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Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings this week offer President Trump and Senate Republicans one of their final chances before the election to shift the fall agenda away from the coronavirus pandemic and toward an issue they believe is more politically beneficial: solidifying a conservative majority on the nation’s high court. But reminders of covid-19 will be inescapable. (Min Kim, 10/11)

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett vows to be a justice “fearless of criticism” as the split Senate charges ahead with confirmation hearings on President Donald Trump’s pick to cement a conservative court majority before Election Day. Barrett, a federal appeals court judge, draws on faith and family in her prepared opening remarks for the hearings, which begin Monday as the country is in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic. She says courts “should not try” to make policy, and believes she would bring “a few new perspectives” as the first mother of school-age children on the nine-member court. (Sherman, Mascaro, Jalonick and Balsamo, 10/11)

Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, will attend Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings remotely, according to her Senate office. “Due to Judiciary Committee Republicans’ refusal to take common sense steps to protect members, aides, Capitol complex workers, and members of the media, Senator Harris plans to participate in this week’s hearings remotely from her Senate office in the Hart building,” a spokesperson for the California Democrat said in a statement on Sunday. (Levine, 10/11)

Amy Coney Barrett, the supreme court nominee, was a member of a “right to life” organization in 2016 that promoted a local South Bend, Indiana, crisis pregnancy center, a clinic that has been criticised for misleading vulnerable women who were seeking abortions and pressuring them to keep their pregnancies. Barrett, whose confirmation hearing before the Senate judiciary committee is set to begin on Monday, was a member of the University Faculty for Life at Notre Dame from 2010 to 2016. Online records show that the group began promoting South Bend’s Women’s Care Center in 2016 on its website, adding a link to the group under a section called “Pro-Life Links”. (Kirchgaessner, 10/11)