With just 36 days to go before the U.S. presidential election, battle lines are being drawn over President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called on Republican senators not to confirm her before the November 3 election to allow U.S. voters to have a say, a view key Republican leaders dismiss. Michelle Quinn reports
…

President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he ran for president and in his first year in the White House, according to a report Sunday in The New York Times.Trump, who has fiercely guarded his tax filings and is the only president in modern times not to make them public, paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the past 15 years. He campaigned for office as a billionaire real estate mogul and successful businessman.Speaking at a news conference at the White House, Trump dismissed the report as “fake news” and said he has paid taxes, though he gave no specifics.A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Alan Garten, and a spokesperson for the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on the report.Garten told the Times that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate.”The disclosure, which the Times said comes from tax return data it obtained extending over two decades, comes at a pivotal moment ahead of the first presidential debate Tuesday and weeks before a divisive election against Democrat Joe Biden.The president vowed that information about his taxes “will all be revealed.” But he offered no timeline for the disclosure and made similar promises during the 2016 campaign on which he never followed through.In fact, the president has fielded court challenges against those seeking access to his returns, including the U.S. House, which is suing for access to Trump’s tax returns as part of congressional oversight.Garten said in a statement to the news organization that the president “has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015.”During his first general election debate against Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Clinton said that perhaps Trump wasn’t releasing his tax returns because he had paid nothing in federal taxes.Trump interrupted her to say, “That makes me smart.”
…

U.S. lawmakers have battled through a tumultuous political year on Capitol Hill that has included a Senate impeachment trial, a pandemic and the largest aid package in U.S. history.  With President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett Saturday to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, lawmakers now face a historic confirmation battle just weeks before the November 3 presidential election.  A Senate vote would not only cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the court, it will also likely galvanize voters of both parties, many of whom will be participating in early voting as the confirmation process gets under way. Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham said Saturday the hearings would begin Monday, October 12.  The Supreme Court nomination could be a boost for Trump, who currently lags behind Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in polls in most key states. Trump has made appointing conservative judges who could overturn key decisions on abortion rights and gay marriage a centerpiece of his appeal to voters. In 2016, one quarter of voters who backed Trump said a president’s ability to nominate Supreme Court justices was an important factor in their vote.  “President Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 and he’s campaigning again promising to appoint judges to federal courts and justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who are textualists and who are originalists who interpret the law based on what it says, rather than on the basis of what they might wish that it said,” Republican Senator Mike Lee told ABC’s This Week on Sunday.But the nomination will also mobilize Democratic voters who say Republicans’ willingness to move forward with the confirmation so close to the election reveals their hypocrisy.  In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not take up President Barack Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, saying, “All we are doing is following the long-standing tradition of not fulfilling a nomination in the middle of a presidential year.”McConnell told Fox News on Friday there was nothing inappropriate about President Trump’s nominee receiving a confirmation hearing this election season because Republicans have control of the Senate.  Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) pays his respects as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lies in repose under the Portico at the top of the front steps of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, Sept. 23, 2020.“It would evidence the fact that she wants to be fair in addressing this,” Durbin told ABC’s This Week. “Why? Because this president has been outspoken and outrageous to think that he would not accept the verdict of the election and that he would make it clear that he’s filling this vacancy on the Supreme Court to make sure it tips his way if there’s any election contest. That is an outrage. No president has ever said that in our nation’s history.”  McConnell appears to have secured enough votes to confirm Barrett even though Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have said they would not vote on a Supreme Court nominee ahead of the election.  Congressional Democrats have few options to stop the confirmation process. But they are using the nomination to highlight key issues in the coming election, including a warning that Barrett could help overturn the Affordable Care Act.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Trump is rushing the nomination not only to seat Barrett ahead of Election Day but to ensure she is place when the Supreme Court is expected to hear a case on the Affordable Care Act on November 10.  “This is unfortunate that the president would be so disrespectful and rush into this,” Pelosi told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday. “But nonetheless, that’s what it is, that vote, the antidote to his whatever he does is to vote, vote, vote, vote for affordable care. Vote for your preexisting condition. Vote for your safety. Vote for your health.”  FILE – U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks during her weekly news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington.Senator Durbin acknowledged on Sunday that Democrats do not have a “silver bullet” for slowing debate on Barrett.  “We can slow it down perhaps a matter of hours maybe days at the most, but we can’t stop the outcome,” Durbin told ABC’s This Week. “There’ve been two Republicans who have spoken out already — Senators Murkowski and Collins — that said they won’t support this procedure before the election. If two others decide during the course of the debate to stand up and take the same position. Then we could have a different timing, perhaps a different outcome.”  Graham told Fox News he expected to have the nomination cleared out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by October 26, giving McConnell the opportunity to schedule a full vote on the Senate floor just days before the election. 
…

