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Amy Coney Barrett nominated by Trump for Supreme Court, setting up contentious battle weeks before election

by Rob Crilly, White House Correspondent | 

 

September 26, 2020 05:04 PM

President Trump named Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee for the Supreme Court Saturday evening with a live, televised reveal from the White House Rose Garden.

“Today it is my honor to nominate one of our nation’s most creative and gifted legal minds to the Supreme Court,” he said as Barrett stood alongside him.

“She is a woman of unparalleled achievement, towering intellect, sterling credentials and unyielding loyalty to the Constitution. Judge Amy Coney Barrett.”

Trump said she would make history if confirmed as the first mother of school age children to serve on the Supreme Court.

In announcing Barrett, he underlined her record as an originalist, known for sticking close to the original text of the constitution.

“You are not there to decide cases, as you may prefer, you are there to do your duty, and to follow the law, whatever it may take,” he said.

About 150 officials and guests, many of whom were not wearing masks, stood and applauded as Trump made the announcement.

Immediately following the announcement, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hailed the nomination.

"Judge Amy Coney Barrett is an exceptionally impressive jurist and an exceedingly well-qualified nominee to the Supreme Court," he said in a statement. "A brilliant scholar. An exemplary judge. President Trump could not have made a better decision."

Insiders said the Catholic mother of seven had been his favorite all along for the vacant seat following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg earlier this month.

Her nomination will tee up a bitter Senate confirmation process and will define the ideological dividing lines between Republicans and Democrats as the election campaign enters its final stretch.

Trump appears to have sufficient Senate support to confirm his nominee, cementing a conservative majority with his third pick for the court. He previously successfully nominated Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the court, although the latter's confirmation hearing was particularly acrimonious.

Democrats have been fiercely hostile to his plan. With crucial votes expected soon on everything from abortion to the future of Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said it was an “abuse of power” to nominate a justice so close to an election.

In a sign of the bitter fight to come, Biden released a statement following the announcement, pegging her as an existential threat to healthcare, as the court prepares to consider a critical Obamacare case amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"She has a written track record of disagreeing with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision upholding the Affordable Care Act. She critiqued Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion upholding the law in 2012," Biden said in a statement.

He added, "The American people know the U.S. Supreme Court decisions affect their everyday lives. The United States Constitution was designed to give the voters one chance to have their voice heard on who serves on the Court. That moment is now and their voice should be heard."

The vacancy arrived with the death of Ginsburg last week at the age of 87. Trump waited until after her funeral at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday before making his announcement.

He had promised to name a woman to the vacant seat and appeals court, and judges Barrett, 48, and Barbara Lagoa, 52, emerged as favorites. Joan Larsen, 51, of the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit Court of Appeals; Allison Jones Rushing, 38, who would have been the youngest Supreme Court justice ever; and deputy White House counsel Kate Todd, 45, made up the five-woman shortlist.

Sources familiar with White House thinking said Lagoa, a Cuban-American from Miami, could help Trump win the crucial battleground state of Florida but that Barrett, 48, was better known, and her conservative, anti-abortion Catholic credentials would help drive turnout among his base.

One of the new justice’s first roles may be to rule on the outcome of an election, as questions circulate about the role of mail-in ballots amid a coronavirus pandemic that has already sparked early litigation.

Trump himself raised the prospect of disputed results on Wednesday.

"I think this will end up in the Supreme Court," he said. "And I think it's very important that we have nine justices."

Tea Party Patriots Action honorary chairman Jenny Beth Martin said Barrett had the right experience and judicial philosophy. “She will be an asset to the court as it considers landmark cases that directly bear on our constitutional rights – from religious liberty to the Second Amendment, from healthcare to immigration,” she said.

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