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      Amy Coney Barrett dodges abortion, healthcare and election law questions

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      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

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

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

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      Lindsey Graham, reverse ferret: how John McCain's spaniel became Trump's poodle

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      Opinion

      US Senate

      Lindsey Graham, reverse ferret: how John McCain’s spaniel became Trump’s poodle

      Sidney Blumenthal

      On Monday, the senator who praised Hillary and helped get the Steele dossier to the FBI will preside over a hearing for Amy Coney Barrett, a nominee to tilt the supreme court right for years to come. His is a quintessential Washington tale More

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

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