so you can start to look at these and you can start to tie them together. the legal groups. all the same funders, over and over again, bringing the cases and providing this orchestrated chorus. then the same group funds the federalist society over here. "the washington post" wrote a big expose' about this, made leonard leo hot, like a burned agent. so he had to jump out. he went off to do anonymously funded voter suppression work. guess who jumped in to take over the selection process in this case for judge barrett? severino made the pop. once again, ties right in together. so center for media and

democracy has done more research. here's a bradley foundation memo they published. the bradley foundation is reviewing a grant application asking for money for this orchestrated amicus process. and what did they say in the staff recommendation? it is important to orchestrate, their word, not mine, important to orchestrate high caliber amicus efforts before the court. they also note that bradley has done previous philanthropic investments in the actual underlying legal actions. bradley is funding what do they call, fill and tlop cli investing in underlying legal action, then giving money to groups to show up in the orchestrated chorus of amici. that can't be good. it goes on. they also found this email. this email comes from an

individual at the bradley foundation, and it asks our friend leonard leo who used to run the selection process is there a 501(c)3 nonprofit to which bradley could direct any support of the two supreme court amicus projects other than donors trust. i don't know why they wanted to avoid the reliability identity scrubber, donors trust, but for some reason they did. leonard leo writes back on federalist society address, don't tell me it isn't federalist society business, on federalist address writes back yes, send to the judicial education project which could take and allocate money, and guess who works for the judicial education project? carr

carr carrie severino. so the connections abound. in "the washington post" article, they point out that the judicial crisis network's office is on the same hallway, in the same building as federalist society, and when they sent the reporter to talk to somebody at the crisis network, somebody from federalist society came down to let them up. this more and more looks like it is not three schemes but one scheme with the same funders, selecting justices.

you've got the campaigns i talked about, where they take $17 million contributions. that's a big check to write. $17 million to campaign for supreme court nominees, no idea who it is, what they got for it. you've got briefs she wrote. the republican senators filed briefs in that nfib case, signed by miss severino, the woman who helped choose this nominee has written briefs for republican senators attacking the aca. don't say the aca is not an issue here. by the way, judicial criesist network funds attorney general association and individual republican attorneys general, and guess who plaintiffs are in the affordable care act case? republican attorneys general. trump joined them because he didn't want to defend. he is in with the republican attorneys general. here's the judicial crisis

network, kpang for supreme court nominees, writing briefs for senators against the affordable ca leading the selection process for this nominee. here's where they are. mitch mcconnell and on through the list, senator collins, senator cornyn, senator hoben, who is still here. marco rubio. it is a huge assortment of republican senators who carrie severino wrote a brief for against the affordable care act. so this is to me a pretty big deal. i have never seen this around any court that i've ever been involved with, where there's this much dark money and this

much influence being used. here is how "the washington post" sums it up. this is a conservative activist behind the scenes to remake the nation's courts, it is a $250 million dark money operation. $250 million is a lot of money to spend if you're not getting anything for it. so that raises the question, what are they getting for it? well, i showed the slide earlier on roe vs wade, obergefell, that's where they lost. another judge, it could change. that's where the republican party platform tells us to look at how they want judges to rule to reverse roe, reverse obamacare cases, and reverse obergefell and take away gay marriage. that's their stated objective and plan. why not take them at their word.

but there's another piece of it and that is not what's ahead of us but what's behind us. what's behind us is now 80 cases, mr. chairman, 80 cases under chief justice roberts that have these characteristics. one, they were decided 5-4 by a bare majority. two. the 5-4 majority was partisan in the sense not one democratic appointee joined the five. i refer to that group as the roberts five, it changes with justice antonin scalia's death, for instance, but there's been a steady roberts five that has delivered now 80 of these decisions and the last characteristic of them is there's an identifiable republican donor interest in those cases and in every single case, that donor interest won. it was an 80-0, 5-4 partisan

