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President Barack Obama nominated federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, unleashing a showdown with the Republican-controlled Senate over the court’s first vacancy in six years. Wednesday’s nomination of Judge Garland, a veteran jurist with a reputation for consensus-building, landed in the middle of a heated election battle and at a time when the nation’s highest court is bitterly divided on hot-button issues that include abortion, campaign finance and gun rights. (Lee and Peterson, 3/16)

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards headed into the West Wing right after Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination was announced — and she seems to like what she heard. "Judge Garland seems like a responsible and qualified nominee,” Richards said in a statement Wednesday afternoon, throwing her support behind giving the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals chief judge a hearing. Abortion rights, of course, are the perennial major issue in Supreme Court politics — and on the frontburner for the Supreme Court this year, with a big case challenging Texas state restrictions in front of the justices. (Dovere, 3/16)

Lawmakers will almost certainly spend coming months digging through Garland's judicial record to see where he stands politically. As chief justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, Garland, who is viewed as moderate, has been involved in a number of healthcare-related cases, sometimes siding with hospitals and other times with HHS. Garland was part of a three-judge panel in May that partially sided with hospitals in a case over Medicare outlier payments. ... Also, in December, Garland was part of a three-judge panel that sided with HHS in a case brought by Fayetteville City Hospital in Arkansas, which was reportedly closed by Washington Regional Medical Center in 2012. ... A few years earlier, in 2011, Garland was part of a three-judge panel that sided with Beverly Hospital in Massachusetts after it challenged reimbursements it received from HHS for services it provided to low-income beneficiaries. ... Garland's court has also dealt with several challenges to the Affordable Care Act. (Schencker, 3/16)

Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland’s nearly two-decade tenure as a judge on the D.C. Circuit holds few seminal opinions that capture his legal philosophy—and, for those rooting for his confirmation, that may be a good thing. ... A former prosecutor, Garland often split with his liberal colleagues on criminal justice issues, while broadly approving of federal government regulatory actions in areas like health and the environment. On the First Amendment, he has leaned towards free speech rights, while his stances in other areas like abortion rights and church-state issues are uncharted. (Gerstein, 3/16)