Thread by @Hegemommy

And we're back! Day Three of the Barrett hearings are happening whether we want them to or not. I'll be covering from here.

Lindsay Graham is opening with a rebuttal to Sen. Harris last night

Graham now talking about how conservative women are marginalized in political discourse

Graham says this is the first time in history Republicans have nominated a woman who is unashamed of being pro-life and it's really so sad how much they run away from Sandra Day O'Connor

Graham again complaining about how little ACA money South Carolina gets

Graham now asking about abortion and the criminalization of IVF and is trying to rehabilitate Barrett's unwillingness to say IVF would be criminalized under her view of fetal personhood

Graham engaging in excessive bad faith arguing right now, even for him

Graham now pushing GOP talking points of ballot harvesting/fraud ugh this is gonna be a long day

Graham asks if there is a constitutional right to a polygamous relationship as a way to try and undercut Obergefell and marriage equality

Barrett already sounds defensive and Graham is the friendliest of witnesses she can have

Graham again bringing up national anti-choice legislation he's pressing

Expect a federal 20 week abortion ban real soon

Now Feinstein is up and is once again delighted to see Barrett's family with her 😐

The good news is the Democratic questioning only gets better from here

Feinstein asks Barrett a question on age discrimination in employment and notes an increasing number of households are led by workers 50+ with no job security and little savings

Grassley is up now. Will likely yell at the clouds

Grassley starts off by congratulating Barrett on doing a very good job answering questions 🙃

It's time to get real, Grassley says

I have no idea I'm just here reporting

Grassley has moved on to government rationed health care

This sounds like a Grassley rant in the judiciary committee circa 2009

I think maybe Grassley just called the federal judiciary The Bad Place?

He wouldn't be wrong, if so

Grassley now talking about cameras in the courts and this is one point on which we totally agree

LIVESTREAM ALL THE ARGUMENTS ALWAYS INCLUDING SCOTUS

Sen Leahy up now and he also wants cameras in the courtroom

DAYLIGHT IN THE COURTS NOW PLEASE

Leahy always sounds like he's got a mouth full of marbles and appearing remotely isn't exactly helping

Leahy starts with a line of questions on the Affordable Care Act and whether Barrett has ever spoken out in *defense* of the health care law

Barrett answers nope never done anything like that

Leahy now asking Barrett about her unwillingness to say that the President can't refuse to comply with a court order.

Even Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said so during their hearings.

Leahy gives Barrett another chance to answer.

Barrett dances around here

Leahy and Barrett having a conversation about the national guard coming in to enforce Brown and it's all pretty dystopian

Leahy asks Barrett if the president can pardon himself

Says she can't answer that

Sen Cornyn up now he's here to wax philosophically with Barrett. Says she wont need her notepad

I might need a drink though

Wonder how long till Cornyn waxes poetic about his decades long crusade to take health care away from folks

Cornyn asks Barrett a question about standing and she answers by using Graham's 'fetal pain' bill as an example

You can't just come to court because you don't like Sen. Graham's fetal pain bill, Barrett says. You have to show you are injured by it.

THIS IS A HUGE RED FLAG ABORTION FOLKS

Anti-choice advocates have been trying to challenge standing in abortion cases for years, and just last term the Court turned away one such challenge.

By Barrett's analysis here only a patient needing a 20 week abortion could sue

Sen Durbin up now. I took a little break to listen to mashups because self care matters more than ever

Durbin starts off with voting and conservative efforts to suppress the votes

Barrett getting combative with Durbin on race discrimination

I feel like Durbin is a very good example of the challenge Dems have moving forward. Like. He's not bad. Sometimes he's good! But effective? Not sure.

I feel like if Barrett is this testy with Durbin she's going to take her earrings off when A-Klo is up

Sen Lee up now. Reminder that yesterday he was spreading both COVID and lies about abortion all over the Barrett hearings

rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2020/1…

Lee says he's going to start by talking about religious freedom but somehow I *DONT* think he wants to talk about the Muslim Ban

Lee wants Barrett to talk about Blaine Amendments-- those are prohibitions on taxpayer funding of religious schools

Conservative SCOTUS totes hate Blaine Amendments

Lee now asking Barrett about Price v Chicago a case that challenged a Chicago protest zone around abortion clinics. She voted to uphold the protest zone because she had to. Her face answering the question says it all.

