Senate confirms Amy Coney Barrett to Supreme Court, cements 6-3 conservative majority
By: Tyler Olsen
Congrats to Amy Comey Barrett, U.S. Supreme Court justice! Thank you to President Trump for nominating her. Your work on the courts alone totally justifies the votes of all who voted for you in 2016.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Barrett will be Trump's third justice appointed to the Supreme Court, the most for any president since Ronald Reagan
The Senate voted 52-48 on Monday night to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in a move that makes the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge and Notre Dame law professor the third appointment to the high court by President Trump , solidifying his administration's legacy even further just a week before Election Day as he seeks a second term.
The last president to nominate three new justices to the Supreme Court was Ronald Reagan.
Monday's vote marked the end of a confirmation process that lasted less than 40 days from when late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died to when her successor, Barrett, was confirmed. During that time Democrats objected loudly to the speed and timing of the confirmation just before an election. Meanwhile, Republicans have touted Barrett's record as an academic and a judge as impeccable -- and her "Well Qualified" rating from the American Bar Association (ABA) whose representatives relayed descriptions of her as "brilliant" and an "intellectual giant."
Barrett is expected to be sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas at the White House on Monday night.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, was the only Republican to vote against Barrett after expressing objections to moving a Supreme Court nomination before an election after Republicans blocked Obama nominee Merrick Garland ahead of the 2016 election. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has also expressed the same concerns as Collins and voted against a procedural motion to advance Barrett's nomination on Sunday, but she voted for the nominee Monday after saying she would not hold her process objections against Barrett.
All 45 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats voted against Barrett's confirmation.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on Sunday, as the Senate advanced a procedural motion that set up the Monday vote, that his party should "feel good about" their involvement in moving Barrett's confirmation forward.
"This is something to really be proud of and feel good about. We made an important contribution to the future of this country," McConnell said as the Senate advanced Barrett for confirmation for a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court. "A lot of what we've done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election ... They won't be able to do much about this for a long time to come."
McConnell has made a point to prioritize judicial nominations during the nearly four years Trump has been the president. Barrett will be the 220th federal judge appointed by Trump to this point in his first term, trailing only Jimmy Carter all-time.
McConnell's dogged focus on judicial appointments led to there being zero remaining vacancies on federal courts of appeals -- although Barrett's confirmation Monday creates another for him to fill.
Monday's vote followed 30 consecutive hours of floor debate -- running overnight Sunday into Monday -- after Republicans invoked cloture on the Barrett nomination in a rare Sunday session.
The Barrett confirmation fight was not nearly as chaotic as the previous fight over Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation, which involved lurid accusations of sexual assault against the nominee and multiple rounds of hearings. In fact, Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called the Barrett hearings "one of the best Senate hearings that I've participated in."
She added to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.: "I want to thank you for your fairness and the opportunity of going back and forth."
Graham responded: "I know we have very different views about the judge and whether we should be doing this or not. But having said all that, to my Democratic colleagues, you have challenged the judge, you have challenged us, and I accept those challenges as being sincere and not personal."
The collegiality between the longtime senators does not mean the nomination wasn't hard-fought, however. Interest groups on both sides poured tens of millions of dollars into advertising and Senate Democrats pulled out every conceivable procedural stop to pressure Republicans.
That included Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., forcing several procedural votes on topics from health care to coronavirus relief to shutting down the Senate. In one stunt that was particularly effective at squeezing the GOP, Schumer forced a vote on a measure that would ban the Justice Department from arguing against the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as it currently plans to when a case against it comes before the Supreme Court on Nov. 10.
The "cloture" motion on that failed 51-43 -- it needed 60 votes to pass -- but succeeded in getting six moderate or electorally vulnerable Republican senators to back it.
Beyond that, Senate Democrats even boycotted the beginning of the first markup on Barrett's nomination on Oct. 15 and the entirety of the second on Oct. 21, forcing the GOP to forge ahead by waiving committee rules that require at least two members of the minority party to be present for the committee to do business.
But despite the pressure tactics from Democrats, Republicans stuck together and seem to have votes to confirm Barrett. For many of the GOP senators, Barrett's qualifications were inescapable and were the most important factors in their votes.
"I consider Judge Amy Coney Barrett to be the most qualified Supreme Court nominee that I've encountered in my 34 years in the United States Senate," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said Monday.
"I regret that we could not do it the normal way. But what I don't regret is reporting her out of committee," Graham said after the Judiciary Committee gave a 12-0 favorable recommendation of Barrett, with all the committee's Democrats boycotting. "I could not have lived with myself if I denied her her day."
But for Democrats, the emphasis was on health care but also alleged "hypocrisy" from Republicans.
"There is no escaping this glaring hypocrisy," Schumer said on the Senate floor Sunday. "As I said before, not tit for tat, convoluted, distorted version of history will wipe away the stain that will exist forever with the Republican majority and this Republican leader."
Fox News' John Roberts contributed to this report.
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Amazing.
