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      For Trump, V is for victory – while his lawyers flick a V-sign our way | Richard Wolffe

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      You may have thought the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump was somehow connected to the fascist mob that staged an insurrection on Capitol Hill last month.According to Trump’s lawyers, you are clearly an idiot.In actual fact, the former president was impeached for using the word “fight” – a crime committed by everyone in Congress and a good number of other people you might know.Madonna, for instance. Johnny Depp too. Seriously, America. If it’s OK for Madonna to talk about fighting, or voguing, or being a material girl, what’s the big deal?If the star of Pirates of the Caribbean can talk about walking the gangplank or shivering his timbers, then who is to deny our beloved former president the right to also don an eyepatch and wave a cutlass in our general direction?There was lots of video on the day of the greatest Trump lawyering of all. Mostly the same video, played over and over again, sometimes two or three times in quick succession like a Max Headroom compilation of politicians saying the word “fight”.There was President Biden, and Vice-President Harris. There were a bunch of former Democratic presidential candidates. Also some House impeachment managers.The only challenge for Trump’s lawyers is that none of them led an insurrection. None of them urged a mob to storm Congress. None of them timed their fight song for the precise moment when elected officials were carrying out their constitutional duty to certify an election’s results.[embedded content]But we digress. Back to the best lawyering in the land, a veritable elite strike force of jurists not seen since the last one outside that landscaping business next to the sex shop in a particularly lovely corner of Philadelphia.The strike force featured a new striker. Not the bumbling, rambling Bruce Castor, or the endlessly pedantic David Schoen. No, this time Trump bestowed upon his historic impeachment trial a personal injury lawyer from – yes, you guessed it – Philadelphia. An ambulance chaser, best known in Philly for his radio ads, asking if you’ve tripped while walking down the street.“If the walkway isn’t clear, and you fall and get hurt due to snow and ice, call 215-546-1000 for Van der Veen, O’Neill, Hartshorn and Levin,” the ads say, according to the Washington Post. “The V is for Victory.”Last year Mr V was actually suing Trump for his unfounded claims about mail-in voter fraud. This year, he is not so much chasing the ambulance as driving it.First, Mr V claimed that Trump was encouraging his supporters to respect the electoral college count, not to “stop the steal” as the entire mob was screaming in front of him. Then he claimed that the first of the mob to be arrested was a lefty antifa stooge, not a Trumpy fascist thug.But mostly he claimed that he – and his client – were defending the constitution at the precise moment when they were burning it to crispy charcoal husk.OK, so the Trump mob unleashed violence to stop the constitutional counting of the electoral college votes. But the idea that Congress might stop Trump’s free-speech rights to whip up that mob is an outrageous, unconstitutional human rights abuse that threatens to silence all politicians everywhere.OK, so the Trump mob might have silenced Mike Pence permanently by hanging him on the gallows they built on the steps of Congress. But if Congress tries to stop a president from using a mob to intimidate Congress, where will it end?Pretty soon, Mr V argued, we won’t even have access to lawyers. The hallowed right to counsel, if not ambulance chasers, might be threatened. “Who would be next,” he asked, indignantly. “It could be anyone. One of you! Or one of you! It’s anti-American and sets a dangerous precedent forever.”To his great, sighing chagrin, Mr V lamented the state of political discourse. “Inflammatory rhetoric from our elected officials – from both sides of the aisle – has been alarming frankly,” he said, in sorrow, as if his client were just a hapless symptom of a bigger sickness: a pandemic of mean words from Democrats.“This is not whataboutism,” he declared, after rolling his whataboutist video for the second or third or fourth time. “I’m showing you this to show that all political speech must be protected.”The key to the defense was about incitement to violence and the legal test of Brandenburg v Ohio. Appropriately enough, the Brandenburg in question was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and the test – as Trump’s lawyers helpfully explained – was about whether the free speech in question “explicitly or implicitly encouraged the use of violence or lawless action”.“Mr Trump did the opposite of advocating for lawless action,” said Mr V. “The opposite!”The worst news of all was that Bruce Castor was at the microphone, pretending to be a half-decent lawyerThis is only true if it’s opposite day, when opposite means the opposite of opposite. As it happens, it was indeed just that day at the impeachment trial of our great defender of the constitution, free speech and peaceful politics.Which is why Mr V’s partner, the now legendary Bruce Castor, concluded the defense case. Castor explained that because he was the lead attorney in this legal shenanigan, he was going to take “the most substantive part” of the case for himself. That wasn’t to say, he added hastily, that his learned friends had done a bad job, oh no. The good news, he said, was that the case was almost over. The bad news was that it would take another hour for it to be over.The worst news of all was that Castor was at the microphone, pretending to be a half-decent lawyer.“Did the 45th president engage in incitement – they say insurrection,” began Castor. “Clearly there was no insurrection,” he continued, defining the word as “taking the TV stations over and having some idea of what you’re going to do when you take power”.As a description of the Trump presidency, that sounded pretty accurate. Unlike the part Castor read from his notes about Trump’s attitudes towards mobs in general.“By any measure,” the lawyer said in his most Trumpy way, “President Trump is the most pro-police, anti-mob president this country has ever seen.”From that point on, the defense case smooshed together some condemnation of the Black Lives Matter protests, some justification of Trump’s campaign to overturn the election results in Georgia, and some accusation of a supposed effort to disenfranchise Trump voters – who lost the election.Like so much else connected to the scrambled neural networks inside one Florida resident’s cranium, it made no sense. It was a radio echo bouncing around the cosmos from a distant star that collapsed into a black hole of disinformation and delusion long ago.“Spare us the hypocrisy and false indignation,” said Mr V, as he wrapped up another hypocritical and falsely indignant response to the same old video of Democrats saying fiery things.Now all we have left is the hypocrisy and false indignation of Republican senators who value their own careers above their own lives or the democracy that elected them. The V is for venal. More

