Republicans are hopeful about President-Elect Donald Trump’s prospective Supreme Court justice pick, which would ideally replace the late Justice Scalia with another conservative. However, it is likely that Democrats will attempt to block Trump’s nominee with the Senate filibuster, in which case Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would have to invoke the “nuclear option” and appeal to the presiding officer of the Senate in order to shut down the filibuster without the necessary Senate super-majority vote.
In November 2013, Senate Democrats used the “nuclear option” to override a filibuster of executive and judicial court nominees, to which McConnell lamented, “It’s a sad day in the history of the Senate,” calling the move a “power grab.”
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