I didn't vote for Trump in part because I didn't think he deliver on judges. I thought he'd give in to the left and make Souter like appointments out of some need to be accepted by the left. I thought he'd out McCain McCain in that regard. Luckily, Schumer and the Dems went scorched earth on Trump from day one, making any sort of rapprochement impossible. I wonder if the dems had more savvy leadership, or at least leaders who weren't puppets of the online hard left, if they'd have used Trump to achieve a lot of progressive policy goals and gotten Trump to compromise on Judges as part of his desire to make deals..
The President not only delivered on that promise, but I think he got the best of compliments coming from the left wing site Vox, which noted “Based solely on objective legal credentials, the average Trump appointee has a far more impressive résumé than any past president’s nominees.”
Let's not forget the leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who helped usher in three associate Justices and has confirmed 53 circuit judges plus 162 district judges. A legacy good for at least a generation or two!
Yes, It is....And while the democrats are howling at the sky somewhere, the real Party of Diversity is watching a woman Supreme Court Justice being sworn in by a black Supreme Court Justice.
The Republican Party is the party of ALL Americans!
Ah yes the Party of Diversity 2018 WH interns, 4 out of 90 are not white.
Btw the ceremonial swearing in of the new Justice with the POTUS present is the third such politicalization
of a what is supposed to be a non political event. Another norm smashed by Trump.
Tomorrow ACB will be sworn in as the 115th(?) justice properly by the Chief Justice at the Supreme Court.
spoken like a true progressive liberal, lol
Then either something is seriously wrong or the Democrats are the party of all Americans, too.
Doubtful that either statement is correct,
Do you really look at pictures of interns checking out the race of people?
Btw the ceremonial swearing in of the new Justice with the POTUS present is the third such politicalization
of a what is supposed to be a non political event. Another norm smashed by Trump.
That I assume is another excuse to pack the Court if the animals win?
Tomorrow ACB will be sworn in as the 115th(?) justice properly by the Chief Justice at the Supreme Court.
Nope - the Senior Justice - Now Clarence Thomas. The Justice democrats once tried to smear & destroy.
spoken like a true progressive liberal, lol
No thanks, I don't use gender & race to gain power.
Then either something is seriously wrong or the Democrats are the party of all Americans, too.
Yup, there is a lot wrong. Women who believe in the right to life want to know if they can join the democratic party.
No, it was a major story on an outlet you probably don't watch, lol.
Animals? I could say the "animals" have already won and are already packing the courts.
Does that sound like a fair basis to discuss anything?
You don't think so? Ironic.
Certainly they can. Most women have no issues keeping their personal choices personal and practice religion and politics separately.
Hi Telo !
Identity politics, pure and simple.
The poison pill of democracy.
Nice to know Sean that you have no standards whatsoever to which you hold your president, and for that matter Mitch McConnell either. Between you and Vic you have the market on ideological extremism cornered on this forum.
When the Democrats get control of Congress again they will react in kind. I don't think they will pack the court. I think they will end the filibuster rule and pass legislation that will be harder for the conservative SC to rule against. Without a filibuster rule they can pass and sign an awful lot of legislation in two years, or four years, as the case may be.
ean that you have no standards whatsoever to which you hold your president
Trump nominated three excellent justices. He probabyl nominated the three most qualified justices in a single term in American history. So he passed that standard with flying colors.
think they will end the filibuster and pass legislation that will be harder for the conservative SC to rule against.
Funny how you claim Trump destroys norms yet again, you assume it will be the Dems who actually do it. All Trump did was fill the vacancies on the Court .
Why don't the Dems just pass legislation and accomplish their policy goals?
They will. The Republicans have now made it easy for them to justify whatever way they choose to approach it.
The 53 Republicans in the Senate represent less Americans than the 47 Democrats do. People have had enough of this "minority rules" shit. The Democrats need to start playing more hard ball and over the last 10 years McConnell and the Republicans in Congress, and Trump , have given the Democrats a lot of motivation to do what they need to do.
One could get whiplash from listening to Democrats on the filibuster this century. No principles, just whatever suits their best interest in the moment.
Sean, the first standard is being fit to hold office. Donald Trump is a known pathological liar, crook, bigot, moron and cheat. Not believed to be, known to be. If he is fit to hold the office of president then Bernie Madoff or Charles Manson were fit.
We have a wannabe dictator leading a mass cult. America is headed off a cliff if Trump doesnt lose next week and then we are able to restore some sanity to the government.
If the Democrats win the presidency and the senate they will have to end the filibuster rule, because they will have to pass legislation protecting Obamacare and pre-existing conditions. You can thank Mitch McConnell and his installing an extreme conservative justice on the Supreme Court 8 days before the election for that.
I cant help you understand things properly. I dont have that level of patience.
I'm not whining at all. I'm telling you what's very likely to happen now.
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Have you never taken a civics or government class in school! Do yo not know that the Senate does not represent the people of the states but the states interests as a whole. How many people represented is not material.
Something that extreme radical leftists don't understand is that the majority of decent American citizens don't share their out of the mainstream views.
You will never make people in flyover country irrelevant no matter how hard you try. Try diminishing their representation in government; and find out just how big that "minority" really is the hard way.
