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]]>CLEVELAND – As the old saying goes, it’s like pouring gasoline on a fire.
If the deadliest pandemic in a century, the worst economic downturn in decades, and a summer of nationwide protests over racial inequity weren’t enough for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and President Trump to battle over at Tuesday at the first of three presidential debates, another combustible topic’s been tossed into the toxic political mix.
NO HANDSHAKES BETWEEN BIDEN AND TRUMP AT FIRST DEBATE
That issue – the most bitterly partisan of all political battles – is a Supreme Court nomination fight, and it’s coming with just five weeks to go until Election Day.
Preparations take place for the first presidential debate in the Sheila and Eric Samson Pavilion, Monday, Sept. 28, 2020, in Cleveland. The first debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to take place Tuesday, Sept. 29. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
The former vice president’s urging the GOP controlled Senate to hold off on any vote on the president’s nominee – conservative federal appeals court judge Amy Coney Barrett – until the winner of the presidential election’s determined.
“The Senate has to stand strong for our democracy,” Biden emphasized Sunday. And he urged senators to “take a step back from the brink,” and that now “is a time to de-escalate.”
The president is barreling forward, telling “Fox & Friends” co-host Pete Hegseth in an interview on Sunday that he thinks Barrett could be confirmed ahead of Election Day on Nov. 3. Trump argued there’s “tremendous amount of time” from the kick off of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings on Oct. 12 until the election.
“I think we could have it done easily before the election,” Trump predicted.
THE KEY ISSUES BIDEN AND TRUMP WILL DEBATE
The Supreme Court confirmation showdown’s one of the 6 topics chosen for the first debate by the moderator, “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace.
Since the death of liberal leaning Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg a week and a half ago, the former vice president’s spotlighted the threat to the survival of the Affordable Care Act – the nation’s health care law best known as Obamacare – warning that Barrett would likely vote to eliminate the landmark measure in a case coming to the high court a week after the November election.
“Absolutely. It’s health care,” stressed veteran Democratic consultant and Fox News contributor Donna Brazile. “The Republicans have tried to gut and destroy the ACA for over nine and a half years and this is their first real shot at doing that with Judge Barrett. Biden has to carefully explain to the American people why now, and why Judge Barrett is a threat to the Affordable Care Act.”
“The vice president has to talk about what’s at stake. Everything is at stake, from voting rights to gay rights to workers’ rights to abortion rights,” spotlighted Brazile, who managed Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign and who twice served as interim chair of the Democratic National Committee over the past decade.
Longtime GOP strategist and Fox News contributor Karl Rove noted that if Biden targets the president for pushing forward with the nomination so close to the election, Trump “needs to defend … because the president of the United States has a constitutional authority to nominate and the Senate has the right to give its advise and consent or not. There’s no time limit on that. We have one president at a time.”
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Brazile acknowledged, “Yes, we know the president has a right to appoint and the Senate has a right to verify. We understand the constitutional issues.” But she emphasized that the question for Biden to spotlight “is why rush this through so close to the election?”
Rove, the mastermind behind both of President George W. Bush’s presidential election victories, said that Trump “wants to do two things. He wants to say ‘I picked somebody who will strictly interpret the constitution and the laws of the United States as written and will not be a legislator in robes.’ It’s a very popular theme and it cuts across party lines. And second of all, he can extoll her background, which is exemplary.”
And if Trump has the time, Rove suggested that the president attack Biden for not releasing his own list of potential high court nominees, as Trump did in the 2016 election and again this month. Rove offered that the president should look at Biden and argue that “the reason you haven’t given us a list is because the American people would figure out they’re all judicial activists on the left of American politics who will use the position on the court to legislate from the bench rather than strictly apply the law.”
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]]>President Trump hadn’t even announced his Supreme Court pick this weekend yet a whisper campaign had already developed against Judge Amy Coney Barrett questioning whether her adoption of two Haitian children was on the up-and-up.
Tactics formerly reserved for only the nastiest of political campaigns have in recent years bled over into battles for the judiciary, breaking down one of the last walls of decency in a town not known for it.
It used to be quite different.
One of President Kennedy’s nominees was announced in late March 1962, and about two weeks later was sitting on the high court.
Even as late as the Clinton administration, a former ACLU lawyer — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — could win confirmation to the Supreme Court on a 96-3 vote in the Senate, just 42 days after her nomination was submitted.
