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      'They won't be able to do anything about this': McConnell revels in Barrett supreme court vote

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      “By tomorrow night,” Mitch McConnell told Senate Republicans on Sunday, after they voted to limit debate and advance the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, “we’ll have a new member of the United States supreme court.
      “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election,” the majority leader said on the Senate floor. “They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”
      The Republican was alluding to the possibility, largely backed by polling data, that Democrats will take back the White House and the Senate on 3 November.
      Sunday’s vote moved the Senate closer to a final vote on Donald Trump’s third supreme court nominee, a little more than a week before the election. The confirmation vote is expected on Monday evening.
      Two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, opposed limiting debate. But Murkowski said on Saturday she intends to vote to confirm.
      “I have no doubt about her capability to do the job and to do it well,” she said.
      No nominee has ever been confirmed this close to an election. More than 58 million ballots have already been cast.
      Democrats boycotted the committee vote on Thursday that advanced the nomination. Ahead of Monday night’s vote, they expressed concerns about the risks of contracting Covid-19, after several Republican staffers and members of Vice-President Mike Pence’s team tested positive. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer urged Democrats not to congregate in the chamber and to cast their votes “quickly and from a safe distance”.
      McConnell twice declined to answer questions about whether Pence would come to the chamber to preside on Monday. At a rally in Florida on Saturday, however, Pence said: “I wouldn’t miss that vote for the world.”
      Schumer said Pence “reportedly intends to come”, and blasted him for being willing to put “the health of everyone who works in this building at risk”.
      “It sets a terrible, terrible example to the American people,” the New York Democrat said. “The Republican party is willing to ignore the pandemic to rush this supreme court nomination forward.”
      Brian Schatz, a senator for Hawaii, told a reporter: “It is clear to me that their closing message is that they’re going to personally deliver Covid to as many people as possible.”
      Republicans did not appear concerned.
      “We’ve done a very good job within the Senate to follow the guidelines as best we can and I think the vice-president will do the same,” said Mike Rounds of South Dakota, adding that Pence was “very responsible”.
      On Sunday the White House said Pence did not have to follow federal guidelines and quarantine for 14 days because he was an essential worker. Pence continued campaigning.
      With Barrett, the supreme court will have a 6-3 conservative majority that could last for years. In the short term, Barrett could weigh in on cases involving the election. Trump has said he believes the court will decide the election and has made clear he wants Barrett on the bench for any such cases.
      Barrett is also likely to participate in oral arguments on 10 November, in which Trump and fellow Republicans are asking the court to strike down the Affordable Care Act, the health law known as Obamacare, in the middle of a pandemic which has infected 8.5m and killed 224,000.
      A favourite of Christian conservatives, Barrett frustrated judiciary committee Democrats this month by sidestepping questions on abortion, presidential powers, climate change, voting rights, Obamacare and other issues. She has criticized rulings upholding Obamacare but said during her confirmation she has no agenda to invalidate the measure.
      Democrats were incensed that Republicans moved forward with Barrett’s confirmation so near an election, after refusing in 2016 to act on a nomination by Barack Obama, because it was an election year. Republicans are hoping Barrett’s confirmation can give a boost to Trump and senators seeking re-election.
      Democrats are considering structural reform to the Senate and the court, should they win back control. Republicans claim such reforms, including expansion of the court, would be dangerous.
      Barrett, 48, has been a federal appeals court judge since 2017 . Before that she was a legal scholar at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Trump touted her nomination at a campaign rally in New Hampshire on Sunday.
      “We’re giving you a great new supreme court justice,” he said. More

