Kang, a former congressional aide who was deeply involved in the Obama administration's vetting of judicial nominees.
While this may be yet more pop-up activism from the left in order to snipe Trump's Supreme Court picks - or it could become something more:
The funding for Demand Justice is also suspect. As a 501(c)(4) organization, Demand Justice does not have a legal obligation to disclose its donors, and the group is too young to have submitted annual IRS tax filings. However, Director Fallon indicated as...