WASHINGTON—Accusing their Democratic opponents of using coded language to stir up prejudice among the electorate, Republicans argued Monday that references to Amy Coney Barrett as “Trump’s court pick” carried deeply anti-Catholic undertones. “To attack Judge Barrett’s faith by calling her ‘President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court’ is to engage in a long and shameful tradition of thinly veiled insults aimed at Catholics,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, adding that 19th-century Irish and Italian immigrants to the United States could hardly have been met with an epithet as hateful as “Donald Trump’s choice to fill the vacancy left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” “For Americans who adhere to the teachings of Catholicism, painful memories are conjured up each time someone says a person is ‘almost certain to be confirmed to the highest court in the land by a slim majority of Republicans.’ We have freedom of religion in this country, and to hear Democrats resort to such anti-Catholic dog whistles is frankly disgusting.” At press time, McConnell asserted that his critics on the left wouldn’t have disparaged Barrett’s faith if she were a “filthy Muslim.”