President Donald Trump is poised to make his first U.S. Supreme Court nomination, setting up a showdown with congressional Democrats over a selection that would bolster the court’s conservative wing for a generation or more. Trump will select one of two federal appeals court judges, either Neil Gorsuch of Denver or Thomas Hardiman of Pittsburgh, according to people familiar with the president’s decision process. Even so, Republicans could eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments with a simple majority vote. Gorsuch is a fourth-generation Coloradan who earned his undergraduate degree at Columbia, his law degree at Harvard and a doctorate in legal philosophy at Oxford. Hardiman has gone further than the Supreme Court in backing gun rights by saying the Constitution’s Second Amendment protects the right to carry a handgun in public places.

Source: National Post January 31, 2017 13:02 UTC