JUDICIARY COMMITTEE SUPREME COURT NOMINATION HEARINGS
Various Networks, 10:00 a.m. ET
And you thought the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh were contentious. (And you were right.) Now come the confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s chosen potential Supreme Court successor to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Among the subtexts this time, and this is by no means an exhaustive list: 1) The Republicans are holding these hearings less than a month before the 2020 presidential election, even though they blocked any consideration for President Barack Obama’s 2016 Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, with eight months to go before that year’s election, saying the voters should decide by electing or re-electing the president who would then nominate his (or, that year, her) preferred choice. 2) With Trump having successfully appointed to the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch in 2017, in the seat Obama wanted Garland to fill, then Kavanaugh a year later, Barrett would be his third appointment to the land’s highest court, and set up a probable conservative shift on such key issues as health care and protected pre-existing conditions (via the Affordable Care Act) and abortion (via Roe v. Wade). 3) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is scheduling these hearings with the hopes that Barrett will be confirmed before Election Day on November 3, giving her a vote even on election-related issues unless she recuses herself. 4) The hearings are proceeding even though two members of the committee have tested positive for COVID-19 and will be participating remotely. Ironically, it’s possible they contracted the virus while attending an event at the White House Rose Garden in honor of Barrett’s nomination. 5) The committee chairman, Lindsay Graham, like McConnell, is facing a serious race for re-election next month – yet won’t even commit to taking a COVID test, and confirming a negative result, before chairing the committee. What’d I forget?