Politics

(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. issued a stark new warning Friday that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could begin during the Olympics.

“We can’t pinpoint the day, at this point, and we can’t pinpoint the hour, but what we can say is that there is a credible prospect that a Russian military action would take place even before the end of the Olympics,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House. The Winter Olympics, which are ongoing in Beijing, are scheduled to end on Feb. 20.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in Melbourne, Australia, earlier Friday, shared the same message: “As we said before, we’re in a window when an invasion could begin at any time. To be clear, that includes during the Olympics.”

Sullivan said the United States still could not say whether Russian President Vladimir Putin had actually made a decision to invade.

But he said the situation had grown so dire that Americans in Ukraine should leave “immediately” — or at least “in the next 24 to 48 hours.”

“We don’t know exactly what is going to happen,” Sullivan said. “But the risk is now high enough, and the threat is now immediate enough that this is what prudence demands.”

Sullivan told ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Mary Bruce that he expected President Joe Biden to “engage by telephone with President Putin.” The last time the leaders spoke was Dec. 30.

A White House official later said the two would speak Saturday morning.

Sullivan said Biden did not plan to put American troops’ lives at risk to rescue Americans who remained there.

“If you stay,” he said, echoing what said in an NBC News interview Thursday, “you are assuming risk with no guarantee that there will be any other opportunity to leave, and there is no prospect of a U.S. military evacuation in the event of a Russian invasion.”

Sullivan said the U.S. is reducing the size of its “embassy footprint” in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

BREAKING: White House updates on Ukraine:

– Further signs of Russian escalation
– “We are in the window when an invasion could begin at any time”
– Invasion could begin during Olympics, “despite a lot of speculation that it would only happen after”
– “We are ready either way.” pic.twitter.com/4ANN9fdc19

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) February 11, 2022

Sullivan went on to describe in vivid detail what could happen, including a “rapid assault on the city of Kyiv.”

“If a Russian attack on Ukraine proceeds, it is likely to begin with aerial bombing and missile attacks that could obviously kill civilians without regard to their nationality,” Sullivan said. “A subsequent ground invasion would involve the onslaught of a massive force with virtually no notice, communications to arrange a departure could be severed and commercial transit halted.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley spoke Friday with Chief of Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov by telephone, a Joint Chiefs spokesperson said in a statement.

“The military leaders discussed several security-related issues of concern,” the statement said. “In accordance with past practice, both have agreed to keep the specific details of their conversation private.”

Earlier Friday, Biden held a call with transatlantic leaders to chart next moves as talks over Russia’s military build-up near Ukraine showed no sign of defusing the crisis.

Biden spoke about “coordination on both diplomacy and deterrence” with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, the United Kingdom, NATO, the European Commission, and the European Council, according to the White House.

The president has remained largely silent on Ukraine over the past few days, instead holding public events focused on the U.S. economy.

The transatlantic call came as NATO warned Europe was facing a “dangerous moment.”

“This is a dangerous moment for European security,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday in Brussels.

European leaders have engaged in intense diplomacy with Russia and Ukraine over the past several weeks to avoid war in eastern Europe. But the talks have so far failed to yield much apparent progress.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, before meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, the next day.

Russia and Ukraine held talks Thursday in Berlin, moderated by Germany and France, but after nine hours of discussion failed to even agree on issuing a joint statement.

Western officials had hoped that the latest round of the so-called “Normandy Format Talks” would push forward the diplomacy by Macron and other officials who have been shuttling between capitals over the past couple weeks.

The sides remained at an impasse, though, over Russia’s insistence that the Ukrainian government speak directly with Russian-backed separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine.

Biden said Monday that Americans currently in Ukraine should leave, and on Thursday, he repeated that message with more urgency.

“American citizens should leave now,” Biden Thursday said in an interview with NBC News. “It’s not like we’re dealing with a terrorist organization. We’re dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. It’s a very different situation and things could go crazy quickly.”

Senior U.S. officials say they do not believe Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has made a decision whether to invade Ukraine, even as he has amassed over 100,000 troops on Russia’s border with Ukraine.

The U.S. and other Western nations have warned of severe economic consequences to Russia if it does invade. Russia denies it plans to do so.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Russia and Belarus kicked off 10 days of joint exercises in Belarus, north of Ukraine.

