Former Democrat Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has criticised US President Joe Biden's "identity politics" criteria for picking his vice president and a new Supreme Court justice.
Biden said last week he would only consider black women as potential candidates for the SCOTUS seat soon to be vacated by liberal Justice Stephen Breyer.
That led to some speculation that the president was preparing to offload his widely-criticised number two Kamala Harris — a former attorney general of California — onto the Supreme Court.
Harris, of mixed Tamil Indian and black descent, was hailed by liberals as the first black woman to hold such high office in the US when she was sworn in alongside the president last January.
But Biden's pick of running mate had only spent three years in the Senate, and had dropped out of her own campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination before the first primary due to lack of support.
Gabbard, who is of mixed Samoan ancestry and a Hindu by religion, expressed similar thoughts in a tweet on Thursday, stressing that the next SCOTUS appointee should be chosen based on their "commitment to uphold our Constitution and the freedoms guaranteed to all Americans".
Biden may be in a hurry to get his Supreme Court nomination approved by the Senate before November's mid-term elections, when the Republicans look increasingly likely to win a majority in both houses of Congress thanks to his and Harris' handling of people-trafficking across the Mexican border and the chaotic retreat from Afghanistan.