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      in US Politics

      Justice Alito takes aim at abortion rights, gay marriage and Covid rules

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      The inability of people to say, without fear of being branded as bigots, that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman is threatening to make freedom of speech “a second-tier constitutional right”, supreme court justice Samuel Alito said at a virtual conference on Thursday.In a bleak address, Alito took aim at abortion rights, same-sex marriage, gun control and other conservative bugbears.The remarks were made to the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group that has helped Donald Trump remake the judiciary in the last four years.While supreme court justices have in the past waded into politics in public forums, Alito’s 30-minute speech stood out for its provocative engagement on fronts in the culture wars that had not seemed to be particularly hot, at least before the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett last month.Alito’s speech fueled concerns that Barrett’s elevation, which established an ironclad 6-3 conservative majority on the court, could lead the court to revisit basic anti-discrimination protections, marriage equality, reproductive rights and other issues.“This was a hyper-political, partisan speech, and his message in sum was: I’m free to say this now. We have the votes,” tweeted Chris Geidner, director of strategy at the justice collaborative advocacy group.As the United States continues to shatter daily records for new Covid-19 cases, Alito blasted coronavirus mitigation measures for imposing “previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty”.He singled out restrictions in Nevada limiting religious services to 50 attendees. “The states’s message is this: forget about worship and head for the slot machines, or maybe a Cirque du Soleil show,” Alito said.Although by any measure conservative jurisprudence under Trump has flourished, securing minority legal views for a generation, Alito spun a conservative victimization narrative, in which citizens are threatened in their freedom to speak and act as they please.“When I speak with recent law school graduates, what I hear over and over is that they face harassment and retaliation if they say anything that departs from the law school orthodoxy,” he said.“It pains me to say this,” Alito said, “but in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right.” As an example, Alito decried a Washington state law requiring a pharmacist to fill prescriptions for “morning-after pills, which destroy an embryo after fertilization”, as he put it.“Even before the pandemic, there was growing hostility to the expression of unfashionable views,” Alito continued, using the rubric of “the rule of law and the current crisis” to mount an attack on same-sex marriage, secured by the court in Obergefell v Hodges (2015), a ruling from which he dissented.“You can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman,” Alito complained. “Until very recently, that’s what the vast majority of Americans thought. Now it’s considered bigotry.”Alito went on:
      That this would happen after our decision in Obergefell should not have come as a surprise. Yes, the opinion of the court included words meant to calm the furors of those who cling to traditional views on marriage. But I could see, and so did the other justices in dissent, where the decision would lead. I wrote the following: ‘I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers and schools.’ That is just what is coming to past.
      One of the great challenges for the supreme court going forward will be to protect freedom of speech. Although that freedom is falling out of favor in some circles we need to do whatever we can to prevent it from becoming a second-tier constitutional right.”
      Legal analysts said the speech displayed thinking familiar from the 70-year-old justice’s opinions – but they called his decision to give voice to those opinions unusual.“I’m not surprised that Justice Alito believes any of those things,” tweeted University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck. “One need only read his written opinions to see most of them. I’m surprised that he decided to *say* them in a public speech that was live-streamed over the internet – clips of which will now be recirculated for ever.”Alito unleashed will make him a hero to more people looking for a leader of the conservative Court — but it also will make people outside of the SCOTUS world realize how he comes off (and it’s not good). pic.twitter.com/Gqt7uyHW07— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) November 13, 2020
      Alito is a George W Bush appointee who previously worked as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey and a circuit court judge. The speech was pre-recorded for the 2020 National Lawyers Federation sponsored by the Federalist Society. “Today I’m talking to a camera, and that feels really strange,” Alito said.To capture the mood of what he described as an assault on religious liberties and free speech, Alito quoted a 1997 Bob Dylan song.“To quote a popular Nobel laureate,” Alito said, “it’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.” More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on the election endgame: end Trump’s war on the truth | Editorial

