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- Mar 6, 2017
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On Sept. 26, 2020, President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court in a pre-election rush to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg less than 10 days earlier. In doing so, Trump replaced a legendary champion of women’s equality and bodily autonomy with an ideologue committed to dismantling Ginsburg’s legacy.
People For the American Way’s evaluation of Barrett’s record as a federal judge concluded that she had been “a reliable vote to deny people their legal rights in areas such as health care, racial equity, criminal justice, immigrants’ rights, and the rights of working people.”
Barrett’s rushed confirmation by the Republican-led Senate days before Americans voted to remove Trump from office was proof of Republican leaders’ contempt for democracy and their view of the Court as purely an instrument of political power. Four years earlier, Republican senators refused to even consider President Barack Obama’s nomination to fill the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death for an entire year, giving Trump a chance to start his term with a Supreme Court nomination.
Barrett’s nomination, Trump’s third, allowed him make good on his promise to religious-right leaders in 2016, when he made a deal to win their support. Put me in the White House, he said, and I’ll give you a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade. That was Amy Coney Barrett’s assignment, one for which some religious-right leaders insisted that she was anointed by God, and one which she carried out, voting to open the door to today’s efforts to criminalize abortion across the country.
The White House event at which Barrett’s nomination was announced became notorious for spreading the COVID-19 virus among attendees, but the harm caused by her nomination and confirmation will certainly be broader and longer lasting.
Here’s what the Amy Coney Barrett nomination reminds us of the threat still posed by Trump:
People For The American Way
People For the American Way’s evaluation of Barrett’s record as a federal judge concluded that she had been “a reliable vote to deny people their legal rights in areas such as health care, racial equity, criminal justice, immigrants’ rights, and the rights of working people.”
Barrett’s rushed confirmation by the Republican-led Senate days before Americans voted to remove Trump from office was proof of Republican leaders’ contempt for democracy and their view of the Court as purely an instrument of political power. Four years earlier, Republican senators refused to even consider President Barack Obama’s nomination to fill the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death for an entire year, giving Trump a chance to start his term with a Supreme Court nomination.
Barrett’s nomination, Trump’s third, allowed him make good on his promise to religious-right leaders in 2016, when he made a deal to win their support. Put me in the White House, he said, and I’ll give you a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade. That was Amy Coney Barrett’s assignment, one for which some religious-right leaders insisted that she was anointed by God, and one which she carried out, voting to open the door to today’s efforts to criminalize abortion across the country.
The White House event at which Barrett’s nomination was announced became notorious for spreading the COVID-19 virus among attendees, but the harm caused by her nomination and confirmation will certainly be broader and longer lasting.
Here’s what the Amy Coney Barrett nomination reminds us of the threat still posed by Trump:
- Trump is proud of the right-wing Supreme Court majority he solidified. At religious-right political events this year he has bragged that his nominations gave anti-choice forces a victory that they had been seeking for 50 years. Anti-equality groups are now scheming to give the Trump court a chance to overturnmarriage equality and other rulings recognizing the rights of LGBTQ Americans. Christian nationalists are gearing up to “go on the offense” with new efforts to further weaken separation of church and state.
- The same religious-right groups Trump is counting on to help him get elected are now scheming to erect an explicit religious test for future Supreme Court nominees. In a plot exposed by People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch, the American Family Association and other religious-right groups are working to tank the potential nominations of any right-wing judge who doesn’t meet their standard for holding a “biblical worldview.”
- The Trump takeover of the Supreme Court has emboldened right-wing political groups, who are now preparing to take over the rest of the federal government if Trump or another Republican wins the White House. The “2025 Project” being led by the Heritage Foundation is putting a plan in place to help Trump purge the civil service of anyone not considered a MAGA loyalist, and to turn the Justice Department and FBI into weapons for his personal vendettas.
- Trump turned over selection of judges to right-wing groups, who used him to fill the lower courts with hard-right activists, often unqualified, who have been wreaking havoc with rulings that ignore legal precedent and opinions that read more like far-right rants. Giving Trump four more years to fill the courts with such judges would go a long way to fulfilling the right-wing movement’s dream of repealing the New Deal and rolling backmore than a century of progress.
People For The American Way
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