WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett sought to present herself to the nation Monday as a humble and apolitical judge, opening a pandemic-altered Senate confirmation hearing that Democrats tried to make as much about health care, covid-19 and President Donald Trump as about Barrett's qualifications.
It was the start of what will be an acrimonious four days, as Republicans embark just weeks before Election Day on a move to lock in a long-sought 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Democrats acknowledged there is little they can do to stop Barrett's confirmation. So they attempted to use the first day of the hearing to portray Republicans as a threat to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the nomination as a last-ditch effort to save Trump should next month's election lead to litigation in the Supreme Court.
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"There is nothing about this that is normal," said Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.
The nominee, who spoke for just 12 minutes, wore a mask for nearly the entire hearing. Several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee participated remotely, one because he has tested positive for the coronavirus. In a first, the architect of the Capitol submitted a letter certifying that the hearing room met Centers for Disease Control and Prevention safety regulations.
And when the 48-year-old Barrett, nominated by Trump after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death less than a month ago, finally spoke, it was from a table that had just been cleared of antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizer.
She rarely strayed from remarks released by the White House on Sunday, in which she pledged a nonpartisan and deferential approach to judging.
"The policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the people," said Barrett, a Notre Dame law professor who for the past three years has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. "The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not try."
She added: "I believe Americans of all backgrounds deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our Constitution and laws as they are written. And I believe I can serve my country by playing that role."
And she said, "Courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life."
But Barrett, with her husband, Jesse, and six of her seven children behind her, was largely a bystander on the hearing's opening day. Instead, Republicans and Democrats on the committee talked at each other for about five hours. Questioning of the judge will begin this morning.
IDEOLOGICAL SWING
Barrett's replacement of the liberal Ginsburg would be the court's biggest ideological swing since Justice Clarence Thomas took the seat of retiring civil-rights icon Thurgood Marshall nearly 30 years ago.
Ginsburg's legacy was felt throughout the hearing, with some Democrats wearing lapel pins with her likeness. Barrett also praised the liberal icon, saying she was "forever grateful" for Ginsburg's trailblazing path as a woman on the court.
Democrats portrayed Barrett's "rushed" nomination as, variously, an attempt to install a justice who will oppose the Affordable Care Act in a case to be heard next month, a backstop for what the president has said is likely to be a contested election outcome, and a power grab by Republicans.
The Republican-led Senate in 2016 refused even to grant a hearing when President Barack Obama that March nominated Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat of Justice Antonin Scalia, who had died the previous month.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., pledged at the time that he would never consider someone nominated in a presidential election year. The Judiciary Committee chairman obliquely referred to the broken pledge Monday.
"There's nothing unconstitutional about this process," said Graham, who four years ago told people to "use my words against me" if he backtracked. "This is a vacancy that's occurred, the tragic loss of a great woman. And we're going to fill that vacancy with another great woman. The bottom line here is that the Senate is doing its duty constitutionally."
He added: "This is probably not about persuading each other unless something really dramatic happens. All the Republicans will vote yes; all the Democrats will vote no."
Graham told reporters later in the day that Barrett is "a slam dunk" based on her qualifications. She received the highest, "well-qualified" rating from the American Bar Association, though she is the first nominee since Thomas who did not receive a unanimous assessment.
Underscoring the Republicans' confidence, Graham set an initial committee vote on the nomination for Thursday, the last day of the hearing, which would allow for final approval by the panel one week later and a vote for confirmation by the full Senate on Oct. 26.
Trump appeared to be watching from the White House on Monday, offering commentary as the day wore on.
In one Twitter post, sent not long after Graham explained why it was important for Barrett to face a thorough, bipartisan vetting, the president said Republicans were giving Democrats too much time "to make their self serving statements relative to our great new future Supreme Court Justice." He suggested cutting off the hearing and approving "STIMULUS for the people!!!"
DEMOCRATS' ARGUMENTS
There seems little Democrats can do to prevent a narrow majority of Republicans from confirming Barrett in a floor vote.
"We do not have some secret, clever procedural way to stop this sham. Let's be honest," Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said at a post-hearing news conference.