ABC News’ Patrick Reevell and Matt Seyler contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Ahead of his promised intent to name his nominee to the Supreme Court by the end of the month, and sticking to his pledge to name the court’s first Black woman, President Joe Biden has indicated to Senate Democrats he will start interviewing prospective candidates for the upcoming vacancy next week, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the meeting.

Emerging from a meeting with Biden on Thursday, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said they are all “anxious to get started” with the process and confirmed that Biden would be “going to take up a meeting with the nominees soon.” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., added they’re “aware of the historic nature of this appointment,” and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said that whomever Biden names will give Republicans “no choice” but to support her nomination.

“I came away from this conversation looking forward more than ever, to bipartisan support because I think the president will nominate someone of such compelling personal story, of character and intellect that Republicans will have no choice in effect, but to support her in some number,” Blumenthal said.

Biden and Harris also told the Senate Democrats, according to a White House readout, that there are a “wealth of extraordinarily qualified potential nominees under consideration” and that “any of the candidates” under review would be “deserving of bipartisan support.”

In an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt taped Thursday, Biden said he’s done a “deep dive” on “about four people” who have already seen “thorough background checks” as he keeps an eye on replicating the qualities of Justice Stephen Breyer on the bench.

“I’m not looking to make an ideological choice here,” Biden said. “I’m looking for someone to replace Judge Breyer with the same kind of capacity Judge Breyer had, with an open mind, who understands the Constitution, interprets it in a way that is consistent with the mainstream interpretation of the Constitution.”

Court watchers expect those under closest consideration include Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, Judge Leondra Kruger of the California Supreme Court and Judge J. Michelle Childs of the U.S. District Court in South Carolina.

Biden told Holt the candidates are “incredibly well qualified and documented. They are the honor students that come from the best universities they have experience, some on the bench, some in the practice of law.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki also said earlier in the week that the president has reviewed “binders of cases” authored by the potential picks.

“He is receiving and engaging with a range of people as he considers this process. I would note also that as he’s looking at the process, he’s reviewing not just bios, but he’s also reviewing cases. And he is looking at binders of cases,” Psaki said. “He’s taking a very thorough approach to it.”

Once Biden names his nominee, she will go before the Senate Judiciary Committee for public hearings. If confirmed out of the committee, her nomination will see a full floor vote in the Senate.

While Harris, as vice president and president of the Senate, could potentially serve as a tie-breaking vote to Biden’s pick since 51 votes are needed to confirm Supreme Court nominees — there is not a single Black woman in the Senate to vote to confirm the first Black woman nominated to the high court.

A group of 14 Black female lawmakers in the House led by Rep. Cori Bush sent a letter to Biden Thursday morning outlining what they are looking for – and there’s a split within the Congressional Black Caucus as to whether it’s appropriate to publicly push for one Black woman over another.

“I just don’t think it’s our place to pit Black women against each other who are trying to get this spot,” Bush told ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott.

Bush’s comments mark a clear break from the highest-ranking Black member of the Congress, Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., who has launched an aggressive campaign to persuade the president to nominate Childs of South Carolina. Childs already has at least one Republican vote if picked.

“If this happens, it will be because of the power of Jim Clyburn in the Democratic world. I think I can get some of my Republican colleagues to follow my lead, and wouldn’t it be something if the first African-American woman on the court was a South Carolinian,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told WYFF earlier this week.

Biden met last week with Durbin and the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, as the president nears his own self-imposed deadline for the historic Supreme Court pick.

At the formal announcement of Breyer’s retirement, Biden said he was seeking a candidate “with character” and a judicial philosophy that “suggests that there are unenumerated rights to the Constitution and all the amendments mean something, including the Ninth Amendment,” which states that “certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

ABC News’ Devin Dwyer contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. issued a stark new warning Friday that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could begin during the Olympics.

“I do want to be clear: it could begin during the Olympics despite a lot of speculation that would only happen after the Olympics,” scheduled to end Feb. 20, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House, but he quickly added that the U.S. could not say whether Russian President Vladimir Putin had made a decision to do so.

Sullivan also said the situation had grown so dire that Americans in Ukraine should leave “immediately” — within the next 24 to 48 hours.

“We don’t know exactly what is going to happen. But the risk is now high enough, and the threat is now immediate enough that this is what prudence demands,” he said.

