Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy lists Utah Senator Mike Lee as a possible Supreme Court nominee

Ramaswamy said he is releasing the list of 16 possible appointments to show voters where he stands.

Biotech entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on Monday released a list of 16 people he would nominate for the US Supreme Court or federal circuit courts if he becomes president.

Ramaswamy’s list includes Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah as possible candidates for the nation’s top court, as well as rising federal judges who overturned President Joe Biden’s airplane mask mandate and the FDA’s two-decade-long approval of the abortion pill.

The alignment of the Supreme Court was an important issue for Donald Trump during his 2016 candidacy. Conservative voters’ desire for a Republican president to appoint a replacement for Judge Antonin Scalia, who died in early 2016, helped bring the former reality TV star to the White House.

Trump released his own list of possible Supreme Court nominations in the 2016 primary to reassure voters from his new party that he was consistent with their legal agenda.

In an interview, Ramaswamy, 37, said he would publish the list of possible appointments to show voters where he stands.

“When you’re asking voters to choose the next President of the United States, it’s important that you’re as transparent as possible about what you’re going to do,” Ramaswamy said.

Ramaswamy is the latest Republican nominee trying to win back conservative enthusiasm around the court as Democrats have gained increasing momentum from his conservative rulings.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would appoint stronger conservatives to the bench than Trump, whose three candidates helped form the majority that overturned women’s constitutional right to abortion, a longtime conservative, in a ruling last year Goal. Trump himself has frequently delighted in the court’s rulings, noting that he appointed half of the court’s conservative 6-3 majority.

Ramaswamy said he sees no reason to criticize Trump’s appointments.

“It’s a bizarre criticism,” he said of the argument that Trump’s decisions weren’t conservative enough.

Ramaswamy’s own list includes prominent conservative legal names. He said he would nominate Cruz or Lee only if doing so would not upset the balance in the US Senate, which Democrats currently control by two votes. Another prominent name on the Supreme Court list is Paul Clement, who served as former President George W. Bush’s Attorney General.

Ramaswamy also proposes appointing several district judges to the country’s courts of appeal. He cites Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an Amarillo-based federal judge whose April ruling against the abortion pill was riddled with pronouncements from anti-abortion rights activists and was quickly shelved by appellate judges and then the Supreme Court.

Also on the list is Kathryn Mizelle, who Trump nominated for a Florida judgeship at the age of 38 and who last year lifted Biden’s mask requirement for air travel.

Another prominent conservative justice making it onto Ramaswamy’s Supreme Court list is James Ho, another Trump nominee for a position on the Texas-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, whose judgments are rife with conservative political rhetoric. Ramaswamy said Ho first became aware of him because the judge cited his own book, Woke, Inc., in one of his rulings.