Amy Coney Barrett

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      US election 2020: who is supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett?

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      Today is the start of the confirmation process for Amy Coney Barrett, a deeply conservative judge who is Donald Trump’s pick for supreme court judge. Guardian US investigative journalist Stephanie Kirchgaessner has been looking at her career and personal life, including membership to the secretive Catholic group People of Praise, and discusses what her appointment would mean for the US

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      If Donald Trump has his way then he will use the few weeks remaining before Americans go to the polls on 3 November to install his choice as the ninth supreme court justice. If successful, it would mean replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a ferocious campaigner for women’s rights whose work turned her into a liberal icon, with Amy Coney Barrett, a deeply conservative judge whose values push in the opposite direction. The move would shift the balance so starkly in America’s highest court that some fear it could lead to key rulings protecting civil rights being overturned – and possibly hamper the ability of Democrats to change laws for decades to come. The Guardian US investigative journalist Stephanie Kirchgaessner talks to Anushka Asthana about Barrett’s career and personal life – including membership of a secretive Catholic “covenant community” called People of Praise that is accused of adhering to a “highly authoritarian” structure. She discusses Barrett’s views on abortion and the Affordable Care Act, the Obama-era law that extended health insurance to millions of Americans. If she is confirmed before the election, one of Barrett’s first cases could determine the fate of that act. More

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      Holy war: Republicans eager to focus Amy Coney Barrett hearings on religion

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      When Donald Trump’s latest supreme court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, arrives before the Senate judiciary committee for her confirmation hearings on Monday, Democrats will be out to raise an alarm that Barrett could help strike down the Affordable Care Act in the very first case she hears.But in the weeks leading up to the hearings, Republicans have been out for something else entirely: a holy war.The future of the supreme court hinges on the Barrett hearings. But the hearings will be backgrounded by a political fight over religion that is potentially as important as the question of whether Barrett replaces Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late liberal justice, on the court.If Republicans can make it look like Democrats are attacking Barrett, a conservative Catholic, for her religious views, they believe, that could stir enough political anger to rescue a couple of tight Senate races in the elections on 3 November – and potentially save the teetering Republican Senate majority.Democrats hope to defeat the Barrett nomination on the merits.But they also hope to take control of the Senate next month, claim the White House, and then pass a bulwark of laws on key issues – healthcare, reproductive rights, marriage equality, voting rights, the climate emergency – to withstand what could be decades of tendentious rulings by a supreme court with as many as three Trump-appointed justices on it.The current Senate judiciary committee chair, Lindsey Graham, who happens to be among the most endangered Republican incumbents, explained the Republican strategy last month on Fox News, saying Democratic protests over credible sexual assault allegations against Trump’s supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh helped Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections.“Kavanaugh really did help Republicans pick up Senate seats because they went too far,” Graham said.In a transparent attempt to whip up a comparable spectacle around the Barrett nomination, Senate Republicans have produced an ominous video featuring tense footage from the Kavanaugh hearings and accusing Democrats of a “radical power plot” to attack Barrett over her religious beliefs.But prominent Democrats have urged a minimum of pageantry during the Barrett hearings and a focus on Barrett’s views on the healthcare law, abortion, same-sex marriage and other issues.“It is going to be really important to not give Lindsey Graham and the rest of the Republicans a moment of righteous vindication over a circus-like atmosphere,” the former Democratic senator Claire McCaskill said on a popular politics podcast this week.“So I just think this is one of those times when some of our most passionate supporters that are so angry on behalf of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that they’ve got to realize that there is a better way than flooding the halls with women in handmaid costumes.”To protest against the Barrett nomination earlier this month, activists stood outside the supreme court wearing red robes and white bonnets, recognizable from the TV series based on the Margaret Atwood novel of female subjugation, The Handmaid’s Tale.Democrats should focus on the threat posed to healthcare by Barrett, who in 2017 published a critique of Chief Justice John Roberts’ 2012 ruling to uphold the Affordable Care Act, said Ben Jealous, president of the progressive People for the American Way group. On 10 November, just one week after the election, the supreme court is scheduled to hear a separate case that could vacate the law.“The confirmation hearings have to be all about what the nomination is about: destroying healthcare for millions of Americans,” Jealous said. “Anybody who wants to make this about a nominee’s personality, or even the life they’ve lived so far, is missing the point.”Democrats on the committee acknowledge they do not currently have the votes to stop the nomination from moving forward, and Senator Cory Booker said last week that procedural stalling measures would not work – because the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, could merely change the rules to keep the nomination on track.Progressives must not write off the Ginsburg seat as lost, however, said Neil Sroka of the progressive Democracy for America group. More

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      Amy Coney Barrett: quick confirmation under threat as three senators infected