“If you stay you are assuming risk with no guarantee that there will be any other opportunity to leave, and there is no prospect of a U.S. military evacuation in the event of a Russian invasion,” he added, echoing what President Joe Biden said in an NBC News interview Thursday.

Sullivan said the U.S. is reducing the size of its “embassy footprint” in Kyiv.

Pressed by reporters about the evidence the U.S. had, Sullivan there is a “credible prospect Russian military action will happen even before the end of the Olympics.”

He went on to describe in vivid detail what could happen, including a “rapid assault on the city of Kyiv.” He said Biden wouldn’t put U.S. service members’ lives at risk in a war zone to rescue people who don’t leave now.

“If a Russian attack on Ukraine precedes it is likely to begin with aerial bombing and missile attacks that could obviously kill civilians without regard to their nationality. A subsequent ground invasion would involve the onslaught of a massive force with virtually no notice, communications to arrange a departure could be severed and commercial transit halted,” Sullivan said.

“The president will not be putting the lives of our men and women in uniform at risk by sending them into a war zone to rescue people who could have left now but chose not to. So, we’re asking people to make the responsible choice,” he said.

Earlier Friday, Biden held a call with transatlantic leaders to chart next moves as talks over Russia’s military build-up near Ukraine showed no sign of defusing the crisis.

Biden spoke about “coordination on both diplomacy and deterrence” with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, the United Kingdom, NATO, the European Commission, and the European Council, according to the White House.

The president has remained largely silent on Ukraine over the past few days, instead holding public events focused on the U.S. economy.

The transatlantic call came as NATO warned Europe was facing a “dangerous moment.”

“This is a dangerous moment for European security,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday in Brussels.

European leaders have engaged in intense diplomacy with Russia and Ukraine over the past several weeks to avoid war in eastern Europe. But the talks have so far failed to yield much apparent progress.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, before meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, the next day.

Russia and Ukraine held talks Thursday in Berlin, moderated by Germany and France, but after nine hours of discussion failed to even agree on issuing a joint statement.

Western officials had hoped that the latest round of the so-called “Normandy Format Talks” would push forward the diplomacy by Macron and other officials who have been shuttling between capitals over the past couple weeks.

The sides remained at an impasse, though, over Russia’s insistence that the Ukrainian government speak directly with Russian-backed separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine.

Biden said Monday that Americans currently in Ukraine should leave, and on Thursday, he repeated that message with more urgency.

“American citizens should leave now,” Biden Thursday said in an interview with NBC News. “It’s not like we’re dealing with a terrorist organization. We’re dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. It’s a very different situation and things could go crazy quickly.”

Senior U.S. officials say they do not believe Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has made a decision whether to invade Ukraine, even as he has amassed over 100,000 troops on Russia’s border with Ukraine.

The U.S. and other Western nations have warned of severe economic consequences to Russia if it does invade. Russia denies it plans to do so.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Russia and Belarus kicked off 10 days of joint exercises in Belarus, north of Ukraine.

“As we said before, we’re in a window when an invasion could begin at any time,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday in Melbourne, Australia. “To be clear, that includes during the Olympics.”

The Winter Olympics, which are ongoing in Beijing, are scheduled to end on Feb. 20.

ABC News’ Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden held a call with transatlantic leaders on Friday to chart next moves as talks over Russia’s military build-up near Ukraine showed no sign of defusing the crisis.

Biden spoke about “coordination on both diplomacy and deterrence” with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, the United Kingdom, NATO, the European Commission, and the European Council, according to the White House.

The president has remained largely silent on Ukraine over the past few days, instead holding public events focused on the U.S. economy.

The transatlantic call came as NATO warned Europe was facing a “dangerous moment.”

“This is a dangerous moment for European security,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday in Brussels.

European leaders have engaged in intense diplomacy with Russia and Ukraine over the past several weeks to avoid war in eastern Europe. But the talks have so far failed to yield much apparent progress.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, before meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, the next day.

Russia and Ukraine held talks Thursday in Berlin, moderated by Germany and France, but after nine hours of discussion failed to even agree on issuing a joint statement.

Western officials had hoped that the latest round of the so-called “Normandy Format Talks” would push forward the diplomacy by Macron and other officials who have been shuttling between capitals over the past couple weeks.

The sides remained at an impasse, though, over Russia’s insistence that the Ukrainian government speak directly with Russian-backed separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine.

