President Trump interviewed four candidates on Monday to take Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s place on the Supreme Court as the White House raced to meet the president’s promise to announce a replacement for the retiring justice early next week.
The White House refused to disclose the names of whom the president met with, but according to people briefed on the vetting process, they were the federal appeals court judges Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit; Brett M. Kavanaugh of the District of Columbia Circuit; and Raymond M. Kethledge and Amul R. Thapar of the Sixth Circuit. The president met alone with them for 45 minutes each.
Judge Thapar, the son of Indian-American immigrants, was Mr. Trump’s first nominee to an appeals court in 2017. A former district court judge from Kentucky with a conservative track record, Judge Thapar was among those the president considered as a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016.
Judge Kavanaugh, an appointee of President George W. Bush who also worked in Mr. Bush’s White House, clerked at the Supreme Court for Justice Kennedy. He was also a prosecutor under the independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who investigated President Bill Clinton.
Mr. Trump has expressed a desire to name a woman to the court, and Judge Barrett is a favorite of religious conservatives. Deeply religious and a former law clerk for Justice Scalia, she once argued that Catholic judges should sometimes recuse themselves from sentencing in death penalty cases.
Judge Kethledge also clerked for Justice Kennedy, and has the support of some conservative activists. A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, Judge Kethledge does not have the Harvard or Yale pedigree that Mr. Trump has told associates he would like to see in the next justice. …
Mr. Trump said he most likely would meet with two or three other candidates before making his decision. …
The candidates interviewed Monday are among a group of federal appeals court judges who are believed to be finalists to replace Justice Kennedy. All are on a broader list of 25 people, mostly conservative judges, from which Mr. Trump has publicly said he will choose. His shortlist appears to also include Thomas M. Hardiman of the Third Circuit, William H. Pryor Jr. of the 11th Circuit and Joan L. Larsen of the Sixth Circuit.
