Supreme Court Nominee Amy Barrett Could Reshape Judiciary for a Generation

Amy Coney Barrett is expected to make her first appearance Tuesday on Capitol Hill, where she will meet with McConnell; Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chair of the Judiciary Committee; and others.

Hearings are set to begin October 12, and Graham said he hoped to have Barrett's nomination out of the committee by October 26.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned that a vote to confirm Barrett to the high court would be a vote to strike down the Affordable Care Act.

Schumer added that the president was once again putting “Americans’ healthcare in the crosshairs” even while the coronavirus pandemic rages.

Biden took that route of criticism, as well, framing Trump’s choice as another move in Republicans’ effort to scrap the 2010 health care law passed by his former boss, President Barack Obama.

The court is expected to take up a case against it this fall.

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The set design at the Rose Garden, with large American flags, hung between the colonnades, appeared to be modeled on the way the White House was decorated when President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg in 1993.

Amy Coney Barrett, recognizing that flags were still lowered in recognition of Ginsburg's death, said she would be “mindful of who came before me".

Although they have different judicial philosophies, Barrett praised Ginsburg as a trailblazer for women and for her friendship with Scalia, saying, “She has won the admiration of women across the country and indeed all across the world."

Within hours of Ginsburg’s death, Trump made clear he would nominate a female Supreme Court nominee for the seat.

Barrett was the early favorite and the only one to meet with Trump.

Amy Coney Barrett has been a judge since 2017, when President Donald Trump nominated her to the Chicago-based 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals.

But as a longtime University of Notre Dame law professor, she had already established herself as a reliable conservative in the mold of Scalia, for whom she clerked in the late 1990s.

She would be the only justice on the current court not to have received her law degree from an Ivy League school. The eight current justices all attended either Harvard or Yale.

The staunch conservative had become known to President Donald Trump in large part after her bitter 2017 appeals court confirmation included allegations that Democrats were attacking her Catholic faith.

The president also interviewed her in 2018 for the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, but Trump ultimately chose Brett Kavanaugh.

Trump and his political allies are itching for another fight over Barrett’s faith, seeing it as a political windfall that would backfire on Democrats.

Catholic voters in Pennsylvania, in particular, are viewed as a pivotal demographic in the swing state that Biden, also Catholic, is trying to recapture.

While Democrats appear powerless to stop Barrett’s confirmation in the GOP-controlled Senate, they are seeking to use the process to weaken Trump’s reelection chances.