Republicans, who control the chamber now, have vowed to try to match that pace, though they have no hope of coming close to that near-unanimous vote of support for Judge Barrett.
The Congressional Research Service says things have gotten worse since the late 1960s, when a series of fights over the nominees of President Richard Nixon ushered in a new era.
Over nearly 200 years before that, it took about a week for the Senate to receive a nominee, sometimes hold hearings, then vote. Since 1967, that time has soared to an average of 68 days.
And it’s not just because of big-time showdowns. While blowups over Judge Robert Bork and Justice Clarence Thomas are well-remembered, there were also legislative knife fights over picks like Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., a nominee of President George W. Bush, who waited 82 days for confirmation and had to survive an attempted filibuster.
Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, said as the court has inserted itself deeper into social issues, Americans — and the politicians they elect — have grown more combative over picking who’s making those decisions.
“There’s a lot more at stake,” he said.
The battle over Justice Ginsburg’s seat was raging even before Judge Barrett was announced Saturday as the nominee to fill it.
Republicans are speeding to get her approved, with a timeline of acting before the Nov. 3 election. Democrats say that timetable’s a thing of the past, and it should take months to approve a nominee.
And in this case they say any action at all is hypocritical after Senate Republicans just four years ago refused to act on President Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, citing the looming election in blocking him for almost a year.
The treatment of Judge Garland is still very fresh in the minds of Democrats.
“Garland was simply an extension of how politicized the court has become. It was a naked abuse of the process to deny a good man even a hearing,” said Jim Manley, a veteran Democratic operative who worked for Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Harry Reid when they were involved in fights over judges.
Mr. Manley said after what the GOP did to Judge Garland, if they now speed Judge Barrett through, Democrats must “strongly consider” expanding the high court, should they take control of the White House and Senate in November’s elections.
Republicans say they won’t be lectured on treatment of judges.
Indeed, analysts looking for a start to the nastiness often point to how Democrats approached Bork’s nomination in 1987.
A high-powered legal mind and appeals court judge, Bork was deemed “well-qualified” for the high court by the American Bar Association.
But Kennedy delivered a withering repudiation of his judicial philosophy in a famous floor speech, challenging Democrats, who controlled the chamber, to reject him. Everything from his legal writings to his personal video-rental history became fodder.
Bork’s nomination was defeated on a 58-42 vote, and “to bork” joined the lexicon as a term for unfair treatment of a nominee.
Four years after the first borking, Justice Thomas’s nomination arose and then-Sen. Joseph R. Biden led the Senate in a set of hearings over allegations of sexual harassment. Justice Thomas survived the process and was confirmed on a 52-48 vote.
“Compare the treatment of Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh to that of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, and it’s clear that there already is one set of rules for a Republican president and one set of rules for a Democrat president,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican.
Mr. Graham, who as Judiciary Committee chairman will oversee Judge Barrett’s confirmation process, said four years ago that he would never move forward with a nominee in a presidential election year.
The treatment of Justice Kavanaugh changed his mind, he says.
Mr. Trump’s previous high court pick was forced to go through a second round of hearings after a woman came forward saying he’d sexually assaulted her in high school. Other women followed.
None of the major accusations was substantiated, and the first woman’s own account was disputed by those she said were present. Justice Kavanaugh squeaked by on a 50-48 vote.
Judging by the numbers, GOP picks have indeed had a rougher go than Democratic nominees.
Since 1980, Republican presidents have submitted 11 high court nominations to the Senate. They’ve lingered an average of 73 days, and earned an average of 71 votes in support.
Democrats over that time have submitted four high court nominees. All of them have been confirmed, they were pending for an average of 67 days, and they were approved with an average of 79 votes in support.
And no Democratic president’s picks have ever faced an attempted filibuster. Six Republican picks have.
Mr. Manley said Republican presidents make more controversial picks.
“For better or worse, Democratic presidents have usually tried to thread the needle by nominating relatively moderate candidates for the court. Republicans on the other hand oftentimes have picked very controversial nominees with very conservative views,” he said.
Mr. Levey saw a different explanation: “The Democrats are just better at, or more prone to, I’m not sure which, the politics of personal destruction.”
He said Republicans have been more deferential to Democratic presidents in the past, but he said that may have been undone by the treatment of Justice Kavanaugh.
