As of now, there are three Republican Senators who have tested positive for Covid: Mike Lee (UT), Thom Tillis (NC) and Ron Johnson (WI). Two of them - Lee and Tillis - sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee. They are under quarantine orders. Senate votes must take place in person (efforts to make Congress fully remote never seemed to get traction, mainly from Covid skeptics being resistant).
The GOP currently has a 53-47 majority. Murkowski and Collins refuse to have a vote on Comey Barrett before the election. Also, there must be 51 Senators present for a quorum.
Any prolonged absence by three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee (Marsha Blackburn flew with Trump to the debate) means that the Committee cannot send Comey Barrett to the full Senate for a vote. We should probably also talk about mortality, grim as that might be. Tillis is currently in a tough race against Cal Cunningham (Cunningham dropped a statement last night that he had engaged in inappropriate flirtatious texts with a woman not his wife. Nice timing Cal, seriously. I imagine that story won't dominate headlines right now.) If Tillis were to die, the NC governor - a Democrat - names his temporary replacement. If Johnson were to die, Wisconsin law (I believe) leaves the seat open until a special election.
Senator John Kennedy is the only other GOP member of the Senate Judiciary with a Democratic governor. However, every vote counts and if the White House Super Spreader event knocks off or even incapacitates a number of GOP Senators, it means that any movement on Comey Barrett's nomination would come after the election at the earliest.
Tweet of the Day: "It looks like Ruth Bader Ginsburg just won her first oral argument before God."
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