Nominee Archives - Mediarabe

Amy Coney Barrett isn’t nominee for health care czar

October 14, 2020

Amy Coney Barrett has accomplished many things in her career. Becoming an authority or a policy maker on health care isn’t one of them.

At Notre Dame, she was a professor at the law school, not at the Eck Institute for Global Health. She’s written for the Cornell Law Review, not The New England Journal of Medicine. She’s up to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court, not Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

No one would have guessed it, though, from listening to Democratic senators on the first day of her much-anticipated confirmation hearings. They acted as if Barrett has been nominated to become the nation’s health care czar, responsible for everything from the fate of Obamacare to the country’s coronavirus response.

This tack underlined political themes that Democrats are hammering home in the final weeks of the election, but

Trump Court Nominee Fends Off Questions On Abortion, Health Care

October 14, 2020

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US Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett insisted Tuesday that she had no fixed views on hot-button legal issues as Democrats painted her as President Donald Trump’s vehicle to end abortion rights and kill the popular Obamacare health program.

In the second day of hearings on her hurried nomination, Barrett, who if approved will tilt the high court decisively to the right, told lawmakers she would put personal and religious beliefs aside when deciding landmark cases.

But the 48-year-old judge and devout Catholic could not escape accusations from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee that she was chosen to achieve Trump’s dream to nullify the Affordable Care Act of predecessor Barack Obama, which extended cheap health care to millions of uninsured Americans.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a practicing Catholic, is well-regarded by conservative Christians, who share many of her values, including an opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage Photo: AFP

Supreme Court nominee Barrett says personal views will not impact her decisions on abortion, health care

October 14, 2020

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President Trump’s third nominee to the Supreme Court declined to answer some questions that seemed steeped in basic facts, such as whether a president has the power under the Constitution to unilaterally delay an election. Barrett also declined to say whether she would recuse herself from a potential 2020 election case as Senate Democrats demanded, saying she would not be “used as a pawn to decide the election for the American people.”

Like high court nominees who preceded her, Barrett repeatedly avoided weighing in on her personal views of landmark decisions and declined to say whether she endorsed opinions from her mentor, former Justice Antonin Scalia, on abortion and same-sex marriage. At the same time, under hours of questioning from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, she reinforced perceptions that she would help solidify a 6-to-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

On the Affordable Care Act, whose constitutionality will

Amy Coney Barrett confirmation: Trump’s nominee vows to be apolitical as Democrats warn of threat to health care

October 13, 2020

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Democrats acknowledged there is little they can do to stop Barrett’s confirmation. So they seemed determined to use the hearings to portray Republicans as a threat to the Affordable Care Act, and the nomination as a last-ditch effort to save Trump should next month’s election lead to litigation in the Supreme Court.

On optics alone, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) seemed to speak for everyone when he said, “There is nothing about this that is normal.”

The nominee, who spoke for just 12 minutes, wore a black face mask for nearly the entire hearing. Several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee participated remotely, one because he has tested positive for the coronavirus. In a first, the Architect of the Capitol submitted a letter certifying that the hearing room met Centers for Disease Control and Prevention safety regulations.

And when the 48-year-old Barrett, nominated by Trump after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death

Supreme Court Nominee Hearings Set Up Partisan Battle Ahead of Election

October 12, 2020

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WASHINGTON—Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett this week promise to add more unpredictability to an already tumultuous election season as the GOP-led Senate seeks to expand the Supreme Court’s conservative majority with just weeks before Election Day.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) has planned four days of hearings starting Monday, though three Republicans on the 22-member panel can’t attend the first day of hearings in person, with two having tested positive for the coronavirus and a third under quarantine for having been exposed to one of them.

Republicans’ goal is to have Judge Barrett, who is set to appear before the committee on Monday but won’t take questions until Tuesday, confirmed by the full Senate during the last week in October. Election Day is Nov. 3.

“I chose to accept the nomination because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the place

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