TED CRUZ PREDICTS – AT 9:12 A.M. ET:   President Trump has just filled the first vacancy he had on the Supreme Court, assuming – and it's a solid assumption – that Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed.  But will he have another fairly soon?  From Fox: 

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told "Special Report with Bret Baier" Thursday that "I think the odds are very good" that a second seat on the Supreme Court will fall vacant this year.

"If not this summer, next summer," Cruz told Bret Baier. "You know, judges don’t like it when people kind of nudge them out, so they’ll go when they decide to go."

Cruz stressed that he had "no inside information" about any possible vacancy, but noted that "that most of my professional career has been as a Supreme Court litigator and I know the Court well."

President Trump has nominated Neil Gorsuch to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last year at the age of 79. Cruz did not specify which justice he believed would retire, but two of the remaining eight justices on the court — liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg and swing vote Anthony Kennedy — are in their 80s.

Cruz said the battle over whoever is appointed to fill the forthcoming vacancy would be "Armageddon."

"[This] is going to be the opportunity to shift the course of this court [and] put a five-justice majority of Constitutionalists on the court," Cruz said, adding that Republicans "need to be prepared to take the case to the American people."

COMMENT:  He's right.  Republicans must take the fight to the people.  So far the Republican Congress is underperforming, and the White House messages get muddled.  Should a new seat become vacant, the battle over confirmation will be explosive. as Cruz says.  It will be ugly in the extreme, and making the "Borking" of Judge Bork in the 1980s look like a fight in a student government.

I have no doubt that Trump will nominate another outstanding person, probably a woman, and will push that nominee through to confirmation...unless a few Republicans go crazy and join the opposition, and that is always a possibility.

February 24, 2017