Greg, "decent Americans" do not all have the same political beliefs.
It's a victory for the Founders. We can finally after 50 years have a Court that reviews the law instead of acting as a super legislature.
It will now be interesting to see if the Chief Justice thinks he still needs to side with the 3 progressives. If he keeps doing it, he won't be writing many more majority opinions.
Here is what should happen, and I think some version of it will happen. If the Democrats take control of the presidency and the senate, and keep the House, they can pass and sign any legislation they like. That will require ending the filibuster rule, but that course of action will be the Democrats revenge for the Republicans confirming a very conservative Supreme Court justice 8 days before the presidential election. Game on.
The Democrats will be able to pass legislation that repairs the constitutional issues with the Affordable Care Act, which will essentially nullify Barrett and company's desire to end Obamacare. Normally it would take an unreachable 60 votes in the Senate to pass such legislation, but once they end the filibuster it will be relatively easy. The conservatives keep complaining about liberals wanting to legislate from the bench, which is an option when you have a senate that can't pass anything due to the filibuster rule. With that gone a lot of legislation can be passed and can be designed to be much more difficult for the courts to overturn.
And if the 6 - 3 conservative court DOES overturn it, it will be time to pack the court to 7 - 6 liberal majority. .
The Republicans did end the filibuster rule for Supreme Court justice nominations. And they havent felt the need the pack the court because they have had the ideological majority for years.
It is only when that majority is being expanded unfairly that we hear of the threat of "packing the court" through expansion.
McConnell said yesterday have "elections have consequences" and that what the Republicans were doing by confirming Barrett 8 DAYS before a presidential election is constitutional . Well, if the Democrats win the senate and act to change things it will also be because elections have consequences and what they will do is constitutional. See how that works?
Did you not read what John admitted to, legislation to repair the constitutional issues of the ACA, which means the ACA should've been struck down then for not meeting constitutional muster and since these issues still exist, according to John, it should be struck down now.
It doesnt mean the ACA is objectively unconstitutional, it means that ideologically driven conservative justices may rule that it is unconstitutional. Since the SC has the last say, it may be necessary to rewrite the law.
It also could mean that ideologically driven liberal justices purposely overlooked the unconstitutional aspects of the law.
Ohh. The Republicans filled a vacancy on the Court. The horror!
ics and just steam roll over conservatives every chance they get, scorch the earth, burn their metaphorical fields, stack the court, change Senate rules, do whatever it takes no matter how unsavory to smother the Republican party and Trumpism into extinction
Was 2010 that long ago? Do you really not understand how politics work?
No doubt those same conservatives will be whining and gnashing their teeth at how "unfair" the Democrats are being when they're in p
The lack of self awareness here.....
SCOTUS numbers have changed several times since inception with justice numbers ranging from 5 to 10. The number of justices hasn't changed in 150 years and does not reflect current status of lower courts, or of all Americans with the now majority of very obvious right leaning justices. I do not believe they represent the current make-up of Americans and it needs to change.
Currently there are 94 district courts divided into 12 regional districts.
Currently there are 13 appellate courts.
The SCOTUS should have at least 12 justices to represent 12 regional districts.
Democrats need to start playing by the rules the republicans use. Biden winning the election isn't a far fetched prediction and flipping the Senate seems likely. Biden can ask congress to expand the SCOTUS, then nominate 3 liberal leaning justices. Not a thing the GOP could do about it.
Really? Trump asked congress to expand the SCOTUS, and then nominated 3 conservative leaning justices because there wasn't a thing the Democrats could do about it. When did that happen?
Although its funny to imagine how people here would have reacted had Trump tried to destroy the Supreme Court like that. He certainly would have been impeached for it once the Dems won the House back.
The Republicans justification for adding a new extreme conservative justice 8 days before a presidential election is that they can because a) they won the 2016 election and kept the Senate in 2018, and b) because it is constitutional to add the justice.
Both of those standards would also apply to a Democratic Senate adding new Supreme Court justices next year.
Where did I say he did? All I am saying that Biden could do exactly what I suggested and there would be nothing the right could do about it.
Not that hard to understand.
You said "Democrats need to start playing by the rules the republicans use" and then advocated packing the Court. I assumed the sentences in your post are in fact connected. I didn't realize they are just random words thrown together.
No, I didn't, I said EXPAND the courts which is 100% legal.
What part of my original post is not factual and/or legal?
I said EXPAND the courts which is 100% legal
Do you imagine there's a difference between "expanding" the Courts and packing the Courts?
It's legal, unless the Constitution evolves to make illegal. Progressives tell me all the time it's a "living document." Maybe you'll wake up tomorrow and find out 5 justices discovered it "evolved" and fixed the number of justices at 9.
If Trump had tried something so flagrantly destructive of the government as packing the Court and the liberals had 5 SC votes, they'd absolutely find Court packing unconstitutional. Not a doubt about it.
ts need to start playing by the rules the republicans use
Really? Trump asked congress to expand the SCOTUS, and then nominated 3 conservative leaning justices because there wasn't a thing the Democrats could do about it. When did that happen?