Collins also said she asked the president to expand his list of possible nominees beyond a previously released list. However, the three leading contenders for the seat are all on Trump’s list: Brett Kavanaugh, a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals; Raymond Kethledge, a member of the Sixth Circuit Court; and Amy Coney Barrett, who sits on the Seventh Circuit.

By Wednesday, Collins was becoming a little peevish (by restrained Susan Collins standards) about the questions she was getting about the Court seat.

“I think I’ve made it pretty clear that if a nominee has demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade and has said they’re not going to abide by that long-standing precedent, that I could not support the nominee, but we don’t even know who the nominee is,” she told NBC News. “What I’m telling you is, how can you ask me to take a position on a nominee whose identity I don’t yet know?”

Collins’s frustration is understandable. But her description of her test for a nominee remains nebulous—and, for those who worry about Roe’s future, not especially reassuring. The problem is that no smart, ambitious conservative judge will take a clear stand on Roe if he or she can possibly avoid it, and no judge is likely to say publicly that he or she doesn’t respect precedent.

Collins says it “would be inappropriate to ask a judge nominee on how they are going to vote in a future case.” Most judges won’t answer questions like that anyway, at least not publicly. This creates an awkward dance during the confirmation process, as senators try to extract pledges that nominees will uphold their preferred stances, and judges try to avoid being pinned down on anything, both to bolster their chances at confirmation and to preserve their flexibility on the bench.

Long before they are nominated, upwardly mobile conservative jurists try to avoid a “demonstrated hostility” toward Roe, because they know that if they want to make it to the Supreme Court, they’re going to have to get past people like Susan Collins. This extends to many issues beyond abortion. In recent decades, Supreme Court nominations have become more and more partisan, and presidents have increasingly sought to appoint young justices to the bench, in order to mark the Court with their ideology for as long as possible. As a result, aspiring justices have sought to leave as short a paper trail as possible about their views on hot-button issues, and their comparative youth means they’ve had less time to create liabilities.

Trump has said publicly he didn’t plan to ask prospective nominees about Roe, and Collins told Raddatz he privately told her the same. Nonetheless, the president has been clear that he wants to see Roe overturned. “If we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that's really what’s going to be—that will happen,” he said during the final 2016 presidential debate. “And that’ll happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the Court. I will say this: It will go back to the states, and the states will then make a determination.” This week, Aaron Blake of The Washington Post notes, Trump reprised those comments in an interview with Fox News, again saying it should be up to states—a euphemism for overturning Roe.