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Amy Coney Barrett
Democrats are resigned to losing the supreme court battle – but set on winning the war
Amy Coney Barrett’s supreme court confirmation hearings bring few surprises – with occasional glimpses of truth More
The World’s Election
Trump and Biden offer starkly different visions of US role in world
The security council chamber at the UN headquarters in New York.
Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS
The world is anxiously watching the election, with the candidates far apart on issues such as the climate crisis and nuclear weapons
by Julian Borger in Washington
Main image:
The security council chamber at the UN headquarters in New York.
Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS
Foreign policy barely gets a mention in this US election, but for the rest of the world the outcome on 3 November will arguably be the most consequential in history.
All US elections have a global impact, but this time there are two issues of existential importance to the planet – the climate crisis and nuclear proliferation – on which the two presidential candidates could hardly be further apart.
Also at stake is the idea of “the west” as a like-minded grouping of democracies who thought they had won the cold war three decades ago.
“The Biden versus Trump showdown in November is probably the starkest choice between two different foreign policy visions that we’ve seen in any election in recent memory,” said Rebecca Lissner, co-author of An Open World, a new book on the contest for 21st-century global order.
In an election which will determine so much about the future of America and the world, the Trump campaign has said very little about its intentions, producing what must be the shortest manifesto in the annals of US politics.
It appeared late in the campaign and has 54 bullet points, of which five are about foreign policy – 41 words broken into a handful of slogans such as: “Wipe Out Global Terrorists Who Threaten to Harm Americans”.
The word “climate” does not appear, but there are two bullet points on partnering with other countries to “clean up” the oceans, and a pledge to “Continue to Lead the World in Access to the Cleanest Drinking Water and Cleanest Air”. (The phrase ignores a series of US scandals about poor water quality – and the fact that millions of Americans can no longer afford their water bills.)
The US remains the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and the average American’s carbon footprint is twice that of a European or Chinese citizen. More
It took less than one day after Kamala Harris was announced as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee for a racist and baseless “birther” conspiracy theory to start circulating among her critics.The morning after Joe Biden named Harris as his running mate, making her the first black woman and the first Asian American to join a major party’s presidential ticket, Newsweek published an op-ed casting doubt upon the California senator’s US citizenship because she was born to immigrant parents.The argument was immediately discredited by legal experts, who noted Harris was born in a hospital in Oakland, California, and was thus undeniably a US citizen.But that irrefutable evidence did not stop Donald Trump, one of the champions of the similarly baseless birther claims against Barack Obama, from stoking the conspiracy theory.“I just heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” Trump said at an August press conference. “But that’s a very serious, you’re saying that, they’re saying that she doesn’t qualify because she wasn’t born in this country.”The president has continued his attacks against Harris in the two months since, most recently calling her a “monster” after last Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate.Trump’s efforts to demonize Harris have taken on an added element of desperation heading into the final weeks of the presidential election, as polls show Biden leading nationally and in major battleground states.The Democratic ticket’s significant polling advantage increases the likelihood that Harris will indeed become the country’s first female vice-president, potentially setting her up for a successful White House bid after Biden leaves office.But Trump’s comments have underscored a consistent theme of Harris’s entire political career, one that will probably only be amplified if she becomes vice-president: it’s not easy being the first.…Harris’s involvement with political activism started when she was a child, a fact that she has frequently touted on the campaign trail. Her mother, a cancer researcher from India, and her father, an economist from Jamaica, met as graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s and became involved with the civil rights movement. More
Amy Coney Barrett
Democratic senator and vice-presidential nominee condemns Republican push to overturn healthcare law and abortion rights
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Kamala Harris questions Amy Coney Barrett over the Affordable Care Act – video
Kamala Harris delivered a blistering rebuke of Republican efforts to tear down healthcare and abortion access as she grilled Amy Coney Barrett, prompting the supreme court nominee to make the unbelievable claim that she was not aware of Donald Trump’s campaign promise to appoint justices who would dismantle Obamacare.
Speaking via teleconference during Barrett’s Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, the Democratic senator and vice-presidential nominee began with a campaign speech about the importance of accessible healthcare amid the coronavirus – highlighting the number of Americans who would lose insurance if the 2010 Affordable Care Act were repealed in five states where Republican senators are struggling to win re-election.
She then addressed Barrett: “Prior to your nomination, were you aware of President Trump’s statement committing to nominate judges who will strike down the Affordable Care Act? And I’d appreciate a yes or no answer.”