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center has reported large jumps in new COVID-19 cases in India and the U.S.Johns Hopkins said late Saturday that India had 86,054 new infections in the previous 24 hours, while the U.S. reported 55,054.In the U.S., the coronavirus has reached the country’s so-called “heartland,” an area in the middle of the country that seemed to be impervious to the virus when the country’s Northeastern, Southern, and Western states were stricken earlier this year. North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin have been hit hard by the outbreak.Europe is experiencing a new wave of coronavirus infections, leading some governments across the continent to reimpose restrictions on residents and businesses.In France, the head of the National Council of the Order of Doctors said a “second wave” of COVID cases “is arriving faster than we thought.”Patrick Bouet told Journal du Dimanche that “if nothing changes, France will face a widespread outbreak across its whole territory, for several long autumn and winter months” and the health system would crumble under the demands.On Saturday, France said it had recorded more than 14,000 new infections in the previous 24 hours.Dutch Prime Minister Make Rutte called the wave of infections in his country “very worrisome and will force us to take extra measures.”The Czech Republic also will face new measures, Health Minister Roman Prymula said Friday, without specifying exactly what limits will be in place.In Spain, local Madrid authorities and the national government are clashing over the extent of the steps needed to control the outbreak of new infections in the capital region.Unmasked demonstrators took to London’s streets Saturday to protest new lockdown measures. Police broke up the demonstration and at least 16 people were arrested.There are nearly 33 million global COVID-19 cases.The U.S. has more than 7 million cases, followed by India with nearly 6 million, and Brazil with almost 5 million.  
…

By nominating Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Saturday to replace the late liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Donald Trump unquestionably has chosen a committed conservative jurist.In announcing his choice in the White House Rose Garden, Trump described Barrett as “one of our nation’s most brilliant and gifted legal minds,” a woman with sterling credentials and “unyielding loyalty to the Constitution.”A one-time protégé of Antonin Scalia, the late conservative icon on the high court who opposed abortion and gay marriage, Barrett, more than Trump’s two earlier Supreme Court appointments — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — is expected to push the bench much further to the right by creating a new 6-3 conservative-liberal split.That much most legal and political expert agree on.What no one can predict with any certainty is how she’ll vote on hot-button social and economic issues that are likely to come up before the court and determine the rights and freedoms of millions of Americans – including the fate of the Affordable Care Act that currently insures more than 20 million people amid the worst pandemic in over a century.During her confirmation hearing for a seat on a federal appeals court in 2017, Barrett faced two broad questions — whether she can separate her Catholic faith from her decision-making on the court, and whether she will she accept court precedent on abortion, LGBTQ rights and other issues that might be at odds with her understanding of the Constitution.Those questions will likely dominate her confirmation hearing, which reportedly could begin as soon as October 12, and shed light on how she might come down on key issues before the high court.Catholic faith versus jurisprudenceBarrett, 48, is a devout Catholic and the mother of seven children. Her Catholic faith came up during her 2017 confirmation hearing for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. Democrats suggested that her religious beliefs on abortion and same-sex marriage would influence how she votes on those issues on the court.She sought to reassure the lawmakers that she would not allow her faith to affect her vote on the federal bench. “It’s never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge’s personal convictions, whether they derive from faith or anywhere else, on the law,” she said.She also said that she would follow all Supreme Court precedents “without fail” and would regard decisions such as Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortions, as binding precedent.Democrats were not persuaded.“I can’t tell you how many nominees have been before this panel . . . and virtually all say the same,” Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said. “‘I’m following the precedent, I’m following the law, I’m following the Constitution. Don’t worry a thing about who I am. How I was raised. What my religion is. What my life experience has been. Put it all aside.’ I don’t believe that for a second.”Today many critics, including Senate Democratic leaders, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and liberal advocacy groups, harbor similar doubts about her professed impartiality.“I think her viewpoint would ensure that people who share her ideas about religion would be dominant,” said Caroline Fredrickson, a former president of the left-leaning American Constitution Center who now teaches law at Georgetown University.Her defenders say Barrett is committed to keeping her religious beliefs and jurisprudence separate.“There’s no doubt that Judge Barrett is conservative,” said Andrew Hessick, a University of North Carolina professor who endorsed Barrett’s appellate nomination in 2017. “I think it’s important to separate out the claim that she’s conservative and that she is looking to impose her religious views on the world.”Where she stands on precedentPrecedent, or deference to past court decisions, is a bedrock principle of American jurisprudence. Lower courts are bound by precedents set by the Supreme Court and the high court often upholds its own precedent.However, the Supreme Court sometimes reverses past decisions, and in her scholarly writings and speeches over the years, Barrett has stressed that stare decisis — the legal principle of following precedent — is not an absolute principle.“There is a time when cases should be overruled and errors corrected,” she said on a panel at the Federalist Society, a highly influential organization of conservatives and libertarians that advises the Trump White House on judicial nominations.In a 2013 law journal article, Barret singled out the type of precedents that could potentially be overturned, drawing a distinction between Supreme Court decisions that serve as simple precedent and so-called “super-precedents” – cases that “no justice would overrule.”Among super precedents, she cited Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that ended racial segregation in public schools, but not Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion. In 2017, she declined to say whether the 2015 Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage qualified as a “super-precedent.”That worries LGBTQ rights advocates.“She is on record as saying that marriage should be between a man and a woman which indicates to us that she is hostile to the Obergefell ruling and could potentially seek to undermine or overturn it,” said Kevin Jennings, president of Lambda Legal, the largest LBGTQ rights legal advocacy organization in the country. He was referring to the 2015 Obergefell v Hodges court ruling recognizing same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.Hessick said Barrett’s stance on precedent is “a little bit more aggressive” than other jurists’.“She’s written multiple articles saying that there are good reasons to allow litigants to challenge precedent and for courts to reconsider precedent, that It’s important to get it right,” Hessick said.On the other hand, just because a decision is not considered a super-precedent, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will be overturned, Hessick added. “It just means that there’s less restriction on overturning it, that judges should be more willing to re-examine it.”However, while Roe v. Wade is unlikely to be overturned anytime soon despite a fervent campaign by religious groups, Obergefell may be more at risk.“It’s a very important decision, but it’s a recent decision,” Hessick said. “And I think that that probably opens the door for some people to think that it’s more amenable to a challenge than some of the precedents that have been around for a really long time.”Another major issue whose outcome Barrett could influence is the Affordable Care Act. On November 10 — a week after the presidential election — the court is set to hear oral arguments in the latest case challenging the program.As a professor at Notre Dame in 2012, Barrett signed a protest statement denouncing Obamacare, saying a religious exemption from the law’s contraceptive coverage mandate “changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty.”Later, Barret criticized a high court decision upholding the law, taking Chief Justice John Roberts to task for construing as a tax Obamacare’s penalty on individuals lacking health insurance coverage.Ultimately, court watchers say there is no way to know with certainty how she’ll vote on hot-button issues. Justices evolve over time and sometimes break ranks with their ideological cohorts.Going back to the 1950s, a number of Republican justices have gone on to embrace liberal positions much to the chagrin of many on the right.“I don’t know if anyone could have predicted the way Chief Justice Roberts has been voting or the way Justice [Anthony] Kennedy voted in his later years or go back to Chief Justice [Earl] Warren, who Eisenhower apparently said was his worst decision as president,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a University of Virginia law professor who endorsed Barrett three years ago.During her three years on the federal bench, Barrett, according to her defenders, has demonstrated her independence as a jurist. While she has ruled in favor of the Trump administration in two immigration cases and backed restrictions on abortion in two other cases, Barrett has also rejected a police officer’s claim of immunity and a Republican Party challenge to the Illinois governor’s coronavirus pandemic economic and social limits. 
…

