The White House said President Donald Trump is “refreshing” his list. | Win McNamee/Getty Images Trump releases updated short list of potential Supreme Court nominees

President Donald Trump released a new list of potential Supreme Court justices on Friday, adding five new judges to his previous compilation of 20 jurists.

The White House said Trump, who was “elected to restore the rule of law and to Make the Judiciary Great Again,” is “refreshing” his list.


“President Trump will choose a nominee for a future Supreme Court vacancy, should one arise, from this updated list of 25 individuals,” the White House said in a statement. “The president remains deeply committed to identifying and selecting outstanding jurists in the mold of Justice Gorsuch. These additions, like those on the original list released more than a year ago, were selected with input from respected conservative leaders.”

As the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump initially released a list of 11 potential justices in May 2016. He added 10 names during the general election in September, including Neil Gorsuch, the man Trump successfully tapped in January to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the high court.

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In the September announcement, the campaign said Trump had committed to picking any nominees for future vacancies from that final list. However, shortly before the Senate confirmed Gorsuch in April, administration officials said the president did not feel bound to pick a second Supreme Court justice from his campaign list.

The updated roster omits Gorsuch and adds judges Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Britt Grant of the Georgia Supreme Court; Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; Kevin Newsom of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; and Patrick Wyrick of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

White House counsel Don McGahn announced the new additions in remarks to a lawyers convention hosted by the Federalist Society later Friday.

McGahn said the jurists all “have a demonstrated commitment to originalism and textualism.”

“They all have paper trails. They all are sitting judges,” McGahn said. “There’s nothing unknown about them. What you see is what you get.”

The Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo played an outsize role in helping vet Trump’s original list of judges, as well as in selecting Gorsuch for the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Scalia’s death in 2016.

“Our opponents of judicial nominees frequently claim the president has outsourced his selection of judges. That is completely false,” McGahn argued. “I’ve been a member of the Federalist Society since law school — still am. So, frankly, it seems like it’s been insourced.”

“But seeking advice from Leonard Leo and many members of the Federalist Society is not outsourcing the judicial selection process,” he added. “The fact is we all share the same vision of the judicial role, and we welcome input from many sources.”