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      'This is not justice': supreme court liberals slam Trump's federal executions

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      The supreme court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer have excoriated the Trump administration for carrying out its 13th and final federal execution days before the president leaves office.Dustin John Higgs died by lethal injection at the federal correctional institute in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Friday night, after his 11th-hour clemency appeal was rejected.Higgs, 48, was convicted of murdering three women at a Maryland wildlife refuge in 1996, even though it was an accomplice who fired the fatal shots. Willis Haynes was convicted of the same crime but sentenced to life.“This was not justice,” Sotomayor, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote in an order issued late on Friday.Sotomayor, who was critical of the Trump administration’s July 2019 announcement that it would resume federal executions after a two-decade hiatus, condemned what she saw as “an unprecedented rush” to kill condemned inmates. All 13 executions have taken place since July 2020.The government executed more than three times as many people in the last six months than in the previous six decades“To put that in historical context, the federal government will have executed more than three times as many people in the last six months than it had in the previous six decades,” she wrote.“There can be no ‘justice on the fly’ in matters of life and death,” Sotomayor added. “Yet the court has allowed the United States to execute 13 people in six months under a statutory scheme and regulatory protocol that have received inadequate scrutiny, without resolving the serious claims the condemned individuals raised.”Breyer, a fellow liberal on the nine-justice high court, was equally scathing, naming each of the 13 executed prisoners and noting a lower court’s observation that Higgs had significant lung damage. The lethal injection of pentobarbital, Breyer said, would “subject him to a sensation of drowning akin to waterboarding”.He said the court needed to address whether execution protocols risked extreme pain and needless suffering and pressured the courts into last-minute decisions on life or death.“What are courts to do when faced with legal questions of this kind?” he wrote. “Are they supposed to ‘hurry up, hurry up?’”Breyer went further than Sotomayor by questioning the constitutionality of the death penalty, the first member of the current panel to do so. The third liberal justice, Elena Kagan, also dissented in the Higgs case but did not give an explanation.Higgs’s petition for clemency said he had been a model prisoner and dedicated father to a son born after his arrest. He had a traumatic childhood and lost his mother to cancer when he was 10, it said.He was convicted in October 2000 by a federal jury in Maryland for the first-degree murder and kidnapping in the killings of Tamika Black, 19; Mishann Chinn, 23; and Tanji Jackson, 21. Although Haynes shot the women, Higgs handed him his gun.“He received a fair trial and was convicted and sentenced to death by a unanimous jury for a despicable crime,” the US district judge Peter Messitte wrote in December.Arguably the most high-profile execution of the Trump administration came just days ago when Lisa Montgomery received a lethal injection at Terre Haute and became the first woman put to death by the federal government almost seven decades.Her lawyer accused the Trump administration of “unnecessary and vicious use of authoritarian power”.Many believe officials rushed to complete a series of executions before Joe Biden is inaugurated on 20 January. Biden has stated his desire to have the death penalty abolished at federal and state level. More

