President Donald Trump will replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy with one of 25 people from a previously released list, he affirmed on Wednesday after news broke that Kennedy, the court’s longtime swing vote, is retiring.
Trump said the process of nominating a new justice will “begin immediately.”"Hopefully we will pick someone who is just as outstanding," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "It will be somebody from that list.”
Here is a look at the 25 people Trump has said he will choose from:
Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She previously clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She was appointed by Trump and confirmed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in October 2017.
She is a graduate of Notre Dame Law School.
Keith Blackwell of Georgia, Supreme Court of Georgia. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of Georgia in July 2012 after previously serving on the Court of Appeals of Georgia.
He served as a clerk for Judge J.L. Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit after graduating from University of Georgia School of Law.
Charles Canady of Florida, Supreme Court of Florida. A former member of the Florida House of Representatives and the U.S. House of Representatives, Canady was appointed to the Florida Supreme Court in 2008.
His colleagues elected him to his second term as Chief Justice in 2018. He is a graduate of Yale Law School, and he introduced the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in Congress in 1995 that was ultimately vetoed by President Bill Clinton.
Steven Colloton of Iowa, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. On a list short on Ivy League graduates, Colloton’s educational pedigree is notable. He got his undergraduate degree from Princeton, went to law school at Yale and served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
The judge spent about eight years as a federal prosecutor in Iowa and later served two years as U.S. Attorney in Des Moines before being tapped by Bush for the federal appeals court in 2003. He also spent almost two years working for Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who investigated Clinton over Whitewater and his affair with a White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Allison Eid of Colorado, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Eid was appointed by Trump to fill the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals seat that was vacated by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
She previously served on the Colorado Supreme Court and as Solicitor General of Colorado. She clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Britt Grant of Georgia, Supreme Court of Georgia. Grant joined the Georgia Supreme Court in 2017. She served as solicitor general in Georgia from 2015 to 2017.
Trump has nominated her to serve as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the 11thCircuit. After graduating from Stanford Law School, she clerked for D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh and served in the George W. Bush White House.
Raymond Gruender of Missouri, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Gruender, a former U.S. Attorney in St. Louis under Bush, has been a solidly conservative vote on the 8th Circuit since winning confirmation on a 97-1 vote in 2004. Before taking the U.S. Attorney post, he worked as a prosecutor there, handling white collar crime and corruption cases involving county council members, as well as lawyers and judges connected to a scandal in Missouri’s workers’ compensation system.
On the appeals court, Gruender wrote an en banc decision in 2008 upholding South Dakota’s “informed consent” law on abortion, and he later wrote an opinion stating that the state has the right to force doctors to tell women seeking abortions that they would be at risk of committing suicide if they underwent the procedure. (Colloton, who sits on the same court, also endorsed both those views.)
Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Hardiman spent about three years as a federal judge in Pittsburgh before being nominated to the 3rd Circuit in 2006. Hardiman graduated from Notre Dame and went to law school at Georgetown.
A 2007 ruling Hardiman wrote upheld the constitutionality strip searches of jail prisoners regardless of how minor an offense they were accused of. The Supreme Court later endorsed his decision, 5-4.
Hardiman won favor with gun rights advocates for a 2013 dissent that said New Jersey was violating the Second Amendment to the Constitution by requiring those seeking to carry a handgun to demonstrate a “justifiable need” for such a permit.
Brett Kavanaugh of Maryland, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Kavanaugh was appointed to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006 by Bush, for whom he had previously served Assistant to the President and staff secretary.
A graduate of Yale Law School, he clerked for Justice Kennedy from 1994 to 1997, and for part of 1998, he was Associate Counsel for Starr as he investigated Clinton.
Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Kethledge, who joined the 6th Circuit in 2008, has a resume with something rarely seen on Trump’s SCOTUS list: a stint on Capitol Hill. The University of Michigan law school graduate spent a couple of years as a Judiciary Committee counsel to former Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) before heading across the street to clerk for Kennedy.
In 2014, Kethledge wrote an opinion rejecting a groundbreaking Equal Employment Opportunity Commission case seeking to limit private employers’ use of credit checks for job applicants. The EEOC argued that the practice amounted to racial discrimination. Kethledge accused the agency of hypocrisy.
Last year, Kethledge issued a politically charged ruling blasting the Obama administration for “continuous resistance” to efforts to discover what actions the IRS took against conservative nonprofit groups.