route, ransacking. and it's important to look at where those cases went because they're not about big public issues like getting rid of the affordable care act, undoing roe vs wade, and undoing same-sex marriage. they're about power. if you look at the 80 decisions, they fall into four categories over and over again. one, unlimited and dark money in politics. citizens united is the famous one. it continued with mccutchen, one is coming up now. always the 5-4, unlimited money in politics, never protecting against dark money in politics, despite the fact they said it would be transparent, and who wins when you allow unlimited dark money in politics? a very small group. the ones that have unlimited

money to spend and motive to spend it in politics. they win, everybody else loses. if you're looking at who might be behind this, let's talk about people with unlimited money to spend and motive to do it. we'll see how that goes. next. knock the civil jury down. whittle it down to a nub. in the constitution, in the bill of rights, in the darn declaration of independence, but it is annoying to big corporate powers because you can swagger your way as a corporate power through congress. you can go tell the president you put money into to elect what to do, he will put your stooges at the epa. it's all great until you get to the civil jury because they have an obligation as you know, judge barrett, obligation under the law to be fair to both parties, irrespective of size. you can't bribe them, you're not allowed to.

it is a crime to tamper with the jury. standard practice to tamper with congress. and they make decisions based on the law. if you're used to being the boss and swaggering your way around the political side, you don't want to be answerable before a jury. so one after another, the 80 decisions, 5-4, whittled away at the great american institution. third, first was unlimited dark money, second was demean, diminish civil jury, third is weaken regulatory agencies. a lot of the money i'm convinced is polluter money. the koch industries is a polluter. who else is putting buckets of money and hiding behind donors trust or other schemes.

and if you're a big polluter, what do you want? weak regulatory agencies, ones that you can box up and run over to congress and get your friends to fix things for you in congress. over and over again these decisions are targeted as regulatory agencies to weaken their independence and weaken their strength and if you're a big polluter and weak regulatory agency, it is your idea of a good day. the last thing is in politics. in voting. why on earth the course made the decision a factual decision, not something appellate courts are supposed to make as i understand it, judge barrett. the factual decision that nobody needed to worry about minority voters in preclearance states being discriminated against or legislators would try to knock back the ability to vote. these five made that finding in shelby county, against

bipartisan legislation from both houses of congress, hugely passed, on no factual record. they just decided that that was a problem that was over. a no record with no basis because it got them to the result that we then saw what followed, state after state after state passed voter suppression laws. one so badly targeting african americans that two courts said it was surgically, surgically tailored to get after minority voters. and jergerrymandering, bulk gerrymandering. you go into a state like red map project did in ohio and pennsylvania and you pack democrats so tightly into a few districts that all of the others become republican majority districts, and in those states you send a delegation to congress that has a huge majority of republican members,

like 13-5 as i recall, in a state where the five, the party of the five won the popular vote. you've sent a delegation that's out of step with the popular vote of that state and court after court figured out how to solve that, and the supreme court said nope, 5-4 again, nope, not taking interest in that question. in all these areas where it is about political power for big special interests and people want to fund campaigns, and get through politics without showing up, doing it behind donors trust and other groups, doing it through these schemes, over and over and over again you see the same thing. 80 decisions, judge barrett. 80 decisions. 80-0 sweep. i don't think you've tried cases, but some cases the issue is bias and discrimination, and

if you're making a bias case as a trial lawyer, lindsey graham is a hell of a good trial lawyer. if he wanted to make a bias case, dick durbin is a hell of a good trial lawyer. if they want to make a bias case and could show 80-0 pattern, a, that's admissible, b, i would love to make that argument to the jury. i would be hard pressed to say to the jury 80-0 is flukes. all bipartisan, all this way. something is not right around the court. and dark money has a lot to do with it. special interests have a lot to do with it. donors trust, whoever is hiding behind donors trust has a lot to do with it, and the bradley foundation orchestrating over at the court has a lot to do with it.

