Trump nominates to the U.S. Supreme Court Amy Coney Barrett: an Indiana Judge and Mother of Seven

by Yehudit Garmaise

Yesterday in the Rose Garden of the White House, President Donald Trump formally nominated Indiana Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat left open by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Brooklyn-born liberal icon, who passed away on Sept. 18.

  Barrett, a U.S. federal judge in the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, is the mother of seven children, one of whom has Down Syndrome and special needs and two of whom are adopted from Haiti.

  Barrett, who is 48, also serves as a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame Law School, the school from which she graduated in 1997.

  After the ceremony, Barrett thanked her husband, who is the assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Indiana and her children, whom she called “her greatest joy.”

   At a ceremony at the White House Rose garden today, President Trump said, “Today it is my honor to nominate one of our nation’s most brilliant and gifted legal minds to the Supreme Court.     

    “She is a woman of unparalleled achievement, towering intellect, sterling credentials and unyielding loyalty to the Constitution.”

  In contrast to some lawmakers who regard the Constitution as “a living document” that is open to much interpretation, Barrett is known for her text-based, literal interpretations of the law, a skill she honed as a law clerk for the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who was as revered by conservatives as Ginsburg was by liberals.

   When Scalia passed away in 2016, Trump nominated  Neil Gorsuch, who was confirmed in 2017 to replace fill the vacancy. In 2018, Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh, who replaced Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had retired.

    Barrett’s traditionalist outlook sharply contrasts with that of Ginsburg, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

  Later last night, Sen. Lindsay Graham (SC-R) announced that Barrett’s four-day confirmation hearings, which are sure to be contentious,

will begin on  Monday, Oct. 12.

    Many Democrats have vowed to delay or derail Barrett’s confirmation process as they argue that President Trump should not be able to replace Ginsburg because  the next presidential election is 37 days away.

   In addition, if Barrett is confirmed, to offset the conservatism of Trump’s three U.S. Supreme Court nominees, if presidential candidate Joe Biden wins the election, many Democrats plan to add liberal justices to “stack the court,” so that the Supreme Court tilts left ideologically.

    As for the success of Barrett’s nomination, with likely nothing in her personal history to discredit her, conservatives are bracing for attacks on Barrett’s Roman Catholicism, an issue that infamously came up during Barrett’s 2017 nomination to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, when Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (CA-D), expressed the idea shared by many Democrats now and at the time, that judges who are religious could not render fair and unbiased legal decisions.

   During the hearings, Sen. Feinstein attacked Barrett's belief in G-d by saying, “The dogma lives loudly within you,” clearly expressing the anti-religious bias of the Democratic party.

     The New York Post reported yesterday President Trump said yesterday, “Amy Coney Barrett will decide cases based on the text of the Constitution as written.”

     “As Amy has said, being a judge takes courage. You are not there to decide cases as you prefer but to do your duty and follow the law wherever it may take you.

    In the latest attack on Barrett, the New York Post reported this morning that anyone searching for more information online for the Supreme Court nominee will be directed to the website AmyConeyBarrett.com, which is a domain name that Demand Justice, a progressive group bought to smear her name.

. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)