Court nominee clears 1st hurdle

Democrats can block Gorsuch unless GOP changes Senate rules

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch cleared his first hurdle at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday as Democrats attained the votes needed to block his confirmation on the floor, setting up a political brawl over the future of the high court that Republicans vowed to win.

The panel’s 11-9 vote along straight party lines sent Gorsuch’s nomination by President Trump to the Senate floor, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised a vote by Friday in order to seat the federal appeals court judge in time to hear cases later this month.

The initial vote came even as Democrats reached the 41-vote threshold required to prevent Gorsuch’s nomination from reaching the Senate floor under ordinary circumstances. But these are not ordinary circumstances; Republicans, after blocking President Barack Obama’s choice for the open seat last year, have threatened to eliminate Supreme Court filibusters by changing the Senate’s rules.

That means Gorsuch’s final confirmation isn’t really in doubt — but how it is achieved will have a profound impact on the court, the Senate and the 2018 elections.

“If we have to, we will change the rules, and it looks like we will have to,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said.

The committee vote came just 62 days after Trump nominated the 49-year-old federal appeals court judge from Colorado — a vote McConnell denied Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, for 293 days last year. Republicans said Obama should not get to replace the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in an election year, prompting Democrats to complain that the seat was stolen.