Republican Senators lined up behind President Donald Trump in his bid to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with an ultraconservative younger justice with just 42 days left before the Presidential election. In spite of his strong critiques of Trump—which has earned him the ire of the President—Republican Senator Mitt Romney threw his lot behind his party and like most other GOP Senators, agreed to a confirmation vote. In remarks to reporters Romney said liberals ought to get used to a court that tilts right-ward. According to Associated Press, “No court nominee in U.S. history has been considered so close to a presidential election.” Yet GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, who famously 4 years ago argued against filing a Supreme Court seat in an election year, has promised to confirm a justice ahead of the November 3rd race. His rival Democrat Jaime Williams is neck-in-neck with him in the latest poll.  

Trump says he will announce his Supreme Court pick on Saturday and on Monday met with a woman who is considered his top contender: Amy Coney Barrett. Coney Barrett is a federal appeals court judge who faced a ferocious battle in 2017 over her religious fundamentalist views. She is a member of a fringe rightwing church called People of Praise that reportedly inspired author Margaret Atwood to write her dystopian fiction novel The Handmaid’s Tale in which women are the sex slaves of men. Coney Barrett’s church according to media sources believes that men have authority over their wives. The church is also strictly anti-abortion which would likely mean that the constitutional right to an abortion could be overturned if Coney Barrett were to be a Supreme Court justice. 

Meanwhile, the so-called pro-life movements in the U.S. have remained silent on the staggering loss of lives as 200,000 deaths linked to the coronavirus are marked. The number means that one in every five deaths globally linked to the virus are American. At a rally in Ohio on Monday evening Trump claimed that the virus, “affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing.”  But new research suggests that reopening schools contributed in large part to the resurgence of the virus. According to the Wall Street Journal, “in-person classes led to thousands of additional cases each day in the U.S.” Additionally, “an extra 3,200 cases a day occurred in the U.S. that likely wouldn’t have happened had schools kept classes online.” And, while there continues to be a shortage of masks and some medical equipment in the U.S., it was revealed that the Pentagon spent millions of tax doll...