so i thank you, judge barrett, for listening to me now a second time. i think this gives you a chance for you and i to tee up an interesting conversation tomorrow. i thank my colleagues for hearing me out. >> thank you, senator whitehouse. senator cruz. >> mr. chairman, can i put in three letters? >> without objection. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. judge barrett, welcome. congratulations on being nominated. congratulations on enduring the confirmation proceedings. it is a particularly good things, made it through the top of the lineup of questioning. and some of the smartest and frankly most effective questioners on the democratic side, and i think it speaks volumes that collectively they

had very few questions for you. virtually none calling into question your credentials, which are impeccable, your record, and what i think has been an extraordinary life you've led. that should be the source of great satisfaction in terms of the scholarly record and judicial record you spent a lifetime building. i want to start asking you a question. why is the first amendment's protection of religious liberty, why is that important? >> well, i think it is broadly viewed that the framers, and ratifiers, protected freedom of religion for reasons of history, persecuted religious minorities fleeing to the united states,

that enshrining that protection, it was in the bill of rights because it was considered so fundamental. >> and why does that matter to americans? what difference does that make in anybody's life? >> well, i think all of the bill of rights, each ander o every os important because we value the constitution, including religious liberty. >> how about the free speech protections of the first amendment. why are those important? >> so minority viewpoints can't be squashed, so that it is not just the majority that can speak popular views. you know, you don't need the first amendment if what you're saying is everybody wants to hear, you need it when people are trying to silence you. >> and how about the second amendment? why is the right to keep and bear arms important? >> well, we talked about heller earlier this morning and what heller tells us is that the second amendment protects an individual right to bear arms

for self defense. >> well, i think all of those rights, i agree with you, the entire bill of rights is incredibly important to americans. i also think what is really striking about this hearing today and also yesterday is that senate democrats are not defending what i think is really a radical agenda that they have when it comes to the bill of rights. and the topics they're discussing today have little bearing to the rights that are really at issue and in jeopardy at the supreme court. so let's take a few minutes to go through them. first of all, we've had some discussion of roe vs wade. you have declined to give an opinion on a matter that might be pending before the court, that is of course the same answer that every single sitting

justice has given when he or she was sitting in the same chair you are. it is mandated by canons of judicial ethics, that's the answer given to the committee for decades. but i do think it is interesting that our democratic colleagues, number one, don't discuss what would actually happen if there came a day in which roe vs wade were overruled, which is namely it wouldn't be the case that abortion was illegal but rather would revert to the status of the law as it has been for nearly 200 years of our nation's history, which is that the question of the perfect missability of abortion is for legislature at the state level and at the federal level. and it is difficult to dispute

there are a great many jurisdictions, including jurisdictions like california and new york who even if roe vs wade were no longer the law of the land, their elected legislatures would almost certainly continue unrestricted access to abortion with virtually no limitations. what i find interesting though is that our democratic colleagues do not discuss what is really the radical position of the most liberal justices on the supreme court, which is that no restrictions whatsoever are permissible when it comes to abortion. yesterday one of the democratic senators made reference to the case gonzales verse carhart. i am quite familiar with that case. i represented texas and a number of other states in that case.

that concerned constitution alternate route on the federal ban on partial birth abortion, legislation that was signed into law that made the gruesome practice of partial birth abortion illegal. overwhelming majority of americans believe partial birth abortion should be prohibited, even those that identify as pro-choice, significant percentage of americans don't want to see that gruesome practice allowed. supreme court by vote of 5-4 in carhart versus gonzales upheld that. that means four justices were ready to strike it down, ready to conclude you can't ban partial birth abortion, you can't ban late term abortion, and by the way, other restrictions, including parental consent and notification laws. some of our democratic colleagues want to talk about the justices they want to see on the court which strike down

every reasonable restriction on unlimited abortion on demand that the vast majority of americans support. how about free speech. well, we heard quite a bit about free speech. the senator from rhode island gave a long presentation, complete with lots of charts. i'll say a couple of things on free speech. first of all, our democratic colleagues when they address the issue of so-called dark money and campaign finance contributions are often deeply, deeply hypocritical and don't address the actual facts that exist. here are some facts. of the top 20 organizations spending money for political speech in the year 2016, 14 of them gave virtually all their

money to democrats and another three split their money evenly. only three of the top 20 gave money to republicans. what did that mean in practice? that meant the top 20 super pac donors contributed $422 million to democrats and 189 million to republicans. those who give these impassioned speeches against dark money don't mention their side is funded by dark money with a massive differential. the senator from rhode island talked about big corporate powers without acknowledging that the contributions from the fortune 500 in this presidential election overwhelmingly favor joe biden and the democrats, without acknowledging that contributions from wall street in this election overwhelmingly favor joe biden and the democrats. that's an awful lot of rhetoric about power but it gets even more interesting when you look

