If The New York Times reports it, it must be true:

President Trump has selected Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the favorite candidate of conservatives, to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and will try to force Senate confirmation before Election Day in a move that would significantly alter the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court for years.

Mr. Trump plans to announce on Saturday that she is his choice, according to people close to the process who asked not to be identified disclosing the decision in advance. The president met with Judge Barrett at the White House this week and came away impressed with a jurist that leading conservatives told him would be a female Antonin Scalia, referring to the justice who died in 2016 and for whom Judge Barrett clerked.

As they often do, aides cautioned that Mr. Trump sometimes upends his own plans. But he is not known to have interviewed any other candidates for the post.

Washington Post reports same, as do PBS, WSJ, CNN, and everybody else. The Daily Beast says that the GOP plans to have a Senate vote before Election Day — and that they’ll be able to, because there’s nothing the Democrats can do to stop it. She was thoroughly vetted before her 2017 Senate confirmation hearing for the Seventh Circuit, in which Sen. Dianne Feinstein memorably criticized the nominee’s relationship to her Catholic faith by saying:

The Barrett nomination and expected confirmation, coming after Trump’s having put two other conservatives on the Supreme Court, is about the best possible news for social conservatives, and is mostly why Christians who didn’t like Trump otherwise voted for him. We should remember that judges are human beings, not robots; Gorsuch ruled the wrong way (from a socon point of view) in Bostock. Nevertheless, this nomination is sweet indeed, and, in tandem with the other two Trump SCOTUS picks, evidence that elections really do matter.

Here’s something we’re not going to know until Election Day exit polling: will the ACB nomination (and confirmation) do more to motivate Democratic turnout, or Republican turnout? I think a lot of that depends on how the Democrats handle themselves between now and then. This would not be a promising way to go:

Take a look at this letter signed by prominent black Pentecostals, charismatics, and Full Gospel pastors, including the Rev. Eugene Rivers and Bishop Talbert Swan. It says, in part:

As Christians, when we see others being abused and mistreated, we must speak out in defense of
their rights. We must defend the rights of our fellow Christians, of people of other faiths and of
those who hold no faith. Today we stand with, and speak in defense of, Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
As black Christians we will not stand by in silence as our sister in the faith is persecuted for the
“political crime” of her beliefs.

We do not know whether she will be nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court of the United
States, for which she is by all reports under consideration. But we do know that attacks on her
Christian beliefs and her membership in a charismatic Christian community reflect rank religious
bigotry that has no legitimate place in our political debates or public life. We condemn these vile
attacks—which began three years ago during the process of her confirmation for the judicial post
she currently holds. As the descendants of slaves we are particularly sensitive to acts of
discrimination and we demand an end to this reprehensible conduct.

Judge Barrett has a record as a lawyer, law professor, and U.S. Court of Appeals judge. She should
be judged on that record, not on her religious beliefs or membership in a religious community, be
it charismatic or otherwise. Contrary to the claims of some, this is no marginal group. Pentecostal
and Charismatic Christians together represent almost 600 million people, or 8.5 % of the world’s
population and almost twice the population of the United States. If Judge Barrett’s belief in the
baptism of the Holy Spirit and in the moral convictions associated with the historic Christian faith
disqualifies her for an office of public trust, then our American values of individual freedom and
the right to follow one’s conscience are simply hypocrisy. The truth, however, is that the
Constitution of the United States itself prohibits religious tests for public office. Those who say
that Judge Barrett’s charismatic Christian faith—or ours—is a threat to the Constitution are
themselves enemies of the Constitution. They are enemies of the freedom of the individual. Such
behavior cannot be tolerated. We must stand in defense of freedom of conscience in principle and
defend Judge Barrett’s right to practice her faith in particular.

I really, really appreciate that letter. I bet few if any of these men and women are Republicans. None of them endorse ACB’s nomination per se; they just want to say that nobody better run her down for being a charismatic. They’re right.

I know our liberal friends are very down now, and probably feeling like we would if President Obama had named the head of the ACLU to replace Justice Scalia, and had a Democratic Senate in his back pocket. I’m not going to rub it in, but I’m also not feeling very generous towards those who will shriek abuse at her or us. You know my feeling: that the country is going to speed leftward over the rest of my lifetime — we all know how liberal the Millennials and Gen Z are — and the last line of defense for social and religious conservatives, and for the First Amendment, is going to be the federal judiciary. For ACB’s nomination, Deo gratias.