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      Saving Justice review: how Trump's Eye of Sauron burned everything – including James Comey

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      With the storming of the Capitol, the fired FBI director’s earnest attempt to help America recover has been overtaken by eventsComey: Trump should not be prosecuted after leaving officeA centuries-old norm has been broken. The inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will not mark the peaceful transition of power. On Wednesday, American carnage arrived. Five people including a police officer are dead. Related: After Trump review: a provocative case for reform by Biden and beyond Continue reading… More

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      US Capitol attack: Trump impeachment looms as Republican support wavers

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      [embedded content]
      Efforts to remove Donald Trump from the White House gathered pace on Saturday, as Democrats announced that at least 180 members of Congress would co-sponsor an article of impeachment they intend to introduce in the House of Representatives on Monday.
      The show of force by the president’s opponents comes amid continuing revulsion at Trump’s incitement of Wednesday’s deadly US Capitol riot and his attempts to overturn electoral defeat by Joe Biden.
      One of the authors of the impeachment resolution, the California congressman Ted Lieu, repeated demands for Trump to resign or face the ignominy of being the first president to be impeached twice.
      On Twitter, Lieu announced that the vast majority of the 222 Democratic House members were onboard for impeachment, and revealed a letter to the New York state bar demanding the disbarment of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who advocated “trial by combat” at a rally preceding the violent invasion of the US Capitol building by a mob of Trump supporters.
      “We will hold responsible everyone involved with the attempted coup,” Lieu wrote.
      Trump’s grip on the presidency appeared increasingly tenuous as impeachment plans advanced, allies continued to abandon him and Twitter banned him, removing his most powerful way to spread lies and incite violence.
      On Friday night one Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, called for the president’s removal.
      “I want him to resign,” she said. “I want him out. He has caused enough damage.”
      Five people died around the chaos at the Capitol, including a police officer who confronted rioters and a rioter shot by law enforcement. Multiple arrests have been made, among them a Florida resident photographed walking off with the lectern of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Also arrested was a man from Arizona who styles himself as the QAnon shaman and who sat in the Vice-President’s chair in the Senate, dressed in horns and animal skins.
      Amid reports the FBI was investigating whether some rioters intended to take lawmakers hostage, the Washington US attorney said a 70-year-old Alabama man was charged after his truck was discovered packed with homemade bombs and guns. Another man was alleged to have threatened to kill Pelosi and to have been heavily armed.
      The article of impeachment, which charges Trump with inciting an insurrection and having “gravely endangered the security of the United States” and its institutions, prompted a flurry of legal activity at the White House, according to Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter. She tweeted that a defence team was beginning to take shape, including Giuliani and possibly Alan Dershowitz, a celebrity lawyer who has defended Trump before.

      Significantly, current White House counsel, including Jay Sekulow, Marty and Jane Raskins, Pat Cipollone and Pat Philbin, were reportedly unlikely to be involved in any Senate trial, which according to indications from Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is almost certain to take place after Trump leaves office on 20 January.
      The impeachment move is part of a multi-pronged approach by Democrats pressing for Trump’s removal ahead of Biden’s inauguration. Pelosi, who spoke to the leader of the US military, seeking to ensure Trump cannot launch a nuclear attack, has also called for Trump’s removal via the 25th amendment, which provides for the ejection of a president deemed unable to fulfil his duties.
      The treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, was reportedly among officials to discuss such a course but it seems unlikely, particularly as cabinet members who might participate have resigned.
      White House sources have asserted Trump will not resign or turn over power to Vice-President Mike Pence in order to seek a pardon, so a second and high-speed impeachment looms. In his first impeachment, over approaches to Ukraine for dirt on political rivals, Trump was acquitted by a Republican-held Senate.
      This time, more Republican senators are indicating support. Murkowski became the first in the open, telling the Anchorage Daily News: “I think he should leave.
      “He’s not going to appear at the inauguration. He hasn’t been focused on what is going on with Covid. He’s either been golfing or he’s been inside the Oval Office fuming and throwing every single person who has been loyal and faithful to him under the bus, starting with the vice-president. More

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      Trump Twitter: Republicans and Democrats split over freedom of speech