“We may look at the days between Bork and Thomas and Gorsuch as the good old days, because a lot of people are angry about Kavanaugh on both sides of the aisle,” he said. “We maybe in for a period that makes 1987 through a few years ago look tame.”
Mr. Levey said there have been some windows of intense court battles before.
The years before the Civil War saw a number of presidential picks defeated or forced to withdraw. And during the New Deal era the court was also a battleground. Then, as now, Democrats talked of stacking the panel with more justices in order to change the playing field.
Today’s nastiness can be broken into two categories: the norm-breaking, and the rule-rewriting.
An example of norm-breaking began in 2003, when Democrats launched filibusters of President George W. Bush’s appeals court nominees. The first target was Miguel Estrada, a young superstar lawyer whom Democrats called “dangerous” because he was on track to become the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
After waiting more than two years, Mr. Estrada withdrew his nomination. During the confirmation fight, his wife suffered a miscarriage.
Democrats would go on to filibuster nine other Bush picks for appeals court seats, then attempt to filibuster Justice Alito.
A decade later, the GOP used the same tactic on some of President Obama’s nominees. Then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, engaged in rule-rewriting, using the “nuclear option” to defang the filibuster for all presidential nominees save Supreme Court picks.
When Mr. Trump took office and Democrats launched the first-ever successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee, the GOP followed Mr. Reid’s lead and used the nuclear option to complete the rules change for high court picks, too.
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]]>Democrats, the media and activists have ramped up their attacks against Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nomination to succeed the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ibram X. Kendi, an American author who became the new director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University in July, railed against Barrett on Twitter for adopting two Black children from Haiti, equating her and her husband to “White colonizers.”
“Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children. They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity,” Kendi wrote Saturday.
SEN. JOHN KENNEDY TO DEM COLLEAGUE ON BARRETT CRITICISM: ‘SELL CRAZY SOMEWHERE ELSE’
He was responding to a since-deleted tweet about White parents adopting Black children.
“And whether this is Barrett or not is not the point. It is a belief too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can’t be racist,” Kendi continued.
“I’m challenging the idea that White parents of kids of color are inherently ‘not racist’ and the bots completely change what I’m saying to ‘White parents of kids of color are inherently racist.’ These live and fake bots are good at their propaganda. Let’s not argue with them.”
SCALIA: DEMS WILL USE OBAMACARE AS ‘RED HERRING’ IN ATTACKING SCOTUS PICK BARRETT
The conservative Barrett, 48, currently serves as a judge on the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. She is a devout Catholic and a working mother to seven children, including two adopted children from Haiti. She previously clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, and is devoted to the literal interpretation of the Constitution known as originalism.
Critics claim her nomination risks an overturn of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision that guarantees a woman’s right to an abortion, as well as the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare.
“Make no mistake: A vote for Judge Amy Coney Barrett is a vote to eliminate health care for millions of Americans and to end protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions in the middle the COVID-19 pandemic,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted Sunday.
Other Democrats, including Sen. Ed Markey, who co-authored the Green New Deal with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have also threatened to pack the Supreme Court.
A member of the Hollywood elite, actress Debra Messing, accused Trump of pushing to have Barrett approved for the Supreme Court before November so she can vote him in for a second term if the election results are contested.
Meanwhile, songwriter Diane Warren said Barrett was a hybrid of Aunt Lydia, a character in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and a Stepford wife.
Newsweek had to run a correction after incorrectly reporting that Barrett was affiliated with the same group that inspired “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the popular Amazon series based on the novel by Margaret Atwood depicting a fictional society that forces the few remaining fertile women into sexual servitude.
The publication incorrectly claimed that the novel was based on People of Praise, a Christian parachurch organization based in South Bend, Ind., which Barrett and her husband both have ties to. Atwood has never said “The Handmaid’s Tale” was inspired by People of Praise, and a 2017 profile on the author published by The New Yorker mentions a newspaper clipping as part of her research for the book of a different Catholic group, People of Hope.
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Barrett is Trump’s third Supreme Court nomination. after Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.
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]]>The post Supreme Court live updates: Trump expected to nominate Amy Coney Barrett at White House event appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>President Trump will announce Saturday evening his nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the recent death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, setting up a bitter confirmation fight in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. At an event in the White House Rose Garden, Trump is expected to name federal appeals court judge Amy Coney Barrett, a deeply conservative jurist in the mold of the late Justice Antonin Justice Scalia, whose confirmation would cement the right’s hold on the nation’s highest court for many years and ensure Trump’s legacy is felt for generations.
