Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he plans to hold a vote on President Donald Trump's nominee to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away on Friday (September 17) from complications of metastatic pancreas cancer.

"In the last midterm election before Justice Scalia's death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president's second term. We kept our promise. Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president's Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year," McConnell said. "By contrast, Americans re-elected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary. Once again, we will keep our promise. President Trump's nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate."

President Trump said he wants to the Senate to move forward with a vote as quickly as possible.

".@GOP We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices. We have this obligation, without delay," he wrote on Twitter.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that the Senate should not hold a vote to fill the vacancy until after the presidential election in November.

"The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice," Schumer tweeted. "Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president."

President Trump has not officially nominated a replacement for Ginsburg, but he recently updated his shortlist of candidates for the position. The list includes three sitting Senators, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Josh Hawley, along with several judges that Trump has appointed to lower courts.

Photo: Getty Images

Tom Sipos

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