Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates
With the advice and consent of the United States Senate, the president of the United States appoints the members of the Supreme Court of the United States, which is the highest court of the federal judiciary of the United States. 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.
Judge Neil Gorsuch, his wife Louise, and President Donald Trump during the announcement in the East Room of the White House.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh and his family with President Donald Trump in 2018
President Donald Trump nominates Judge Amy Coney Barrett in the Rose Garden of the White House.
Neil Gorsuch Supreme Court nomination
On January 31, 2017, soon after taking office, President Donald Trump, a Republican, nominated Neil Gorsuch for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to succeed Antonin Scalia, who had died almost one year earlier. Then-president Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated Merrick Garland to succeed Scalia on March 16, 2016, but the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate did not vote on the nomination. Majority leader Mitch McConnell declared that as the presidential election cycle had already commenced, it made the appointment of the next justice a political issue to be decided by voters. The Senate Judiciary Committee refused to consider the Garland nomination, thus keeping the vacancy open through the end of Obama's presidency on January 20, 2017.
President Trump announcing the nomination, accompanied by Gorsuch and Gorsuch's wife, Louise
Neil Gorsuch with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, February 1, 2017
Ticket for the March 2017 Neil Gorsuch Supreme Court nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee
Judge Gorsuch testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, March 22, 2017