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      Senate Republicans are facing a shrinking window of time before the November 3 election to confirm Donald Trump’s supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, following the news that at least three Republican senators have tested positive for the coronavirus and more are quarantining after likely exposure.Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader and Republican from Kentucky, on Saturday morning said he would seek consent from Democrats to cancel any action on the main floor of the Senate for the next two weeks, until 19 October.But the Senate judiciary committee, which must vote on the nomination first, will still convene as planned on 12 October to begin the confirmation hearing process for Barrett, he said. While senators have attended recent hearings remotely, Democrats have said there is bipartisan opposition for allowing them to do so for something as high profile as a supreme court nomination that could determine the ideological tilt of the court.In a letter on Saturday, top Democrats on the committee said that to “proceed at this juncture with a hearing to consider Judge Barrett’s nomination to the supreme court threatens the health and safety of all those who are called upon to do the work of this body”. Many of the senators on the committee are older and have other risk factors for Covid-19.Republicans are trying to advance Barrett’s nomination as quickly as possible to replace the court’s progressive champion Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last month.This despite refusing to consider Barack Obama’s pick for a supreme court justice in an election year in 2016.Republican leaders are concerned that if they lose their majority in the Senate in the November election, and if Trump loses the White House, it will be harder to confirm a conservative nominee during the lame-duck session before former vice president Joe Biden could enter office in January 2021.Utah senator Mike Lee and North Carolina senator Thom Tillis, both of whom sit on the judiciary panel, tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday and will quarantine for 10 days, until the committee meeting.Both had attended an event at the White House announcing Barrett’s nomination last Saturday. Multiple attendees of the event, including Trump, his wife Melania, former White House counsel Kellyanne Conway and Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and a Trump adviser, have now tested positive.Without Lee and Tillis’s votes, Barrett’s committee approval could be in jeopardy. Democrats could refuse to attend the meeting, denying Republicans the total number of lawmakers required to send the nomination to the full floor.A third Republican senator on the committee, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, who is 87, was also at a hearing last week with Lee. But Grassley’s office argues his doctors have not recommended he be tested and don’t believe he has been in close contact with anyone suspected of having or confirmed to have the coronavirus. At the hearings, senators sit far apart, although neither Grassley nor Lee wore a mask when speaking.McConnell said the judiciary committee has been meeting since May with some senators present and some participating virtually.“Certainly all Republican members of the committee will participate in these important hearings,” he said, of the supreme court confirmation process, which, if completed, would tilt the court dramatically to the right.Wisconsin Republican senator Ron Johnson, who is not on the committee, has also contracted the coronavirus. He did not attend the White House event last Saturday because he was already isolating following a different potential exposure.Senate Republicans meet several times a week for a caucus lunch, where they sit in a large room and remove their masks. All three of the senators who have tested positive were at those lunches last week, according to CNN.If at least three Republican senators are too ill to appear in person to confirm Barrett, the party leadership may not have enough votes.Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and Mike Pence, the vice-president, could break a tie. Two Republicans, Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, have said they will not confirm a nominee before the election. More

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      The US supreme court may soon become plutocracy's greatest defender | David Sirota

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      If you get your news from the political press and television ads, you might think the US supreme court is a forum that only adjudicates disputes over the most hot-button religious and civil rights issues. What you would not know is that while the court does periodically rule on those important matters, it spends as much or more of its time using business-related cases to help billionaires and corporations rig the economy against ordinary Americans.In light of that, Amy Coney Barrett’s US supreme court nomination must be understood as the culmination of cynical tactics that Republicans have perfected over the last two decades. The strategy is straightforward: they nominate plutocrat-compliant judges knowing that the corporate-owned media and political system will make sure confirmation battles focus on partisan wrangling and high-profile social issues – but not also on the economic issues that justices often decide.In other words: Republican politicians rely on conflagrations over political process and social issues to mobilize their religious base in service of Republican donors’ real objective – smuggling corporate cronies on to the highest court in the land. And if Barrett is confirmed, those Republican donors will not just get another business-friendly judge – in advance of the 2020 election, they will also get a third justice who worked directly on the legal team that convinced the US supreme court to hand Republicans the presidency in 2000.To be sure, Barrett’s record on social issues is extreme and worthy of scrutiny, criticism and organized opposition, especially at a time when crucial precedents may be on the line. She signed an ad criticizing Roe v Wade and she has suggested that a more conservative court could accept state restrictions on abortion clinics. As a judge, she has also written dissenting opinions against limits on gun rights and in favor of a Trump administration rule to try to make it harder for low-income immigrants to enter the United States.Those issues, however, are almost certainly not what is motivating big donors to funnel millions of dollars into groups like the Judicial Crisis Network, the oil magnate Charles Koch’s network and the US Chamber of Commerce in support of Barrett’s nomination. Those groups’ ads and lobbying campaigns may try to focus the public debate on religion and court precedent, but such enormous sums of cash flood into judicial campaigns with one underlying goal: enriching the corporations and plutocrats that are making the donations.These organizations know the supreme court is the place to do exactly that – and they have been wildly successful in stacking the court since 2005.That was the year that business interests engineered John Roberts’ ascension to supreme court chief justice. Back then, corporate groups launched what was their first sophisticated public campaign to install a new jurist on the court – and Roberts was the perfect pick. He had advised the Bush 2000 legal team, he represented corporate clients in private practice and he was considered “the go-to lawyer for the business community”.Roberts’ business fealty was not the focus of his court confirmation hearings – and that omission is now standard practice. Indeed, other than the brief controversy over Neil Gorsuch’s ruling in a workers’ rights case, recent confirmation battles have rarely ever homed in on nominees’ views on corporate power.And yet, the Roberts court has been defined by its allegiance to big business. According to the Constitutional Accountability Center, 70% of the Roberts court’s rulings in business cases have sided with the US Chamber – the pre-eminent business lobby group in Washington. That is the highest rate of corporate loyalty of any supreme court in 40 years, and it is a bipartisan affair: Republican-appointed judges are almost always siding with business interests, and in roughly half the cases, Democratic-appointed justices have been with them, too. More