Trump will then travel to Harrisburg, Pa., for a campaign rally.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has two virtual events on his schedule, first a meeting with Latino business owners and then a public address to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
With 38 days until the election …
- Democratic senators are mapping out how they will fight Trump’s SCOTUS nominee given they have little power to actually derail his pick.
- Trump is expected to personally attack Biden at the candidates’ first debate on Tuesday, and Biden is being prepped for the anticipated barrage.
- A majority of Americans, 57 percent, say the winner of November’s presidential election should choose the next Supreme Court justice, while 38 percent say Trump should fill the seat.
- Biden leads Trump by eight percentage points nationally, 51 percent to 43 percent, according to a Washington Post average of polls. Biden’s margin is the same in Michigan and Pennsylvania and smaller in other key states: seven points in Wisconsin, five in Arizona and one in Florida.
- Are you planning on watching the first presidential debate? The Washington Post wants to hear from you.
September 26, 2020 at 1:42 PM EDT
Protesters leave message on street outside Mitch McConnell’s D.C. home
By Colby Itkowitz
Youth activists representing the advocacy groups March for Our Lives and Demand Justice drew a massive chalk mural on the street in front of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s D.C. home.
McConnell, and his neighbors, will be greeted with this message: “Hey Mitch. We Call BS. Let The People Decide.”
McConnell (R-Ky.), who refused to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in President Barack Obama’s final year in office, said immediately after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death that he would move forward with Trump’s confirmation even though Americans could vote him out of office in a few weeks.
Demand Justice, a liberal group that advocates against conservatives’ stacking of federal courts, also unveiled a new domain name Friday night: www.amyconeybarrett.com.
The URL opens to a page on the group’s website dedicated to blocking her confirmation.
“Amy Coney Barrett would threaten your health care and your reproductive freedom. We have to stop her,” it says.
September 26, 2020 at 1:40 PM EDT
Biden calls Trump ‘not that smart,’ compares him to the Nazi propaganda minister
By Matt Viser
Biden, just days before the first presidential debate, called Trump “not that smart” while also comparing him to the Nazi propaganda minister.
“He’s sort of like Goebbels,” Biden said during an interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle. “You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it — it becomes common knowledge.”
Biden made the comment when asked about Trump’s repeated attempts to brand Biden as a socialist.
“I think people see very clearly the difference between me and Donald Trump,” he said. “Trump is clearing protests in front of the White House that are peaceful, you know, with the military. This guy is more Castro than Churchill.”
Biden, while brushing aside a suggestion from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that he avoid debating Trump, said that he is preparing for a debate filled with personal attacks from the president.
“That’s the only thing he knows how to do,” Biden said. “He doesn’t know how to debate the facts, because he’s not that smart. He doesn’t know that many facts. He doesn’t know much about foreign policy. Doesn’t know much about domestic policy.”
During the 20-minute interview, some of which aired Friday, Biden also held to the idea that the Republican Party would moderate if Trump is defeated.
“I’m not being facetious when I say this. … Get rid of the worst president in American history, Donald Trump,” Biden said, when asked how to unite people and defuse the partisanship in the Senate.
“He holds a lot of people with sway. Everybody in the Republican Party knows he is vindictive,” Biden added. “People are worried, I think, about what he’ll do. With him gone, I think it opens up a different avenue.”
September 26, 2020 at 12:35 PM EDT
Trump says the ‘only way’ he will lose is if Democrats cheat
By Colby Itkowitz
Trump held his first campaign rally in Virginia this year on Friday night, telling his supporters there he’d make a “heavy play” for the state he lost in 2016.
Virginia has become increasingly more Democratic, with the vote-rich areas outside Washington, D.C., tending to be more liberal than the rest of the state. Hillary Clinton won the state by five points four years ago.
“I was told not to go for Virginia. We did really well last time and I never came and never did anything, and we did really well,” Trump said.
Trump actually held three campaign rallies in Virginia during the 2016 general election, including one two days before the election.
“I said, ‘Why didn’t I go for Virginia?’ But it’s traditionally not a Republican state over the last number of decades, and I said, ‘Why not? You have a crazy governor, and every time I see it, every two weeks he’s trying to take your guns away, right?” Trump said, referring to Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam.
