Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., began her questioning by reminding the committee that the Senate should be passing coronavirus relief right now, not rushing a Supreme Court nomination in an election year.

“I appreciate Judge, that you said you did not want to be a 'queen.' I would not mind being the queen around here, truth be known,” Klobuchar said, prompting a laugh from Barrett. “But you said that you would not let your views influence you and the like, but the truth is the Supreme Court rulings rule people's lives.”

Klobuchar then quoted Trump promising to appoint a justice who would overturn the Affordable Care Act and asked Barrett, “Do you think that we should take the president at his word when he says his nominee will do the right thing and overturn the Affordable Care Act?”

“I can't really speak to what the president had said on Twitter,” Barrett said. “He has not said any of that to me. What I can tell you, as I have told your colleagues earlier today, is that no one has elicited any commitment in the case or brought up that commitment in the case. I am 100% committed to judicial Independence from political pressure.”

Klobuchar also quoted from an essay Barrett wrote disagreeing with Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority decision which upheld the Affordable Care Act. Barrett stood by her interpretation.

“One thing I want to clarify is you say that I criticized Chief Justice Roberts, and I don't attack people. It's just ideas,” Barrett said. “So it was designed to make a comment about his reasoning in that case, which as I have said before is consistent with the majority opinion characterizing it as a left plausible reading of the statute.”

Graham called the Senate Judiciary Committee back into session shortly after 12:45 p.m.

There are fifteen senators remaining in this round. Each has 30 minutes to ask Barrett questions.

After three hours of questioning, Graham announced the Senate Judiciary Committee is in recess until 12:45 p.m.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., homed in on Barrett’s dissent in Kanter v. Barr, a gun rights case from 2019. Barrett was the lone dissenter when a Seventh Circuit panel majority rejected a Second Amendment challenge from a man, Ricky Kanter, found guilty of felony mail fraud and prohibited from possessing a gun under federal and Wisconsin law.

Barrett argued non-violent felons shouldn't be banned for life from gun ownership, writing in her dissent that the Second Amendment “confers an individual right, intimately connected with the natural right of self-defense and not limited to civic participation.”

Knowing this, Durbin asked Barrett about the differentiation she made in Kanter between felon voting rights and gun ownership.

“You are saying a felony should not disqualify Ricky [Kanter] from buying an AK-47 but using a felony conviction to deny them the right to vote is all right?” Durbin asked.

Barrett answered confidently but provided little insight into what her Kanter decision might mean for future voting rights cases.

“Senator, what I said was that the Constitution contemplates that states have the freedom to deprive felons of the right to vote. It is expressed in the constitutional text, but I expressed no view whether it was a good idea, whether states should do that. I didn't explore in that opinion because it was completely irrelevant to what limits, if any, there might be on a state's ability to curtail felon voting rights,” she said.

The Democratic nominee for vice president, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., appearing virtually, opened her line of questioning with a 10-minute defense of the Affordable Care Act, arguing Republicans are confirming Barrett before the election so they can achieve their goal of getting the court to strike down the health care law.

She asked Barrett when she wrote the article which criticized the majority decision of Chief Justice Roberts to uphold the Affordable Care Act, homing in on the timeline.

Barrett said she didn’t remember when she wrote it, but Harris responded that Trump nominated Barrett to the Seventh Circuit court five months after the article was published.

"In other words, the Affordable Care Act and its protections hinge on this seat,” Harris claimed. "You've already opined the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. And that position satisfied the president's promise to only nominate judges who would tear down the Affordable Care Act."

Harris also asked if she was aware of Trump's statements committing to nominate judges who would strike down the Affordable Care Act before she was picked -- to which Barrett said she didn’t recall.

"I want to be very very careful. I'm under oath. As I'm sitting here, I don't recall seeing those statements,” Barrett said.

Highlighting the real-world impact of the health care law, as her Democratic colleagues had before her, Harris then asked, “Would you consider the 135 million people who gained protection under the Affordable Care Act when deciding the case that challenges that law?"

"Senator Harris, if I were to be confirmed and conclude that I was not -- I was able to sit on the case pursuant to the recusal statute and heard the case and decided the case, I would consider all the protections that Congress put in place," Barrett said.

Harris ended her questioning by arguing Barrett has been much less forthcoming than Justice Ginsburg was in her confirmation hearing, specifically when it came to legislation involving reproductive rights, but said the American people should be familiar with Barrett's views by now.

“I would suggest that we not pretend that we don't know how this nominee views a woman's right to choose," she added, referring to Roe v. Wade.