Dems boycott as GOP advances Supreme Court nomination
WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to advance U.S. President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, with majority Republicans skirting the panel’s rules to recommend her confirmation as Democrats boycotted the session in protest.
The lopsided 12-0 outcome set up a vote by the full Senate to confirm Barrett on Monday, a month to the day after Trump nominated her to fill the seat vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If all goes according to plan, Trump and his party would win a coveted achievement just eight days before the election.
“This is why we all run,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chair of the committee, said. “It’s moments like this that make everything you go through matter.”
Democrats, livid over the extraordinarily speedy process, spurned the committee vote altogether and forced Republicans to break their own rules to muscle through the nomination. Without the votes to block the judge in either the committee or the full Senate, though, their action was symbolic.
Democrats have sharply opposed Barrett, a conservative in the mould of former Justice Antonin Scalia, on policy grounds. But their goal on Thursday was to tarnish the legitimacy of her confirmation, arguing that Republicans had no right to fill the seat vacated just over a month ago by the death of Ginsburg, when millions of Americans were already voting. Democrats were particularly angry that Republicans had reversed themselves since 2016, when they refused to consider former president Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, citing the election nine months later.
“Republicans have moved at breakneck speed to jam through this nominee, ignoring her troubling record and unprecedented evasions, and breaking longstanding committee rules to set tomorrow’s vote,” Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said in a statement.
Democrats planned to hold a news conference later Thursday on the steps of the Capitol to highlight their opposition to the process. Republicans proceeded anyway with little hesitation, even though it meant tossing out Judiciary Committee rules that required members of the minority party be present to conduct official business.