Several Senate Democrats, including N.Y Sen. Chuck Schumer and Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, have joined multiple political groups in condemning the Republican refusal to hold a hearing on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee. Photo courtesy of MoveOn.org
WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Several Senate Democrats, including N.Y Sen. Chuck Schumer and Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, have joined multiple political groups in condemning the Republican refusal to hold a hearing on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee.
The senators, along with progressive groups including MoveOn.org and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, on Wednesday held a press conference in which they collectively delivered 1.3 million signatures in a petition seeking to "amp up pressure on Senate Republicans to do their job and allow consideration of the president's upcoming Supreme Court nominee."
Those who signed the petition include Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who also joined the conference.
"Today I joined my colleagues & a progressive coalition calling on Senate Republicans to stop the SCOTUS obstruction," Murphy said on Twitter after the news conference. "This obstruction will go down in history as the moment our solemn responsibility to the Supreme Court became yet another political football."
On Tuesday, Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said they reached a consensus that there should be no hearings on a Supreme Court nominee this year to replace Justice Antonin Scalia.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., argued the next president should pick the nominee. Progressive political groups are planning a three-day protest at the Capitol beginning April 16.
"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has created a constitutional crisis-in-the-making with his unprecedented demand that President Barack Obama not appoint a replacement for Justice Scalia and his assertion that Senate Republicans will block approval of a new justice until a new president takes office," Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement. "We are taking to the streets to demand the Senate do its job and give proper consideration to a Supreme Court nominee, with an up-or-down vote."
