Gorsuch heads for confirmation as Senate tears up own rules
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| Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky. signals a thumbs-up as he leaves the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 6, 2017, after he led the GOP majority to change Senate rules and lower the vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees from 60 votes to a simple majority in order to advance Neil Gorsuch to a confirmation vote. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- In a confrontation that could reshape the Supreme Court for
generations, Republicans tore up the Senate's voting rules Thursday to
allow Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch to ascend to the high court over
furious Democratic objections.
Democrats
denounced the GOP's use of what both sides dubbed the "nuclear option"
to put Gorsuch on the court, calling it an epic power grab that would
further corrode politics in Congress, the courts and the nation. Many
Republicans bemoaned reaching that point, too, but they blamed Democrats
for pushing them to it.
"We will sadly point
to today as a turning point in the history of the Senate and the Supreme
Court," declared Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
"This
is going to be a chapter, a monumental event in the history of the
Senate, not for the better but for the worse," warned Sen. Lindsey
Graham of South Carolina, a senior Republican.
A
final confirmation vote on Gorsuch is expected Friday, and he should be
sworn in soon to hear the final cases of the term. He was nominated by
President Donald Trump shortly after the January inauguration.
The
Senate change, affecting how many votes a nominee needs for
confirmation, will apply to all future Supreme Court candidates, likely
ensuring more ideological justices chosen with no need for consultation
with the minority party. Trump himself predicted to reporters aboard Air
Force One that "there could be as many as four" Supreme Court vacancies
for him to fill during his administration.
"In
fact, under a certain scenario, there could even be more than that,"
Trump said. There is no way to know how many there will be, if any, but
several justices are quite elderly.
Even as
they united in indignation, lawmakers of both parties, pulled by fierce
political forces from left and right, were unwilling to stop the
confirmation rules change.
The maneuvering played out in a tense Senate chamber with most members in their seats, a rare and theatrical occurrence.
First
Democrats tried to mount a filibuster in an effort to block Gorsuch by
denying him the 60 votes needed to advance to a final vote. That was
successful only briefly, as Gorsuch fell five votes short. Then Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., raised a point of order, suggesting that
Supreme Court nominees should not be subjected to a 60-vote threshold
but instead a simple majority in the 100-member Senate.
McConnell
was overruled, but he appealed the ruling. And on that he prevailed on a
52-48 party-line vote. The 60-vote filibuster requirement on Supreme
Court nominees was effectively gone, and with it the last vestige of
bipartisanship on presidential nominees in an increasingly polarized
Senate.
The developments were accompanied by
unusually bitter accusations and counter-accusations. And yet in many
ways the showdown had been pre-ordained, the final chapter in years of
partisan warfare over judicial nominees.
In
2005, with the Senate under GOP control, Republicans prepared to utilize
the "nuclear option" to remove the filibuster for lower-court nominees.
A bipartisan deal at the time headed off that change. But then in 2013,
with Democrats in charge and Republicans blocking President Barack
Obama's nominees, the Democrats did take the step, removing the
filibuster for all presidential appointments except the Supreme Court.
McConnell
accused Democrats of forcing his hand by trying to filibuster a highly
qualified nominee in Gorsuch, 49, a 10-year veteran of the 10th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver with a consistently conservative
record.
"This is the latest escalation in the
left's never-ending judicial war, the most audacious yet, and it cannot
and will not stand," McConnell said.
But
Democrats were unable to pull back from the brink, partly because they
remain livid over McConnell's decision last year to block Obama's
Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, who was denied even a
hearing after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016.
Instead McConnell kept Scalia's seat open, a calculation that is now
paying off for Republicans and Trump.
Even as
Graham and other senior Republicans lamented the voting change,
McConnell and some allies argued that all they were doing was returning
to a time, not long ago, when filibusters of judicial nominees were
unusual, and it was virtually unheard-of to try to block a Supreme Court
nominee in that fashion. Even Clarence Thomas got onto the court
without a filibuster despite highly contentious confirmation hearings
involving sexual harassment claims.
Some
senators fear that the next to go could be the legislative filibuster,
one of the last remaining mechanisms to force bipartisan cooperation on
Capitol Hill. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Chris
Coons of Delaware were circulating a letter to colleagues Thursday in
support of keeping the filibuster in place for legislation.
With
his final vote set for Friday, Gorsuch counts 55 supporters: the 52
Republicans, along with three moderate Democrats from states that Trump
won - Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and
Joe Donnelly of Indiana. A fourth Senate Democrat, Michael Bennet from
Gorsuch's home state of Colorado, refused to join in the filibuster
Thursday but announced he would vote against Gorsuch's confirmation.
