Thread by @sahilkapur

Mitch McConnell is on the Senate floor praising Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a “spirited, powerful and historic champion for American women” and says: “The legal world is mourning a giant.”

Mitch McConnell now on the Senate floor: “Presidnent Trump’s nominee for this vacancy will receive a vote on the floor of the Senate.”

McConnell is distinguishing 2016 from 2020 by saying there was “a divided government” then while Republicans control the Senate and White House now.

(For context, some of his own members didn’t see it this way at the time, including Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham.)

McConnell says 2014 voters gave Republicans control of the Senate to be a “check and balance” on Obama while in 2018 they preserved the majority to continue confirming Trump’s judges.

Chuck Schumer is now on the Senate floor talking about SCOTUS, citing RBG's dying wish that she be replaced by the next president. "By all rights, by every modicum of decency and honor, Leader McConnell and the Republican Senate majority have no right to fill it. No right."

Chuck Schumer needles McConnell for being “defensive” with his SCOTUS comments, arguing he’s flipping his standard. “No amount of sophistry can change what McConnell said then. And it applies even more so now, more so — so much closer we are to the election.”

Schumer says McConnell’s words are “totally empty, totally meaningless if he moves to appoint someone to tear down everything Justice Ginsburg built.”

“To hear Leader McConnell up on the floor trying to defend this — pathetic. Pathetic.”

SCHUMER: “I worry for the future of this chamber if the Republican majority proceeds down this dangerous path. If the Senate majority over the course of six years steals two SupCt seats using completely contradictory rationales, how could we expect to trust the other side again?"

Schumer on Republicans moving to replace Ginsburg after 2016: “Tell me how. Tell me how this would not spell the end of this supposedly great deliberative body? Because I don’t see how.”