Vivek Ramaswamy releases conservative pool of Supreme Court picks

Borrowing a tactic from former President Donald Trump, 2024 GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy released a list of conservative potential Supreme Court nominees.

WASHINGTON — Borrowing a tactic from former President Donald Trump, 2024 GOP Oval Office hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy released a list of conservative potential Supreme Court nominees Monday.

The roster includes two senators — Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah — former Solicitor General Paul Clement and a half-dozen of the nation's most conservative federal appellate court judges. Some of them have worked to limit abortion and transgender rights.

Ramaswamy also named seven judges, from various federal district courts, the U.S. Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, as a pool from which he would select U.S. circuit court nominees if he is elected.

"We were looking for diversity of vantage points on the Constitution, but without a diversity of commitment to the originalist understanding of the Constitution," Ramaswamy said in an interview with NBC News.

In May 2016, as Trump locked down the Republican nomination, he thrilled conservatives by announcing his own list of 11 people whom he might name to succeed Antonin Scalia. None of them were Neil Gorsuch, whom Trump actually nominated and who now sits on the high court.