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      Since he took office Donald Trump has posed a grave threat to democracy. His wild, relentless post-poll fight against reality this week has shown just how dangerous he can be. Designed to give his supporters a rationale for their anger over losing the popular vote, the falsehoods raised troubling questions about when, and how, Mr Trump will leave the White House.The bad news is that it won’t be anytime soon. Democracy in America is rare in giving a president more than 10 weeks of power after losing an election. Mr Trump is using this time to ratchet up the rhetoric to a fever pitch, seeding the idea that society is irreconcilably at odds with itself. This is profoundly damaging to America, a fact that cable networks have thankfully and belatedly woken up to after election day. Around the world former democracies are slipping into autocracy. The United States is not immune.The fact is Mr Trump will lose the popular vote by millions of votes and only America’s outdated electoral college has saved him from a crushing defeat. The president should be preparing to leave the White House, not be instructing his lawyers. Perhaps Mr Trump cannot afford to lose. Presidential immunity from prosecution vanishes once Mr Trump leaves office, a consideration that may weigh heavily given the ongoing investigations by the New York district attorney into reported“protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization”. Mr Trump denies any wrongdoing.For months it has been obvious that Mr Trump would claim victory and fraud should he lose the election. He has refused to say he would accept a peaceful transfer of power. The polls, he claimed, could not be trusted. Without a shred of shame, Mr Trump appears willing to challenge the validity of the vote in any state he loses, seeking to undermine the electoral process and ultimately invalidate it.This is a dangerous moment. There’s no evidence of widespread illegal votes in any state. Yet a fully fledged constitutional crisis over the process of counting ballots is on the cards because Mr Trump is demanding recounts and court cases while conditioning his base to view the election in existential terms. Last year, in an influential and prescient analysis, Ohio University’s Edward B Foley wargamed how a quarrel over mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania could lead to a disputed result in the 2020 presidential election.The most frightening scenario, said Prof Foley, was “where the dispute remains unresolved on January 20, 2021, the date for the inauguration of the new presidential term, and the military is uncertain as to who is entitled to receive the nuclear codes as commander-in-chief”. This ends with the US attorney general, William Barr, announcing that it is legally sound for Mr Trump to be recognised as re-elected for a second term while Democrats call for nationwide protests to dislodge the squatters in the White House. It would be better to avoid such a predicament rather than plan to get into it.Republicans must not be seduced by Mr Trump into manipulating the electoral system, through political and legal battles, to defy the popular will for partisan advantage. The Grand Old Party has profited from voter suppression and gerrymandering to keep an emerging Democratic majority at bay. But these darker impulses have given rise to Mr Trump and an unhealthy reliance on a shrinking coalition of overwhelmingly white Christian voters paranoid about losing power.Joe Biden looks to have done enough to win the White House. He will have his work cut out when he gets there, needing to rebuild the US government’s credibility after Trumpism hollowed out its institutions. That means offering hope to a country that faces a pandemic and an economic recession. He will have to reassert America’s role as the global problem-solver. Under Mr Trump the “indispensable nation” disappeared when it was needed the most. By any reasonable standard Mr Biden should not have to continue to run against Mr Trump. He must be allowed to get on with running America. More

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      in Elections

      International observers say US elections 'tarnished' by Trump and uncertainty

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      An international observer mission has reported that the US elections have been “tarnished” by legal uncertainty and Donald Trump’s “unprecedented attempts to undermine public trust”.A preliminary report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) pointed to systemic weaknesses in US elections, as well as the stress imposed by the coronavirus pandemic and Trump’s calls for an end to vote counting in certain states based on false claims of fraud.“Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including on election night, harm public trust in democratic institutions,” the report, by the OSCE’s Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the organisation’s parliamentary assembly, said.“With Covid and so many things changing at the last minute practically for the voter and for the election administration, there was this feeling of unease or confusion,” the head of the ODIHR mission,the Polish diplomat Urszula Gacek, told the Guardian. “And then on top of that, you have an incumbent who is doing something we’ve never seen before, casting doubt on the actual process, and making the way you cast your ballot also a political statement.”The OSCE report pointed to efforts at the state level to adjust voting procedures in light of the pandemic, and then the raft of legal challenges to those adjustments (overwhelmingly from Republicans), as being a source of considerable confusion when it came time to vote.“There was an unprecedented volume of litigation over voting processes in the months before the elections, with over 400 lawsuits filed in 44 states, some still before the courts a few days before elections,” the report said. “The legal uncertainty caused by this ongoing litigation placed an undue burden on some voters wishing to cast their ballots and on election administration officials.”The issues caused by the pandemic and an erratic president compounded long term systemic problems, the OSCE found, many of which disadvantage the poor and ethnic minorities, such as the varying requirements for proof of identity at polling stations, which the report found to be “unduly restrictive” for some voters.“If the only thing you could possibly use would be a college student card and you’re not a student, or a driving license and you don’t drive, or a passport and you never travel anywhere, you can imagine that certain economically disadvantaged groups will be disproportionately affected, and certain ethnic minorities could be excluded,” Gacek said.The report also referred to the disenfranchisement of felons and former felons. It said: “An estimated 5.2 million citizens are disenfranchised due to a criminal conviction, although about half of them have already served their sentences.”“These voting restrictions contravene the principle of universal suffrage,” the report concluded.Gacek said that $400m federal emergency funding for states’ election administrations had not been sufficient and the shortfall had come from private sources. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, contributed $400m.“But when you look at the $14bn which has been spent on the campaign, and you juxtapose that against an administration which has been having to rely on philanthropists to help them actually run the election, I think it’s interesting,” Gacek said. More