Trump also revisited his refusal to say whether he would support a peaceful transfer of power if he loses. The president claimed that the “only way” he loses is if the Democrats cheat and said he’s not going to support a transition if there was cheating.
Trump has actively sought to delegitimize the results of the election, falsely claiming universal mail-in voting intended to protect people amid the coronavirus pandemic is ripe for corruption although there is no evidence this is true. In the five states that already allowed universal mail-in voting, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington, there have been no issues with widespread fraud.
“The only way we’re going to lose is if there’s mischief, and it’ll have to be on a big scale, so be careful,” Trump said. “We do want a very friendly transition, but we don’t want to be cheated and be stupid and say, ‘Oh, let’s, we’ll go and we’ll do a transition,’ and we know that there were thousands and thousands of ballots that made the difference through cheating. We’re not going to stand for it.”
This attack claiming Democrats are trying to cheat is also baseless when it is the president who has sought to limit resources to the U.S. Postal Service to curtail its ability to handle the influx of mailed ballots.
Trump has also said he expects the Supreme Court to decide the presidential election, meaning he intends to legally challenge the results if he loses.
September 26, 2020 at 11:54 AM EDT
Barr told Trump about investigation into discarded Pennsylvania ballots
By Amy Gardner, Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey
Attorney General William P. Barr personally told President Trump this week about an investigation into nine discarded mail ballots in northeastern Pennsylvania that the president later touted as evidence of widespread election fraud, according to a person familiar with the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal administration discussions.
The conversation came as Trump has fixated on the subject of voter fraud with aides, administration officials said, asking for information on the topic and updates from his campaign advisers and legal team about voting lawsuits. He has repeatedly lambasted voting by mail as susceptible to widespread fraud, despite evidence to the contrary.
The Justice Department made a public announcement about the Pennsylvania case Thursday after the president discussed it in a radio interview. The statement drew sharp criticism from voting-law experts, who questioned the timing and the details released, such as the fact that most of the ballots were cast for Trump.
September 26, 2020 at 11:51 AM EDT
Some Democrats worry that pro-Biden super PACs are prioritizing white voters over minorities
By Michelle Lee
Some Democratic strategists are raising the alarm about the millions of dollars being spent by super PACs in support of nominee Joe Biden, saying too much is being spent on White swing voters while not enough is being devoted to driving up turnout among voters of color.
The complaints are perennial, but they carry new resonance this year, as Biden has struggled to inspire enthusiasm among young Black voters and Latinos.
Many in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party have urged leadership to pay closer attention to voters of color, who they say increasingly form the backbone of the party but cannot be taken for granted. This month, a prominent Democratic donor publicly scrutinized super PAC spending, urging groups to change course as the election nears.
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]]>A New York Supreme Court judge on Thursday ordered a public judicial inquiry into the case of Eric Garner, the 43-year-old who died after being put in an apparent chokehold by a New York police officer in 2014.
Judge Joan Madden on Thursday ordered a “summary inquiry” into the case, including an alleged lack of immediate medical aid to Garner by officers; alleged lies in a police report; the unauthorized release of Garner’s arrest record; and release of autopsy information by New York City’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner.
She did not indicate who would conduct the inquiry or when it would take place. She set a hearing on the matter for Oct. 6.
The group Communities United for Police Reform called the ruling a “major win for transparency and basic civil rights.”
The organization said in a statement that the decision could allow for Mayor Bill de Blasio, former New York Police Department Commissioner James O’Neill and others “to take the stand and answer to claims of neglect and the violations of duty related to the killing of Eric Garner.”
The ruling is part of civil litigation against city officials by Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, and sister, Ellisha Flagg. They were awarded $5.9 million in a 2015 settlement with the city.
A Staten Island grand jury in late 2014 declined to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo on criminal charges related to Garner’s death. Pantaleo has denied any wrongdoing but was fired last year.
The New York City Police Benevolent Association could not be reached for comment Friday but its president, Pat Lynch, has maintained that Pantaleo and partner Justin Damico did nothing wrong when they confronted Garner on July 17, 2014, for allegedly selling loose cigarettes illegally in Staten Island and took him to the ground.
While he was on the ground, Garner said, “I can’t breathe,” words echoed by George Floyd, a Black man who died in Minneapolis police custody in May. Floyd’s death and the fatal police shooting in March of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, at her home in Louisville, Kentucky, prompted nationwide protests and demands for police reform and racial justice.