Biden said Monday that Americans currently in Ukraine should leave, and on Thursday, he repeated that message with more urgency.

“American citizens should leave now,” Biden Thursday said in an interview with NBC News. “It’s not like we’re dealing with a terrorist organization. We’re dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. It’s a very different situation and things could go crazy quickly.”

Senior U.S. officials say they do not believe Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has made a decision whether to invade Ukraine, even as he has amassed over 100,000 troops on Russia’s border with Ukraine.

The U.S. and other Western nations have warned of severe economic consequences to Russia if it does invade. Russia denies it plans to do so.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Russia and Belarus kicked off 10 days of joint exercises in Belarus, north of Ukraine.

“As we said before, we’re in a window when an invasion could begin at any time,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday in Melbourne, Australia. “To be clear, that includes during the Olympics.”

The Winter Olympics, which are ongoing in Beijing, are scheduled to end on Feb. 20.

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(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Bernie Sanders gave a speech on the Senate floor Thursday expressing grave concern over the “drumbeats” of war building in Washington, D.C., amid escalating tensions along the Ukrainian border.

Sanders, I-Vt., the de-facto leader of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, which had kept relatively quiet on the issue to this point, pleaded with government officials to not follow a similar path of past military conflicts.

“I’m extremely concerned when I hear the familiar drumbeats in Washington, the bellicose rhetoric that gets amplified before every war, demanding that we must ‘show strength,’ ‘get tough’ and not engage in ‘appeasement’,” said Sanders, who has, in the past, led the charge to defund the war in Iraq and to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

The senator focused on the “unintended consequences” that have resulted from previous American military involvements and the way wars have been portrayed in the lead up to those conflicts.

“They [wars] rarely turn out the way the planners and experts tell us they will. Just ask the officials who provided rosy scenarios for the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, only to be proven horribly wrong,” Sanders said.

Sanders reaffirmed his support for the pursuit of a diplomatic solution with Russia, the latest attempts of which have been led by French President Emmanuel Macron, who met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy separately this week.

While condemning Putin over his responsibility for the current crisis, Sanders also called on officials to “consider the perspectives of our adversaries.” Putin has demanded the U.S. and Europeans commit to keeping Ukraine out of NATO, something the West has rejected outright.

“One of the precipitating factors of this crisis, at least from Russia’s perspective, is the prospect of an enhanced security relationship between Ukraine and the United States and Western Europe,” Sanders said.

In addition to his war critique, Sanders objected to potential sanctions against Russia and the possible impact on civilians. That includes a package the Senate has been discussing that could cause economic devastation in Russia and reverberate across Europe.

The legislation appears to be on hold following disagreement on a variety of issues, including the strength of the sanctions, leading some to suggest President Joe Biden should proceed on his own.

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., indicated it would be better for Biden to take action as opposed to waiting for the passage of a sanctions package he believes wouldn’t deter Putin. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., struck a similar tone.

“We’re just a hair’s breadth away from an agreement on strong, message-sending sanctions legislation, but I really believe the Biden administration should act now — in fact yesterday,” said Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Concerns about a Russian invasion into Ukraine continue to build as the Russian military began a series of exercises in Belarus on Thursday that are expected to continue until Feb. 20.

“[We] must work hard to achieve a realistic and mutually agreeable resolution…that is not weakness,” Sanders said. “That is not appeasement. Bringing people together to resolve conflicts nonviolently is strength, and it is the right thing to do.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday setting in motion a plan to make $7 billion in Afghan funds held in the United States available to compensate victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, and to provide humanitarian relief and other support to the Afghan people dealing with crushing hunger, according to senior Biden administration officials.

The funds were deposited by Afghanistan’s central bank in the United States before the Taliban took over last year and have since been made unavailable to the Taliban. Much of the money comes from U.S. and other international donations over the past 20 years, according to the official.

The U.S. has struggled to determine how to provide aid to the Afghan people without money going to the Taliban.

Biden’s order would freeze the funds and set aside more than $3.5 billion for American victims of terrorism who are pursuing litigation against the Taliban, according to the officials. The money would be available to them pending the outcomes of their litigation, the officials said.

The administration would also ask a court to allow for the rest of the funds to be placed into a trust fund to be used “for the benefit of the Afghan people and for Afghanistan’s future,” a senior administration official said.