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      in Elections

      Could Trump really settle US election result in the supreme court?

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      Given Donald Trump’s lifelong predilection for tying up opponents in the courts, and his long-stated threat to do the same with an election result that threatened to go against him, his call to have the 2020 election settled in the supreme court is not a surprise.
      So can he do it?
      Trump may, with this in mind, have filled the supreme court with conservative appointees, but things aren’t so straightforward. The supreme court is the final court of appeal in the US and has discretion over which cases it should hear, largely relating to challenges to cases heard in lower courts on points of federal law and the constitution.
      So a lot of action will happen initially at state-level courts – the election has prompted a spate of new cases in the hotly contested battleground state of Pennsylvania, including two due to be heard later on Wednesday.
      What has made the current election landscape more of a minefield is the fact the coronavirus pandemic has led states to look for ways to make voting safer, including expanding absentee ballots, which has opened states up to challenges in the courts over issues such as proposed extensions to the period in which late mail-in votes are counted.
      It is important to remember that election challenges in state courts are nothing new, sometimes without merit, and often have little impact in the end. However, one important exception to that was the 2000 election where a series of legal challenges over faulty voting procedures in Florida handed the election to George W Bush.
      What’s the thrust of Trump’s tactic?
      With more than 40 pre-election cases by Republicans, Trump’s strategy is to argue that any measure to make voting easier and safer in the midst of a pandemic is unconstitutional and open to fraud, a framing aimed at the supreme court.
      A second argument that has been deployed several times is that many of the measures to ensure voting is easy have been made by state officials – like governors – rather than state legislatures, opening a path, say conservatives, for a constitutional challenge.

      How could this work?
      The most common scenario is for lawyers to challenge the way an election was conducted locally and seek to have votes discarded. In the key state of Pennsylvania, conservative groups have already ramped up cases to ensure late mail-in ballots are not counted, with two cases due to be heard on Wednesday.
      However, Pennsylvania requires an unusually high burden of proof for challenging elections, including written affidavits detailing wrongdoing.
      Pennsylvania is already on the supreme court’s radar in this respect. Republicans in the state have already appealed against a Pennsylvania supreme court decision ordering state election officials to accept mail-in ballots that arrive up to three days after the election, relying on an interpretation of the state’s own constitution.
      The US supreme court deferred hearing this case before the election but in a case that it did rule on, the court sided with a Republican challenge saying the state could not count late mail in ballots in Wisconsin. The supreme court chief justice John Roberts made clear, however, that “different bodies of law and different precedents” meant the court did not consider the situation in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as the same.
      Isn’t that good news for Democrats?
      It’s difficult to know. The Wisconsin decision was delivered before Trump’s third pick for the supreme court, Amy Coney Barrett, formally joined the bench last week, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority.
      Trump’s hope, as he has made very clear, is that this would help in the event he challenged the election result, but it is also unclear how Barrett would respond given Trump’s comments. And she could recuse herself from hearing any election-related cases because of a perceived conflict.
      Where else could we see challenges?
      Michigan, if it is close, is an outlier in that it has no formally laid-out system for a challenge, although any recount is automatically triggered by a margin of less than 2,000 votes.
      North Carolina, for instance, also has a challenge to a late voting extension before the courts. It all becomes something of moot point should Biden secure enough of a lead in the electoral college.
      What’s the worst-case scenario?
      The closer the outcome in the electoral college, the more messy things become, with the memory of Florida in 2000 looming above everything. The closest of results led to 35 messy days of legal challenges and laborious hand recounts, which gave the election to George W Bush after the state was originally called by news organisations for the Democratic challenger Al Gore.
      Bush took 271 of the 538 electoral votes, winning Florida by fewer than 600 votes, after a recount was halted by the supreme court, making Bush the first Republican president since 1888 to win despite losing the popular vote. More