Lee now asking about a fetal remains opinion Barrett wrote that was ultimately went up to SCOTUS. @AngryBlackLady wrote about that case here

rewirenewsgroup.com/ablc/2019/05/2…

@AngryBlackLady Sen. Rumpled Hotness is up now

AKA Sen Whitehouse is set to question Barrett

Whitehouse starts off by noting the code of ethics does not apply to Supreme Court justices

Sen Whitehouse has more poster boards and you better believe we'll be discussing this on Boom! Lawyered later tonight

Every time Whitehouse puts his face in his hand I get weak in the knees why am I like this lololol

Gonna pitch a reboot of Schoolhouse Rock but with Sen Whitehouse as the host

Sen Cruz is up right now. Why? Because that's just how 2020 works

Never a bad time to repost this piece from @AngryBlackLady before Cruz starts lying about birth control

If Birth Control Induces Abortion, Then So Does Voting for Ted Cruz

rewirenewsgroup.com/ablc/2015/03/2…

Ted Cruz says Democrats want Charles Mason to vote because felons only vote Democrat which is an interesting argument given the indictments racing through the Trump/RNC camps

Cruz moves on to the Federalist Society and dark money and also makes fun on Whitehouse's poster board and also calls out Demand Justice specifically and I love how upset Cruz is by all of it

@katieoconnoresq I tip my hat to y'all 😂

Remember when Trump put Cruz on his SCOTUS shortlist just to humiliate Cruz?

Listening to Cruz now-- so does Cruz

Ted Cruz calls 'school choice' the civil rights issue of the next decade in case it wasn't clear WHY Republicans were pushing schools to open during COVID with zero distance learning support/plans for handling outbreaks knowing it's a disaster in the making

The thing with Republicans is that there is always a tell.

Cruz moves on to "packing the court" and calls it an abuse of power with a complete straight face in today's proceedings

Okay quick break for lunch or screaming inside your hearts. Or both!

And we are back! A-Klo is up and reminds us all this isn't normal and these hearings shouldn't be happening

AKlo turns immediately to the Affordable Care Act and the arguments the Trump administration is CURRENTLY making that the entire health care law has to go

Barrett's dislike of Klobuchar is palpable

Klobuchar brings up Barrett's work as an attorney working on Bush v Gore, the 2000 Supreme Court case that handed the presidency to Republicans

Klobuchar is straight up chuckling at some of Barrett's responses and frankly I'm here for it

Sen Sasse is up now and I bet we talk about civics and 8th graders

His first question is how what she'd consider a successful career after spending "30 or 40 years" on the Court 😫😫😫😫

Civics champion Sasse does't want cameras in the court because cameras in the court is contrary to transparency according to Sasse so good luck untangling that pretzel logic

Sasse now asks why is the Ninth Amendment even

Sasse now wants to know why the First Amendment has so many parts

Sasse is speechifying

Ugh now he wants to talk about baseball because we're doing an entire Opie schtick

Somehow this is going to be a story about Democrats being cheaters and Republicans being the real victims

Texas making fun of Nebraska for a lack of sports teams is gonna strike a lot of nerves glad we can do this while the country burns

Sen Coons is up now time for the yuk yuks over sportsball to end fellas

Coons turns right to originalism and the right to privacy

Scalia thinks Griswold was wrongly decided. Do you agree with Scalia there Coons says

Barrett says she can't express a view on this

Barrett calls states trying to ban contraception an "academic" question

Barrett won't say if she thinks Griswold was correctly decided just that she doesn't think it is "going anywhere"

Barrett specifically says she thinks Coons wants to know because he's gonna ask if she thinks Roe is correctly decided

So lets be very clear here. Barrett does not believe in a right to privacy

Sexual privacy rights encompass many freedoms, all of which are at risk with a Barrett confirmation

Coons has a poster board with over 100 cases and the difference between a 5-4 conservative majority and .... not

It's a stark exhibit of just how much power the Court wields over our lives even as all this theatre feels so remote

Josh Hawley is up now and again why

His first question is asking if there's a legal movement to challenge Griswold

Hawley now brings up Bork

The Borking of Amy Barrett is a terrible headline someone make it go away

Is it fair to say you are an independent woman, Hawley asks Barrett

Good grief we've got 19 more minutes of this

Also why are Republicans suddenly running away from Scalia

Josh Hawley bringing up Hunter Biden with about 10 "hypotheticallys" thrown in there

Hawley is Eric Trump basically

Hawley gonna talk about the free exercise of religion for evangelicals

Barrett tells Blumnethal she had a glass of wine last night after the hearing

and readers I didn't even have a drink yesterday

Barrett's mic cuts out because maybe the universe decided we all could use a break

Is it the rapture and have we all been left behind at this Barrett confirmation hearing

And we're back! I have apparently neither been raptured nor left behind I am indeed still stuck here listening to this hearing

Blumenthal returns to banning IVF and Barrett still won't say whether she believes IVF can be constitutionally banned

Blumenthal asks if Brown was correctly decided

Barrett says it was correctly decided

The Loving Case: Barrett says it was correctly decided

Griswold: Barrett gets cagey

Blumenthal says the fact that Barrett thinks Griswold isn't likely to be challenged is MORE reason for her to be willing to say Griswold was correctly decided

Barrett offers up word salad in response

Barrett says she would be surprised if people think contraception is about to be criminalized

Listen y'all. Barrett opposed birth control access for Notre Dame students AS A LEGAL POSITION while a prof there

Lawerence v Texas: Barrett won't say if she thinks it was correctly decided

Obergefell v Hodges: Barrett wont say if it was correctly decided

LGTBQ rights are directly on the line with her

Reminder Barrett said Brown v Board was correctly decided. Also binding precedent of the Supreme Court. So she *CAN* when she wants to.

