Slate: “On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings for a number of Joe Biden’s nominees, including Hampton Dellinger, whom the president selected to serve as assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy. An outspoken progressive, Dellinger surely expected Republican senators to grill him about his past political tweets on controversial topics, including abortion. He probably did not expect these senators to ask about his religious beliefs, which the Constitution expressly forbids. But that’s what GOP Sen. John Kennedy did during a startling exchange in which the lawmaker asked Dellinger: “Do you believe in God?”
Kennedy’s question arose in the context of a tweet in which Dellinger asserted that male Republican politicians are the driving force behind abortion restrictions. “If there were no Republican men in elected office,” he tweeted, “there would be no abortion bans.” Kennedy read this tweet aloud, then asked Dellinger: “Do you think that my votes with respect to abortion are based on the fact that I want to control women?” When Dellinger responded that he “cannot speak to that,” the senator responded: “Then why’d you say it in front of God and country?” Dellinger told the senator that, to his mind, the Supreme Court’s decisions protecting reproductive rights “are important.” After further back-and-forth, Kennedy asked the nominee whether he believed in God. When Dellinger told him that “I have faith, I believe,” the senator shot back: “A lot of people have faith. Did it ever occur to you that some people may base their position on abortion on their faith?””