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Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa are two judges Mr. Trump is considering for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Justice Ginsburg, as he proceeds to nominate a Justice "without delay." 

Barrett is a Judge who has served for 2 years on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. She is a devout Roman Catholic and a legal scholar from Notre Dame University in Indiana. Lagoa is a judge on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the first Latina on the Florida Supreme Court. Trump's nominee is likely to be confirmed quickly by the Senate as Republicans have 53 members in the Senate from a total of 100 members. Democrats want the nomination to be done after a president is elected in January 2021.

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The White House event related to the nomination of Amy Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court that reports suggest may have led to President Trump's infection with the coronavirus. The Rose garden party was attended by guests being at close quarters and many maskless with guests later entering the spaces inside the White House. As a result many of the people in the upper echelons of the Trump administration are now infected with the coronavirus as reported here in The Times. Many testing positive include a University president (Notre Dame), Senator Mike Lee, and others.

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This report in the WSJ shows how Amy Barrett, the new Supreme Court nominee, has managed to combine parenting with her career as a Notre Dame professor and judge on the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A lot of help from her husband, a flexible workplace, living in a smaller town South Bend, Indiana, and a willingness to go with nonconformity, make it possible. She is up at 4 or 5 am to exercize. Blending different worlds is part of this. She can go from work to run an activity for the children. She also views raising children as the activity that has the "greatest impact on the world," so that her career is seen in a bigger context of life.

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Textualism or strict interpretation of the Constitution word for word may be back but one can never be sure. No sooner is one decision made in a certain direction with a particular approach to the law whether it be textualism or something else it then comes up for rethinking a few years later, under a different approach to the law or from a new angle. This is the law practiced in most British style courts of law including the US.  Former Justice Breyer of the US Supreme Court replaced by his law clerk Ketanji Jackson, is interviewed by NYT's Adam Liptak. Today so much is written about Breyer as a non textualist, and Gorsuch, Kavanaugh recent additions to the Court as textualist or strict interpreters of the Constitution based on when it was written with what intent. Yet as thinking individuals who like the rest of the American people grow in their understanding all Justices cannot be categorized  in this way. Breyer says he worked with retired Justices Kennedy and Souter and found them to be willing and keen on hearing all angles. Then it has to be said that both Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were law clerks for Kennedy. Much of American law at the highest court actually is no better than any other human creation - it tries to approximate as best one can the people of the US. Sotomayor coming from Puerto Rican descent, Ketanji Jackson from minority black, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch from Georgetown preparatory schools where Kavanaugh's paternal grandfather attended Yale something even JFK could not claim, Chief Justice Roberts coming from a company professional type background, Barrett a professor at a Catholic university, Kagan with a Bostonian JFK style background, Alito old Italian and Clarence old minority black background. Breyer retired recently to make way for a younger judge, Judge Ketanji Jackson who was law clerk to Breyer. Breyer is writing a new book which he hopes the conservatives on the Supreme Court will read- Justices Kavanaugh, Barrett and Gorsuch. The book coming out March 26 has the title- Reading the Constitution- Why I Chose Pragmatism not Textualism. He hope these Justices will read the book and say their colleague was making sense, would say that it was not a bad point. ...

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US president's sweeping powers to use tariffs as a tool for policy when American people's jobs, communities, health, is threatened by fentanyl and concentration of manufacturing jobs in China, unfair trade by EU and Japan, is the issue presented to the US Supreme Court. The US president presented it in this way- tariffs as a foreign policy tool, not a way to impose economic policy in the form of a tax on American importers or buyers which is the power allocated to Congress by the US Constitution. Justices who mentioned these powers called them sweeping powers but would not say the word fentanyl or look back at the recalcitrant behaviour of Asian nations Japan and China when it comes to unfari trading practices, where the US could literally negotiate forever and get no result, or to the enormous concentration of manufacturing power and supply channels in China that not only ships out American jobs but leaves Americans at the mercy of foreign powers for cost of living. Nowhere was this more evident as during covid years and now in rare earths export restrictions from China. The Justices assumed it was just alright to ignore this or leave it unsaid.  The cost to American buyers is small because most of the tariffs are borne by foreign suppliers in China, Japan and Germany, who as in the case of automobiles unfairly benefitted for decades and are now bearing most of the cost of tariffs. The large business in the US have increased their margins so much in the 2020-2024 period that they are now bearing some of the cost of the tariffs, as reported in WSJ. So that inflation in the US is at 3.0 % in the US less than anticipated, when average tariffs are at about 10% overall, not what the headlines say of 15-20% because of the product exceptions made in the tariffs for each nation. Justice Roberts may be right when he says more care should be exercized in the placing of a tariff, but even Roberts and Justices Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and others know that the US has used this as a last resort, as a policy tool to protect the American people. Sweeping powers need care and caution as Justice Roberts stated- “power to impose tariffs on any product from any country in any amount for any length of time. It does seem like that’s a major authority."   ...

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Under the law overturned by the US Supreme Court it was illegal to carry a gun openly and a permit was needed in New York to carry it concealed. Three Supreme Court Justices appointed by president Trump were of a disposition that opposed gun control laws- Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. The requirement under the New York law was that you had to show "good moral character" and "cause" to carry a concealed weapon or carry a gun openly. Many other states have such laws in California, Hawaii and urban states in the north east. Republican states are loosening gun control laws. This comes as many random shooting incidents are taking place in the US some in schools and grocery stores, the most recent being a shooting in Buffalo, NY. The vote was 6-3 after the Supreme Court for years had avoided hearing such cases based on Second Amendment rights from the Constitution that some had interpreted to include freely carrying guns without any common sense restrictions. This issue is second only to abortion as a cultural issue in the US on which sides are taken by the public including the Supreme Court Justices selected by Mr. Trump. Though not directly apparent these and issues of immigration, other cultural issues surrounding gay rights are putting those who would normally come together on issues of national interest on opposite sides when it comes to common sense support for everyday issues of feeding families, keeping workers employed in good factories at home, child care, education, health care, fair wages, restoring America's manufacturing leadership and bringing back manufacturing to the US. The emergence of Tech and tech companies, Silicon Valley, the finance sector in New York, has reinforced the prejudice in these opposing sides as Tech and the finance sector have largely embedded themselves into the Democratic side. Tech and finance sector employees with higher incomes have largely insulated themselves from the interests of ordinary workers and families creating a split Democratic party when it comes to supporting workers and families who form the vast majority of the American people. In a sense today the national interest is separate from these cultural issues and supporters of national interests can be found in both parties who can look beyond and above these cultural issues. It is also where many of these cultural issues can be resolved to some degree using common sense on which most informed members of Congress can agree. This is true for gun control as a group of bipartisan Senators from both parties are preparing gun control around common sense principles that today are even beyond the capacity of the Supreme Court of the US that itself now reflects a raucous public sphere. ...