Zoe Tillman Profile picture
Hello from court. Covering the intersection of law and politics at Bloomberg News. ztillman2 at bloomberg dot net

Sep 30, 2020, 6 tweets

On the SCOTUS segment during tonight's debate:
- We didn't learn much we didn't already know about where Trump and Biden stand on filling RBG's seat. Trump made clear they'll push Barrett's nomination through during the lame duck session if they can't get her confirmed by Nov. 3

- Trump asked how Biden could know Judge Barrett's views on Roe v. Wade. Setting aside what we know about Barrett's views on abortion and how she's voted on the bench, Trump has explicitly said he will pick justices who will reverse Roe so...that's one way Biden could know

- Biden declines to engage on whether he'd support court packing (he's prev. said he doesn't support it), pivots instead on making a pitch to people to vote.

But court packing will now go down in history as the issue that prompted Biden to say to Trump, "Will you shut up man"

- I will continue this thread since the courts came up again. Trump repeated his line that he'll have 300 federal judges confirmed by the end of his first term. The math on that doesn't add up. From the last time I went down this rabbithole:

- Trump criticized Obama for leaving a lot of federal court vacancies open by the end of his second term. Dems faulted Obama for moving too slow on noms in hist first term, but the reason there were so many vacancies by 2017 was McConnell slowed action on nominees in 2016

- Trump is asked if he's counting on SCOTUS, incl. with a Justice Barrett, to settle mail-in voting fights. Trump replies: "I think I'm counting on them to look at the ballots definitely. I hope we don't need them in terms of the election itself. But for the ballots I think so."

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