Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is recovering well from her recent lung surgery, according to a statement from the Supreme Court. But that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from preparing for the worst. A source familiar with the conversations told Politico that the White House has begun communicating with conservative activists and other allies in preparation for a confirmation fight if the liberal hero should depart the court, for whatever reason—“taking the temperature on possible short-list candidates, reaching out to key stakeholders, and just making sure that people are informed on the process.” Given that Ginsburg is still very much alive—the 85-year-old justice’s exercise routine is intense enough to exhaust grown men decades younger—and widely expected to return to work by the end of February, the White House is treading carefully. “They’re doing it very quietly, of course, because the idea is not to be opportunistic, but just to be prepared so we aren’t caught flat-footed,” said the source.

Filling Supreme Court seats has been one of the few bright spots in Trump’s clouded administration, though both of his appointments came with excessive controversy. Neil Gorsuch, who replaced the seat the Republicans kept empty after Antonin Scalia died in 2016, passed through the Senate after Mitch McConnell used the “nuclear option” and eliminated the 60-vote threshold to confirm a Supreme Court justice, allowing him to pass with a 54-45 vote. Brett Kavanaugh, who replaced Anthony Kennedy, barely squeezed by after a controversial accusation that he had sexually assaulted a woman when they were both teenagers. (Kavanaugh has denied sexually assaulting any women.)

But as John Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation told Politico, the intensity of those confirmations would pale in comparison to what Ginsburg’s potential replacement could experience—particularly because that person could ideologically tilt the court for generations. “When Neil Gorsuch was the nominee, you were replacing a conservative with a conservative. With Kavanaugh, you were replacing the perennial swing voter, who more times than not sided with the so-called conservative wing, so that slightly solidified the conservative wing,” he said. “But if you are replacing Justice Ginsburg with a Trump appointee, that would be akin to replacing Thurgood Marshall with Clarence Thomas . . . It would mark a large shift in the direction of the court.”

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