White House meeting

White House meeting on court nominee yields no progress

By Sarah Wheaton

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met with Senate leaders at the White House to discuss the Supreme Court vacancy, and they talked about basketball.

With the West Wing as a backdrop, the top politicians in Washington went through the motions, sitting around a coffee table in the Oval Office during a brief photo-op for the press. They didn’t say anything, nor did they need to, really, given that they had already pledged to repeat their existing talking points about the Supreme Court: GOP leaders stuck by their commitment to not consider a new justice until after the election, while Democrats continued railing about the Republicans' dereliction of Constitutional duty by refusing to hold hearings on any Obama nominee.

"We killed a lot of time talking about basketball," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, speaking to reporters alongside Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee about 40 minutes after the beginning of the meeting.

The Republicans in the room, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley, skipped the stake-out session afterwards.

For his part, Obama again tried to offer a measure of an olive branch, but on Tuesday, Republicans weren't interested. The White House has insisted the president won’t apply a political test to the nominee, and Obama reiterated that point to the Republicans, according to Reid.

“One thing the president made very clear, if they have any names, he will seriously consider them," Reid said.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest echoed that point on Tuesday.

“He gave everyone in the room, Democrats and Republicans, the opportunity to put forward their suggestions for Supreme Court nominees,” Earnest said, adding, “The offer is not a one-time only offer.”

For the White House, the meeting is part of a broader effort to show the president is taking his “consultation” with the Senate seriously, even in an election year.

Senate Republicans, on the other hand, are trying to signal that their refusal to hold any hearings, regardless of the nominee, is nothing personal against Obama. It’s also not something they’re going to reconsider.

"It was a good opportunity to reiterate our view that this appointment should be made by the next president," McConnell told reporters back at the Capitol on Tuesday.

"So this vacancy will not be filled this year," McConnell added. "We will look forward to the American people deciding who they want to make this appointment through their own votes."

Reid seemed to mock Congressional Republicans — who have privately fretted about potentially disastrous consequences down the ballot if Donald Trump becomes the GOP presidential nominee.

"They're going to wait and see what President Trump will do I suppose," Reid said Tuesday.

Grassley did not refer to Trump in his statement following the meeting, but he did make reference to the populist anger that seems to be driving Trump voters in a fresh explanation for his approach.

“There’s a growing feeling of isolation among a lot of Americans who feel left out by political elites. Executive orders and liberal courts are trampling on religious liberty and property ownership, for example, and snubbing the rule of law and endangering the right to keep and bear arms," Grassley said.

“Whether everybody in the meeting today wanted to admit it, we all know that considering a nomination in the middle of a heated presidential campaign is bad for the nominee, bad for the court, bad for the process, and ultimately bad for the nation," Grassley continued. "It’s time for the people to voice their opinion about the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system of government.”

McConnell said that while half the meeting was devoted to the Supreme Court, there was also a "very constructive" discussion about the opioid epidemic. On Monday, an opioid bill advanced with bipartisan support in the Senate.

While McConnell was meeting with Obama, however, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a statement saying the opioid bill is inadequately funded and “would do little to address the epidemic.”