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With US President Joe Biden getting the chance to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, there has been a lot of speculation as to who it may be. The White House has announced that among those in consideration would be US District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs.
A White House spokesperson said Friday last week that Childs is among the women in consideration to become Biden’s Supreme Court pick. Childs would be replacing Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring this year at the end of the court’s term in June. Biden has pledged to nominate the first Black woman to become a Supreme Court Justice and is set to pick from a list of 10 women or fewer.
The US leader may be meeting with potential candidates as soon as next week.
“Judge Childs is among multiple individuals under consideration for the Supreme Court, and we are not going to move her nomination on the Court of Appeals while the president is considering her for this vacancy,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates. Biden nominated Childs last month to the Court of Appeals for DC.
“At the same time, reporting indicating that the president is only seriously considering three potential nominees is incorrect,” Bates added. The statement follows the Senate Judiciary Committee’s delaying of a planned hearing for Childs Tuesday for the DC Circuit Court.
Aside from Childs, other major contenders for the nomination are federal appeals court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, and NAACP Legal Defense fund attorney Sherrilyn Ifill. Childs has received endorsement from top House Democrat Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina.
In other related news, the Secret Service has apprehended a man who was suspected of threatening to assassinate Biden. Scott Merryman, who is from Kansas, has been detained in a facility in Maryland awaiting trial. According to a court filing, Merryman was set to travel to Washington to see Biden.
In a phone interview Wednesday with a US Secret Service agent, Merryman said God told him to go to Washington and cut off “the head of the serpent in the heart of the nation.” While Merryman denied that Biden was the said “serpent,” he called Biden the “AntiChrist” in a Facebook post and said, “he will suffer a fatal head wound.”