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      in US Politics

      'Power grab': how Republican hardball gave us Amy Coney Barrett

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      The almost certain confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court on Monday represents a “power grab” by Republicans facing possible wipeout at the ballot box, activists and analysts say.
      Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee shrugged off a Democratic boycott on Thursday to advance Barrett’s nomination to the full Senate, which will vote little more than a week before the presidential election. If confirmed, Barrett could be sworn in as a justice almost immediately.
      To critics, the rushed process represents one of the most naked power plays yet by a party which, confronting dismal opinion polls, is weaponizing unelected judges to compensate for setbacks in elections. Even as they contemplate the loss of political power, Republicans are poised to cement judicial power for generations.
      “This is like the last gasp by the Republican party to try to lock in their minority rule,” said Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of the progressive group Demand Justice. “They’re potentially just days away from not only losing the White House but also the Senate, maybe even resoundingly, and so they’re trying to do everything they can to consolidate on the supreme court a Trump supermajority for decades to come.”
      Under Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Republicans have built a reputation for ruthless bare knuckle tactics Democrats struggle to combat. They blocked swaths of Barack Obama’s legislative agenda and in 2016 refused to grant a hearing to his supreme court nominee Merrick Garland, arguing that it was an election year so the voters should decide.
      In 2018, when the conservative nominee Brett Kavanaugh faced credible allegations of sexual assault, Republicans ignored fierce protests and rammed his appointment through. And when liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last month, Donald Trump moved like lightning to replace her with Barrett, 48, a lifetime appointment who would tilt America’s highest court to a 6-3 conservative majority.
      It was another example of Republican hardball – audacious, shameless and devastatingly effective.
      Comedian Bill Maher told viewers of his HBO show: “If you haven’t gotten it yet, this kind of completely bald-faced premeditated hypocrisy should make it clear. There’s no catching them in an inconsistency. They don’t care because it’s all and only about power. The only rule Republicans play by is: the people who win make the rules. Power talks, losers walk.”
      Democrats cried foul, pointing out that the Senate has never confirmed a supreme court nominee so close to a presidential election. They were whistling in the wind. During committee hearings Barrett swerved most of their questions, refusing to commit herself on abortion, the transfer or power or the climate crisis.
      Kang said: “The process was so rushed and she was far more evasive and refused to answer more questions than any other nominee. That was a little bit jarring, if not surprising, but it shows how little respect Republicans have not only for the Senate but the supreme court itself. The Republican party is very blatantly just treating the supreme court as another political branch of government.”
      Demand Justice has called for Democrats to fight back by expanding the court, noting that its size has been changed seven times before. Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, has said he will appoint a bipartisan commission to examine such proposals.
      Kang predicted: “Republicans’ attempt to assert their raw political partisan power grab to get a sixth seat on the court, when they already have five, could end up backfiring spectacularly on them and they could be on the losing side of a 7-6 supreme court before they know it.”
      All 12 Republicans on the judiciary committee voted in favour of Barrett. Ted Cruz of Texas hailed perhaps the “single most important accomplishment” of Trump’s presidency. Democrats displayed posters at their desks, of Americans who benefited from Obama’s Affordable Care Act which they warn Barrett could help strike down.
      Democrats have also warned that if Trump follows through on his threat to dispute the outcome of the 3 November election, it might go before Barrett and other members of the supreme court for a final ruling, just like the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore.

      Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, described Barrett’s probable confirmation as a “‘power grab’ in every relevant sense of the term, especially in light of President Trump’s open concession that he appointed judge Coney Barrett in part to ensure her ability to vote in his favour should his re-election as president end up turning on a case the supreme court would need to resolve in order to give him an electoral college victory in the face of a national popular defeat.”
      Trump has appointed more than 200 federal judges, likely to be his most lasting legacy whether he serves one term or two. Critics suggest the courts represent the last bulwark of Republican minority rule and the Barrett episode is starkly indicative of a party that has lost its ideological and ethical moorings and now treats power as an end in itself.
      Kurt Bardella, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said Republicans have betrayed their claims to be the party of fiscal responsibility, pro-life principles, small government and congressional oversight.
      “When a party diverges from itself on so many issues so many times,” he said, “it tells you they don’t actually have any moral convictions or principles that guide them. Only the pursuit of power.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump assaulted American democracy – here's how Democrats can save it | Robert Reich

