The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday has set off a political earthquake, with the fight to replace the liberal icon on the court dominating the political conversation just six weeks before a presidential election. President Donald Trump says he will announce his nominee on Saturday, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has whipped enough of his Republican colleagues into line to all but guarantee there will be hearings on a Supreme Court nominee by the end of 2020. Meanwhile, Democrats are demanding the nomination process be put off until next year, at the start of the next presidential term and after the new Congress has been sworn in.

With the Senate and the While House under GOP control, Democrats have few procedural options to hold up the process. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told WNYC’s Sean Carlson his party's strategy is to engage the public to highlight what's at stake in the nomination fight.

"The president said that one of the tests for his nominee would be that he or she would strike down the Affordable Care Act," Blumenthal said. "That means that people who have preexisting conditions, COVID-19 being one of them, will no longer have any protections. It means that women will be unprotected from discrimination. It means that young people on their parents policies, if they're under 26, will have no protection. And the argument on this case is literally a few days after the election."

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