Lynch said last year that Pantaleo and Damico “utilized textbook de-escalation techniques to limit the use of force against a much larger and irate individual.” Neither officer could be reached for comment Friday evening.
A city medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide by asphyxiation, likely from a chokehold. The New York Police Department banned chokeholds in 1993.
The Office of Chief Medical Examiner did not respond immediately to a request for comment Friday. New York Police Department Sgt. Jessica McRorie said by email that “the New York City Police Department is reviewing the determination by the State Supreme court.”
Madden said in her ruling that there was “no indication” police administered aid to Garner after he fell unconscious. She called an alleged lack of investigation by the police commissioner “neglect of duty.”
She also suggested Damico lied in claiming in a police report that Garner committed a felony for selling loose cigarettes, although the amount in his possession would not have supported such a charge.
She rejected a request by Carr and Flagg for an inquiry into the actions of medical first-responders.
The Associated Press
contributed.
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]]>President Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden quickly moved to capitalize on the enthusiasm of their party bases for filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court, hauling in a wave of campaign contributions and strategizing messaging to boost voter turnout.
Both parties are fired up after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday.
Mr. Trump on Monday said he had a shortlist of five female candidates for the nomination, with four federal appeals court judges and one member of his White House legal team in the mix.
“Five women are being vetted very carefully,” he told White House reporters as he departed for an Ohio trip. “I’d much rather have a vote before the election, because there’s a lot of work to be done and I’d much rather have it.”
“I’m just doing my constitutional obligation. I have an obligation to do this. So I would rather see it before the election.”
The president’s pick of a woman for the high court, which he is expected to announce Friday or Saturday would potentially appeal to the female voters he has struggled to win over.
That’s just one calculation in the nomination game.
Mr. Biden, meanwhile, is revving up his base with a warning that Mr. Trump’s picks will jeopardize abortion rights and Obamacare health coverage.
“You think like Trump [then] you try to take away health care from 20 million Americans in the middle of this pandemic,” Mr. Biden said while campaigning in Wisconsin. “He’s in court today trying to get that done.”
He said this week that millions of Americans are already voting early because they don’t want to see the Supreme Court overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed abortion rights.
Of course, Mr. Biden is hoping the Republican Senate majority can’t muster enough votes to confirm a nomination before the Nov. 3 election. Then he can make the case that if he wins, he should be the one to name a replacement for the late liberal icon and keep the high court’s 5-4 ideological split intact.
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the only Democrat who voted to confirm Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, said that he’s in favor of waiting until after the election, meaning the GOP likely cannot count on bipartisan support for whatever path they choose.
But Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, said Mr. Trump’s loss in November wouldn’t stop them from confirming his nominee during a lame-duck session.
Asked on CNN if Republicans would hold a lame-duck confirmation vote before Mr. Biden’s inauguration, Mr. Cornyn said: “You mean while we’re still in our term of office, and President Trump is? Of course.”
Angling to avoid that necessity, Mr. Trump is calculating which Supreme Court pick could put Senate Democrats on the defensive now and potentially galvanize conservative voters in battleground states.
Mr. Trump’s shortlist includes:
• Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals;
• Judge Barbara Lagoa of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals;
• Judge Joan Larsen of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals;
• Judge Allison Jones Rushing of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; and
• Kate Todd, deputy counsel to the president.
“All of those have really great stories behind them,” said Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network, which is planning to spend $2.2 million on an ad blitz backing Mr. Trump’s high court nominee.
At least two of the women — Judge Barrett and Judge Lagoa — are Catholic. Their faith would appeal to Mr. Trump’s pro-religious liberty base but also supply ammunition to pro-choice opponents.
Judge Barrett’s Catholic faith caused a dust-up with Senate Democrats during her confirmation to the appeals court. The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, told her the “dogma” lives loudly within her.
Conservatives see that type of anti-Catholic and anti-Christian bias as a hurdle for Democrats to overcome with voters ahead of November. Ms. Barrett also met with the president on Monday.
But nominating a Catholic is not necessarily unique. Mr. Trump’s last Supreme Court pick, Justice Kavanaugh, is Catholic, as are at least two other justices on the bench.
Matthew Schmidt, a political science professor at the University of New Haven, noted 30% of voters in Pennsylvania — a critical swing state — are Catholic and there’s also a large number of Catholics in Florida, which has 29 electoral college votes.
