Washington, Sept 20(UNI) US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he will next week nominate a woman to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, escalating a political row over her successor.
Ginsburg, 87, died on Friday, just weeks before the presidential election.
However, Mr Trump's Democrat rival, Joe Biden, has been insisting that they wait till after the election is over to decide on her replacement.
The ideological balance of the nine-member court is crucial to its rulings on the most important issues in US law.
But President Trump has vowed to swear in Ginsburg's successor "without delay", a move that has infuriated Democrats, who fear Republicans will vote to lock in a decades-long conservative majority on the country's highest court.
"I will be putting forth a nominee next week. It will be a woman," Mr Trump said at a campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. "I think it should be a woman because I actually like women much more than men."
Some supporters chanted "Fill that seat!" as Mr Trump spoke, urging him to take the rare opportunity to nominate a third justice during one presidential term to a lifetime appointment on the court.
Earlier, Trump had praised two female judges on city appeals courts, hinting them as possible choices. Both judges - Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa - are conservatives who would tip the balance of the Supreme Court in favour of Republicans.
Democrats are vigorously opposed any nomination before November's election, arguing that Senate Republicans blocked Democratic President Barack Obama's choice for the US top court in 2016 on the grounds that it was an election year.
Ginsburg, a liberal icon and feminist standard-bearer, died of metastatic pancreatic cancer at her home in Washington DC, surrounded by her family. She was only the second-ever woman to sit on the Supreme Court and served for 27 years.
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