WASHINGTON — A sec­ond Repub­li­can sen­a­tor came out in oppo­si­tion to fill­ing a vacant Supreme Court seat before the Nov. 3 elec­tion while Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi assert­ed with­out details that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic-led House has “options” for stalling or pre­vent­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump from quick­ly installing a suc­ces­sor to the late Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg.

Sen. Lisa Murkows­ki of Alas­ka said in a state­ment that “for weeks, I have stat­ed that I would not sup­port tak­ing up” a poten­tial nom­i­na­tion as the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion neared. “Sad­ly, what was then a hypo­thet­i­cal is now our real­i­ty, but my posi­tion has not changed.”

Murkows­ki joins Maine. Sen. Susan Collins, who said replac­ing Gins­burg should be the deci­sion of the elec­tion win­ner — Trump or Demo­c­rat Joe Biden. Repub­li­cans hold a 53–47 edge in the Sen­ate. If there were a 50–50 tie, it could be bro­ken by Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence.

Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell, R‑Ky., has pledged to move for­ward but hasn’t set a timetable.

Focus is grow­ing on Sen. Mitt Rom­ney, R‑Utah, who has bro­ken with Trump before. There is anoth­er poten­tial wrin­kle: Because the Ari­zona Sen­ate race is a spe­cial elec­tion, that seat could be filled as ear­ly as Nov. 30, which would nar­row the win­dow for McConnell if Demo­c­rat Mark Kel­ly wins.

The House has no for­mal say in pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tions, a role the Con­sti­tu­tion assigns to the Sen­ate, and Pelosi, D‑Calif., refused in a tele­vi­sion inter­view to detail the “arrows in our quiver,” even when asked about try­ing to impeach Trump for a sec­ond time.

Ginsburg’s death Fri­day at age 87 has inject­ed new feroc­i­ty into the elec­tion-year bat­tle for the pres­i­den­cy and con­trol of Con­gress, in a nation already strug­gling with the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, eco­nom­ic col­lapse and racial ten­sion. The talk on the Sun­day news shows gave a glimpse of the pow­er tug over the tim­ing of any vote to fill Ginsberg’s seat 44 days from the election.

Trump says he is oblig­at­ed to act as soon as pos­si­ble and had at least two women in mind for the seat. Most Repub­li­cans con­curred on the need for speed and one named a prac­ti­cal rea­son: The nine-seat mem­ber, argued Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, must be full if called upon to decide the out­come of a dis­put­ed pres­i­den­tial election.

Democ­rats urged the GOP Sen­ate major­i­ty to heed its own advice against fill­ing the court’s life­time slots so close to elections.

“The peo­ple pick the pres­i­dent. The pres­i­dent picks the jus­tice,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D‑Minn.

Pelosi was asked whether she would be open to the House under­tak­ing impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Trump or Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Barr, as a way of try­ing to stall the con­fir­ma­tion process. She did not rule out doing so.

“We have our options. We have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to dis­cuss right now,” she said. Pelosi had stopped by the Court in the qui­et of ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing to pay trib­ute to Gins­burg at the site that has filled since Fri­day with peo­ple, many leav­ing bou­quets of flowers.

The next jus­tice, Pelosi said, would help deter­mine the sur­vival of the Afford­able Care Act. The court is sched­uled to hear a law­suit involv­ing “Oba­macare” on Nov. 10, which could affect the law’s pro­tec­tion of peo­ple with pre­ex­ist­ing conditions.

“Those are the peo­ple the pres­i­dent wants to crush when he says he wants to replace the jus­tice in this short peri­od of time,” Pelosi said.

Nonethe­less, the process was mov­ing ahead. On a call with Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell, R‑Ky., late Sat­ur­day, Trump men­tioned two fed­er­al appeals court judges: Amy Coney Bar­rett and Bar­bara Lagoa, accord­ing to a per­son famil­iar with the pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion who was not autho­rized to pub­lic dis­cuss the call and spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity.

Some Democ­rats have sug­gest­ed Barr should be impeached for what they say is the politi­ciza­tion of the Jus­tice Depart­ment under his . After the elec­tion, new impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings could by less risky to the Democ­rats than was their impeach­ment of Trump last year. The Sen­ate acquit­ted him.

But the House’s options are few to bog down Trump. Impeach­ment is time-con­sum­ing, expen­sive and reserved for the most egre­gious wrongdoing.

To the chants of “Fill that seat,” Trump told sup­port­ers at an event Sat­ur­day night in North Car­oli­na that he would nom­i­nate a woman as soon as this week. Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell, R‑Ky., quick­ly com­mit­ted to hold­ing a vote on a nom­i­nee, but has not said when.

“We win an elec­tion and those are the con­se­quences,” said Trump, who then seemed to sig­nal that he’d be will­ing to accept a vote on his nom­i­nee dur­ing the lame-duck peri­od after the elec­tion. “We have a lot of time. We have plen­ty of time. We’re talk­ing about Jan­u­ary 20th” — when the next pres­i­dent is inaugurated.

Cruz said all nine seats need to be filled by the election.

“An equal­ly divid­ed court, four-four, can’t decide any­thing,” Cruz said. “We need a full court on Elec­tion Day, giv­en the very high like­li­hood that we’re going to see lit­i­ga­tion that goes to the court. We need a Supreme Court that can find a defin­i­tive answer for the country.”

Democ­rats have denounced McConnell’s move to push ahead as hyp­o­crit­i­cal, point­ing out that he refused to call hear­ings for Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s nom­i­nee of Mer­rick Gar­land 237 days before the 2016 election.

The next pick could shape impor­tant deci­sions beyond abor­tion rights, includ­ing the fate of Obama’s health­care law any legal chal­lenges that may stem from the 2020 elec­tion. In the inter­im, if the court were to take cas­es with eight jus­tices, 4–4 ties would revert the deci­sion to a low­er court; for instance, the Afford­able Care Act could then be struck down by a low­er Texas court.

Pelosi and Cruz spoke on ABC’s “This Week” and Klobuchar was on CNN’s “State of the Union.”