Supreme Court's new term could see landmark rulings on abortion, guns and vouchers
CNN
For the first time in more than a year, the Supreme Court will convene in its crimson velvet-lined majestic chamber Monday to begin a new term and hear some of the most divisive issues of the day at a time when the Court's institutional legitimacy is under attack and the majority of the public doesn't approve of the job the justices are doing.
In the coming months the nine -- six appointed by Republican presidents and three by Democrats -- will tackle abortion, the Second Amendment, religious liberty and perhaps even affirmative action, all the while fending off calls from liberal interest groups to change the court's makeup.
Several of the justices have even begun an unusual campaign in recent weeks to convince the public that they are not -- as Justice Amy Coney Barrett said -- "political hacks," but are simply divided by their judicial philosophies.
Over and over at a confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Democratic senators confronted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about controversial comments they said he had made in the past. And over and over, President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services either denied having said those things or said he wasn’t sure he had said them.
Investigators are intensifying their search into what caused the collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and an Army Black Hawk helicopter, with recovery crews still working to pull wreckage from the Potomac River and initial concerns already raised about the path of at least one of the aircraft.