Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced Saturday that all previously-scheduled floor activity would be “rescheduled until after October 19th.”
His statement was tweeted by Voice of America Washington bureau chief Steve Herman. Bloomberg reporter Steven Dennis provided more context, adding that McConnell said the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett will continue as scheduled on October 12.
“McConnell is separately *seeking consent* from Democrats to have the Senate go on hiatus until Oct. 19,” Dennis reported.
Further reporting suggests McConnell will allow all committees to continue their work, not just the Judiciary, which oversees Barrett’s hearings.
As soon as three Republican senators were diagnosed with coronavirus, Democrats began calling for a delay on Barrett’s confirmation hearings — something they opposed as soon as former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away on September 18.
As The Daily Wire’s Tim Pearce reported Saturday morning, two of the three GOP senators — Mike Lee of Utah and Thom Tills of North Carolina — are on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is responsible for moving Barrett’s nomination to the Senate for a vote.
“Committee chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham has said he needs both men back in the chamber by Oct. 15 when the committee is expected to take up debate on the nomination, according to CNN,” Pearce reported. “If the senators don’t return to vote Barrett’s nomination out of committee, Democrats on the committee may boycott the vote in an attempt to stall the nomination, which needs a majority of members present to have a quorum and move forward. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may move the nomination out of committee anyway.”
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) separately said that his committee would continue to hold to its October 12 schedule to being Barrett’s confirmation hearings, saying the two missing senators would not affect the schedule.
Democrats have demanded to hold the nomination until after the November 3 election to see if Trump loses re-election. While they have claimed McConnell should follow his own statement when delaying President Barack Obama’s 2016 Supreme Court nominee, Democrats fail to note that at that time, Democrats controlled the White House but Republicans controlled the senate. Now, Republicans control both the White House and the senate.
And despite Democrat claims that Republicans are rushing the nomination, three former Supreme Court justices — including Ginsburg — were confirmed in fewer than 45 days, which is how many days before the election that Ginsburg passed.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, Ginsburg was nominated and confirmed in 42 days. While The Washington Post tried to claim the Senate timeline for confirming Barrett was “unprecedented,” The Daily Wire reported that was “demonstrably false.” If confirmation hearings begin on October 12 and a vote is held around October 23, the time between hearings and vote would be 11 days. By comparison, the vote to confirm Ginsburg took place 13 days after her confirmation hearings began.
This article has been expanded after publication to include additional information.