President Obama on Tuesday slammed Senate Republicans over the Supreme Court vacancy as the justices for the nation's top court returned for a new term this week.

"In a city of self-inflicted wounds, this one is more dangerous and less defensible than most," Obama wrote of the vacancy in a Huffington Post op-ed.

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"If we ever hope to restore the faith in our institutions that has eroded in recent years, we cannot tolerate a politically motivated, willfully negligent vacancy on the Supreme Court," he wrote.

Obama noted that he nominated Merrick Garland more than 200 days ago to fill the seat left vacant by the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February.

"This delay has nothing to do with Judge Garland’s personality or his qualifications," Obama said, blasting "the obstruction of a broken Republican-led Congress."

Senate Republicans have held off holding hearings or a vote on Garland during an election year, arguing that the next president should nominate Scalia's replacement.

Some have criticized that strategy. Sen. Jeff Flake Jeffrey (Jeff) Lane FlakeJeff Flake: Republicans 'should hold the same position' on SCOTUS vacancy as 2016 Republican former Michigan governor says he's voting for Biden Maybe they just don't like cowboys: The president is successful, some just don't like his style MORE (R-Ariz.) told The Daily Beast for a story published this week that "nobody really believes" the seat should remain vacant until the next president takes office.

"Our position shouldn’t be that the next president ought to decide. Nobody really believes that, because if this were the last year of a Republican presidency nobody would say that,” Flake said.

Obama argued Tuesday that the refusal to hold hearings for Garland underscored a broader refusal to work with his administration, saying GOP leaders have "lost sight of their basic mission" and "can’t even meet their own goals."

"By hobbling the Supreme Court for what could be a year or longer, Republicans are eroding one of the core institutions of American democracy," Obama said. "This cannot be the new normal."