at supreme court nominations. we just heard an attack on the federalist society, a group i have been a member of over 25 years, i joined as a law student. it is a group that brings conservatives, libertarians, constituti constitutionalists together. a company called arabella advisers, for profit entity that manages nonprofits, including the 1630 fund and new venture fund. what are those? those sound like awfully dark and confusing names. well, according to "the wall street journal" this sunday, in the year 2017 and 2018, those entities reported $987.5 million in revenue. nearly a billion dollars.

we heard a lot of thundering indignation at what was described as $250 million of expenditures. in this case, you have a billion dollars. the senator of rhode island said with that much money, much of which is dark money that we don't know who contributed it, he asked what are they getting for it? and by the way, one of the things they're getting for it is a group called demand justice, a project of those entities, spent $5 million opposing justice brett kavanaugh, launched a seven figure ad buy opposing your confirmation. so all of the great umbrage about corporate interest or spending dark money is you wildly in conflict with the actual facts that corporate

interests that are spending dark money are funding the democrats by a factor of 3-1 or greater. a fact that doesn't ever seem to be acknowledged. but not only that, what was citizens united about. most people have heard about it, know it makes democrats upset, but they don't know what the case is about. citizens united concerned whether or not it was legal to make a movie criticizing a politician, specifically citizens united is a small nonprofit organization based in d.c. that made a movie critical of hillary clinton. and the obama justice department took the position that it could fine, it could punish citizens united for daring to make a movie critical of a politician. the case went all the way to the

u.s. supreme court. at the oral argument, there was a moment that was truly chilling. justice sam alito asked the obama justice department is it your position under your theory of the case that the federal government can ban books. and the obama justice department responded yes. yes. it is our position that if the books criticize a political candidate, a politician, the federal government can ban books. as far as i'm concerned, that's a terrifying view of the first amendment. citizens united was decided 5-4, by a narrow majority, supreme court concluded the first amendment did not allow the federal government to punish you for making a movie critical of a politician. and likewise, that the federal

government couldn't ban books. four justices dissented. four justices were willing to say the federal government can ban books and movies and presumably could ban books as well. when hillary clinton was running for president, she explicitly proch promised every justice she nominated to the supreme court would pledge to overturn citizens united. by the way, hillary clinton said she would demand of her nominee something you have rightly said this administration has not demanded of you, a commitment on any case as to how you will rule. democrats have shown no come pung shun, saying here's a promise, here is how i'm going to vote on a pending case, judicial ethics be damned. how about the second amendment. we heard some reference to the

heller decision. senator from connecticut yesterday talked about reasonable gun control and gun safety provisions. well, that of course was not what was at stake in the heller decision. number one, majority decision in heller, justice scalia's opinion, acknowledges reasonable provisions, things like prohibitions on felons in possession are perfect miscible. your decision in can't tore that restrictions from criminals from getting firearms are perfect miscible under the second amendment. the issue at heller was more fundamental. it was whether the second amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms at all. the vote in heller was 5-4. by a vote 5-4, the majority

struck down district of columbia total prohibitions on owning and operating a firearm in district of columbia. the argument of the four dissenters was not what our democratic colleagues talk about, wasn't some reasonable gun control provisions are okay, that was not the argument of the dissenters. that question, we can have a reasonable debate, reasonable minds can differ on what the appropriate lines should be, what are reasonable laws there, but that's not what was at issue at heller. the position of four dissenters was the second amendment protects no individual right to keep and bear arms whatsoever, but merely a quote, collective right of the militia, which is fancy lawyer talk for a nonexistent right. four justices would have ruled that way. one vote away. the consequences of the court concluding there's no individual right under the first amendment

