The Senate took a 30-minute dinner break beginning around 6:22 p.m. ET. They will return shortly before 7 p.m. ET, at which point Harris will begin her line of questioning.

As the Democratic vice presidential pick, she could be the senator most directly affected by Barrett's confirmation should the high court take up an election-related case later.

Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn that he thought Barrett was doing "incredibly well" in her confirmation hearings. 

Trump has tweeted about the hearings throughout the day on Monday and Tuesday.

President Donald Trump responded to Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., as the senator questioned Judge Barrett. 

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, pressed Barrett on comments she made earlier Tuesday referring to sexual "preference" instead of sexual orientation.

As advocates have pointed out, the use of the term "preference" over "orientation" frames being a part of the LGBTQ community as a choice.

Barrett replied, "I certainly didn't mean and would never mean to use a term that would" offend LGBTQ Americans. 

"If I did, I greatly apologize for that," she added.

Again and again, Amy Coney Barrett insisted to senators on Tuesday that she has no “agenda” on issues like the Affordable Care Act, the future of abortion rights or same-sex marriage, and that she would be nobody's “pawn” if confirmed to the Supreme Court.

“Do you think we should take the president at his word when he says his nominee will do the right thing and overturn the Affordable Care Act?” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., asked, displaying a poster of a President Donald Trump tweet criticizing the 2012 ACA decision.

“I can’t really speak to what the president has said on Twitter," Barrett responded. "He hasn’t said any of that to me." She added, "I am 100 percent committed to judicial independence from political pressure.”

The exchange captured the central tension of the Supreme Court hearing: Barrett insisted she will continue to be open-minded, but Trump had already told Americans his judicial picks will faithfully advance his agenda before he put her in the hot seat.

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After senators returned from the break, Blumenthal focused his initial questioning around abortion rights and pressed Barrett about her signing of anti-abortion statements in the past, including a 2006 newspaper advertisement sponsored by St. Joseph County Right to Life and a 2013 letter sponsored by the University of Notre Dame's Faculty for Life and Fund to Protect Human Life.

Blumenthal first addressed the 2006 ad, which he said Barrett did not provide to the committee ahead of her initial confirmation hearing to a federal appeals court in 2017. She said she did not include the ad because she "didn't have any recollection of that letter, or statement."

"I signed it almost 15 years ago quickly on my way out of church, and, you know, the questionnaire asks me for 30 years' worth of material, and I've produced more than 1,800 pages, and so I didn't recall it," she said. She later added that the documents amount to "no more than an expression of a pro-life view."

In one contentious exchange, Blumenthal told the story of a rape survivor who was impregnated, asking whether Barrett viewed Roe v. Wade as constitutional and as having been correctly decided. He also shared the experience of a woman who conceived using in vitro fertilization, which the Roman Catholic Church has opposed. Barrett said she would not discuss how she would rule on cases she did not get to take part in.

Graham announced the hearing will take a 20-minute recess. 

Senators are expected to return before 4 p.m. ET with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., set to question Barrett first after the break. 

Senators will proceed until their dinner break, which is expected around 6:30 p.m.

Barrett said her life experiences and those of her children do not influence her decision-making on the bench.

In an exchange with Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Barrett discussed how having a multiracial family and a child with a disability have "shaped me as a person."

"While my life experiences, I think, I hope have given me wisdom and compassion, they don't dictate how I decide cases," she said. The exchange was one of several she had this week related to her family.

On Tuesday, Barrett discussed how when writing "an opinion resolving a case, I read every word from the perspective of the losing party," asking "how would I view the decision if one of my children was the party I was ruling against."

"Even though I would not like the result, would I understand that the decision was fairly reasoned and grounded in the law?," she said. "That is the standard I set for myself in every case, and it is the standard I will follow as long as I am a judge on any court."

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., pressed Barrett on remarks Trump made prior to her nomination about wanting to have nine justices in place ahead of the election to deal with any potential litigation.

Given that background, Coons asked Barrett if she would "commit to recusing yourself from any case arising from a dispute in the presidential results coming three weeks from now?"

"I want to be very clear to all members of this committee that no matter what anyone else may think or expect, I have not committed to anyone or so much as signaled — I have even written a couple of opinions in the [U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit] that relate to election law," she said. "But I haven't written anything that would make anyone probably say, 'Oh, this is how she would solve an election dispute.'"

"I would consider it — I certainly hope that all members of the committee have more confidence in my integrity than to think I would allow myself to be used as a pawn to decide this election for the American people," she added.