2020 Election Live Updates: Amy Coney Barrett
Sworn In as Supreme Court Justice, as Democrats Vow Reprisals
Senate Republicans confirmed Judge Barrett 52 to 48,
delivering President Trump a victory days before the election. She could begin
work as soon as Tuesday.
Here’s what
you need to know:
Barrett is
swiftly sworn in after her Supreme Court confirmation, as Democrats fume.
Looking for
clarity on the race? Watch where Trump and Biden travel.
The Supreme
Court’s ruling to limit ballot-counting in Wisconsin comes as voting battles
escalate.
Trump plans
to hold his election night festivities at his Washington hotel, despite crowd
restrictions.
Barrett is
swiftly sworn in after her Supreme Court confirmation, as Democrats fume.
The Senate
voted 52 to 48 to confirm the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative
appeals court judge, eight days before the presidential
election.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
A divided
Senate voted on Monday night to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme
Court, capping a lightning-fast Senate approval that handed President Trump a
victory days before the election and promised to tip the court to the right for
years to come.
In a
52-to-48 vote, all but one Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who is
battling for re-election, supported Judge Barrett, a 48-year-old appeals court
judge and protégée of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Wasting no
time, Mr. Trump held an unusual nighttime swearing-in ceremony for Judge
Barrett on the South Lawn of the White House, a month to the day after a mostly
maskless Rose Garden event attended by multiple people who later tested
positive for the coronavirus, including Mr. Trump and the first lady. Though
more precautions were taken at the ceremony on Monday, neither Mr. Trump nor
Justice Barrett wore masks, perhaps because both already have had the virus and
could be immune.
Justice
Clarence Thomas, who swore in his new colleague, wore no mask, either, even
though he is not known to have been previously infected. None of the other
seven justices attended.
Mr. Trump
praised Justice Barrett’s “deep knowledge, tremendous poise and towering
intellect,” calling her a suitable replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
the liberal stalwart who died last month and was her ideological polar
opposite.
In her remarks,
Justice Barrett seemed intent on sending the message that she would not simply
do Mr. Trump’s bidding, using the words “independent” or “independence” three
times, even though he has said explicitly that he wanted her seated before the
election so she could lend her vote in case of a legal dispute over the
balloting.
“A judge
declares independence not only from the Congress and the president, but also
from the private beliefs that might otherwise move her,” Justice Barrett said
after being sworn in. “The oath I have solemnly taken tonight,” she added,
“means at its core that I will do my job without any fear or favor and that I
will do so independently of both the political branches and of my own
preferences.”
Barrett’s
Record: A Conservative Who Would Push the Supreme Court to the Right
As an
appeals court judge, Judge Barrett has issued opinions that have reflected
those of her mentor, Justice Antonin Scalia, but with few of his occasional
liberal rulings.
Neither
Democrats nor Republicans seemed to believe that, instead commending or
condemning her confirmation as a victory for conservatives and a defeat for
liberals. Democrats immediately vowed on Monday night that there would be
reprisals.
Representative
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York called on Democrats to expand the court if
they won the presidency and took control of the Senate, an idea that the
Democratic presidential candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr., has so far refused to
co-sign. Mr. Biden instead has said that he would set up a bipartisan
commission to look at ways to overhaul the court.
Senator
Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, excoriated her Republican
colleagues in a fund-raising email to her supporters that was sent minutes
after the vote.
“They stole
another Supreme Court seat just eight days before the end of the election,
after tens of millions of Americans had already cast their ballots, and just 15
days before the Supreme Court will hear a case that could overturn the
Affordable Care Act,” Ms. Warren wrote.
In a statement
late Monday, the Biden campaign called the Barrett confirmation “rushed and
unprecedented,” and issued a call to action based on the Affordable Care Act
case.
“If you
want to say no, this abuse of power doesn’t represent you — then turn out and
vote,” the statement said.
Justices
can begin work as soon as they are sworn in, meaning Justice Barrett could be
at work as early as Tuesday. The court is confronting a host of issues
concerning the election and Mr. Trump’s policies, including cases from North
Carolina and Pennsylvania about whether deadlines for receiving mailed ballots
may be extended. Under the court’s usual practices, Justice Barrett cannot
participate in cases that have already been argued, though they could be argued
again before the full court if the justices are deadlocked.
52-48The
vote capped a brazen feat for Republicans, who pushed through a Supreme Court
nominee in little more than five weeks.
Welcome to
the watch-what-they-do end of the presidential campaign. Don’t pay attention to
what the candidates and their aides are saying about their how-to-win
strategies in the final days. The best way to tell which states President Trump
and Joseph R. Biden Jr. think are in play is to track their campaign travel.
Trips are
being announced just a few days in advance, and the operative word is
tentative. Candidates will make last-minute adjustments to their schedules
based on the latest information from overnight polls (or prodding from worried
supporters).
Case in point:
Mr. Biden paid a quick trip to Pennsylvania on Monday. This is one of the most
contested states on the map, which the president narrowly won last time and
where polls now show Mr. Biden ahead. Mr. Trump has spent so much time in the
state in recent days that it seems only a matter of time until Pennsylvania
starts hitting him up for its resident income tax.
Mr. Biden
heads to Georgia on Tuesday and to Iowa later in the week, two states Mr. Trump
won in 2016 that are on the edge of the Democrats-have-a-chance map. It’s an
aggressive move. Should Mr. Biden lose next Tuesday, expect the second-guessing
brigade to inspect his decision to play offense when perhaps the game called
for defense, and to invoke the trip Hillary Clinton made to Arizona at the end
of the 2016 campaign.
But he is
also going to Tampa, signaling how important Florida is, and how Democrats have
put the president on the defensive in a state that he needs to win. (If early
returns show Mr. Biden winning Florida next week, watch Democrats begin to pop
the champagne.) And he is also heading to Wisconsin, as he tries to nail down
the Big Three Midwestern states — the other two are Pennsylvania and Michigan —
that lifted Mr. Trump over the 270 electoral vote hurdle four years ago.
Mr. Trump
is spending a lot of time on defense this week, heading to states that he won
in 2016 and where he is struggling today: Arizona and, of course, Michigan,
Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Assuming Mr. Trump can hold on to the rest of his
2016 map (and that may be a big assumption), he needs to hold just one of the
three key Midwestern states to win re-election.
Interestingly,
Mr. Trump is also going to Nevada, a state that Mrs. Clinton won in 2016.
Nevada has not been extensively polled, and the surveys that have been done
show a tight race there. Some clarity about the state of play in Nevada could
come later Tuesday with the latest New York Times/Siena College Poll, which we
are expecting to release around 1 p.m. Eastern.
— Adam Nagourney
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