would mean you and i and every american watching this would lose your second amendment right. it would mean the federal government, state government, the city could ban guns entirely, could make it a criminal offense for any one of us to own a firearm and no individual american would have any judicial cognizant right to challenge that. that's a radical reading of the constitution. that is effectively erasing the second amendment from the bill of rights. and hillary clinton likewise promised in 2016 that every justice she nominated would commit to voting to overturn heller. they were big on litmus tests. and joe biden, although he refuses to answer just about anything about whether or not he's going to pack the court, he did tell the american people the voters don't deserve to know whether he is's going to pack

the court. truly a statement of disrespect and contempt for the voters, unusual in our political process. one vote away from the second amendment being erased from the bill of rights. none of our democratic colleagues admit that's their agenda, yet those are the justices that democratic presidential nominees are promising they will appoint. justices who will take away your right to criticize politicians, justices who will allow sensorship, justices that will allow movies and books to be banned, justices that will erase the second amendment from the bill of rights. and how about religious liberty? religious liberty is an issue near and dear to a great many of

us. the right of every american to live according to your faith, your conscience, whatever that faith may be. religious liberty is fundamentally about diversity, about respecting diversity, that whatever your faith tradition might be, the government is not going to trample on it. religious liberty cases over and over again have been decided 5-4. van horton versus perry, a case i litigated, dealt with the ten commandments monument on the state capitol grounds since 1961 in texas. an individual plaintiff, ooet eeist, homeless man, filed a lawsuit seeking to tear it down. the case went to the supreme court. it was decided 5-4, four justices were willing to say send in bulldozers, tear down that monument because you can't gaze on the image of the ten commandments on public land. another case, mojave desert war

memorial, erected to the men and women that gave their lives in world war i, to low white latin cross, simple in the middle of the desert, been there on sunrise rock where it stands. the aclu filed a lawsuit saying you cannot gaze on the image of a cross on public land and the aclu won in the district court. they won in the 9th circuit court of appeals. federal courts ordered that veterans memorial covered with a bureau lap sack with a chain on the bottom and plywood box. when the case went to the u.s. supreme court, i represented three million veterans pro bono for free defending that veterans memorial. we won 5-4. and there were four justices prepared to say tear down the veterans memorial and under the

reasoning that they put forth they were not far away from saying bring out the chisels and remove the crosses and stars of david on the tombstones of men and women that gave their lives at arlington cemetery defending this nation. that is a radical view. and we're one vote away. that is utterly contrary to the text of the first amendment, to the understanding of the first amendment. when we argued the ten commandments case in the u.s. supreme court, there was more than a little irony. do you know how many times the image of the ten commandments appears in the courtroom of the supreme court? the answer to that is 43. there are two images of the ten

commandments carved on the wooden door. as you walk out of the courtroom, you'll soon be looking at them. 40 images of the ten commandments on the bronze gates on both sides of the courtroom. and judge barrett, when you're sitting at the bench above your left shoulder will be carved into the law, one of whom is moses, holding the ten commandments. the text of which is legible in hebrew as he looks down upon the justices and four justices were willing to say in effect bring out the sand blasters because we must remove god from the public square. it doesn't just extend to public acknowledgments, it extends to religious liberty. the little sisters of the poor.

nuns that devote their lives to caring for the needy. obama administration litigated against the little sisters of the poor seeking to fine them to force them to pay for abortion inducing drugs and others. when you have the federal government litigating against nuns. supreme court decided hobby lobby case, another case routinely denounced by senate democrats. that case concluded the federal government could not permissibly force a christian business to violate their faith. it reflected the religious liberties of the country that you can lif according to your faith without the government trampling on it.

you know what this body did, i'm sorry to say? senate democrats introduced legislation to gut the religious freedom restoration act. when that passed this body, it passed with overwhelming bipartisan majority. senate democrats, including chuck schumer and joe biden and ted kennedy voted for that freedom restoration act. bill clinton signed that act. and yet in the wake of the hobby lobby decision, this body voted on legislation to just gut the protections for religious liberty, and sorry to say, every senate democrat voted to do so. not a single one, zero, would defend religious liberty. joe biden has already pledged if he's elected, he plans to initiate again the attack on the little sisters of the poor. that's interesting, folks in the press like to talk about pope