That was a devastating line of questioning

Blumenthal pivots to corruption and then climate change and Barrett won't offer up if she thinks climate change is real

OOOH A QUESTION ON THE SUPREME COURT SHADOW DOCKET THIS IS SEXY STUFF FOR LAW NERDS

The 'shadow docket' is a term referring to emergency orders/opinions that happen outside the usual court practice

Welp we lost audio again

We're back this time with Tillis asking Barrett about guns and sheriffs who would refuse to issue permits

Tillis asks how she would approach the case and Barrett has no problem walking into this hypothetical despite the fact that this kind of case could come before her

Amy Coney Barrett talks about the confirmation process and how her children would be attacked and that is some nonsense

weaponizing her white motherhood for conservative sympathy is so gross

Tillis now brings up abortion and Gonzales v Carhart and "late term abortion"

Reminder late term abortions are not a thing and Tillis needs to stop equating them with his granddaughter who was born premature

Barrett again brings up Graham's 20 week abortion ban as though she's signaling for one to land before her. 🤔

Tillis just said he hopes everyone votes on November 11th

That would be .... the day after SCOTUS hears the ACA case and not election day

Hirono up now and wastes no time challening Barrett on supporting Trump's public charge rule which would deny visas to immigrants the administration thinks will use public benefits

The effect of the public charge rule is devastating and a reproductive justice issue.

Hirono asking Barrett about her decision in Price v Chicago the case where Barrett reluctantly upheld an abortion clinic protest zone law and basically begged anti-choice attorneys to appeal that decision to SCOTUS -- which they did

SCOTUS didn't take the case

@steve_vladeck gets a shout out from Hirono noting Barrett's confirmation would lurch the Court to the right

Hirono brings up the Supreme Court's order issued yesterday allowing the census count to be cut short

Hirono asks Barrett if she thinks voting discrimination exists and Barrett says we have the Voting Rights Act

Oh yay Sen Ernst is up now and I'm already annoyed

Ernst going to take up the cause of conservative women reclaiming "feminism" and my stomach hurts

Ernst is talking about an ideological litmus test for women and she asks Barrett to respond to folks who say that she's not RBG

I mean. She's not.

Conservative women fare just fine in politics and this gendering of white resentment politics is awful

Patriarchy is bullshit across the board but miss me with your poor downtrodden conservative women schtick

Ernst is now doing a word cloud for Barrett

Did Ernst just bring up her daughter's Black friend?

I swear to cheesus conservatives cannot help themselves

Sen Booker up now and dives right into the public charge rule

Booker asks Barrett if its wrong to separate children from their parents to deter them from coming onto the country and Barrett wont answer

Booker does a very good job communicating how disappointed he is in Barrett in general

Booker now brings up racial disparities in policing, especially through the war on drugs. Notes white folks and Black folks use drugs in the same amounts but policing doesn't reflect that

Booker bringing up virtue tests to vote. We ran a piece on Amy Coney Barrett and virtue tests yesterday!

rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2020/1…

Next up is Sen Crapo. Again a reminder that it is CRAY-po not CRAP-oh.

I mix it up all the time too

CRAY-po insisting Republicans are not challenging pre-existing coverage and says its not at risk in the Supreme Court case and that is a bald face lie

CRAY-po also says Tillis has legislation to protect pre-existing conditions pending which WHY ARE YOU PASSING A BILL IF THIS ISNT A THING

Barrett keeps flicking at Brown v Board in discussions of precedent and makes me think she'll cite that in the opinion she writes to overturn Roe

These are some of my hard balls CRAY-po jokes, making everything instantly awkward

Sen Harris up now and starts immediately with the Voting Rights Act

Harris is giving a devastating history of racialized voter suppression in the context of this Voting Rights Act discussion

Barrett says he's very happy to day that racial discrimination exists in this country and sometimes slips like that just happen after a long day 🙃🙃🙃

Harris now going through Barrett's history of ruling against workers while on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals

Harris brings up climate change and it's clear Barrett thinks this is matter up for debate

Kennedy asks Barrett if she is a racist, if she likes clean air, and if she supports science and if she likes puppies

Big reveal: The Barretts' have a pet chinchilla

Kennedy now talking about California's history of discrimination to rebut Sen. Harris

Barrett talking about Brown and reliance interests the South had in Plessy makes me very nervous about abortion rights

I do not want Sen. Kennedy talking about state constitutions no thanks

The reason I don't want Kennedy talking about state constitutions is because voters there have a measure on the ballot to amend the state constitution for an abortion ban

rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2020/1…

Trust me. It's always about abortion

Wow Kennedy asked Barred about Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" and it just got real weird

I still can't believe Blackburn is a Senator

Honestly what is she even talking about right now