Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination heads to full Senate for vote on Monday
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted on Thursday to approve President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, with majority Republicans pushing past a Democratic boycott and the panel’s rules to recommend her confirmation.
The 12-0 tally set the stage for a vote to confirm Barrett on Monday, a month to the day after the president announced her nomination to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It reflected the deep partisan polarization gripping the Senate as Republicans rush to cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the court and score a coveted achievement eight days before the election. Republicans hold a majority in the Senate.
“This is why we all run,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., the chairman of the committee, exulted just before pushing through her nomination. “It’s moments like this that make everything you go through matter.”
The all-but-certain confirmation of Barrett, 48, an appeals-court judge who has styled herself in the mold of her mentor, Justice Antonin Scalia, will most likely shape American society for decades to come. It has potentially sweeping
implications for corporate power and the environment, abortion rights and gay rights, and other policy issues, including healthcare access, gun rights and religious freedom.
Democrats, livid over the speedy process, spurned the vote altogether and forced Republicans to bypass their own long-standing committee rules requiring at least two members of
the minority to be present to transact business.
“Democrats will not lend a single ounce of legitimacy to this sham vote in the Judiciary Committee,” Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said at a news conference on the steps of the Capitol, where he raised his voice to be heard over the cries of protesters opposed to the nomination.
“We are voting with our feet,” Schumer said. “We are standing together. And we are standing against this mad rush to jam through a Supreme Court nomination just days — days — before an election.”
The boycott, and the majority-only vote to recommend the nomination, marked a new precedent for Supreme Court confirmation proceedings, which have steadily grown more bitter and more partisan in recent decades. It foreshadowed even more brutal battles to come over the fate of the Senate and the judiciary itself.
Even as the panel prepared to meet, former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, pledged that if elected, he would establish a bipartisan commission to study whether to expand or otherwise restructure the courts. The issue is a top priority of liberal activists who have been outraged by Republicans’ drive to stack the judiciary with conservatives.