Again and again, Amy Coney Barrett insisted to senators on Tuesday that she has no “agenda” on issues like the Affordable Care Act, the future of abortion rights or same-sex marriage, and that she would be nobody's “pawn” if confirmed to the Supreme Court, NBC News reports.
“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?” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., asked, displaying a poster of a President Donald Trump tweet criticizing the 2012 ACA decision.
“I can’t really speak to what the president has said on Twitter," Barrett responded. "He hasn’t said any of that to me." She added, "I am 100 percent committed to judicial independence from political pressure.”
The exchange captured the central tension of the Supreme Court hearing: Barrett insisted she will continue to be open-minded, but Trump had already told Americans his judicial picks will faithfully advance his agenda before he put her in the hot seat.
With only 21 days until the election, politics was infused in every piece of the second day of confirmation hearings, but Barrett held to the time-honored tradition of Supreme Court nominees by declining to weigh in on legal issues that could come before the court.
