Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a scathing statement Monday after the New York Times wrote a critical story about Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s two adopted children from Haiti.
“The political Left and the press should leave Judge Barrett’s children alone,” McConnell said. “The nominee introducing her family in a few sentences of prepared remarks does not give the New York Times license to start treating minor children like objects of public curiosity.”
The story scrutinized the Barretts’ adoption of John Peter and Vivian, who came from a Haitian orphanage, and juxtaposed it to President Trump’s efforts to limit the admittance of disaster refugees and immigrants.
“Just as everything with her nomination, the adoptions have been hard to totally separate from the politics of the moment,” the New York Times wrote. “Advocates hope the Barretts’ story will encourage other prospective parents to come forward. Detractors have criticized as ‘white saviorism’ the judge’s public accounts of her children’s dire situations before they left Haiti.”
McConnell accused the New York Times of elevating criticism from a sparse group of critics and would have avoided such a story if Barrett were nominated by a Democratic president.
Barrett, a mother of seven, has expressed anti-abortion views and said she adheres to the political philosophy of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who issued many of the most conservative decisions on the court.
“Only a few far-left commentators and now the Times have opted to scrutinize Judge Barrett’s children rather than her qualifications,” McConnell said. “If Judge Barrett happened to be a liberal icon, the press would be running interference against personal attacks and hounding Republicans to denounce them, not pretending they represent some chin-stroking national conversation.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to advance Barrett’s nomination to the Senate floor on Thursday, and a final vote to confirm Barrett to the Supreme Court is expected by next week.