Barrett maintained that before she was nominated to the supreme court, she was unaware of his public statements. “I don’t recall hearing about or seeing such statements,” Barrett said.
Harris asked how many months after Barrett wrote an article criticizing John Roberts’ decision upholding the Affordable Care Act she received her nomination for her appeals court position.
“The Affordable Care Act and all of its protections hinge on this seat,” Harris said.
“I would hope the committee would trust my integrity,” Barrett said, noting, as she has done throughout the hearings, that she has not made any commitments to rule a certain way on the healthcare law.
The assertion, and Barrett’s implication that she had somehow tuned out the president’s loud, public criterion for judges he’d appoint, is difficult to believe.
Harris, the former attorney general of California, is famous for her prosecutorial style of questioning. Her sharp interrogation of Donald Trump’s last Supreme Court nominee – now Justice Brett Kavanaugh – helped elevate her political profile.
CSPAN
(@cspan)
Complete exchange between Sen. Kamala Harris and Judge Kavanaugh on Mueller Investigation.Kavanaugh: “I would like to know the person you’re thinking of.”Sen. Harris: “I think you’re thinking of someone and you don’t want to tell us.” pic.twitter.com/3bP7rJ6u0L
August 11, 2020
Harris also tackled Barrett’s views on abortion, making a carefully laid-out case that despite Barrett’s equivocation and insistence that she is unbiased on the issue of reproductive rights, she is far from it.
Barrett was a member of a “right to life” organization that in 2016 promoted a crisis pregnancy center in South Bend, Indiana, that has been criticized for misleading and misdirecting vulnerable women seeking abortions. She has signed off on a newspaper ad calling Roe v Wade – the landmark 1973 ruling protecting the right to choose – “barbaric”. A Notre Dame Magazine article from 2013 describes a lecture series during which Barrett “spoke … to her own conviction that life begins at conception”.
As a federal judge, she has considered three laws restricting abortion and expressed misgivings about rulings that had struck down the laws. She joined the dissent against a decision to strike down an Indiana abortion rule – signed into law by Mike Pence when the vice-president was Indiana’s governor – that mandated the fetal remains be buried or cremated.
“I would suggest that we not pretend that we don’t know how this nominee views a women’s right to choose or make her own decisions,” Harris said. The senator noted that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom Barrett has cited as her model in declining to give any hints on how she would vote on future cases, was, unlike Barrett, much more forthcoming with her own personal views on abortion.
Harris did not ask Barrett a direct question about Roe v Wade, driving home the point that her views have already been made plain.
Harris ended by asking to enter into the record letters opposing Barrett’s nomination from the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Planned Parenthood.
Topics
Amy Coney Barrett
Kamala Harris
Republicans
US elections 2020
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Trump has repeatedly stated that he may refuse to accept defeat in the coming election. As Lawrence Douglas explains, things could get very messy if the result is close
How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump famously declared that he would accept the result of the contest with Hillary Clinton, before pausing for dramatic effect and adding: “If I win.” Even after being sworn in as president he cast doubt over the legitimacy of millions of votes that had seen him lose the popular vote while winning in the electoral college. This time around, with millions more than usual expected to vote by mail and with him trailing badly in the polls, Trump is once again questioning the legitimacy of the voting system. Prof Lawrence Douglas, the author of the recently published Will He Go?, tells Anushka Asthana that the stage is being set for a disputed election if the result hinges on small margins and mail-in ballots, which take longer to count. In this scenario, he believes Trump is likely to refuse to concede if the vote goes against him. It could open up a legal and political minefield that the US constitution and the separated powers of the US government is ill-equipped to deal with. One thing is clear: a new president must be sworn in at noon on 21 January 2020. But who turns up to that ceremony could be the result of a bitter and protracted battle. More
Depending on your point of view, the woman seated before the Senate judiciary committee for her first day of questioning was either the female Scalia or the anti-RBG. Or maybe, of course, both.As proceedings commenced in a brightly lit and deeply sanitized hearing room, Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump’s third nominee to the supreme court, described herself as an originalist in the tradition of her mentor. Like the late Antonin Scalia, for whom she clerked, she subscribes to a theory of constitutional interpretation that attempts to understand and apply “meaning that [the constitution] had at the time people ratified it”.That time was the 1780s, when only white and land-owning men could vote. Oddly, Scalia often produced opinions that delighted conservatives. Outside the Capitol on Tuesday, a group of conservative women gathered to sing and pray, hands extended heavenward.Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican committee chair, asked Barrett if it was appropriate to call her the “female Scalia”. She demurred.