A senior administration official said the U.S. government would “take a couple of months” to figure out exactly how the fund would work and how the money would be used. Another official told ABC News the money would go toward humanitarian relief and “other needs.”

“We have not made specific decisions about how the funds will be used,” the senior official said.

That plan would have to clear several procedural and legal steps, including gaining legal approval, receiving a license from the Treasury Department and going through a due diligence process by the Federal Reserve, an official said.

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(WASHINGTON) — A bill that would eliminate forced arbitration agreements for sexual assault and harassment survivors in the workplace was approved in the Senate in a voice vote Thursday, and it now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.

The legislation ushers in some of the most significant workplace reforms in decades.

New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who has long championed the bill and is one if its lead authors, said the bill “will give survivors their day in court, allow them to discuss their cases publicly and end the days of institutional protection for harassers.”

“It will help us fix a broken system that protects perpetrators and corporations and end the days of silencing survivors,” Gillibrand said on the Senate floor Thursday.

An aide to the senator told ABC News that the bill will go into effect immediately after Biden signs it into law.

The bill’s passage comes a few years after the #MeToo movement launched cases of sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace into the public sphere, revealing just how often men in positions of power settle cases and silence victims by using secretive processes.

These practices have allowed some men to move on to new jobs without having to reveal to the public that claims had ever been filed against them.

This bill would for the first time ensure that survivors of sexual harassment and assault have the option of suing their abusers in state, tribal or federal court.

The House voted on the bill in a bipartisan 335-97 vote earlier in the week. All the votes against it came from Republicans.

“Today, the House took a key step toward ending the shameful practice of forced arbitration of sexual assault and harassment in the workplace. This landmark legislation will void agreements currently silencing more than 60 million workers as well as countless more consumers, who have been denied the freedom to pursue recourse for sexual assault and harassment by nursing home contracts, property leases and other legal agreements,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.

“With today’s strong, bipartisan vote, the House sent a clear signal to survivors across our nation that they deserve the freedom to seek justice and to make their voices heard,” she added.

According to a summary of the bill, H.R. 4445, the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act “would allow sexual harassment and sexual assault survivors to elect to file a case in a court of law rather than be subject to mandatory, forced arbitration provisions in cases involving sexual harassment or sexual assault disputes.”

By voiding forced arbitration clauses in the case of sexual assault and harassment, “survivors are provided the freedom to decide what legal path works best for them — that can include bringing a claim in court, discussing their case publicly, or seeking another kind of legal remedy. It will eliminate institutional protection for harassers and abusers and give survivors the chance to pursue justice,” according to the bill summary.

Proponents of the bill say the point of the legislation is to get cases of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace out in the open so that predators are punished and unable to repeat their offenses. Typically, in arbitration cases, the facts of a case don’t become public, and the accused can often move on to their next place of employment without any public recourse.

Just before the bill passed, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said it was “long overdue.”

“It is an outrage that women and men who are abused can not seek justice are forced to be quiet are forced to keep the agony inside themselves, it is outrageous,” Schumer said. “For decades, this forced arbitration has deprived millions of people form the basic right to justice.”

Republicans who have opposed the bill say it’s an overreach by the federal government in workplace matters.

One of the most prominent advocates for ending forced arbitration in sexual misconduct cases, however, is Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox News host who filed a lawsuit against the late Roger Ailes, the former head of the cable network.

“Yes we will make history and have all women’s voices lifted up!” Carlson tweeted ahead of Monday’s vote.

In a statement earlier this month, the White House’s budget backed the bill.

“This bipartisan, bicameral legislation empowers survivors of sexual assault and sexual harassment by giving them a choice to go to court instead of being forced into arbitration,” the White House’s budget office, the Office of Management and Budget, said.

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(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack has found sparse call records and gaps in the White House telephone logs from Jan. 6, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.

One source indicated to ABC News that the logs do not reflect all the calls they understand former President Donald Trump was making that day.

Investigators have not uncovered any evidence that records were deleted or changed.

It’s public knowledge that Trump used not only his personal cell phone to make calls but also the phones of his aides.

The apparent gaps in the calls records is the latest challenge for the committee as they try to paint a complete picture of what Trump was doing and who he was talking to that day.

The call logs obtained by the committee detail incoming and outgoing calls through the White House switchboard.

A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment.

The phone log hunt was first reported by the New York Times.

