Jfc.
It is maybe in bad taste to ask, but what is the latest possible date “something could happen” that would give the GOP adequate time to confirm a new justice before everything changes over in January?
According to the Senate's
legislative calendar for the rest of the year, they'll only be in session for a total of 24 days between Election Day & the swearing-in of the new Senate on January 3rd, because a lot of that in-between time is spent on recess (with the Senators going back home) for the Thanksgiving & Christmas holiday seasons.
Now, for a little bit of scale, the Kavanaugh nomination (pre-scandal) was expected to take a total of 90 days between Kennedy's retirement announcement & Kavanaugh's confirmation; before that, the Gorsuch nomination took 66 days between nomination & confirmation, & back in 2010 & 2009, the Kagan/Sotomayor nominations took 118 & 98 days, respectively, between their predecessors' retirements & their confirmations.
Given all of this information & understanding just how long the nitty-gritty of a Supreme Court nomination generally takes (e.g., shortening the long-list of potential nominees, vetting, background checks, interviews; & then, once a nominee is picked, meeting with Senators, committee hearings & all of the preparation (including those long ass-questionnaires) that entails, committee debate & voting, Senate debate & - finally - voting, & none of that even takes into consideration the possibility of a scandal arising), I'd be confident in saying that
if we don't see a Justice announce their retirement &/or pass away by mid-October at the latest, then I'd have to presume that the Senate which takes office on January 3rd & the President inaugurated on January 20th will be the ones whom this potential nomination comes down to, for reasons of logistical efficiency if nothing else.
Of course, this assumes that the current Senate would still feel a need to do its due diligence & actually hold committee hearings & a debate & a roll-call vote. But if it looks like the writing's on the wall that the public wouldn't stand for that, then it's safe to presume that skipping all of that would be unlikely to happen.
