Nominee set for confirmation
WASHINGTON — A sharply divisive drive to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court before election day wound Sunday toward its expected end as Senate Republicans overcame Democratic protests to limit debate and set up a final confirmation vote on Monday.
Two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joined united Democrats in an attempt to filibuster President Trump’s nominee, and Democrats once again planned a flurry of parliamentary tactics to protest a vote that they say should wait until after the election. But Republicans had the simple majority they needed to blow past them, setting up the vote to confirm Barrett just eight days before the election and a month to the day after she was chosen.
The tally was 5148. Republicans were expected to win back Murkowski’s vote Monday for final confirmation, though not that of Collins. Sen. Kamala Harris of California, the Democratic nominee for vice president, spent the day campaigning and did not vote.
Republicans, who have been on a mad dash to fill the vacancy caused by the death last month of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, planned to keep the Senate in session overnight to speed things up further. Thirty hours must elapse between the vote to limit debate and final confirmation. The unusual allnighter only underscored what was at stake.
Barrett’s ascension would lock in a 63 conservative majority on the court, a Republican accomplishment decades in the making that could reshape abortion rights, immigration law, and corporate and government power as well as put a check on Democrats should they win back the White House and Senate next week. It could also have immediate implications as the court continues to act on emergency votingrelated cases before the Nov. 3 balloting.
“It’s a big deal for the president,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS. C. “It’s one of his legacies.”
Democrats tried to color the confirmation process as an illegitimate power grab by Republicans, who had blockaded a Supreme Court nominee from President Barack Obama in 2016, citing the coming election that year. Democrats insisted a quorum be present to conduct any business, unusually drawing most senators into the chamber at once. But with the election at hand, their goal was not so much to stop the confirmation as to use it as a rallying cry for their voter base.
Partisan fights over the direction of the federal courts have escalated rapidly in recent years, as Congress has ceased to regularly legislate and both parties have increasingly looked to the courts to enact their visions for the country.
But the confirmation wars appeared to be headed to a new, bitter low Monday. For the first time in recent memory, not a single member of the minority party — in this case, the Democrats — was expected to vote for confirmation. A single Democrat, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, had supported Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
Democrats oppose Barrett ideologically, but their opposition has little to do with the nominee herself. Democrats have insisted the winner of the election should be allowed to fill the seat. They have accused Republicans of rank hypocrisy for rushing to fill it despite prior assurances by several senior Republicans that they would not do so if a vacancy opened in an election year and despite Republicans’ insistence in 2016 that voters be given a say in who fills the seat.
At 48, Barrett would be the youngest justice on the bench, poised to put an imprint on the law for decades to come. An appeals court judge in Chicago and a Notre Dame law professor, she has been presented as an heir to former Justice Antonin Scalia, a towering figure of the court’s conservative wing for decades.