frances. on some issues, he has been vocal when it comes to the environment, when it comes to issues concerning immigration. the pope is vocal on issues our democratic colleagues like and agree with. the press is happy to amplify those views. somehow missing from that is acknowledgment that when the pope came to the united states in washington, he went and visited little sisters of the poor. here in d.c., went to their home and the vatican explained he did so because he wanted to highlight their cause. that the federal government shouldn't be persecuting nuns for living according to their faith. that's what's at stake in these nominations. you won't hear any of that from the senate democrats on the committee. that's why their base is so

angie angry at your nomination. they don't believe you'll join the radical efforts to erase those fundamental rights from the bill of rights. i believe that issue, preserving the constitution and bill of rights are fundamental liberties, the most important issue facing the country in the november elections. and i think for those of us that value those rights, we should take solace in the fact that not a single democrat is willing even to acknowledge the radical sweep of their agenda, much less defend it. they know it is wildly unpopular and right at the heart of this is a decision many democrats have made to abandon democracy. you see most policies, policies

like obamacare and health care, most policies under our constitutional system are meant to be decided by democratically elected legislatures. why? so they can be accountable to the people. so if voters disagree, they can throw the bums out. but too many democrats have decided today that democracy is too complicated, it is too hard to actually convince your fellow americans of the merits of your position, it is easier just to give it to the courts, find five lawyers in black robes, let them decree the policy outcome you want which makes your radical base happy, presumably makes the millions if not billions in dark money being spent for democrats happy, without actually having to justify it to the american people. judge pbarrett, i'm not going t

ask you to respond to anything. but i do want to shift to a different topic which is a bit more about you personally, your background. judge barrett, do you speak any foreign languages? >> once upon a time i could speak french but i have fallen out of practice, please don't ask me to do it now. >> i had two years of high school french, i suspect yours remains better than mine. how about music, do you play any instruments? >> the piano. >> do you? how long have you played piano. >> i played it growing up for ten years, and now most of my piano playing consists of playing my children's songs for them, supervising their practice. i look forward one day when i have time to choose some of my own music. >> do the kids do piano lessons

as well? >> the kids do piano lessons. some of the older ones in high school have gotten busy in sports and they stopped, but the younger children do. >> our girls are 9 and 12, both do piano lessons. in our household, it is less than voluntary. one of the things heidi and i found particularly the last six months during covid which has been an extraordinary crisis is just with two kids at home that doing distance learning when schools were shutdown was hard for us with two children. for you and your husband, you've got seven kids. how did y'all manage through the lockdown, distance learning. what was that like in the barrett household? >> well, it was a challenging time as it was for every american. our oldest daughter emma who is in college moved home at that point because she's at notre dame, it closed. emma could manage her own e

learning, and high school age children could, too. but jessie and i tried to take a divide and conquer approach for the younger four. yeah, it was quite challenging, i assure you. >> one part of your story that i find particularly remarkable and that i admire is the decision you made to adopt two children. you and your husband had five biological children, you adopted two more. both of your adoption children are from haiti. haiti is a country that has some of the most crushing poverty in the world. my brother-in-law is a missionary in haiti and heidi and the girls just got back from haiti a couple weeks ago. curious if you would share with this committee and with the american people what led you and your husband to make the decision to adopt? it's i think one of the most

loving and compassionate decisions any family can make. >> when jessie and i were engaged, we met another couple who had adopted in this instance, a couple who adopted a child with special needs and then we also met another couple who adopted a few children internationally and we decided at that point while we were engaged that at some point in the future we wanted to do that ourselves, and i guess we had imagined initially we would have whatever biological kids that we decided to have and then adopt at the end, but after we had our first daughter emma, we thought why wait. i was expecting tests when we went and got vivian. she and tess function, call them fraternal twins, they're in the same grade. it enriched our family immesh rably. once we adopted vivian, we made the decision to adopt again.