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      in US Politics

      Wisconsin can't count mail-in ballots received after election day, supreme court rules

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      The US supreme court has sided with Republicans to prevent Wisconsin from counting mail-in ballots that are received after election day.
      In a 5-3 ruling, the justices on Monday refused to reinstate a lower court order that called for mailed ballots to be counted if they are received up to six days after the 3 November election. A federal appeals court had already put that order on hold.
      The ruling awards a victory for Republicans in their crusade against expanding voting rights and access. It also came just moments before the Republican-controlled Senate voted to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, a victory for the right that locks in a conservative majority on the nation’s highest court for years to come.
      The three liberal justices dissented. John Roberts, the chief justice, last week joined the liberals to preserve a Pennsylvania state court order extending the absentee ballot deadline but voted the other way in the Wisconsin case, which has moved through federal courts.
      “Different bodies of law and different precedents govern these two situations and require, in these particular circumstances, that we allow the modification of election rules in Pennsylvania but not Wisconsin,” Roberts wrote.
      “As the Covid pandemic rages, the court has failed to adequately protect the nation’s voters,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent that noted the state allowed the six-day extension for primary voting in April and that roughly 80,000 ballots were received after the day of the primary election.
      Democrats argued that the flood of absentee ballots and other challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic makes it necessary to extend the period in which ballots can be counted. Wisconsin, a swing state, is also one of the nation’s hotspots for Covid-19, with hospitals treating a record high number of patients with the disease. The supreme court allowed a similar extension to go into effect for Wisconsin’s April election, a decision that led to nearly 80,000 additional votes getting counted in the contest (Trump carried the state in 2016 by just under 23,000 votes).
      Republicans opposed the extension, saying that voters have plenty of opportunities to cast their ballots by the close of polls on election day and that the rules should not be changed so close to the election.
      The justices often say nothing, or very little, about the reasons for their votes in these emergency cases, but on Monday, four justices wrote opinions totaling 35 pages to lay out their competing rationales.
      Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged the complications the pandemic adds to voting, but defended the court’s action.
      “No one doubts that conducting a national election amid a pandemic poses serious challenges. But none of that means individual judges may improvise with their own election rules in place of those the people’s representatives have adopted,” Gorsuch wrote.
      Justice Brett Kavanaugh, meanwhile, echoed Trump in writing that states should announce results on election night.
      States “want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter”, he wrote. “Moreover, particularly in a presidential election, counting all the votes quickly can help the state promptly resolve any disputes, address any need for recounts, and begin the process of canvassing and certifying the election results in an expeditious manner.” He also wrote states had an interest in avoiding “the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election.”
      That comment earned a sharp rebuke from Kagan, who said “there are no results to ‘flip’ until all valid votes are counted”.
      She noted that the bigger threat to election “integrity” was valid votes going uncounted. “nothing could be more ‘suspicio[us]’ or “improp[er]’ than refusing to tally votes once the clock strikes 12 on election night. To suggest otherwise, especially in these fractious times, is to disserve the electoral process,” she wrote.
      Kavanaugh cited Vermont as an example of a state that “decided not to make changes to their ordinary election rules” due to the pandemic, even though, in fact, the state authorized the secretary of state to automatically mail a ballot to all registered voters this year, in order to make it easier for everyone to vote absentee.
      In a significant footnote, Kavanaugh also wrote that state courts do not have a “blank check” to step in on state laws governing federal elections, endorsing conservative justices’ rationale in deciding the election in 2000 between George W Bush and Al Gore.
      Two decades ago, in Bush v Gore, the supreme court decided – effectively – that Bush would be the US president after settling a recount dispute in the swing state of Florida. Back then, three conservative justices – William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas – said that the Florida supreme court “impermissibly distorted” the state’s election code by ordering a recount of a close election, during which voting machines were found to have issues correctly counting the votes.
      In Monday’s ruling, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch – both Trump appointees – endorsed that view expressed in the Bush v Gore case, a move that could foretell how the court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority, would rule if the results of the presidential election are contested.
      Justices Thomas, Samuel Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh recently voted to block a deadline extension to count ballots in Pennsylvania. However, with only eight justice on the court at the time, and the conservative justice John Roberts siding with liberals – at tied court ultimately upheld the deadline extension.
      But Pennsylvania Republicans, sensing an ally in Barrett, have asked for a re-do. In making their case, they are arguing that the state supreme court overstepped by ordering officials to count mail-in ballots that are sent by election day but arrive up to three days later.
      Agencies contributed to this report 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