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      Twitter’s decision to permanently suspend Donald Trump’s account in the wake of the storming of Capitol Hill on Wednesday continues to stoke fierce debate, supporters and critics split on partisan lines as they contest what the suspension means for a cherished American tradition: freedom of speech.Republicans – many using Twitter – decried Trump’s removal and claimed conservative beliefs and opinions are being censored.“Big Tech censoring [Trump] and the free speech of American citizens is on par with communist countries like China and North Korea,” tweeted Steve Daines, a senator from Montana.The president’s son Donald Trump Jr said: “Free speech is dead and controlled by leftist overlords.”Democrats argued that the company had the legal right to make the decision – which they said was long overdue.“It took blood & glass in the halls of Congress – and a change in the political winds – for the most powerful tech companies to recognise, at the last possible moment, the threat of Trump,” tweeted Senator Richard Blumenthal, from Connecticut.Trump’s suspension came two days after the US Capitol saw a violent attack by supporters of the president, who has for months spread false information about the election and encouraged his followers to contest the result.Two tweets the president posted on Friday proved the last straw. Trump tweeted that his supporters “will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future” and said he would not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration. Twitter said the tweets were “highly likely to encourage and inspire people” to replicate the Capitol attacks. Reports of secondary attacks have been spreading among extremist social media groups.Debate has been going on for years about the role social media companies should play in moderating content.Conservatives are adamant companies should be punished for what they say is censorship that the Republican Study Committee, a caucus in the House of Representatives, wrote on Twitter “runs contrary to the principle behind our first amendment”.Tiffany Trump, the president’s daughter, used the social media site Parler, popular among conservatives and also subject to controversy over its policies, to say: “Whatever happened to freedom of speech?”Republicans claim Twitter’s move violates the first amendment of the US constitution. Others argue that the first amendment says the government cannot restrict speech, but social media companies are private entities.“[The first amendment] doesn’t give anyone the right to a particular platform, publisher or audience; in fact, it protects the right of private entities to choose what they want to say or hear,” said Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law – on Twitter.Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act exempts social media platforms from legal liability for user-generated content. Republicans including Trump say Congress could curtail social media companies through reform to the law.But Republicans are no longer in control of Congress and activists and Democratic lawmakers said actions taken this week – Facebook has banned Trump for at least two weeks and Google removed Parler from its app store – are what they have been advocating for years. The attack on the Capitol, they said, showed a breaking point had been reached.Misinformation experts and civil rights activists claimed that the platforms were culpable for the attack.“[The violence] is a direct response to the misinformation, conspiracy theories and hate speech that have been allowed to spread on social media platforms,” Jim Steyer, who leads Common Sense Media, an advocacy group which organized the Stop the Hate for Profit campaign that encouraged advertisers to boycott Facebook over hate speech concerns, told the Guardian.Many Democratic lawmakers have been critical of social media companies but have yet to propose specific actions to curtail them.“It’s important to remember, this is much bigger than one person,” wrote Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, incoming chair of the Senate intelligence committee – on Twitter.“It’s about an entire ecosystem that allows misinformation and hate to spread and fester unchecked.” More

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      After Trump review: a provocative case for reform by Biden and beyond

