One week after her passing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is being honored Friday morning with a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda. Justice Ginsburg becomes the first woman and the first person of Jewish faith to lie in state in Statuary Hall.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi honored the beloved jurist, and welcomed attendees come to pay their respects.
Conspicuous in their absence are the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California.
“Normally, a ceremony of this magnitude is a bipartisan affair where the so-called Big Four (w Pelosi & Schumer) present a united front,” NBC News’ Peter Alexander observed.
MSNBC’s Chris Jansing called it “remarkable for a ceremony of this magnitude to be missing two top congressional leaders.”
Today’s ceremony comes just one day before President Donald Trump will announce his nominee to sit in the chair Ginsburg held for 27 years. By most accounts he will nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a far right wing religious extremist who has made clear she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and void the Affordable Care Act.
One Capitol Hill staffer notes McConnell’s office “is on the same floor, just a few hundred feet from the rotunda where this ceremony is occurring.”
On social media some called the Republicans’ snub of Justice Ginsburg anti-Semitic. Others called it political and lamented the end of bipartisanship.