so several years later john peter entered our family. >> so your children have been wonderfully well behaved. i think you're an amazing role model for little girls. what advice would you give little girls? >> well, what i'm saying is not designed, my brother now has left, i was thinking of what my dad told me before the spelling bee, anything boys can do, girls can do better. since my sons are sitting behind me, i'll say boys are great too. >> thank you. >> thank you. senator klobuchar. >> thank you very much, mr. chair. welcome again, judge. since i have the draw to always follow senator cruz, i did want to make one thing clear after listening to that for a half hour that joe biden is catholic and he is a man of faith. and then i want to turn to something else and that is that we need a reset here in my mind

for the people at home, a bit of a reality check that this isn't normal right now. we have to understand that what people are dealing with, 7.7 million people have gotten this virus, 214,000 americans have died, and for people watching at home and wondering what we're all doing in this room right now, maybe you're home because you lost your job or maybe got your kids calling all over your couch right now, maybe you're trying to teach your first grader to do a mute button to do school, maybe you have a small business that you had to close down or that's struggling, we should be doing something else right now. we shouldn't be doing this. we should be passing coronavirus relief like the house just did, which was a significant bill that would have been a big help. i think people have to know that right now. whether you're democrat, independent, or republican,

that's why i started out yesterday by telling people that they need to vote. number two. some of my colleagues throughout this hearing on the other side have been kind of portraying the job that the judge is before us on as being some kind of ivory tower exercise. i think one of my friends called it, related that you would be dealing with dormant commerce clause. i'm sure that might be true, but we also know this is the highest court in the land, that the decisions of this court have a real impact on people, and i appreciate a judge that you said you didn't want to be a queen. i actually wouldn't mind being a queen around here, truth be known, wouldn't mind doing it, benevolent queen in making decisions so we could get things done, but you said you wouldn't let your views influence you and the like. but the truth is, the supreme court rulings, they rule

people's lives. they decide if people can get married. they decide what schools they can go to. they decide if they could even have access to contraception. all of these things matter. so i want to make that clear. and the third reset here that i think we need to have is that this hearing is not normal. it is a sham, a rush to put in a justice. last time we had a vacancy so close to an election is when abraham lincoln was president. and he made the wise decision to wait until after the election. last time we lost a justice so close to an election. that's what he did. today, we are 21 days from the election. people are voting. millions of people already cast their ballots. i go to the words of senator

mcconnell, last time we had a situation in election year, he said the american people should have a voice in the selection of the next supreme court justice, therefore this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president. that set the precedent that so many of you have embraced. in an election year the people choose the president and then the president nominates the justice. so why is this happening? well, that's a good question. this guy, our president, he is the one that decided to pull out the supreme court nomination in the middle of an election, when people's health care son the line with the case before the court on november 10th. so let's see what he said about the supreme court. well, one of president trump's campaign promises in 2015 was

that his judicial appointment will do the right thing on obamacare. you can see it right here. and, in fact, judge, just one day after you were nominated, this is, like a few weeks ago, he said, also on twitter, that it would be a big win if the supreme court strikes down the health law. so, just, my first question. do you think we should take the president at his word when he says his nominee will do the right thing and overturn the affordable care act? >> senator klobuchar, i can't really speak to what the president has said on twitter. he hasn't said any of that to me, and what i can tell you as i have told your colleagues earlier today is that no one has elicited from me any commitment in a case, even brought up a commitment in the case. i'm 100% committed to judicial

independence from political pressure. so whatever people's party platforms may be or campaign promises may be the reason why judges have select tenure is to insulate them from those pressures. i take my oath seriously to follow the law and not committed nor pre-committmepre-committed case either way. >> and the tenure you have a job for life makes this even more important for us to consider where you might be, and i know you have not said how you would rule on this case that's coming up right after the election, where the president had said it would be a big win if the supreme court strikes down the law, but you have directly criticized justice roberts in an article in my own state in one of the minnesota law school journals. it was in 2017. it was the same year you became a judge, and when roberts writes

the opinion to uphold the affordable care act you said he "pushed the affordable care act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute." is that correct? >> senator klobuchar, i just want to clarify. is this the constitutional commentary publication you and i discussed -- >> yes it is. but still a university of minnesota. >> just wanted to be sheer. >> again, did you say that, that he pushed the affordable care act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute. >> i want to clarify you said that i criticized chief justice roberts, and i don't attack people, just ideas. just designed to make a comment about his reasoning in that case, which as i said before is consistent with the way the majority opinion characterized it as the less plausible reading of the statute.