“But Catholics aren’t monolithic as a voting bloc,” he warned. “And given that many voters have already voted, the effect of a SCOTUS battle takes place in a smaller subset of voters.”
Conservatives also view Judge Lagoa, who is the child of two immigrants who fled Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, as a viable option for the president. She is Cuban-American and was the first Hispanic judge to sit on the Florida Supreme Court. Mr. Trump tapped her last year for the 11th Circuit.
Picking Judge Lagoa could help the president court some Hispanic voters in critical swing states such as Florida, which is also her home state.
Similarly, picking Judge Larsen could help Mr. Trump in her home state of Michigan, and Judge Rushing in North Carolina, other key battlegrounds.
“In a close state, if there is a modest increase it can be helpful,” said G. Terry Madonna, the director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College.
As the president is weighing which nominee could resonate best with his base, Mr. Biden has shown no signs of departing from his statements during the primary in which he warned against expanding the number of seats on the Supreme Court.
The move to pack the court has been called for by many progressives if Democrats gain control of the House, Senate, and White House next year.
Instead, Mr. Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, honed in on the potential real-world consequences that a 6-3 conservative majority on the court would have on issues like health care and abortion.
The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in a challenge to Obamacare the week after the election.
“We now have almost 7 million people who are going to have the preexisting condition of COVID who if Donald Trump wins his lawsuit could be barred from having coverage,” Ms. Harris said. “This is real. This is real stuff.”
Toeing the ticket line, Ms. Harris punted when asked about expanding the court and who specifically she wants to see replace Justice Ginsberg.
“I am focused on the next 43 days,” she said during an appearance on Instagram Live with journalist April Ryan.
Mr. Biden’s focus is a stark contrast to the approach from some liberals, who are floating everything from packing the court to launching impeachment proceedings to try to push back on Mr. Trump and the Republicans.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called for the end of both the legislative filibuster and the Electoral College, which has been in liberal crosshairs for some time.
“If Republicans disregard their own made-up rules to steal a second Supreme Court seat after ramming through the Kavanaugh nomination, after short-circuiting that process as well, Leader Schumer is right: everything should be on the table,” said Ms. Warren, a former 2020 presidential candidate.
She spoke as part of a kickoff event for Just Democracy, a new coalition of liberal advocacy groups calling for adding seats to the Supreme Court, abolishing the filibuster and the Electoral College system, and granting statehood to Washington, D.C.
Democratic strategist Scott Ferson said Mr. Biden is smart to layer in other real-world issues at stake in a court fight, like environmental protections and immigration rights, rather than talk about process issues like abolishing the filibuster.
“There are people out there doing that,” Mr. Ferson said. “He doesn’t need to.”
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]]>Angry protesters have gathered outside homes owned by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to express their anger at the Republican senators’ support for moving forward with nominating and confirming a new Supreme Court justice before November’s election after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Banging drums, shouting slogans and flashing lights, dozens of protesters amassed outside Graham’s home in Washington in the early morning hours Monday as Capitol Police tried to keep them off the lawmaker’s property.
“We can’t sleep so neither should Lindsey,” a banner read.
Graham was not in Washington at the time and that the senator “regrets the disturbance caused to his neighbors,” a spokesman for Graham said Monday afternoon.
GRAHAM: DEMS TELLING ME HOW TO HANDLE SCOTUS PICKS IS LIKE ‘ARSONISTS ADVISING THE FIRE DEPARTMENT’
But Graham later tweeted on Monday afternoon a comment asking his followers “how did your Monday start?” before asking them to “[s]tand with me against the mob.”
Demonstrators later marched from Graham’s home to the Supreme Court building.
A protester stands outside the house of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in Louisville, Ky., Saturday, Sept. 19, 2020. McConnell vowed on Friday night, hours after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to call a vote for whomever President Donald Trump nominated as her replacement. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)
Graham’s critics have pointed to his words after Senate Republicans refused to move forward on the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland during the last year of former President Obama’s second term. The South Carolina Republican said that if a vacancy arose during the last year of President Trump’s term and the primary process had already started, the seat should not be filled during that year.
Graham now says that he is “dead set on confirming” Trump’s pick, whoever it may be. He has explained his change of heart by pointing to Democrats’ behavior during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process when multiple women came forth with allegations of sexual misconduct during his high school and college years. Kavanaugh had previously been investigated by the FBI for past judicial appointments without incident.
