1. Trump picks Amy Coney Barrett for Supreme Court

• President Donald Trump has nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, capping a dramatic reshaping of the federal judiciary that will resonate for a generation and that he hopes will provide a needed boost to his reelection effort.
• Barrett, a former clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, said Saturday that she was “truly humbled” by the nomination and quickly aligned herself with Scalia’s conservative approach to the law, saying his “judicial philosophy is mine, too.”
• Barrett, 48, was joined in the Rose Garden by her husband and seven children. If confirmed by the Senate, she would fill the seat vacated by liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It would be the sharpest ideological swing since Clarence Thomas replaced Justice Thurgood Marshall nearly three decades ago.
• She would be the sixth justice on the nine-member court to be appointed by a Republican president, and the third of Trump’s first term in office.
• Trump hailed Barrett as “a woman of remarkable intellect and character,” saying he had studied her record closely before making the pick.
• Republican senators are lining up for a swift confirmation of Barrett ahead of the Nov. 3 election, as they aim to lock in conservative gains in the federal judiciary before a potential transition of power. Trump, meanwhile, is hoping the nomination will galvanize his supporters as he looks to fend off Democrat Joe Biden.
• Read more about Trump’s nomination HERE.

2. Jones won’t vote to confirm nominee before election

• Alabama U.S. Sen. Doug Jones said on Friday that he would not be voting to confirm any supreme court justice nominee before the Nov. 3 election, saying Senate Republicans’ rush for confirmation will “subvert the will of the people.”
• “We should not force the country into a brutal and divisive partisan confirmation fight while Americans are already voting to choose the next president,” Jones said during a Facebook live event.
• The top concerns Jones noted for a Supreme Court conservative majority were not abortion rights or gun control, but protection of the Affordable Care Act and whether President Donald Trump disputes the results of the Nov. 3 election.
• “It’s about getting a more friendly Supreme Court in the event that this president loses this election and claims it was because of fraud and other irregularities,” Jones said.
• Jones said his vote is ultimately “inconsequential” but plans to keep speaking out against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s choice to rush the vote and won’t be part of the Kentucky Republican’s “political power grab.”
• “I will not be a party to the further erosion of the institution of the Senate and I will not be a party to denying the people a voice in this process to the election of the next president of the United States in just under 40 more days,” Jones said.
• Read more about Jones comments from me HERE.

3. Barrett could be Ginsburg’s polar opposite on Supreme Court

• Amy Coney Barrett paid homage to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her White House speech Saturday as a shatterer of glass ceilings. She said she would be mindful of the woman whose place she would take on the Supreme Court.
• She even commented that her children think their father is the better cook, much as Ginsburg used to talk about her husband’s prowess in the kitchen.
• But the replacement of the liberal icon Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court, by Barrett, who would be the fifth, would represent the most dramatic ideological change on the Supreme Court in nearly 30 years and cement conservative dominance of the court for years to come.
• Barrett, a judge on the federal appeals court based in Chicago, made clear in her Rose Garden address that she looks to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she once worked, and not Ginsburg, on matters of law.
• “His judicial philosophy is mine, too. Judges must apply the law as written. Judges are not policy makers,” Barrett said. She was referring to their common method of interpreting laws and the Constitution based on what they were understood to mean when they were written.
• Ginsburg, who died this month at age 87, and Scalia were dear friends, but they were on opposite sides of the most divisive issues of the day.
• Read more about the shift HERE.

4. 1963 church bombing survivor seeks apology, restitution

• More than a dozen sticks of dynamite planted by Ku Klux Klansmen exploded at a Birmingham church in 1963, killing four Black girls.
• The “fifth little girl,” Sarah Collins Rudolph, survived but still has shards of glass in her body from the blast that took her sister, her right eye and her dreams of becoming a nurse. Rudolph, 69, is now seeking an apology from the state and compensation for what she says has been a lifetime of trauma.
• A law firm working for free on Rudolph’s behalf sent a letter to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey arguing that the words of state leaders, including Gov. George Wallace, at the time encouraged the racial violence that led to one of the most infamous acts of the civil rights era. Attorney Ishan K. Bhabha said Rudolph’s story “cries out for justice.”
• “Her life was put on a fundamentally different track in an instant as a little girl,” said Bhabha.
• The state has yet to respond to Rudolph.
• Read more about Rudolph’s life HERE.

5. Alabamians, New York City, & Covid-19

• New York City saw great devastation from COVID-19 and was the epicenter of the coronavirus in the U.S. earlier this year which means Alabamians living in the city were also facing that difficult time.
• Matthew Colson, a contributing writer from Clanton, decided to took a closer look at those native Alabamians living in the Big Apple and what they had to go through.
• Here is an excerpt:

• There stories’ are worth your time this Sunday. Read more HERE. 

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