Amid virus, GOP seeks to pause Senate work
Calls for everyone on Capitol Hill to be tested for virus increase; Supreme Court hearings still on schedule.
WASHINGTON >> Republicans on Saturday sought to call off legislative work in the Senate until Oct. 19 as the coronavirus reached into their ranks. But they vowed that hearings for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee would push ahead as planned even as lawmakers increasingly demanded testing for everyone on Capitol Hill.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett will still begin Oct. 12, even if Democrats agree to cancel the regular Senate session to avoid further spread of COVID-19. Since Friday morning, three GOP senators have announced they have tested positive.
“T he Senate’s f loor schedule will not interrupt the thorough, fair and historically supported confirmation process,” the Kentucky Republican wrote. Jud ic ia r y C ommit t ee Chairman Lindsey Graham, who is running for reelection in South Carolina, added that senators can attend the hearings virtually.
“Cer tainly,” McConnell wrote, “all Republican members of the committee will participate in these important hearings.”
But Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer took aim at that plan, saying that if the COVID threat is too great for Senate sessions, it makes Barrett’s confirmation perilous, too.
The Republicans’ “monomaniacal drive to confirm Judge Barrett at all costs needlessly threatens the health and safety of Senators, staff, and all those who work in the Capitol complex,” Schumer said in a statement.
However, Schumer notably did not say Democrats would block McConnell’s plan. Doing so could force the Senate back into the confines of the Capitol without the mandatory testing of lawmakers and their aides.
T he ba ck- a nd- for th served as an emphatic reminder that Senate Republicans defending their majority had hoped for an election season finale focused on their power to solidify a conservative majority on the high court. But the whipsaw infections of Trump, who has been hospitalized, and a series of GOP senators since Friday morning raised significant worries in Republican circles about the spread of the virus at various events where masks have been scarce.
Concern began with the White House Rose Garden ceremony last Saturday where Trump introduced Barrett. In the audience, where few people wore masks, were members of the Judiciary Committee that will handle confirmation hearings. T wo members of the panel, Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, on Friday announced that like Trump, they had tested positive for the virus.