september 1904

Senate Republicans were always going to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. Conservative voters wanted it, and the party united around the concept. Republicans “believe voting on this justice is a constitutional duty. The nomination happened. There was time to get it done. So they got it done,” Steven Duffield, a Republican former senior Senate aide, told me. Even the highest-ranking Republican leaders aren’t shy about admitting that this may be the party’s last gasp before losing political power for a while. “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said during a speech yesterday. The Democrats “won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”

During her confirmation hearings, Amy Coney Barrett argued that the judicial philosophy known as “originalism” should guide judges in their interpretation and application of constitutional principles. Most famously associated with the late Justice Antonin Scalia (for whom Judge Barrett clerked), this idea sounds simple and sensible: In determining what the Constitution permits, a judge must first look to the plain meaning of the text, and if that isn’t clear, then apply what was in the minds of the 55 men who wrote it in 1787. Period. Anything else is “judicial lawmaking.”

In some cases, interpreting the Constitution with an originalist lens is pretty easy; for example, the Constitution says that the president must be at least 35 years old (“35” means, well, 35), that each state has two senators (not three and not one), and that Congress is authorized to establish and support an Army and a Navy. But wait a minute. What about the Air Force? Is it mentioned in the text? Nope. Is there any ambiguity in the text? Again, no. It doesn’t say “armed forces”; it explicitly says “Army” and “Navy.” Did the Framers have in mind the Air Force 115 years before the Wright brothers? Not likely.

For a judge with a brilliant legal mind, Amy Coney Barrett seemed oddly at a loss for words.

Does a president have the power to postpone an election? Senator Dianne Feinstein of California asked. Barrett said she would have to approach that question—about a power the Constitution explicitly grants to Congress—“with an open mind.”

Is voter intimidation illegal? Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota asked. “I can’t apply the law to a hypothetical set of facts,” Barrett replied. Klobuchar responded by reading the statute outlawing voter intimidation, which exists and is, therefore, not hypothetical.

Should the president commit to a peaceful transfer of power? Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey asked. Barrett replied that, “to the extent this is a political controversy right now, as a judge I want to stay out of it.”

On a normal day, the White House is one of the safest buildings in the world. Secret Service snipers stand guard on the roof, their aim tested monthly to ensure their accuracy up to 1,000 feet. Their heavily armed colleagues patrol the ground below and staff security checkpoints. Belgian Malinois guard dogs lie in wait for anyone who manages to jump the property’s massive iron fence.

But safety means something different in a pandemic. Over the past few days, several aides to Vice President Mike Pence, including his chief of staff, have tested positive for the coronavirus. The outbreak is the second in the White House in a month, after dozens of people, including President Donald Trump himself, tested positive following the apparent super-spreader event hosted by the administration to celebrate the Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

A number of influential commentators who firmly opposed Donald Trump in 2016 recently announced their intention to vote for him in 2020. Nearly all of them, including James Lindsay, Danielle Pletka, and Ben Shapiro, blamed illiberalism on the left. As Shapiro said on his popular show, he is planning to vote for Trump because “Democrats have lost their fucking minds.”

Concerns about illiberal tendencies on the left are not made up out of thin air. Many Democratic politicians have not been as full-throated in their opposition to left-wing political violence as they should be. Parts of the left now seek far-reaching censorship in social media, advocate for employees to be fired for expressing conservative opinions, and are openly hostile to free speech. The likely future mayor of Portland, Oregon, has appeared to glorify mass murderers such as Che Guevara and Mao Zedong on the campaign trail.