San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Senate confirms Kavanaugh to court amid protests.
WASHINGTON — Judge Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court on Saturday by one of the slimmest margins in U.S. history, locking in a solid conservative majority on the court and capping a rancorous battle that began as a debate over judicial ideology and concluded with a reckoning over sexual misconduct.
As a chorus of women in the Senate’s public galleries repeatedly interrupted the proceedings with cries of “Shame,” somber-looking senators voted 50-48 — almost entirely along party lines — to elevate Kavanaugh. He was promptly sworn in by both Chief Justice John Roberts and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy — the court’s longtime swing vote, whom he will replace — in a private ceremony.
For Trump and Senate Republican leaders, who have made stocking the federal judiciary with conservative judges a signature issue, the Senate vote was a validation of a hard-edge strategy to stick with Kavanaugh, even after his nomination was gravely imperiled by allegations by Palo Alto University professor Christine Blasey Ford that he had tried to rape her when they were teenagers.
The president was exultant. “He’s going to go down as a totally brilliant Supreme Court justice for many years,” he told reporters, whom he had invited to join him in watching the vote on television aboard Air Force One on his way to a rally in Kansas. Trump derided the sizable protests against Kavanaugh on the steps of the Supreme Court and the Capitol as “phony stuff ” and said it was wrong to imply that women were upset at his confirmation.
“Women, I feel, were in many ways stronger than the men in this fight,” the president said. “Women were outraged at what happened to Brett Kavanaugh. Outraged.”
The Kavanaugh confirmation, playing out against the backdrop of a midterm election where control of Congress is at stake, gave Republicans what they believe is momentum to ensure they keep their Senate majority. Republicans are painting Democrats and their activist allies as angry mobs; Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, delivered a speech Saturday assailing what he called “mob rule,” while Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said that “the virtual mob that has assaulted us in this process has turned our base on fire.”
The bitter nomination fight, coming in the midst of the #MeToo movement, also unfolded at the volatile intersection of gender and politics. It energized survivors of sexual assault, hundreds of whom descended on Capitol Hill to confront Republican senators in recent weeks. But it also left many feeling dispirited, as though their elected representatives have not heard their voices. And, in the end, it challenged Americans’ faith in the Supreme Court as an institution that is above politics.
Washington had not seen such a brutal nomination fight — Cornyn called it a “cruel and reckless and indecent episode” — since 1991, when law professor
“This controversial and partisan choice further deepens the divisions in America and profoundly undermines democratic governance. A real tragedy.”
California Gov. Jerry Brown
Anita Hill accused thenJudge Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her. Senators of both parties wondered aloud how the chamber, and the nation, would heal.
“The road that led us here has been bitter, angry and partisan — steeped in hypocrisy and hyperbole and resentment and outrage,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, said on the Senate floor, minutes before the vote, “When the history of the Senate is written, this chapter will be a flashing red warning light of what to avoid.”
Saturday’s vote reflected that fury, with Capitol Police dragging screaming demonstrators out of the gallery as Vice President Mike Pence, presiding in his role as president of the Senate, tried to restore order.
“This controversial and partisan choice further deepens the divisions in America and profoundly undermines democratic governance. A real tragedy,” said California Gov. Jerry Brown.
The final result was expected; all senators had announced their intentions by Friday. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., was the lone Democrat to support Kavanaugh. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska — the lone Republican to break with her party — was recorded as “present” instead of “no” as part of an agreement with a colleague, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who was attending his daughter’s wedding and would have voted “yes.”
By voting present, Murkowski spared Kavanaugh the indignity of being confirmed by a single vote. The last time a justice was confirmed by that margin was in 1881, when Stanley Matthews was confirmed 24-23. Thomas was confirmed by a four-vote margin.
When Saturday’s vote was over, Murkowski seemed drained. “I don’t know what you were doing when those voices were shouting and screams and I’m sure tears,” she told reporters, “but I was closing my eyes and praying, praying for them and praying for us and praying for the country. We need prayers. We need healing.”
Kavanaugh’s confirmation fulfills a long-held dream of conservatives, who have waged a long campaign to remake the high court. In replacing Kennedy, a moderate conservative, he will give the court a reliably conservative bloc. At 53, he is young enough to serve for decades, shaping U.S. jurisprudence for a generation, if not more.
McConnell was unequivocal about what Republicans had accomplished.
“It is the most important contribution we have made to the country that will last the longest,” McConnell said in an interview, ticking through two Supreme Court justices and 26 federal appeals court judges confirmed in the past two years.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg is a New York Times writer.