As we wait for Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination hearing to resume, Trump has given an interesting interview to the conservative website Newsmax.
Asked whether he intended to keep William Barr on as attorney general if he wins reelection, the president refused to comment.
“I have no comment. Can’t comment on that. It’s too early,” Trump said. “I’m not happy with all of the evidence I have, I can tell you that. I’m not happy.”
Bit of a flurry at the supreme court confirmation hearing, as Amy Coney Barrett’s mike goes down just as she was trying to respond to a question on gun control from Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut.
Murmurs went around the room as she suddenly began speaking into the void, then realized she could not be heard and started fiddling with the buttons on her microphone.
As the hearing paused, photographers sat on the floor in front of her lowered their heavy lenses for a quick rest, and everyone waited.
The Senate judiciary committee has just called a 10-minute recess to try to sort out the problem.
A federal judge has ruled that Tennessee’s 48-hour waiting period law for abortions is unconstitutional.
Tennessee’s 2015 law requires women to make two trips to an abortion clinic, first for mandatory counseling and then for the abortion at least 48 hours later.
In his ruling, US district judge Bernard Freidman found that the law “substantially burdens women seeking an abortion in Tennessee. Friedman also found the state did not show that the law furthers its purported goals.
“Women’s mental and emotional health is not benefited because the mandatory waiting period does nothing to increase the decisional certainty among women contemplating having an abortion.
“Further, the evidence demonstrates that at least 95% of women are certain of their decisions, post-abortion regret is uncommon, and abortion does not increase women’s risk of negative mental health outcomes,” Friedman wrote.
The ruling comes more than a year after a four-day trial on the law and amid the confirmation hearings for supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, who critics worry could help to weaken or even overturn US abortion rights.
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham earlier today praised what he saw as Barrett’s anti-abortion beliefs, saying she was “unashamedly pro-life”.
Democrat Chris Coons asked Amy Coney Barrett about Griswold v Connecticut, the landmark 1965 case that established married couples’ right to access birth control.
Griswold was cited as a precedent when the supreme court decided Roe v Wade, which established women’s constitutional right to abortion access.
Barrett said Griswold was “very very very very very very unlikely to go anywhere” because that would require state legislatures or Congress to pass a law banning birth control and for the court to then uphold that law, which seemed completely implausible.
That being said, Barrett still declined to offer an opinion on whether Griswold was decided correctly.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
Amy Klobuchar asked Amy Coney Barrett if she had ever voted by mail, and the supreme court nominee said she could not recall doing so, although she may have sent a mail-in ballot when she was in college.
In response to a follow-up question from Klobuchar, Barrett said some of her friends and family members have voted by mail.
Amy Coney Barrett says she may have voted by mail when she was in college and has had "friends or family vote by mail" https://t.co/Xy3Sl57gsC pic.twitter.com/9vJDYgp87a
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 14, 2020
But a Washington Post reporter noted that Barrett appears to have voted absentee as recently as 2016.
Barrett said she can't recall whether she voted by mail, but according to @FixTheCourt, Barrett voted absentee in 2016 https://t.co/Sw5dkwhb6I
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) October 14, 2020
Amy Klobuchar expressed frustration with Amy Coney Barrett’s refusal to offer opinions on voting by mail.
Klobuchar asked Barrett if she considered mail-in ballots to be an “essential way to vote for millions of Americans right now.”
Barrett said she could not respond because that was “a matter of policy.”
Klobuchar replied, “To me that just feels like a fundamental part of our democracy.”
Trump has repeatedly attacked voting by mail and suggested that mail-in ballots in this year’s elections will be highly vulnerable to fraud, even though voter fraud is very rare.
Amy Klobuchar noted that if Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, the supreme court will have three justices who worked for the Republican side in Bush v Gore.
Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh also worked on the case that settled the 2000 presidential election.
Amy Klobuchar pressed Amy Coney Barrett on whether she knew of Trump’s opposition to the Affordable Care Act when she was nominated.
“I am aware that the president opposes the Affordable Care Act,” Barrett said. But she would not say whether she was aware of his opposition before now.
Klobuchar again tried to nail down whether Barrett was aware of Trump’s opposition when she penned a 2017 essay criticizing the supreme court’s decision to uphold the ACA.
“To the extent you’re suggesting this was like an open letter to President Trump, it was not,” Barrett told Klobuchar.
The Senate judiciary committee has reconvened, and questioning of Amy Coney Barrett has now resumed, with Democrat Amy Klobuchar speaking.