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Maddow Laments Failure to Interrogate Barrett's Faith

October 27, 2020

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow on Monday expressed regret that Senate Democrats' did not grill Amy Coney Barrett about her Catholic faith.

Maddow argued that Barrett's faith poses a threat to gays and that her ascension to the Supreme Court threatens to "make abortion illegal in this country."

"Barrett will be ruling on an important gay rights case [Fulton v. City of Philadelphia]," Maddow said. "One of the things that did not quite come up in her confirmation process is that she was on the board of a school that won't let kids go there if their mom or dad is gay [and] won't hire gay teachers. How do you think she's going to rule on the gay rights case?"

Democrats largely avoided confrontations with Barrett over her faith after Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) elicited swift blowback when she told Barrett, in her 2017 confirmation hearings to the federal bench, that "the dogma lives loudly within you." The Democrat's accusation became a rallying cry for the right.

Maddow also charged, without evidence, that Barrett had promised to overturn Obamacare, pointing to an article she wrote criticizing Chief Justice John Roberts's decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, arguing that the individual mandate to buy health insurance is a constitutional exercise of Congress's taxing power.

The case before the Court centers on a different legal question, and legal experts consider it unlikely to result in the law being overturned.