>> so you didn't agree with his reasoning in the case that upheld the affordable care act? what i said, and with king versus berwell and amy versus is a bilious. >> i'll get to king versus burwell in a second. >> what i said with respect to nfi bchlb sebelius, construing mandate to be attacked rather than a penalty was not the most natural reading of the statute. >> still the reading that justice roberts got to. now you also criticized as you pointed out by bringing up king v. burwell another case the court ruled in favor of the health law in a 2015 national public radio interview and acknowledged the result of people being able to keep their subsidies under the affordable care act was, would help millions of americans. yet you praised the dissent by justice scalia saying the

dissent had "the better of the legal argument. is that correct? >> i did say that, yes. >> so then would you rule, have ruled the same way and voted with justice scalia? >> well, senator klobuchar, one of the plus sides, upsides of being an academic, you can speak for yourself, a professor professes and can opine but very different than a judicial decision-making process. so it's difficult for me to say how i would have decided that case, if i had to go through the whole process of judicial decision-making that i was describes this morning, now having been a judge for three years, i can say i appreciate greatly the distinctions between academic writing or academic speaking and judicial decision-making, such that a judge might look at an academic and say, easy for you to say, because you're not on a multimember court. you're not constrained by stae y

decisis or have real parties discussing with colleagues. it's a different process. >> it's interesting because you were commenting on public policy result, which you and my colleagues, the republican side said shouldn't be above public policy and said, okay. that's okay. then really clear on your legal outcome in terms of your view of whose side you were on. you were on scalia's side and of course that was a side to not uphold the affordable care act, which would have been kicked millions of people off of their health care and in fact would have lost their subsidies. i just see this as interesting because of this kind of d dichotomy trying to make between policy and legal. my view legal decisions affect policy. i'm looking at people in himigh state that will deal with this if the affordable care act is struck down.

elijah from st. paul born with surreir veeb cerebral palsy. and another without the aca that would be that. bernette suburbs of st. paul who daughter has maultiple sclerosi and another with a 20-year-old son with autism needs her children to be able to stay on her insurance until these 26. melanie, senior from duluth treated for ovarian cancer needs access to the affordable care act. my point is these are real-world situations. so i get that you're not saying how you'd rule on these cases. what does that leave us with here to try to figure out what kind of judge you would be? and i was thinking last night of when i was growing up we would go up to northern minnesota and

we didn't have a cabin, but we had friends that did, and we would go on these walks in the woods with my mom, and she loved to show all of the tracks on that path, whether they were deer tracks. she's have us figure out what they were. elk, make even a bear and we would foley these tracks down that path and you'd always think, is there going to be a deer around the corner we're going to see? and rarely was there one. but we would follow the tracks, and so when i look at your record, i just keep following the tracks. that's what i've got to do, and so when i follow the tracks, this is what i see. you consider justice scalia one of the most conservative judges in the histories of the supreme court as your mentor. you criticized the decision written by justice roberts upholding the affordable care act, that is, to me, one big track. even if you didn't consider

yourself criticizing him personally, you criticized the reasoning. you then said in another case about the affordable care act that you would, that you liked the legal reasoning that he had the better legal argument that justice scalia had the better legal argument. you have signed your name to a public statement featured in an ad, a paid ad, that called for an end to what it called the ad called the barbaric legacy of roe v. wade which ran on the anniversary of the 1973 supreme court decision. you disagreed with long-standing precedent on gun safety, which said that felons shouldn't be able to get guns. something pretty important to me when i had my old job in law enforcement. this is something senator durbin asked about. you suggested you disagreed with the dissent in the marriage

equality case that it wasn't the role of the cart to decide that same-sex couples had the right to be married. i think this was in a lecture you gave where you said the dissents view it wasn't for the court to decide. people could lobby in state legislatures and all of this takes me to one point as i follow those tracks. down that path. it takes me to this point where i believe and i think the american people have to understand that you would be the polar opposite of justice ginsburg. she and justice scalia were friends, yes, but she never embraced his legal philosophy. so that is what concerns me, and i want to turn to an area that, where i think justice ginsburg, whose seat we are considering you for, was truly a hero and that was the area of voting rights. and that was the area