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      Barring a miracle, Amy Coney Barrett will be confirmed on Monday as the ninth justice on the US supreme court.
      This is a travesty of democracy.
      The vote on Barrett’s confirmation will occur just eight days before election day. By contrast, the Senate didn’t even hold a hearing on Merrick Garland, who Barack Obama nominated almost a year before the end of his term. Majority leader Mitch McConnell argued at the time that any vote should wait “until we have a new president”.
      Barrett was nominated by a president who lost the popular vote by nearly 3m ballots, and who was impeached by the House of Representatives. When Barrett joins the court, five of the nine justices will have been appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote.
      The Republican senators who will vote for her represent 15 million fewer Americans than their Democratic colleagues.
      Once on the high court, Barrett will join five other reactionaries who together will be able to declare laws unconstitutional, for perhaps a generation.
      Barrett’s confirmation is the culmination of years in which a shrinking and increasingly conservative, rural and white segment of the US population has been imposing its will on the rest of America. They’ve been bankrolled by big business, seeking lower taxes and fewer regulations.
      In the event Joe Biden becomes president on 20 January and both houses of Congress come under control of the Democrats, they can reverse this trend. It may be the last chance – both for the Democrats and, more importantly, for American democracy.
      How?
      For starters, increase the size of the supreme court. The constitution says nothing about the number of justices. The court changed size seven times in its first 80 years, from as few as five justices under John Adams to 10 under Abraham Lincoln.
      Biden says if elected he’ll create a bipartisan commission to study a possible court overhaul “because it’s getting out of whack”. That’s fine, but he’ll need to move quickly. The window of opportunity could close by the 2022 midterm elections.
      Second, abolish the Senate filibuster. Under current rules, 60 votes are needed to enact legislation. This means that if Democrats win a bare majority there, Republicans could block any new legislation Biden hopes to pass.
      The filibuster could be ended with a rule change requiring 51 votes. There is growing support among Democrats for doing this if they gain that many seats. During the campaign, Biden acknowledged that the filibuster has become a negative force in government.
      The filibuster is not in the constitution either.
      The most ambitious structural reform would be to rebalance the Senate itself. For decades, rural states have been emptying as the US population has shifted to vast megalopolises. The result is a growing disparity in representation, especially of nonwhite voters.
      For example, both California, with a population of 40 million, and Wyoming, whose population is 579,000, get two senators. If population trends continue, by 2040 some 40% of Americans will live in just five states, and half of America will be represented by 18 Senators, the other half by 82.
      This distortion also skews the electoral college, because each state’s number of electors equals its total of senators and representatives. Hence, the recent presidents who have lost the popular vote.
      This growing imbalance can be remedied by creating more states representing a larger majority of Americans. At the least, statehood should be granted to Washington DC. And given that one out of eight Americans now lives in California – whose economy, if it were a separate country, would be the ninth-largest in the world – why not split it into a North and South California?
      The constitution is also silent on the number of states.
      Those who recoil from structural reforms such as the three I’ve outlined warn that Republicans will retaliate when they return to power. That’s rubbish. Republicans have already altered the ground rules. In 2016, they failed to win a majority of votes cast for the House, Senate or the presidency, yet secured control of all three.
      Barrett’s ascent is the latest illustration of how grotesque the power imbalance has become, and how it continues to entrench itself ever more deeply. If not reversed soon, it will be impossible to remedy.
      What’s at stake is not partisan politics. It is representative government. If Democrats get the opportunity, they must redress this growing imbalance – for the sake of democracy.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US More

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      How Trump success in ending Obamacare will kill Fauci plan to conquer HIV

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      In his State of the Union address in February 2019, Donald Trump vowed to end the HIV epidemic by 2030.
      But if Trump has his way and the supreme court strikes down the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the resulting seismic disruption to the healthcare system would end that dream.
      Democrats have expressed grave concern that if Amy Coney Barrett is seated on the supreme court, the conservative jurist could cast a decisive vote to destroy the ACA in the California v Texas case scheduled for oral argument starting 10 November. The Senate judiciary committee will vote on Barrett’s nomination on Thursday. A full Senate vote is expected on Monday.
      The brainchild of Dr Anthony Fauci and other top brass at the Department of Health and Human Services, the ambitious Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America has received for its debut year $267m in new federal spending, largely targeted at HIV transmission hotspots across the US. More

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      in Elections

      Joe Biden plans special commission to suggest supreme court reforms

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      Joe Biden has confirmed he would appoint a special commission to study the US court system over 180 days, if he is elected next month, to provide reform recommendations relating to the supreme court and beyond.
      In response to questions about the US supreme court during an interview for this Sunday’s 60 Minutes news magazine, the former vice-president and Democratic presidential nominee told CBS TV managing editor Norah O’Donnell that the court system is “getting out of whack” and that “there’s a number of alternatives that go well beyond ‘packing’”, ie increasing the number of seats on the nine-justice supreme court bench.
      “The last thing we need to do is turn the supreme court into just a political football, [that means] whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want,” Biden said in the interview, which airs just nine days ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
      “Presidents come and go. Supreme court justices stay for generations,” he added.

      60 Minutes
      (@60Minutes)
      Watch more of @NorahODonnell’s interview with Joe Biden, Sunday. pic.twitter.com/wJmb8MatVg

      October 22, 2020

      In keeping with the show’s election tradition, both candidates will be featured in separate interviews to spell out their plans for the country. The previews come following reports that Donald Trump abruptly ended what was intended to be an hour-long interview at the White House after 45 minutes, before chastising correspondent Stahl for her professionalism and lack of mask.
      Meanwhile, the US president has been talking about doing his own pre-emptive defense.

      Donald J. Trump
      (@realDonaldTrump)
      I will soon be giving a first in television history full, unedited preview of the vicious attempted “takeout” interview of me by Lesley Stahl of @60Minutes. Watch her constant interruptions & anger. Compare my full, flowing and “magnificently brilliant” answers to their “Q’s”. https://t.co/L3szccGamP

      October 22, 2020

      Biden vowed that if he prevails in November’s election he will “put together a bipartisan commission of constitutional scholars – Democrats, Republicans, liberal, conservative” over “180 days come back to me with recommendations” on the US court system.
      “It’s the way in which it’s being handled and it’s not about court packing,” Biden argued, adding “there’s a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated and I’ve looked to see what recommendations that commission might make.”
      While the Democrat kept the focus on the recovery from a pandemic and recession, Trump, meanwhile, vaguely looked forward to one goal: “To get back to normal”.
      “Get back to where we were, to have the economy rage and be great with jobs and everybody be happy,” he said. “And that’s where we’re going, and that’s where we’re heading.”

