What next?

Barrett’s supposed neutrality is a transparent “fiction,” said

Levitz in NYMag.com. Her claims to originalism amount to a “parlor trick”—one that recasts “the conservative movement’s unpopular agenda” as constitutionally mandated. Republicans are all for judicial activism, said Paul Waldman in The Washington Post, as long as it serves “to move American law in a radically more conservative direction.” Supreme Court conservatives gutted the Voting Rights Act passed by Congress, and now they’re targeting the highly popular ACA.

Don’t believe the Democratic hysteria: Obamacare won’t be overturned, said Andrew McCarthy in NationalReview.com. The pending lawsuit presents “a weak challenge,” and the key issue is “severability”—whether the law can stand without the individual mandate now that Congress has reduced penalties to zero. Since the ACA is already operating without the mandate, it’s an “easy” case, with at least five or six votes for severability. The Democrats know this, but with Election Day at hand they decided to “use the high-profile hearings to campaign” and drive home Republican opposition to the popular act. The ACA may survive, said Ruth Marcus in WashingtonPost.com, but marriage equality, LGBTQ rights, and race-based admission policies could all be in peril. The best predictor of how Barrett might rule is to examine the record of her stated role model, Antonin Scalia—who in dissents argued forcefully against all these rulings. As a member of a dominant conservative majority, “his former clerk could translate his angry dissents into controlling law.”

The Republicans have made a “tradeoff” they now have to live with, said Emma Green in TheAtlantic.com.

They accepted Trump’s “erosion of democratic norms,” and in return, he delivered conservative judges. The glittering prize of a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority “makes some of the damage worth it.” But with Trump heading for defeat and control of the Senate in jeopardy, the party may pay a heavy price.