The discussion now on the 25th amendment. Our guest inn a law professor at Michigan State university. You wrote on friday morning that the law is clear about handling president ial illness but it can get murky fast. Talk about what is clear. The 25th amendmenter gives procedures for transferring power from the president to the Vice President things get murky if the president contests thein cabinet and things get really problematic if the president and Vice President are both incapacitated because then we have a lot of gaps in the law. You watch this unfold since friday. What concerns you the most . I think again there is an area where the president might think that he is able and its hard to know how the president is doing and what the side effects of the medication might be. Still not incapacitated enough that the 25th amendment was necessary going to kick in. But theres a potential were the president has been paired but not incapacitated and that is what worries me most now when we m
On full display. Its also a moment where the resiliency of our institutions will be tested, as one that highlights the critical importance of medical sciencebased guidance and research. 7. 3 million infected americans and those who have lost their lives, i spent some time every morning in contemplation and prayer for all of them. I turned to the entire first family. They are in my thoughts and prayers this morning and i hope you will join me in wishing them a quick and full recovery in the midst of these challenging moments. And now today gathering, as part of our brookings series, this conference is part of a greater effort to empower voters with factbased, datadriven nonpartisan information to better understand the policy matters discussed by candidates running for office in 2020. The importance cannot be overstated, especially considering the theme of todays event. As witnessed in the lead up to the 2016 election when russian agents launched a Misinformation Campaign against america
Washington is longtime political reporter and columnist of the washington post. Good sunday morning. Thank you for being with us. Host thank you for being with us. What a year it has been. It is only october 4. It has been an unbelievable year. As i wrote this morning, no one could have written a script for this year. It seems as though not just every week but every day, something dramatic happens. Shakes the country. Weve had unrelenting bad news for most of the year. Pandemic, terrible economic collapse, a recovery that is uneven where the people were stuff are having it the worst at this point. Ande had racial protests violence in the streets. Violence from both sides in the street. We had the death of john lewis, ruth bader ginsburg, now we learned just a couple of days ago that the president of the United States has tested positive for the coronavirus. Get aoes the country ever break from any of this . We are 29 days from the election. Its an unbelievably important election. They
Which are cosponsoring this event, i am delighted to welcome all of you here today to our first exclusively virtual preview of the Upcoming Supreme Court term. Whether you are watching over zoom, youtube, facebook, twitter, or our webpage, we are delighted to have you with us. We are recording this, as is may findo you yourself on cspan at some point in the future. We dont know when. To aspectse we turn of the upcoming term, i want to say a few words about Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg, who died two weeks ago. I first met Justice Ginsburg 37 judgeago, when i was a there. Judges are randomly assigned to the courts of appeals, and my boss, judge scalia, was on a panel. Justice ginsburg was an extra ordinary woman, and extra ordinary justice, an extraordinary lawyer, and an extra ordinary american. I would like to ask for a brief moment of silence in her honor. Let me introduce our moderator and turn it over to him to introduce our panel and get the discussion underway. Robert barnes got hi
Justice ginsburg when i was growing up, the first branch was very different than it is today. And that persisted. I think back to 1993, when president clinton nominated me for the good job i now hold. I had been general counsel to the American Civil Liberties union for several years. The vote was 963 in my favor. My biggest supporter on the Judiciary Committee was not senator biden, although he was certainly in my favor, but it was orrin hatch. I think today he would not touch me with a 10 foot pole. [laughter] we are still friends, but if it came to a vote on me, i dont think he would be the supporter he was in 1993. It was similar with Stephen Breyer when he was nominated the next year. This was well into the 90s, a vote in his favor. It has not been that way for the four most recent members of the court. On both sides of the aisle. I wish there was a way i could wave a magic wand and put it back to when people were respectful of each other and congress was working for the good of th