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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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Senate Teed Up for Monday Vote to Confirm Barrett

Senate Republicans are set to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Monday, a victory for President Donald Trump that will make history just days out from the 2020 election.

WASHINGTON (CN) — Senate Republicans are set to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Monday, a victory for President Donald Trump that will make history just days out from the 2020 election. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed a cloture motion Friday —  setting up a procedural vote Sunday ahead of a final vote on Monday before 8 p.m. — lining up Barrett to fill the vacancy left by the death of liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

“In about 72 hours, I anticipate we'll have a third new associate justice of the Supreme Court,” McConnell said. 

Other nominees have soared through the heated and grueling confirmation process faster than Barrett, but none have clinched the lifetime appointment so close to a presidential election. 

Her vote will fall just one week and a day out from this year’s election, while past justices have been confirmed by the Senate in July at the latest ahead of voters going to the polls. 

Democrats argued Friday as they have for weeks that Barrett’s confirmation is illegitimate and its proximity to Election Day steals the right of American voters to have a voice in the selection of the next justice, with tens of millions having already cast their ballots through early and mail-in voting. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called several motions in an effort to delay Friday, refusing to roll over as Republicans soared to the end of a process with what he called a “monomaniacal drive.” 

“We’re not gonna have business as usual,” Schumer said from the Senate floor as lawmakers convened Friday at noon. 

But his motions to indefinitely postpone Barrett’s nomination, to send it back to committee and to adjourn the Senate until Nov. 9, unless House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House reached a deal on a coronavirus stimulus package, all died with a 53-55 vote. 

Senators also entered a rare closed session, before the GOP majority voted to end the brief conference. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., arrives for a closed-door meeting with Senate Republicans, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Oct. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

McConnell blamed Democrats for reaching for the so-called nuclear option in 2013, changing the Senate rules to require only a simple majority to approve district and circuit nominees. 

“Every new escalation, every new step, every new shattered precedent, every one of them, was initiated over there,” he said, pointing to the Democrats’ side of the chamber. 

Republicans warned their colleagues against “trading away long-term Senate norms for short-term political wins,” McConnell said. 

But the GOP has since applied the simple majority rule to Supreme Court nominees, in the wake of Democrats’ opposition to Trump’s nomination of then-Judge Neil Gorsuch. They are expected to seat Barrett on the high court for life without a single Democrat’s vote. 

“Might does not make right. You did something wrong so we can do something wrong is no justification when the rights of the American people are at stake,” Schumer said Friday. 

Democrats boycotted the Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Thursday to report Barrett’s nomination to the floor, a move to not give the “rushed” process “further legitimacy.” 

Eight days out from the election, Republicans who chose to block President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland for eight months, Democrats argue, are now out to secure a third justice for Trump. 

“For the Republican leader to argue for consistency, using his convoluted version of history, is laughable,” Schumer said Friday. 

The Democratic leader called the process a stain on the Senate, while McConnell argued a simple majority vote is better for the country, streamlining the judicial nomination process when a party holds the Senate and White House. 

Absent four GOP senators jumping party lines in an unforeseen turn of events, McConnell will have secured the votes to confirm Barrett’s nomination on Monday.

On Sunday, senators are expected to begin up to 30 hours of debate following the 1 p.m. cloture vote, ahead of the final vote to confirm Barrett the following day. 

Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska both signaled they may be a “no” vote come Monday, siding with Democrats on Friday to block McConnell’s motion to consider Barrett’s nomination on the floor. 

Democrats are arguing Republicans should be focused on passing a coronavirus relief package, amid a pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 Americans, not rushing Barrett onto the Supreme Court. 

They also warn that Trump tapped Barrett to fill Ginsburg’s seat ahead of a Supreme Court case next month to overturn the Affordable Care Act, swinging the court to a 6-3 conservative majority that could dismantle so-called Obamacare, leaving millions of Americans without health care during the Covid-19 crisis.  

But GOP senators have praised Barrett as supremely qualified, arguing Democrats have no basis to claim that her record indicates she will do away with the ACA. 

Categories / Courts, Government, Politics

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