“If I am confirmed, you would not be getting Justice Scalia,” she said. “You would be getting Justice Barrett.”All of the young conservative women out there, this hearing to me is about a place for youLindsey GrahamThat, of course, is exactly what Democrats fear.In several rounds of questioning, Democratic senators portrayed the would-be justice as a rightwing crusader, chosen to undermine the civil rights legacy of the justice she hopes to replace, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon, a world-famous champion of women.Outside the Capitol on Monday, progressive activists had worn blood-red robes and bonnets, symbols of female oppression taken from The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel.Barrett has roots in a charismatic Catholic group, People of Praise, which has been cited as an inspiration for Atwood. Such citations are wrong, but in the hearing room on Tuesday Democratic senators nonetheless painted a determinedly dystopian picture, of an America ruled by a conservative court.In their telling, millions – constituents with names, faces and gut-wrenching stories the senators took took pains to tell – stand to lose access to life-saving services provided by the Affordable Care Act; poor women who cannot afford to travel for an abortion will be forced to make dangerous choices; same-sex couples may no longer have the right to marry.Barrett declined to answer questions on such issues – and in doing so, perhaps provocatively, cited RBG. A dictum Ginsburg set forth during her 1993 confirmation hearing: “No hints, no forecasts, no previews.”“These are life and death questions for people,” insisted Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the panel. Barrett’s repeated refusal to answer questions on abortion was “distressing” Feinstein said, noting that Ginsburg was far more forthcoming about her views on the issue.“I have no agenda,” Barrett said, not for the first or last time.But Donald Trump does.The president chose Barrett from a list of what he called “pro-life” judges. He has said he hopes, even expects, the court will overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that established the right to abortion.The president tweets of what he expects a supreme court nominee to do politically for himDick DurbinThe president has also insisted he needs a ninth justice on the court before the election, in case the result is contested.“Who came up with this notion, this insulting notion, that you might violate your oath?” Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, wondered sarcastically, in response to Republicans’ accusation that his party was impugning Barrett’s judicial independence merely by asking where she stood on key issues.“Where could this idea have come from? Could it have come from the White House? Could it have come from the president’s tweets of what he expects a supreme court nominee to do politically for him? That is where it originated.”Despite it all, the hearing played out with an air of inevitability. Graham was clear. This was “the hearing to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court”, rather than the traditional opportunity to “consider” her nomination. More
On the second day of hearings before the Senate judiciary committee, Democrats pressed supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on healthcare, election law and abortion rights – and met with little success.Donald Trump’s third nominee for the highest court dodged questions on how she might rule on a challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA); if she would recuse herself from any lawsuit about the presidential election; and whether she would vote to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v Wade, which made abortion legal.In an exchange with the Democratic Delaware senator Chris Coons, Barrett said: “I am not here on a mission to destroy the Affordable Care Act. I’m just here to apply the law and adhere to the rule of law.”Multiple Democratic senators pressed Barrett on whether she would recuse herself from a possible case about the outcome of the 2020 election. The Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal said he was “disappointed” in Barrett’s refusal to commit to a position. He added: “It would be a dagger at the heart of the court and our democracy if this election is decided by the court rather than the American voters.”Barrett argued that she was not a pundit, citing remarks by Justice Elena Kagan and the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg in saying that outside of reviewing a specific case, it was not her place to offer a position.“No hints, no previews, no forecasts,” Barrett quoted Ginsburg as saying, after the California senator Dianne Feinstein questioned her about how she might rule in any case challenging the legality of abortion.Barrett is a devout Catholic whose previous statements and affiliations have been closely examined by Democrats and the media. Trump has said overturning Roe v Wade would be “possible” with Barrett on the court.When she was asked about a newspaper ad she signed criticizing Roe v Wade, first reported by the Guardian, Barrett said she had “no recollection” of it and stressed she had nothing to hide.At another point in Tuesday’s hearing, Barrett cited Kagan in saying she would not give “a thumbs up or thumbs down” on any hypothetical ruling.Most of the questioning from Democrats centered on the ACA, known popularly as Obamacare, and how a ruling by the high court overturning the law would take away healthcare from millions of Americans. A hearing is due a week after election day. Democrats see protecting the ACA as a productive electoral tactic, having focused on it in the 2018 midterms, when they took back the House.Barrett said she was not hostile to the ACA, or indeed abortion or gay rights, another area worrying progressives as the court seems set to tilt to a 6-3 conservative majority. Barrett said she was simply focused on upholding the law.