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      in US Politics

      Amy Coney Barrett hearing: top Republican praises judge for being 'unashamedly pro-life' – live

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      Lindsey Graham lavishes praise on supreme court nominee
      Barron Trump had coronavirus, first lady reveals
      Barrett dodges abortion and healthcare questions
      Trump and Biden offer different visions of US role in world
      Trump in trouble as Florida’s seniors shift towards Biden
      Sign up for Fight to Vote – our weekly US election newsletter

      LIVE
      Updated

      Play Video

      Amy Coney Barrett questioned on third day of supreme court hearing – watch live

      Key events

      Show

      5.48pm EDT17:48
      Public hearing poortion ends

      5.00pm EDT17:00
      Today so far

      4.06pm EDT16:06
      Barron Trump had coronavirus, first lady reveals

      1.15pm EDT13:15
      Today so far

      12.33pm EDT12:33
      Third day of Barrett’s nomination hearings resumes

      12.01pm EDT12:01
      First break in today’s hearing

      10.27am EDT10:27
      Virginia voter registration deadline extended after technical failure

      Live feed

      Show

      5.48pm EDT17:48

      Public hearing poortion ends

      Next is a closed hearing on FBI background checks. Tomorrow the judiciary committee will set up a vote and hear outside witnesses.
      “You will be confirmed, God willing,” Graham said.

      Updated
      at 5.49pm EDT

      5.40pm EDT17:40

      Senator John Neely Kennedy, a Republican, used a Trump campaign talking point that Harris’ past career as a prosecutor deepened racial inequities to rebut her claim that systematic racism exists.
      You can read more about Harris past as a prosecutor here. The Trump campaign – while itself promoting a “tough on crime” attitude and railing against Black Lives Matter protestors – has nonetheless adopted progressive critiques of Harris’ record as “top cop”.
      Harris “thinks America is systemically racist – I think our history is the best evidence of that it is not,” said the senator from Louisiana, citing the Barack Obama presidency as proof. “With the blink of an eye, we went from institutionalized slavery to an African American president,” he said.
      After lobbing several softball questions at Barrett including (“Do you hate little warm puppies?”) Kennedy ended by asking: “Who does the laundry in your house?” (which I’m sure he also meant to ask Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch).
      It is worth noting that Barrett didn’t clearly answer this one either: “We run a lot of loads of laundry.”

      5.19pm EDT17:19

      Barrett also would not comment on whether she believes voting discrimination exists.
      Harris: Do you agree with Justice Roberts when he said voting discrimination still exists?
      Barrett: “I will not comment on what any justice said in an opinion, whether an opinion is right or wrong, or endorse that proposition.”

      Aaron Rupar
      (@atrupar)
      Under questioning from Kamala Harris, Amy Coney Barrett refuses to say if she thinks voting discrimination still exists pic.twitter.com/gv9KN904fu

      October 14, 2020

      5.14pm EDT17:14

      Harris took up questioning Barrett on climate change.
      Harris: Do you think COVID-19 is infectious?
      Barrett: Yes.
      Harris: Do you think smoking causes cancer?
      Barrett: I’m not sure exactly where you’re going with this… Yes, every package of cigarettes warns that smoking causes cancer.
      Harris: Do you think climate change is happening?
      Barrett: “Senator, again… You have asked me a series of questions that are completely uncontroversial, and then trying to elicit an opinion from me that is on a very contentious matter of public debate.”
      Climate change is not a contentious matter of public debate – about 8 in 10 Americans say that human activity is fueling climate change, per a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. But most importantly, climate change is not a contentious matter of scientific debate.

      5.00pm EDT17:00

      Today so far

      That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
      Here’s where the day stands so far:
      The third day of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination hearings is still unfolding. Barrett has been answering questions from the Senate judiciary committee for eight hours, and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris is currently questioning the nominee.
      Lindsey Graham praised Barrett as “unashamedly pro-life,” describing her nomination as historic. “I have never been more proud of a nominee,” the Republican committee chairman said. “This is history being made, folks. This is the first time in American history that we’ve nominated a woman who is unashamedly pro-life and embraces her faith without apology. And she’s going to the court.”
      The first lady revealed Barron Trump had coronavirus. Melania Trump said Barron, her and the president’s 14-year-old son, tested positive for coronavirus but showed no symptoms. Barron and the first lady have both since tested negative, she said.
      Trump is en route to Des Moines, Iowa, where he will hold a campaign rally tonight. The president won Iowa by 9 points in 2016, but recent polls show Trump and Biden running neck and neck in the state.
      Virginia extended its voter registration deadline, after an accidentally cut cable caused the state’s online registration system to shut down yesterday. Virginia voters now have an additional two days to register.
      Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      4.54pm EDT16:54

      Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris is now questioning Amy Coney Barrett. She is the last Democrat who will speak in this round of questioning.

