Taking the next step
Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh clears crucial Senate hurdle
A deeply divided Senate pushed Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination past a key procedural hurdle Friday, setting up a likely final showdown this weekend in a battle that’s seen claims of longago sexual assault by the nominee threaten President Donald Trump’s effort to tip the court rightward for decades.
The Senate voted 51-49 to limit debate, effectively defeating Democratic efforts to scuttle the nomination with endless delays. With Republicans clinging to a two-vote majority, one Republican voted to stop the nomination, one Democrat to send it further.
Of the four lawmakers who had not revealed their decisions until Friday, Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Jeff Flake of Arizona voted yes, as did Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted not to send the nomination to the full Senate. Lawmakers might vote differently on the climactic confirmation roll call, and Collins told reporters that she wouldn’t rule out doing so. That left unclear whether Friday’s tally signalled that the 53-year-old federal appellate judge was on his way to the nation’s highest court. Confirmation would be a crowning achievement for Trump, his conservative base and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
The vote occurred a day after the Senate received a roughly 50page FBI report on the sexual assault allegations, which Trump ordered only after wavering GOP senators forced him to do so. Republicans said the secret document - which described interviews agents conducted with 10 witnesses - failed to find anyone who could corroborate allegations by his two chief accusers, Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez. Democrats belittled the bureau’s findings, saying agents constrained by the White House hadn’t reached out to numerous other people with potentially important information.
The vote also occurred against a backdrop of smouldering resentment by partisans on both sides. That fury was reflected openly by thousands of boisterous antiKavanaugh demonstrators who bounced around the Capitol complex for days, confronting senators in office buildings and even reportedly near their homes.
On the Senate floor, lawmakers’ comments underscored the lingering bitterness.
“What left wing groups and their Democratic allies have done to Judge Kavanaugh is nothing short of monstrous,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said on the chamber’s floor before the vote. He accused Democrats of using destructive, unwarranted personal attacks on the nominee and even encouraging the protesters, saying, “They have encouraged mob rule.”