COVID-Riddled Republicans Will Do Whatever It Takes to Confirm Amy Coney Barrett

By Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair

08 October 20

Don’t think for a second that three senators testing positive for coronavirus will stop Republicans from voting for their SCOTUS pick.

epublicans had seemed poised to jam through their Supreme Court pick, Amy Coney Barrett, in the final weeks of the presidential election. But a COVID outbreak, seemingly stemming from her Rose Garden nomination ceremony, cast those plans in uncertainty. In addition to Donald Trump, several aides, associates, and three GOP senators have so far tested positive for the coronavirus, threatening to delay the last-minute proceedings and maybe even leaving Mitch McConnell short of the votes he needs to confirm the president’s replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

But Republicans are brushing aside the idea that a spate of infections at the White House and on Capitol Hill will prevent them from confirming Barrett before Election Day. Perhaps taking their cue from Trump, who has continued to take a cavalier approach to the coronavirus, even as he remains contagious, the GOP is bragging that they’re not not going to let a little coronavirus get in the way of their 6–3 majority. “We will not stop working for the American people,” McConnell said Monday, announcing that Barrett’s hearings will begin next week, “because Democrats are afraid they may lose a vote.”

Barrett’s confirmation, once seemingly a sure thing for the GOP, was abruptly thrown into jeopardy after three Republican senators—Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson and two members of the Judiciary Committee, Mike Lee and Thom Tillis—tested positive for COVID-19. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has called for a delay in the proceedings, saying the hybrid hearings McConnell is planning wouldn’t be adequate and that in-person hearings could be dangerous. “If it’s not safe for the Senate to be in session,” he said over the weekend, “it’s not safe for the hearings to go forward.” Ah, but who gives a shit about safety? Certainly not Republicans, who have continued to dismiss the gravity of the virus now spreading through their ranks.

“If we have to go in and vote, I’ve already told the leadership, I’ll go in in a moon suit,” Johnson said in a radio interview Monday. “We think this is pretty important.”

The fight over the late Ginsburg’s seat on the bench had already been ugly, given the GOP’s shameless reversal on confirming justices in an election year and the threat Barrett may pose to abortion rights and gay marriage. (Further raising the stakes was the stinging criticism Monday by conservatives Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito of the court’s 2015 same-sex marriage ruling.) But the whole exercise has gotten even more grotesque with the coronavirus thrown into the mix.

Not only does fast-tracking Barrett for a lifetime appointment seem even more slapdash with COVID interrupting the confirmation process, the GOP’s going about business as usual, even as the virus tears through their ranks, taking the party’s dangerous dismissal of the pandemic to new and staggering heights. Trump kept traveling—debating Joe Biden, appearing at campaign events, meeting with donors—after likely being exposed to, and later testing positive for, COVID. After being hospitalized, he subjected his security detail to the deadly virus for the sake of a ride-about to wave at supporters. And on Monday, with his condition unclear but almost certainly still contagious, he returned to the White House and promptly began downplaying the danger of the disease that’s killed more than 210,000 Americans.

Trump’s behavior has gone from extremely dangerous to practically homicidal, but he’s not alone. His aides have continued to flout public health precautions like mask-wearing. Lawmakers who have been infected or been exposed to the virus have gone out in public; Johnson attended a Wisconsin event while awaiting his test results, and a trio of Minnesota Republicans who’d been on Air Force One with the infected Trump flew on a commercial Delta flight Friday, in violation of the airline’s policy. (The three have tested negative.) “There’s a level of unjustifiable hysteria” surrounding the virus, Johnson said in the radio interview. The Trump campaign is also pushing ahead, with Mike Pence set to hold a MAGA rally in Arizona, events that have drawn thousands of mostly mask-less Trump supporters. Meanwhile, the West Wing COVID outbreak continues to grow.

There is, however, at least one Republican who acknowledges the threat COVID poses. McConnell, speaking on the Senate floor Monday, warned of the “danger of this terrible virus.” “We all need to remain vigilant,” he said. “We all need to remain careful.” Those may seem uncharacteristically sober words to hear from a Republican, but he does have a Supreme Court seat riding on this, after all.