Democrat Dick Durbin on Barrett’s Confirmation: “We Can’t Stop The Outcome”

NPR had more:

The second-highest ranking Senate Democrat conceded Sunday that his side can't halt Judge Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation to the nation's high court.

President Trump on Saturday nominated the 48-year-old Barrett to fill the vacancy left by the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"We can slow it down, perhaps a matter of hours, maybe days at the most. But we can't stop the outcome," Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said on ABC's This Week.

A Senate Republican aide has told NPR that confirmation hearings for Barrett are set to begin on Oct. 12.

Barrett's nomination and the resulting political repercussions dominated the Sunday political talk shows.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told NBC's Meet the Press he sees the Republicans scheduling a vote for Barrett as the "height of hypocrisy."

In 2016, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., successfully blocked then-President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, eight months before the election.

"Which precedent do you really believe in?" Booker asked. "Because you can't say one thing and then do another. Barack Obama was putting up a nominee 269 days before an election and now we see Donald Trump doing it while people are voting in the midst of an election."

But Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., doesn't see it that way.

"In 2018, we had about as clear a national referendum as we could," he told CNN, referencing the expansion of the Republican majority in the Senate, while neglecting the Democrats' victories in the House. "It was a clear mandate for a Republican Senate to continue confirming this president's outstanding judicial nominees — and that's what we're going to do to Judge Barrett next month."