      4.49pm EDT16:49

      Trump is en route to Iowa, a state that he won by 9 points in 2016. Polls currently show the president and Joe Biden running neck and neck in Iowa.
      The president will hold a rally in Des Moines tonight, and attendees will be greeted by this billboard when they arrive at the event site.

      Jim Acosta
      (@Acosta)
      Billboard outside Des Moines airport where Trump holds Iowa rally tonight. pic.twitter.com/XHix45wzlw

      October 14, 2020

      4.41pm EDT16:41

      Speaking to reporters before leaving for his Iowa rally, Trump very briefly addressed his son’s health before pivoting to praising Amy Coney Barrett.

      Aaron Rupar
      (@atrupar)
      Trump spent exactly one second answering a question about how his son Barron is doing after he tested positive for coronavirus pic.twitter.com/aiGXBSbHRZ

      October 14, 2020

      “Barron’s fine, and Amy is doing a fantastic job. We’re heading out to Iowa, and we have a big rally,” Trump said.
      The first lady said in a statement that Barron tested positive but experienced no coronavirus symptoms. He has since tested negative, as has the first lady.

      4.31pm EDT16:31

      Like other Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee, Cory Booker pressed Amy Coney Barrett on voting rights.
      As part of his questioning, Booker asked Barrett if she had ever waited in line for five hours to vote. She said no. Booker asked if she had ever waited an hour to vote. She said no.
      Booker compared those answers to the experience of many black voters in America, who often face long lines at their polling stations.

      4.22pm EDT16:22

      Trump said his son, Barron, is doing “fine” after testing positive for coronavirus.
      The president responded to a reporter’s question about Barron as he left for Des Moines, Iowa, where he is holding a campaign rally later tonight.
      Shortly before Trump’s departure, the first lady revealed Barron had tested positive but shown no coronavirus symptoms in a statement about her own experience with the virus.
      Melania and Barron Trump have both since tested negative, the first lady said.

      4.16pm EDT16:16

      Amy Coney Barrett told Democrat Cory Booker that she could not offer her opinion on whether it was wrong to separate immigrant children from their parents.
      “That’s a matter of hot political debate in which I can’t express a view or be drawn into as a judge,” Barrett said. “I can’t express a view on that.”
      The Democratic senator responded that he considered such matters to be “basic questions of human rights”.
      The Trump administration attracted severe criticism in 2018 after its “zero tolerance” immigration policy resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents.

      4.06pm EDT16:06

      Barron Trump had coronavirus, first lady reveals

      Melania Trump released a statement about her experience with coronavirus, and the first lady revealed her son with the president, Barron Trump, tested positive for coronavirus.
      The first lady said 14-year-old Barron initially tested negative after the president was diagnosed, as the White House announced. But the White House did not reveal Barron’s later test came up positive.

      Melania Trump
      (@FLOTUS)
      To all who have reached out – thank you. Here is my personal experience with COVID-19 :https://t.co/XUysq0KVaY

      October 14, 2020

      “To our great relief he tested negative, but again, as so many parents have thought over the past several months, I couldn’t help but think ‘what about tomorrow or the next day?’,” the first lady said in the statement.
      “My fear came true when he was tested again and it came up positive. Luckily he is a strong teenager and exhibited no symptoms.”
      The first lady noted Barron has since tested negative again, as has she. Trump said her own experience with coronavirus was like “a roller coaster of symptoms in the days after” she was diagnosed.
      “I experienced body aches, a cough and headaches, and felt extremely tired most of the time,” Trump said. “I am happy to report that I have tested negative and hope to resume my duties as soon as I can.”
      The first lady added, “Along with this good news, I want people to know that I understand just how fortunate my family is to have received the kind of care that we did.”
      Trump said she continues to pray for the Americans who are currently struggling with coronavirus and their families.

      Updated
      at 4.09pm EDT More