“I am not hostile to the ACA,” Barrett said. “I apply the law, I follow the law. You make the policy.”Asked about gay rights, Barrett said: “I would not discriminate on the basis of sexual preference.”Her choice of words conspicuously suggested that to her, sexuality is a choice. Amid scrutiny of Barrett’s past, meanwhile, it has been reported that she was a trustee at a school whose handbook included stated opposition to same-sex marriageRepublican senators also questioned Barrett on healthcare, the Iowa senator Chuck Grassley asking if she had been asked during the nomination process if she supported overturning the ACA.“Absolutely not,” Barrett said. “I was never asked and if I had been that would’ve been a short conversation.”Barrett said it was “just not true” that she wanted to strike down protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions.Asked if she thought same-sex marriage should be a crime, she said the ruling in Obergefell v Hodges, in 2015, made it the law of the land.Asked if she would recuse herself on any lawsuit over the outcome of the 2020 election, however, Barrett declined to commit. Instead she said: “I have made no commitment to anyone – not in the Senate, not in the White House – on how I would decide a case.”It was the first of two sessions of questioning, after which outside witnesses will be called. Tuesday’s opening exchanges produced a mere continuation of Barrett’s seemingly serene journey into Ginsburg’s seat.Trump and Republicans are eager to move quickly. The president has said he wants to see Barrett confirmed before election day, which is in three weeks’ time, suggesting that this is in part because he hopes she will rule in his favor if a challenge to the election result reaches the highest court.In a conference call with reporters, Senate Democrats fretted about their chances of stopping Barrett.“The fact of the matter is this nominee is extreme,” the Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal said. “Her views are outliers.“I think we are going to demonstrate today and tomorrow what’s at stake and how extreme and far right this nominee is.”He conceded that Democrats had no “magic” tool to block Barrett. They would, he said, use every procedural tool they have but “the politics are difficult here. Republicans are practically boasting that they have the votes.”Blumenthal said Democrats were “ultimately making our case to the American people”, to make them realize the impact Barrett’s nomination was likely to have. More
Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released an extraordinary statement on Tuesday, decrying a political scene he said “has moved away from spirited debate to a vile, vituperative, hate-filled morass, that is unbecoming of any free nation”.“The world is watching America with abject horror,” he added.The presidential election is on 3 November. Donald Trump, the incumbent, trails challenger Joe Biden by double digits in many national polls and by smaller but significant margins in battleground states.On Tuesday morning, Trump’s Twitter feed was as usual filled with abuse of Biden and other presidential hate figures. Romney, a Utah senator who was the 2012 Republican nominee for president, decried such attacks on Biden, his running mate Kamala Harris, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, recently the subject of an alleged kidnap plot by anti-government domestic terrorists.But Romney also sought to blame both sides, saying: “Pelosi tears up the president’s State of the Union speech on national television. Keith Olbermann calls the president a terrorist.”Why Romney felt it necessary to single out Olbermann, a former MSNBC and ESPN host and GQ columnist who campaigns online to save stray dogs, was not immediately clear.Romney tweeted his statement under the title “My thoughts on the current state of our politics”.“I have stayed quiet,” he said, “with the approach of the election.”In fact the senator has spoken out on a range of issues recently, prominent among them Trump’s hugely controversial attempt to ram his nominee Amy Coney Barrett on to the supreme court so close to election day, a key cause of bitter partisan debate.Claiming the US was a “centre-right” country, a position not supported by polling on key issues before the court including healthcare and abortion rights, Romney has said he supports the move to establish a 6-3 conservative majority.“But I’m troubled by our politics,” the sole Republican to vote to impeach Trump added in his statement.“The president calls the Democratic vice-presidential candidate ‘a monster’. He repeatedly labels the Speaker of the House ‘crazy’. He calls for the justice department to put the prior president in jail. He attacks the governor of Michigan on the very day a plot is discovered to kidnap her.“Democrats launch blistering attacks of their own, though their presidential nominee refuses to stoop as low as others.”The “media”, Romney said in a statement which he released to the media, “on the left and right, amplify, all of it.“The rabid attacks kindle the conspiracy mongers and the haters who take the small and predictable step from intemperate word to dangerous action. The world is watching America with abject horror.”Romney also said: “More consequently, our children are watching. Many Americans are frightened for our country, so divided, so angry, so mean, so violent. It is time to lower the heat.“The leaders must tone it down, leaders from the top and leaders of all stripes. Parents, bosses, reporters, columnists, professors, union chiefs, everyone. The consequence of the crescendo of anger leads to a very bad place. No sane person can want that.” More
