Trump’s Supreme Court nominee refuses to pledge to recuse herself from election cases

Updated 2 hours ago

SUPREME COURT NOMINEE Amy Coney Barrett has said that she cannot agree to recuse herself from any case involving disputes that may arise from the United States presidential election.

Barrett told the Senate Judiciary Committee: “I cannot offer an opinion on the disqualification without short-circuiting the entire process.”

The judge said she had not spoken to President Donald Trump or anyone else in the administration about how he would handle election-related challenges. And he said that he would have to consult with the other judges of the court before making a decision.

Barrett is on Capitol Hill for a second day of hearings. The mood is likely to shift to a more confrontational tone as Barrett, an appellate court judge with very little trial court experience, is questioned in 30-minute segments by Democrats staunchly opposed to the nominee of Trump. Republicans rush her to confirm it before Election Day in the United States.

Committee chair Lindsey Graham opened the session under coronavirus protocols with a focus on healthcare and ending the Affordable Care Act.

Graham also quickly asked if the Catholic judge could file his personal beliefs to comply with the law.

“I can. I have,” he said. “I’ll do that still.”

Graham praised her as a conservative woman of faith and the best possible nominee Trump could have chosen.

“I will do everything I can to make sure you have a seat at the table. And that table is the Supreme Court, ”Graham said.

The Senate, led by Trump’s Republican allies, is pushing Barrett’s nomination to a snap vote by Nov. 3, and before the latest challenge to the “Obamacare” Affordable Care Act, which the Supreme Court will hear a week after the elections.

Republicans also hope to seat Barrett quickly enough to hear any legal challenges after the election. Democrats are demanding that she agree not to participate in any election case, but she has not committed to doing so.

One of the two Republicans on the panel who tested positive for Covid-19, Senator Thom Tillis, joined the committee for the first time today, after ending the quarantine.

Barrett presented his approach to the law as conservative yesterday and right at the start of expedited confirmation hearings. Democrats see it as a threat to Americans’ health coverage during the coronavirus pandemic.

With her husband and six of her seven children behind her in a courtroom out of public reach and upset by the risks of Covid-19, Barrett expressed views at odds with the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal icon for whose position Trump nominated her. fill in, exposing a judicial philosophy that he has compared to that of his conservative mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

“The courts are not designed to solve all problems or correct all evils in our public life,” declared the 48-year-old federal appeals judge, removing the protective mask that she wore most of the day to read a prepared statement.

Americans “deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our constitution and our laws as written,” Barrett told the committee.