WASHINGTON (AP) – President-elect Donald Trump has met with one of the judges on his short list for potential Supreme Court nominees, less than two weeks before he is expected to announce his choice for the nation’s highest court.
Judge William Pryor, an Alabama-based judge on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, met with Trump in New York on Saturday, said two people familiar with the meeting. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting had not been publicly announced.
Trump said last week that he would select a candidate to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia within his first two weeks in office. He has promised to seek someone in the conservative’s mold and said he is working from a list of 21 people, mainly conservative state and federal judges in their 50s.
For nearly a year, the court has had only eight justices, which means they can deadlock at 4-4 deadlock on decisions.
The likely confirmation of Trump’s choice by a Republican-controlled Senate would restore a fifth vote for conservative outcomes in cases involving voting rights, the power of unions and in class-action lawsuits, lost with Scalia’s death. Trump also has said he wants an abortion opponent on the bench, although it would take a second Trump appointee to bring about dramatic change on that issue.