Amy Coney Barrett Senate confirmation hearings Day 3 highlights

The Supreme Court nominee finished 19 hours facing questions.

ByLibby Cathey
Last Updated: October 15, 2020, 9:00 AM EDT

The confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, continued Wednesday with seven more hours of questioning.

Senate Republicans are keeping up their push for a final vote before Election Day despite Democratic calls to let voters decide who should pick a new justice.

Trump nominated Barrett to fill the seat left open by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The four days of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, overseen by Chairman Lindsey Graham, are unprecedented, with some members participating virtually and in-person. Barrett has appeared at the witness table to face questions for 19 hours total over two days.

Hearings begin at 9 a.m. each day and will be live streamed on ABC News Live.

The question and answer portion began Tuesday with Democrats arguing protections from landmark cases on health care and same-sex marriage are at risk with Barrett's nomination, while Republicans afforded her opportunities to defend her impartiality as a judge.

Barrett, 48, was a law clerk to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and follows his originalist interpretation of the Constitution. She practiced law at a Washington firm for two years before returning to her alma mater, Notre Dame Law School, to teach. She was nominated by Trump in 2017 to the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and confirmed by the Senate in a 55-43 vote.

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Here's how the day developed.
Oct 14, 2020, 7:29 AM EDT

Road to Senate majority could run through SCOTUS hearings

It's not about the votes in the room -- virtual or otherwise -- or even the votes in the Senate as a whole.

This week's hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett are odd in at least one respect: They appear unlikely to influence the decision of a single senator when it comes time to vote on her confirmation for the Supreme Court.

But the hearings could matter a great deal when it comes to determining who will sit in similar rooms next year and beyond. Four potentially vulnerable Republican senators sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee on the eve of elections that look increasingly dire for their party.

That list includes Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who opened Tuesday's hearing with a riff about how Obamacare has been a "disaster" that he argued is laying the groundwork for Democrats to impose a single-payer system.

Committee Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham speaks during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Oct. 13, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
Shawn Thew/Pool via AP

"That's a political debate we're involved in," said Graham, in what he acknowledged wasn't actually a question to Barrett.

Democrats on the committee include Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for vice president, along with a range of potential Biden administration Cabinet picks. Their goal for the week is less about changing colleagues' minds than it is highlighting what a conservative-leaning court could mean for matters of policy.

To that end, Barrett said repeatedly that she has no predetermined position on the Trump administration's challenge to the Affordable Care Act -- a case scheduled to go in front of the Supreme Court just days after the election.

Barrett also said she would "consider" recusing herself from a case that arises from a dispute in the election.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett arrives to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the second day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill, Oct. 13, 2020, in Washington, D.C.
Shawn Thew/Pool via Getty Images

And in one striking exchange, her care in not prejudging outcomes left her declining to say whether the president has any right under the Constitution to delay an election -- a power he clearly does not have.

-ABC News' Political Director Rick Klein