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(WASHINGTON) — As a Supreme Court confirmation battle looms, Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered a sobering warning Wednesday about intensifying partisanship that she says puts the court’s independence at the brink of crisis.

“As norms of the nomination process are broken, as more senators, congressional representatives, governors, mayors, local politicians, and the media question the legitimacy of the court,” she said, “the threat is greater and unprecedented than any time in our history.”

Sotomayor, who is poised to become the court’s most senior liberal justice when Justice Stephen Breyer retires this summer, made the unusually pointed public remarks in a high-profile virtual appearance for New York University Law School.

“The more partisan the voting becomes, the less belief that the public is likely to have that Congress is making a merit-based or qualifications-based assessment of judicial nominees,” Sotomayor said of the Senate confirmation process.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll late last month found more Americans believe politics — rather than the basis of law — guide most of the court’s decisions. Public approval of the court has also slumped to near historic lows in Gallup polling, down double digits from just over a year ago when approval was near a two-decade high.

President Joe Biden is said to be pursuing a nominee who can draw bipartisan support in part as an effort to dial-down the partisanship around confirmations.

Sotomayor said the divisive and politically polarizing process has harmed perceptions of the court’s impartiality, and also suggested it may be directly affecting the court’s functioning on the inside.

“The emphasis to pick nominees with extensive writings and publicly expressed views on precedents of the court can be viewed as a way –and can be viewed by the public as ways — to control a judge from changing his or her mind,” Sotomayor said in what was widely seen as a veiled reference to groups like the conservative Federalist Society, which has sought ideological uniformity in nominees.

“We have an obligation to keep open minds,” she said, “that we are willing to change with time and experience. If we don’t show it, people will believe — perhaps wrongly — that we are just political creatures and not independent judges.”

“The history of the court has been filled with justices changing their doctrinal views over time,” she added.

Many of the court’s conservatives have adopted a different view, vowing adherence to originalism and textualism which resists evolution in interpretation based on changing circumstances in society and the law.

Sotomayor did not directly address recent public controversies involving her colleagues, but at one point she did appear to offer veiled critiques of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s closed-door speech to the Federalist Society last week and growing questions about Justice Clarence Thomas’ potential political conflicts.

“Most appointed judges have friends and people they know in the political arenas. Ending relationships is not required,” she said, “but care by judges and ensuring that contacts do not give the impression of undue influence or endorsement is necessary.

“We must also be sensitive to not prejudging cases in speeches,” she continued. “We have a wonderful vehicle — our opinions — to set forth our judicial views. Speeches on legal issues, if not done carefully, can give the appearance of undue influence by groups we choose to give speeches to.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday subpoenaed Trump White House official Peter Navarro for records and testimony.

Navarro, who served as President Donald Trump’s trade adviser, supported the former president’s unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump through widespread voter fraud.

In addition to producing multiple reports of unproven voter fraud claims for Trump, Navarro, in his memoir, claimed to have come up with a plan with Trump ally Steve Bannon to contest the election results by delaying the Jan. 6 certification of the Electoral College vote in order to keep Trump in office.

“Mr. Navarro appears to have information directly relevant to the Select Committee’s investigation into the causes of the January 6th attack on the Capitol,” said committee chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. “He hasn’t been shy about his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and has even discussed the former President’s support for those plans.”

“President Trump has invoked Executive Privilege; and it is not my privilege to waive,” Navarro said in a statement to ABC News regarding the subpoena. “They should negotiate any waiver of the privilege with the president and his attorneys directly, not through me.”

Under Navarro’s plan, dubbed the “Green Bay Sweep,” former Vice President Mike Pence was to send disputed election results back to the states, thereby forcing hours of debate on Capitol Hill.

“It was a perfect plan,” Navarro said in an interview late last year with the Daily Beast. “And it all predicated on peace and calm on Capitol Hill. We didn’t even need any protesters, because we had over 100 congressmen committed to it.”

But rioters disrupted the official count, and when the proceedings resumed, Pence certified the vote count over the objections of Trump and his allies who claimed he could have challenged the results.

“The last three people on God’s good earth who wanted chaos and violence on Capitol Hill were President Trump, Steve Bannon, and I,” Navarro said Wednesday.

“More than 500 witnesses have provided information in our investigation, and we expect Mr. Navarro to do so as well,” said Thompson.

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