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      At times, the Trump administration has seemed like a wrecking ball, careening from floor to floor of a building being destroyed, observers never quite knowing where the ball will strike next. At others, it has worked stealthily to undermine rules and norms, presumably fearing that, as the great supreme court justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “sunshine is the best of disinfectants”.
      These changes, far beyond politics or differences of opinion on policy, should trouble all those who care about the future of the American republic. Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer, veterans of Republican (Bush) and Democratic (Clinton) administrations, are students of the presidency whose scholarship is informed by their service. They have combined to write a field guide to the damage and serious proposals to undo it.
      Presidencies do not exist in a vacuum, and many of the excesses of which the authors complain did not begin in 2017. But Trump upped the stakes: the violations of rules and norms are not merely quantitatively more numerous but qualitatively different. Whether seeking to fire the special counsel investigating him, making money from his businesses or attacking the press, he has made breathtaking changes.
      As the authors write, “Trump has merged the institution of the presidency with his personal interests and has used the former to serve the latter”, attacking “core institutions of American democracy” to an extent no president had before.
      The American constitutional system, unlike the British, is one of enumerated powers. But over 230 years, norms have arisen. Unlike laws of which violations are (usually) clear, norms are “nonlegal principles of appropriate or expected behavior that presidents and other officials tacitly accept and that typically structure their actions”. In an illustration of the great American poet Carl Sandburg’s observation that “The fog comes on little cat feet”, norms “are rarely noticed until they are violated, as the nation has experienced on a weekly and often daily basis during the Trump presidency”.
      Those two axioms – that Trump’s offences are worse than others and that norms can easily be overcome by a determined president – show reform is essential.
      The first section of After Trump deals with the presidency itself: the dangers of foreign influence, conflicts of interest, attacks on the press and abuses of the pardon power.
      Here the reforms – political campaigns reporting foreign contacts, a requirement to disclose the president’s tax returns and criminalizing pardons given to obstruct justice – are generally straightforward. Regarding the press, where Trump has engaged in “virulent, constant attacks” and tried to claim his Twitter account was not a public record even as he happily fired public officials on it, the authors would establish that due process applies to attempted removal of a press pass and make legal changes to deter harassment of or reprisals against the media because “the elevation of this issue clarifies, strengthens, and sets up an apparatus for the enforcement of norms”.
      Goldsmith and Bauer’s second section focuses on technical legal issues, specifically those surrounding special counsels, investigation of the president, and the relationship between the White House and justice department.
      The American constitution is far more rigid that the British but it too has points of subtlety and suppleness. One example is the relationship between the president and an attorney general subordinate to the president but also duty bound to provide impartial justice, even when it concerns the president.
      The issues may seem arcane, but they are vital: “Of the multitude of norms that Donald Trump has broken as president, perhaps none has caused more commentary and consternation than his efforts to defy justice department independence and politicize the department’s enforcement of civil and criminal law.”
      And yet even as the attorney general, William Barr, sought a more lenient sentence for Roger Stone, stood by as Trump fired the US attorney in New York City, and kept up a “running public commentary” on an investigation of the origins of the investigation into the Trump campaign, the authors oppose those actions but remain cautious. They decline to endorse some of the more radical proposals, such as separating the justice department from the executive branch. More

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      Trump has tested the limits of the US constitution – but it's still holding | Simon Jenkins

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      Slowly, painfully, alarmingly, Donald Trump has been conceding the US presidency to Joe Biden. Over the weekend his close friend Chris Christie called his delay “a national embarrassment”, joining judges, aides and other Republican politicians. Meanwhile the world has erupted in a chorus of derision at the state of American democracy, polluted by corruption, fake news and money. Countries whose leaders would not dream of risking an open election, let alone conceding one, mimic Moscow in ridiculing “the obvious shortcomings in the American electoral system”. Beijing celebrates by preparing to jail a clutch of Hong Kong democrats.
      The reality is the opposite. The late American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr pointed out that the US constitution regularly takes its grand coalition of diverse peoples to the brink of disintegration, shows them disaster and pulls them back. Trump in 2016 was a populist candidate who ran for election on a pseudo-revolutionary ticket against the Washington establishment. Though he won fewer votes than his opponent, Hillary Clinton, an electoral college biased to protect the interests of small states against big ones gave him the presidency. In office he ran up huge debts, was a bully and a xenophobe, and relentlessly attacked all centres of establishment power. The economy boomed.
      American political participation soared. At this month’s presidential election, turnout at 67% was the highest for a century. Biden’s popular lead over Trump was not so much bigger than Clinton’s in 2016, and the college tilted his way rather than against. But Trump’s popular vote actually rose and did so among surprising groups, including Hispanic, black and female voters. In effect, his “outsiders” stuck with him and told him to finish the job.
      What helped to give Biden victory, according to exit polls, was increased support among white men. Many of them were, in effect, saying that they had got the point of Trump and now wanted rid of him. The fact remains that almost as large a group was warning that it felt ignored and alienated, and that no one should take democracy for granted. It has now flashed that warning not once but twice. And Trump may yet return.
      Of all the great political unions that emerged from the age of empire, the US has proved the most robust (with a hesitant nod towards India). Such unions are seldom entirely stable. Their survival requires constitutions able to accommodate disparate peoples, regions and interests – and do so at peace. The US constitution, so baffling to outsiders, was designed in the 18th century to bind together a union rightly seen as vulnerable. Yet it built what became the world’s dominant great power, recently delivering leaders as diverse as George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. It has survived them all.
      Few would contend that Trump has been anything other than an aberration. But if he was testing the US constitution to destruction, it passed the test. Biden should now receive every support in restoring his country’s dignity and good faith. Meanwhile other unions – not least that of the United Kingdom – should look to their own. They all have their Trumps in waiting. All have lessons to learn.
      Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist More

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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