Graham, whose committee will have to vote on any nomination before it goes to the full Senate, has also pointed to how it was Democrats who first changed Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster for federal circuit court confirmations.
LEADERS FROM BOTH PARTIES UNDER FIRE FOR PREVIOUS STATEMENTS ABOUT SCOTUS NOMINATIONS
A similar scene to the one at Graham’s Washington residence played out on Saturday outside McConnell’s home in Kentucky as around 100 people gathered to protest.
“Ruth Sent Us,” and “No Ethics No Shame,” read some of the signs carried by crowd members in Louisville, local FOX station WDRB-TV reported.
“Hey-hey, ho-ho, Mitch McConnell has got to go,” others chanted.
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One protester was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and improper parking after police determined she used a pharmacy parking lot without planning to patronize the store, the Courier-Journal of Louisville reported.
As Senate leader, McConnell would determine when or if a vote on a nomination would be held. Democrats and some Republicans have argued that any vote on a Trump court pick should be delayed until after the Nov. 3 presidential election.
But McConnell has faced criticism for his 2016 decision to deny Garland a chance for a Senate vote in 2016.
Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer and Dom Calicchio contributed to this report.
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]]>The post Trump says Supreme Court list is down to 5 people, announcement coming Friday or Saturday appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>President Trump on Monday said he has narrowed his list of potential Supreme Court nominees to fill the seat held by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to five people and vowed to announce his pick by Friday or Saturday.
During an exclusive interview on “Fox & Friends,” the president said that the final Senate vote for his potential nominee should be taken “before the election” and “should go very quickly.”
Ginsburg, 87, died on Friday, due to complications surrounding metastatic pancreatic cancer, igniting a new, major political battle before the elections.
“The bottom line is we won the election, we have an obligation to do what’s right and act as quickly as possible,” Trump said.
The president said that he will make his announcement at the end of the week, following services for the late Supreme Court justice.
“I think it will be on Friday or Saturday and we want to pay respect, it looks like we will have services on Thursday or Friday, as I understand it, and I think we should, with all due respect for Justice Ginsburg, wait for services to be over,” the president said.
The president’s shortlist is said to include Judge Amy Coney Barrett from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Judge Barbara Logoa of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, and Judge Allison Jones Rushing of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, among others.
The president touted the list of potential picks, calling them “excellent,” and “all very smart.”
“No matter how you would look at it, these are the finest people in the nation—young people, pretty young for the most part,” the president said.
Barrett is 48, Lagoa is 52, Rushing is 38, and it is unclear the age of the president’s other potential nominees.
“These are the smartest people, the smartest young people, you like to go young, because they’re there for a long time,” Trump said, adding that his nominee would “abide by the Constitution,” be a “good person” and have “very, very high moral values.”
The president said he thinks “the final vote should be taken, frankly, before the election.”
SUPREME COURT JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG DEAD AT 87
Just hours after Ginsburg’s death was announced on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., vowed that a Trump nominee to the Supreme Court to fill her vacancy “will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
McConnell’s comments ignited a political firestorm, even prompting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to say she wouldn’t rule out employing impeachment to block a Trump nominee.
“I heard if I [nominate], they’re going to impeach me, so they’re impeaching me for what constitutionally I have to do,” Trump said. “If they do that, we win all elections.”
He added: “If they do it, I think my numbers will go up, I think we’ll win the entire election, I think we’re going to win back the House, I think we’re going to win the House anyway.”
The president went on to say that “losing an election has consequences.”
“That means the other side gets to pick Supreme Court justices, judges, it’s a big deal,” he said. “It sets the tone. I’m very lucky because rarely does a president have this opportunity.”
PELOSI WILL NOT RULE OUT IMPEACHMENT AS AN OPTION TO BLOCK TRUMP SUPREME COURT NOMINEE
He added: “Here I am in one term, I get to pick three.”
The president nominated, and the Senate confirmed, now-Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in his first term.
Trump acknowledged, however, that “no matter who” he picks as his nominee, “no matter how brilliant,” the Democrats “will say this is terrible.”
“No matter how great this person is, they will not like the person,” the president said.
Meanwhile, Trump said Republicans have “a tremendous amount of time” to confirm a new Supreme Court justice before Election Day.
“I think it would be good for the Republican Party and good for everyone,” he said.
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