SUPREME COURT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump interviewed four candidates on Monday [7-2-18] to take Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s place on the Supreme Court as the White House raced to meet the president’s promise to announce a replacement for the retiring justice early next week. The White House refused to disclose the names of whom the president met with, but according to people briefed on the vetting process, they were the federal appeals court judges Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit; Brett M. Kavanaugh of the District of Columbia Circuit; and Raymond M. Kethledge and Amul R. Thapar of the Sixth Circuit. The president met alone with them for 45 minutes each. Judge Thapar, the son of Indian-American immigrants, was Mr. Trump’s first nominee to an appeals court in 2017. A former district court judge from Kentucky with a conservative track record, Judge Thapar was among those the president considered as a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016.”
–Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman, “Trump Interviews 4 Supreme Court Prospects in Rush to Name Replacement,” The New York Times online, July 2, 2018