      60 Minutes
      (@60Minutes)
      Watch more of Lesley Stahl’s interview with President Trump, Sunday. pic.twitter.com/zA5q4pFxeI

      October 22, 2020

      The president then took aim at China, calling them “an adversary,” “a competitor” and a “foe” before slamming the country for giving rise to the Covid-19 outbreak.
      Interviews with their running mates, Republican vice-president Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris, will also air during the broadcast. More

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      in US Politics

      Senate judiciary committee votes to advance Amy Coney Barrett nomination

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      Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee voted unilaterally Thursday to advance Amy Coney Barrett’s supreme court nomination to the full Senate despite Democrats’ refusal to sit in the hearing room for what they called a naked “power grab”.
      Democratic senators had announced the night before that they would not participate in any move to install Donald Trump’s third supreme court nominee even as tens of millions of Americans vote in a presidential election less than two weeks away.
      No supreme court nominee has ever been installed so close to a presidential election, and just four years ago the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and Senator Lindsey Graham, who now chairs the judiciary committee, said that installing such a nominee in an election year would be a shameful defiance of the will of voters.
      Those qualms were nowhere in evidence on Thursday as Republicans, who hold a majority in the Senate and thus on every committee, met with themselves to send Barrett toward a seat vacated with the death last month of liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
      “My Democratic Senate colleagues and I boycotted the supreme court nominee committee vote today,” Democratic vice-presidential nominee and California senator Kamala Harris tweeted. “Let’s be clear: this nomination process is a sham and shows how Republicans will stop at nothing to strip health care from millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions.”
      Senators plan to convene a rare weekend session for procedural actions ahead of a final confirmation vote expected Monday. McConnell has said he has the votes to confirm Barrett, whose arrival on the court would create an unassailable 6-3 conservative majority.
      “Barrett deserves to be on the supreme court and she will be confirmed,” said Graham. Democrats, he said, “made a choice not to participate”.
      Democratic senators on the committee spoke outside the Capitol later Thursday morning about what they said was a broken process demanded by a corrupt president and engineered by a Republican majority that had lost its way in a desperate attempt to hold onto power despite dwindling popular support.
      “We are descending into the low ground, the quicksand of a power grab, that will go down in history as one of the darker days of this institution,” Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey said.
      In their committee room seats, Democrats arranged for posters to be placed of constituents they said had been helped by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which they fear Barrett, 48, could help throw out in a case that begins oral arguments next month, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
      Barrett is a conservative whose anti-abortion views and ties to groups that have publicly opposed same-sex marriage raised alarm among progressives, as well as her unwillingness to comment on the legality of voter intimidation or to promise to recuse herself from any case arising from the coming election.

      Nan Aron, president of the progressive Alliance for Justice group, said Republicans had conducted “theater”, as opposed to a real hearing.
      “Senate Republicans believe ‘advice and consent’ means performing the theatre of a hearing without scrutinizing the nominee in the least,” Aron said in a statement. “Amy Coney Barrett refused to answer the most fundamental questions about our democracy and human rights. Today’s vote shows Senate Republicans are already confident that she will advance their agenda.”
      But Jeanne Mancini, president of the anti-abortion group March for Life, praised Barrett and compared her favorably to Ginsburg.
      “Like her predecessor, Amy Coney Barrett is a trailblazer who is a role model for Americans,” Mancini said in a statement. “Her immense respect for the law and constitution will allow her to fairly apply the law and consider the rights of everyone who comes before her, including the unborn.”
      Trump is on track to becoming the first president in decades to appoint three supreme court justices in just one term, and he has shattered records for the speed with which he has remade the judiciary, installing more than 200 federal judges with McConnell’s help.
      Previous Trump nominees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined the supreme court in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
      In her confirmation hearings, Barrett declined to say how she would rule in potential future challenges to the landmark Roe v Wade decision in 1973 that made abortion legal in the US, or other landmark reproductive rights cases.
      But progressives and mainstream legal analysts said her views on those and other issues appeared to be extreme, and they expressed concern that she could participate in the dismantling of environmental regulations, voting rights law, anti-discrimination protections, protections for immigrants and other essential safeguards.
      “It is an irresponsible and undemocratic abuse of power to see the Republican Senate leadership on the judiciary committee rush to fill Justice Ruth Ginsburg’s seat in the middle of an election and instead of providing coronavirus relief for the millions of families harmed by the pandemic and the economic crisis,” said Tina Tchen, president of the anti-sexual harassment group Time’s Up Now.
      “This sham process is preventing the American public from understanding how her extreme views are out of step with our constitutional values and principles.” More