RUTHFULLY YOURS

Donald Trump on Wednesday disclosed the names of 11 candidates he would consider to fill the current vacancy at the U.S. Supreme Court. The list includes six federal appeals court judges appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, as well as five state Supreme Court justices with conservative credentials.

Here’s a quick look at the Trump 11:

• Steven Colloton

Judge Steven Colloton, who lives in Iowa, has been a judge since 2003 for the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers a large swath of the Midwest. He was appointed to the position by President George W. Bush. Prior to becoming a federal judge, he served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa and had been a federal line prosecutor in that district for eight years. He received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton and law degree from Yale. After law school, the 53-year-old clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and for Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court.

Judge Colloton’s name had already been floated as a potential Supreme Court nominee in 2012, during GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s bid for the White House. In 2011, he voted in favor of owners in the National Football League to allow a lockout by the players to continue indefinitely. He also voted in a unanimous decision last year to side with religious nonprofits challenging the Affordable Care Act’s rules for contraceptive coverage.

• Allison Eid

Allison Eid, 51, has been an associate justice on the Colorado Supreme Court, the state’s highest, since 2006, appointed by former Republican Colorado Gov. Bill Owens. Before joining the bench, she served as Colorado’s solicitor general representing state officials and agencies in court. She also taught at University of Colorado Law School and worked as a litigator at the Denver office of Arnold & Porter LLP. She received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford and law degree from the University of Chicago.

In 2012, Judge Eid wrote the majority opinion ruling that the University of Colorado’s policy to ban students from carrying handguns on campus was unlawful. She also wrote a decision last year that said companies in Colorado, which has decriminalized most marijuana use, can fire employees for using marijuana outside of work because the activity still violates federal law.

• Raymond Gruender

A 52-year-old Bush appointee, Judge Raymond Gruender has served on the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since 2004. A longtime prosecutor before joining the bench, he served as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri from 2001 to 2004 after working as an assistant in that office for many years.

Between stints as a prosecutor, Judge Gruender campaigned for Bob Dole’s failed 1996 presidential bid. He earned law and business degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. In one noteworthy decision he authored, the Eighth Circuit held that it wasn’t sex discrimination for an employer to exclude insurance coverage for birth control.

• Thomas Hardiman

Judge Thomas Hardiman, 50, joined the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2007, after serving as a district court judge in Pennsylvania for four years. Both appointments came from George W. Bush. A graduate of University of Notre Dame and Georgetown University Law Center, he worked in private practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and other law firms before becoming a judge. The Trump campaign says he’s the first in his family to attend college. In a decision he authored, which was later affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, the appeals court held that a jail’s policy of strip-searching all detainees, even those with minor alleged offenses, wasn’t a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Despite losing the Oregon primary while barely eking out a win in Kentucky, Hillary Clinton emerged with 51 of Tuesday’s delegates to Bernie Sanders’s 55. To reach the 2,383 needed for the nomination, Mrs. Clinton now needs only 92 of either the 890 still-to-be-elected delegates or the 148 still-unpledged superdelegates. This is because she is already supported by 524 superdelegates—the Democratic Party’s unelected overclass—to Mr. Sanders’s 40.

Still, she must be concerned about losing the FBI primary. If the bureau recommends that the Justice Department indict Mrs. Clinton or close aides like Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin or Jake Sullivan for acting with gross negligence—disregard of known or easily anticipated risks—in sending classified information over a private email server, the campaign could be completely scrambled.

The FBI may not recommend indictments, or the Justice Department could refuse to issue them. The latter could result in high-profile resignations like those in 1973 with the Watergate “Saturday Night Massacre,” when several top Nixon officials were fired or resigned. Only this time, the turmoil would be covered on cable TV and in high-def.

If there are indictments, Team Clinton will dismiss them as an overreaction to unintentional, minor mistakes and try pushing on through. But that may be unacceptable to the party’s hierarchy, especially if indictments occur before the Democratic convention in Philadelphia opens July 25.

The party establishment might balk at having the ticket led by someone mired in a national-security scandal or by Mr. Sanders, a socialist and independent who has never before sought election as a Democrat or attended a state or national convention.

Instead, the party establishment might move to replace Mrs. Clinton with Vice President Joe Biden, a sentimental favorite, or Secretary of State John Kerry, whom many in the party’s leadership think more substantive, less prone to gaffes and, because of his 2004 loss against President George W. Bush, more deserving.

The legally unbound superdelegates hold the balance of power. Neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Sanders can get the nomination without their votes. And the rest of the Democratic delegates, unlike their Republican counterparts, aren’t bound by state laws or party rules to vote for the candidate they were pledged to in their state’s primary for a certain number of ballots. CONTINUE AT SITE