With friendly visits to Republicans, Barrett makes Capitol debut
WASHINGTON — Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, made a low-key debut on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, largely sidestepping a storm of Democratic anger as she met with friendly Republican senators eager to muscle through her nomination before Election Day.
Barrett arrived at the Capitol flanked by Vice President Mike Pence and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff — an unusually high-level escort that underscored what Republicans see as the high stakes of her confirmation for the court as well as their political fortunes. Republicans who met with her throughout the day were unanimous in their praise, leaving little doubt that she would be confirmed.
“We truly do believe that Judge Barrett represents the best of America personally, in terms of her great intellect, her great background, and we have every confidence that as the American people learn more about Judge Amy Coney Barrett, they will be as inspired as President Trump was when he made her nomination,” Pence said before a meeting with Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader.
Barrett stood solemnly and silently next to McConnell, who did not answer whether the judge, if confirmed to the nation’s highest court, should recuse herself from any cases related to the election.
Hours later, the White House formally sent Barrett’s nomination to the Senate, for the official start of what is expected to be an unusually fast sprint to confirmation.
If the more than half-dozen senators who met with her throughout the day — all at a careful distance because of the pandemic — tried to pin down her views on politically thorny legal issues like abortion rights or the Affordable Care Act, they gave little public indication.
“What I’m looking for, and I think what she stands for, is the rule of law,” said Sen. Charles E.
Grassley of Iowa, who was chair of the Judiciary Committee when Barrett was confirmed to the appeals court in Chicago in 2017.
Outside the wood-paneled Mansfield Room, near the Senate chamber where Barrett and Republican senators met, there was little good feeling to be found in a Capitol at war over her nomination.
A cohort of Democrats, led by Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, pledged to boycott the usual “courtesy” meeting process with the nominee. They are fiercely opposed to filling the seat when voting is already underway in many states, accusing Republicans who refused to consider President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee in 2016 of rank hypocrisy.
“I will not lend legitimacy to
Mitch McConnell’s efforts to steal another Supreme Court seat,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “We need to treat this nomination like the illegitimate power grab it is.”
With little power to block the nomination, Democrats have sought to frame the confirmation battle as a referendum on health care, given that the Supreme Court is set to hear a case that could overturn the Affordable Care Act in the days after the election. Without any Republicans present on the Senate floor, Schumer on Tuesday successfully set up votes on legislation that would prevent the Justice Department from moving to strike down the Affordable Care Act, ensuring that Senate Republicans would have to vote on health care legislation before the election.