It’s official: Kavanaugh sworn in
Amid protests to the end, 50-48 Senate vote caps a bitter battle
Washington — The Senate on Saturday narrowly confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, securing a historic conservative majority on the nation’s highest court after a tumultuous confirmation process marked by partisan rancor, tearful testimony and tense allegations of sexual assault and bad faith.
Kavanaugh was confirmed 50 to 48, the thinnest margin for any Supreme Court nominee in the modern era. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who opposed the nomination, voted “present” to balance out a fellow Republican who could not attend but wanted to vote “yes.”
The angry protests that shadowed Kavanaugh’s confirmation process continued until the bitter end, interrupting the Senate vote several times. Vice President Mike Pence, who also serves as president of the Senate, directed police to remove shouting protesters from the gallery.
Several hundred protesters gathered in front of the Supreme Court after the vote, chanting past nightfall after police forced them off the broad stone steps. Many hugged. Some wept.
President Donald Trump, who called Kavanaugh after the vote, signed the commission appointing him to the court while flying to Topeka, Kan., for a political rally. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. swore Kavanaugh in later Saturday.
The 53-year-old conservative jurist can join the Supreme Court as early as Tuesday, when it next meets, and formally replace the swing vote of retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy on issues as broad as abortion, gay rights and the environment.
“I think he’s going to go down as a totally brilliant Supreme Court justice for many years,” Trump told reporters in Topeka. “Many years.
He was chosen for the reason of his temperament, his incredible past, his outstanding years on the court.”
He added, “And we’re very honored that he was able to withstand this horrible, horrible attack by the Democrats. It’s a horrible attack that nobody should have to go through.”
Kavanaugh’s confirmation — once considered certain, only to be upended over the last three weeks by decades-old allegations of sexual misconduct — marks a major political victory for Trump and his supporters, one likely to resonate in next month’s midterm election.
Both parties bemoaned a broken confirmation process — albeit for different reasons — that could have a lasting effect on the Senate and further inflame a nation polarized by tribal politics amid the cultural reckoning of the #MeToo era.
Republicans and Democrats insisted that the tumult would motivate their voters to turn out for the Nov. 6 election — with both sides citing the anti-Kavanaugh protests that have roiled Capitol Hill and far beyond as a sign of change to come.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., credited the protests in the Capitol, at lawmakers’ homes, in restaurants and at airports for unifying Republican lawmakers and the GOP voter base.
He said the anger at the demonstrations would rouse Republicans to vote next month.
“We’ve been wondering how we can fire up our own people because we know the Democrats are energized going into an off-year election,” McConnell told the Los Angeles Times before the vote Saturday.
“Nothing unifies and energizes Republicans like a court fight. So the good news about it from a political point of view is it has allowed us to put what I think is our single biggest accomplishment — that is, the transformation of the court system in the course of this Congress — front and center going into the election a month from now,” he said.
Democrats said the protests showed the indignation not just at Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault of Christine Blasey Ford when both were teenagers, but at his fiery and strikingly partisan Sept. 27 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The nominee shouted, wept and angrily interrupted Democratic senators, giving rise to questions about his impartiality and temperament.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., sought to leverage the anger, urging the “many millions who are outraged by what happened here” to vote next month. “If you believe Dr. Ford and other brave women who came forward and you want to vindicate their sacrifice, vote,” he said on the Senate floor.
McConnell said he held a crucial procedural vote Friday without knowing how it would end. He and Trump had agreed that if the Kavanaugh nomination failed, they had to quickly move on to another appointment.
“If this nomination was not successful, we were going to go with a second one and finish it before the end of this calendar year,” he said. He said he wanted to hold a vote to give senators a chance to weigh in on the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh.
For McConnell and the GOP, Kavanaugh’s confirmation is a reminder of why the party embraced Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign: the chance to make lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court.