Joan Larsen of Michigan, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Larsen offers conservatives the possibility of installing a justice who could serve for three decades.
She also has the shortest judicial record of any of those considered finalists: She spent nearly all of her legal career as a law professor at the University of Michigan before being appointed to that state’s top court in September 2015, less than a year before Trump publicly named her as a potential Supreme Court pick.
A Northwestern law grad, Larsen clerked for Scalia.
Mike Lee of Utah, U.S. senator. Lee is one of the most conservative members of the Senate. He clerked for Samuel Alito when Alito was a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and worked as an Assistant United States Attorney in Utah.
He was elected to the Senate in 2010 and re-elected in 2016.
Thomas Lee of Utah, Supreme Court of Utah. Lee was appointed to the Utah Supreme Court in 2010.
He previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and worked as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division in 2004 and 2005 under Bush.
Edward Mansfield of Iowa, Supreme Court of Iowa. Mansfield was appointed to the Iowa Supreme Court in 2011 after serving two years on the Iowa Court of Appeals.
He is a graduate of Yale Law School.
Federico Moreno of Florida, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Moreno was appointed to the District Court by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.
A graduate of University of Miami School of law, he previously served as a judge on the Dade County Court and the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida
Kevin Newsom of Alabama, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He was appointed to the Circuit Court by Trump in 2017.
He served as solicitor general of Alabama from 2003 to 2007. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he clerked for retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
William Pryor of Alabama, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Pryor is a favorite among many constitutional conservatives for his often caustic criticism of the leading liberal Supreme Court decisions. He has called Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion rights ruling, “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.”
Pryor made it onto the 11th Circuit in 2004 via a rare recess appointment from Bush after Senate Democrats blocked a vote on Pryor’s nomination for nearly a year. He was confirmed on a 53-45 vote in 2005 as part of the so-called “Gang of 13” deal that allowed approval of several stalled Bush judicial nominees but preserved the right to filibuster.
While Pryor’s record as an appeals court judge has been staunchly conservative, he surprised many legal observers in 2011 by joining a decision holding that some discrimination against transgender individuals is prohibited by constitutional doctrine forbidding sex discrimination.
Margaret Ryan of Virginia, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. Ryan was appointed to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forced by Bush in 2006.
A graduate of Notre Dame Law School, she is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and clerked for Thomas.
David Stras of Minnesota, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Stras served as a justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court from 2010 until 2018, when he was named to the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals by Trump.
He is a graduate of the University of Kansas School of Law and clerked for Thomas.
Diane Sykes of Wisconsin, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. A former justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Sykes was part of a legal movement that helped set in motion a conservative transformation of the judiciary in her home state.
Sykes was confirmed to the 7th Circuit in 2004 and was reportedly on Bush’s Supreme Court short list if a vacancy emerged in the last couple years of his second term. On the appeals court, she issued a decision compelling a state-run university to recognize a Christian legal group as an official school organization even though the group banned leaders engaged in homosexuality or "fornication."
Sykes also voted to reinstate Wisconsin’s voter ID law just eight weeks before the 2014 general election. The Supreme Court reversed that decision by a 6-3 vote, but the justices allowed the law to take effect once that election was complete.
Amul Thapar of Kentucky, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Thapar was named to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals by Trump in 2017.
He previously served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky under Bush and was appointed by Bush to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky in 2008. He is the first South Asian Article III judge.
Timothy Tymkovich of Colorado, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Tymkovich was appointed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2003 by Bush.
A graduate of the University of Colorado Law School, he served as Colorado’s solicitor general from 1991-1996.
Robert Young of Michigan, Supreme Court of Michigan (Ret.). Young was named as general counsel for Michigan State University in May 2018 after he negotiated the $500 million settlement between the university and victims of convicted sexual predator and former gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.
Young had previously served on the Michigan Supreme Court from 1999-2017. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
Don Willett of Texas, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Willet was appointed to the circuit court by Trump after serving on the Supreme Court of Texas from 2005 to 2018.
He is a graduate of Duke University Law School.
Patrick Wyrick of Oklahoma, Supreme Court of Oklahoma. Wyrick has served on the Oklahoma Supreme Court since 2017 and is Trump’s nominee for District Judge on the U.S. District Court of Western Oklahoma.
He served as solicitor general of Oklahoma from 2011 to 2017 under then Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who now serves as Trump’s EPA administrator and has been dogged by controversy. He is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma Law School.
