The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday set an Oct. 22 vote on Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination as Republicans remained on track to confirm President Donald Trump’s pick before the Nov. 3 election.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is poised to take the first steps toward approving Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett following two long days of Senate testimony in which she stressed that she would be her own judge.
Democratic senators are trying to dig deeper into the judge’s approach as a legal originalist, one who adheres to a more strict reading of the Constitution, but the appellate court justice from Indiana has declined to directly respond to many questions.
The announcement Wednesday sets up dueling town halls with Democratic opponent Joe Biden on a night the two candidates were supposed to meet for their second debate.
The Trump administration argued that the head count needed to end immediately to give the Census Bureau time to meet a year-end deadline.
The Indiana judge described herself as taking a conservative, originalist approach to the Constitution. A former law professor, she told the senators that while she admires Scalia, her conservative mentor for whom she once clerked, she would bring her own approach.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said he would announce a decision Wednesday on the mask mandate that he first issued in July. It is currently set to expire Saturday.
The mood is likely to shift to a more confrontational tone as Barrett is grilled in 30-minute segments Tuesday by Democrats gravely opposed to President Trump’s nominee, yet virtually powerless to stop her rise.
Podcast host Mason King talks with IBJ politics reporter Lindsey Erdody and Andy Downs, director of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Purdue University-Fort Wayne, about how the races are shaping up.
Chief of Staff Thomas Cook told IBJ in an email that the “weekend post was intended to be a joke about my relationship with my coworkers, not anyone else. I took it down when I saw people were misinterpreting things.”
Democratic aides said their senators are united in their view that they will not press Barrett about her beliefs—hoping to avoid the mishap from her circuit court confirmation hearing in 2017, when Feinstein told Barrett that “the dogma lives loudly within you.”
Indiana Democrats are targeting the state attorney general’s race as their best chance to break the stranglehold Republicans have over state government.
Pence’s staff said the change was meant to prevent burnout given his weekend schedule, travel plans next week and late-night arrival back in Washington, D.C., on Thursday evening.
The chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates said the final debate, scheduled for Oct. 22, was still slated to go on as planned. But next Thursday’s debate could be gone, after the Trump team objected to the commission’s virtual mandate.
Seated at distant tables and separated by clear plexiglass barriers to help prevent infection, Pence, 61, and Harris, 55, arrived at the Salt Lake City debate as two of the most consequential running mates in recent history.
Vice President Mike Pence and his Democratic challenger, California Sen. Kamala Harris, are set to face off Wednesday night in a debate that will offer starkly different visions for a country confronting escalating crises.
In a separate case, a judge temporarily stayed, pending appeal, an order blocking an Indiana law that requires absentee ballots be received by noon to be counted.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick, a frequent critic of her fellow Republicans, took several swipes at Gov. Eric Holcomb in an online event Monday night for Dr. Woody Myers.
Attorney general candidates Todd Rokita and Jonathan Weinzapfel are divided over how the governor has used the state’s emergency powers law to impose a mask mandate and other coronavirus-related executive orders.
Voters awaiting results in some of the key presidential battleground states on election night should be prepared to keep waiting.
