Biden is considering making Merrick Garland, denied Supreme Court seat, the attorney general
Image by Getty Images
By Arno Rosenfeld November 20, 2020
Judge Merrick Garland is being considered for attorney general by President-elect Joe Biden, according to an NPR report.
Garland, who currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama but the Republican-led Senate refused to hold a vote on his nomination.
NPR reported that two people close to Biden said the former vice president was considering nominating Garland to restore a semblance of independence to the Justice Department, which has become increasingly politicized during the Trump administration. Garland is widely considered a moderate.
He also has extensive experience at the Department of Justice, where he worked in the 1980s and 1990s. Garland oversaw the prosecution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Garland cited his Jewish immigrant roots during a speech in the Rose Garden after Obama nominated him to replace Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016.
“My family deserves much of the credit for the path that led me here,” Garland said. “My grandparents left the Pale of Settlement at the border of western Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, fleeing anti-Semitism and hoping to make a better life for their children in America.”
Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