Three people were arrested Saturday at a right-wing rally in Portland, Oregon, the city’s police said, adding that they also were investigating one assault.The rally attracted several hundred people, far short of the crowd of 10,000 that organizers had expected. The rally began at noon and was mostly over by 3 p.m. The Oregon Department of Transportation closed an interstate briefly.”The purpose of this closure was to clear some people out of the area who wanted to leave and to keep competing groups separate,” Chris Liedle, a spokesperson with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, said in updates posted on Twitter.The three arrests included a man suspected of driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol and a woman with an outstanding arrest warrant, Liedle said.The rally, in support of President Donald Trump and his campaign for reelection, was organized by the Proud Boys, a self-described “Western chauvinist” group that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group.The group described the rally as a free-speech event to support Trump and the police and to restore law and order. Trump’s campaign has featured criticism of sometimes-violent protests over a series of incidents involving police treatment of Black people, including this week’s decision not to charge white police officers in Kentucky who fatally shot a Black woman, Breonna Taylor.“We the PEOPLE are tired of incompetent city leadership who neuters police and allows violent gangs or rioting felons to run the streets, burn buildings … and assault people with impunity,” the group wrote in an application to the city for a permit to hold the rally. City officials denied the permit, citing coronavirus concerns.The White House has not commented on the rally in Portland, where nightly protests against racism and police brutality — now nearing a fifth month — have taken place in the wake of several recent police incidents. Trump has labeled the city, however, as an “anarchist jurisdiction” where leaders are incompetent, and lawlessness is unchecked.Oregon Governor Kate Brown declared a state of emergency Friday and activated state troopers to assist Portland police and said about 50 crowd-control officers would be deputized as federal marshals in response to that rally and another rally planned by left-wing demonstrators at the same time.A Trump supporter was shot and killed in Portland last month after some vehicles in a pro-Trump caravan encountered left-wing activists. Law enforcement officers killed the suspect, a self-described anti-fascist, the following week as they tried to arrest him in Washington state. 
…