Instead, Democrats decorated the hearing room with posters of constituents -- "Laura," "Shari," "Conner" -- who they said will be hurt if the Supreme Court agrees with the challengers in a lawsuit that a key component of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, and that the entire law must fall.
The act has survived two challenges at the Supreme Court, and Barrett, as a law professor, has written critically of the majority opinions in both.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris of California, a member of the committee, participated remotely from her office to draw attention to what some Democrats labeled an unsafe hearing. She had a copy of a children's book about Ginsburg, "I Dissent," propped up behind her.
Harris warned that Barrett's nomination puts in jeopardy everything Ginsburg fought to protect. She said the court is "often the last refuge for equal justice" and that not only health care but also voting rights, workers' rights, abortion rights and the very idea of justice are at stake.
"They are trying to get a justice onto the court in time to ensure they can strip away the protections in the Affordable Care Act," Harris said. "And if they succeed, it will result in millions of people losing access to health care at the worst possible time, in the middle of a pandemic."
"Health care coverage for millions of Americans is at stake with this nomination," agreed Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee's senior Democrat.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said the nomination is a "judicial torpedo aimed" at the law's protection for people with preexisting health conditions.
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Barrett has criticized the court's two major rulings supporting the law, but Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, dismissed warnings that Barrett will undo the law as "outrageous."
He said Democrats were basing their attacks on a legal argument that Barrett had made about a different portion of the law than the one currently in question. "The legal questions before the court this fall are entirely separate," he said.
For the most part, though, Republicans largely bypassed the policy implications of the court's rightward tilt in favor of Barrett's personal story.
After the hearing, Republicans deflected the Democrats' rigid focus on the Affordable Care Act and defended Barrett from the assumption that she would be an automatic vote to dismantle it in court.
"Her job will be to talk about the law and how you would apply the law to any litigation -- whether it be guns, health care, abortion, campaign finance," Graham told reporters. "I think she'll do a ... good job of understanding the role of a judge is different from that of us."
The challenge to the Affordable Care Act is being brought by Republican-led states. The Trump administration is supporting the effort.
Democrats are likely to pressure Barrett to recuse herself from that case and any arising from the presidential election.
"Your participation in any case involving Donald Trump's election would immediately do explosive, enduring harm to the court's legitimacy and your own credibility," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said. "You must recuse yourself."
Barrett has not indicated that is a possibility.
GOP BACKING
Confident that they have the votes to confirm Barrett, GOP senators went out of their way to praise Ginsburg, saying she is emblematic of a time when nominees were confirmed for their qualifications, regardless of their ideologies.
They recounted her friendship with Barrett's mentor, Scalia, even though the two disagreed on most issues. They said Barrett would bring the same mindset. But there was no mention of the fact that Ginsburg told her granddaughter that her dying wish was that her replacement be named by the winner of the election.
The GOP senators described Barrett as a breath of fresh air for the court, a woman raised in the South and educated in the law in the Midwest, at Notre Dame, rather than at Harvard or Yale, which produced the other justices.
"I can't help but be so proud ... as a fellow woman, fellow mom, fellow Midwesterner," said Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, adding, "I see you for who you are."
One of Barrett's home-state senators, Mike Braun, R-Ind., called the nominee a "legal titan who drives a minivan," as comfortable at a football tailgate as she is in the academic ivory tower.
Several Republicans noted she would be only the fifth woman to serve on the court and, as Barrett herself noted, the only one with school-age children.
The Republican senators also spent considerable time defending Barrett against attacks that never came, for her religious convictions and membership in a charismatic Christian organization.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., lambasted what he called a "pattern and practice of religious bigotry" by Democrats. However, Democratic senators made clear in advance that they didn't plan to question the judge on the specifics of her religious faith.
Talk of religion came from Barrett herself: "I believe in the power of prayer, and it has been uplifting to hear that so many people are praying for me," she said.
Information for this article was contributed by Robert Barnes, Seung Min Kim, Derek Hawkins, Rachael Bade, Karoun Demirjian, Amy Goldstein, Paul Kane, Ann E. Marimow and John Wagner of The Washington Post; by Mark Sherman, Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press; and by Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times.
