Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg announced that she is cancer-free in an interview this week after doctors found a tumor in her pancreas over the summer.
Ginsburg’s health has been one of the constant topics of conversation as President Donald Trump has remade the Supreme Court with a conservative majority, appointing Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
The 86-year-old justice suffered a fall in 2018 that left her with three broken ribs and she missed some of her work on the bench as she was fighting her most recent battle with cancer — this is the fourth time that the RBG has confronted cancer.
But Ginsburg told CNN during an interview this week, “I’m cancer-free. That’s good.”
CNN’s Joan Biskupic, who interviewed Ginsburg, noted on Thursday morning “think of where she was last year at this exact time. She was surviving serious lung cancer surgery, laid up for several weeks.”
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she is cancer-free.
— CNN This Morning with Kasie Hunt (@CNNThisMorning) January 9, 2020
Ginsburg spoke to CNN’s @JoanBiskupic about her health, her friendship with late Justice Scalia and how she’s trying to check the Court’s conservative majority. https://t.co/jjthlSq5U6 pic.twitter.com/ugK4EYoV7B
Ginsburg’s return to the bench will come at a crucial moment in the history of the court — the justices are preparing to hear arguments over House Democrats attempts to get their hands on documents central to Trump’s finances.
Trump has had an astounding effect on the federal courts and in the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been bullish about confirming judges to the benches. In December of 2019, one in four circuit court judges was a Trump appointee, a statistic that is sure to affect the judicial system for a generation.
In April of 2019, Trump said that if the Democrats moved to impeach him, he would immediately go to the Supreme Court, writing on Twitter, “I DID NOTHING WRONG. If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court.” Of course, the Democrats in the House have since adopted articles of impeachment but the saga has stayed out of the Supreme Court so far.