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John Wagner
National journalist heads up the political press team at The Post newspaper
The Senate was about to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as the next Supreme Court Justice on Saturday afternoon, by one of the narrowest margins in the institution's history.
After the remaining votes were set up on Friday, Democrats, defying the challenge, spent the entire night delivering impassioned speeches on the ground against the nomination and continued until Saturday morning. They expressed fears as to how Kavanaugh would rule on a wide range of issues, including the right to abortion and executive power, and put forward allegations of sexual assault dating from several years. decades that have tainted its confirmation process over the past three weeks.
Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) Said that by confirming Kavanaugh, the Senate would send a deeply troubling message to the country's girls and women – "your experiences do not count" – but also to her boys and men .
"They can seize women without their consent and brag about it," Murray said. "They can sexually assault and laugh at women. And they will probably be fine. They can even become president of the United States or become a judge at the Supreme Court. "
[‘Willing to go to the mat’: How Trump and Republicans carried Kavanaugh to the cusp of confirmation]
Murray was elected to the Senate for the first time in 1992, following the vote by 52 votes to 48 in the Supreme House of Clarence Thomas, the last time that gender issues were highlighted so strikingly in a confirmation process. If it is confirmed as planned, Kavanaugh will join a nine-member panel, including Thomas, accused of sexual harassment by law professor Anita Hill.
Democrats' speeches in an almost empty chamber were part of their strategy of using the full 30 hours of debate automatically granted to Senators, allowing them to postpone the final vote on Kavanaugh until late in the afternoon.
While they were talking Saturday morning, a crowd of protesters, mostly women, gathered in the Supreme Court, chanting "Yes, it's yes, no, no, Kavanaugh has to leave," and "that's it." what democracy looks like, "said several women stories to the crowd of their own experiences of sexual assault.
Before the vote, more and more protesters gathered on the Capitol steps, carrying signs saying "Perjury is a crime" and "Trust women". The police started to remove them and stop them.
Trump suggested in a tweet that many of those who had gathered were Kavanaugh supporters: "Women for Kavanaugh, and many others who support this very good man, gather around Capitol Hill to prepare a meeting from 3 to 5 pm VOTE. It's a beautiful thing to see – and it's not professional protesters who receive expensive posters. Great day for America! "
The Republicans, caught in their early victory, chose not to speak Friday night but made appearances on television to brag about Kavanaugh and their near-unity for his nomination.
"It's a great day for America," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), During an appearance on Fox News. "The crowd could not intimidate the Senate."
On Saturday, a few Republicans appeared in the Senate to explain their upcoming votes in favor of Kavanaugh.
Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) indicated that he had previously served as Attorney General in his state and strongly believed that those who commit sexual assault should be punished. But he said that he also believed in the presumption of innocence.
"We do not want a system of guilt until proven otherwise in America," he said.
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) Delivered a two-hour incisive speech, beginning at 4 am, in which he read the testimonies of over 30 survivors of rape and sexual assault who told him had written after the appointment of Kavanaugh.
"I have received a lot of letters," he said in front of a silent chamber, nearly an hour after the start of his speech. "I will read more now."
[The Kavanaugh battle only magnified the nation’s divisions and may leave lasting scars]
At dawn, the reaction of the Democrats to the disappointment of Kavanaugh's expected candidacy began to crystallize. Several senators have presented it as a profound injustice that would lead to lasting cultural change.
The confirmation of Kavanaugh, 53, would consolidate the conservative majority of the country's highest court, replacing the decisive vote of retired judge Anthony M. Kennedy.
The final vote is scheduled for late Saturday afternoon and requires only a simple majority in the Senate controlled by 51 votes to 49.
The Senate advanced the Kavanaugh procedural vote Friday, from 51 to 49, with a Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, voting in favor of Kavanaugh, and a Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, breaking up with her. party to oppose his advancement.
Saturday's margin should also be two votes. But Murkowski said Friday that even though she would oppose Kavanaugh's candidacy, she will ask to be registered as "present" in Saturday's vote, courtesy of Senator Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Who will miss the vote because of the marriage of his daughter. .
The practice, called a "pair of senators," ensures that the voting margin would be the same if Daines was there, and Murkowski said that she was doing it to recall that "we can make very small, very small steps to be kind to another. "
A margin of two votes would be the narrowest for a confirmed Supreme Court judge since 1881, when the Senate confirmed Stanley Matthews, candidate for President James A. Garfield.
[As the decision loomed, anti-Kavanaugh demonstrators weighed on a Maine senator’s tiny staff]
Trump appointed Kavanaugh in July to succeed Kennedy, an initiative that sparked an intense partisan battle for the future of the court long before Ford's allegation of misconduct. But this accusation, as well as subsequent claims by other women, led the fight for the nomination to clash with the #MeToo emotional movement that disrupted politics, media, and other industries long dominated by men.
Kavanaugh's initial accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, claimed to have sexually assaulted her during a meeting in a high school in suburban Maryland in the early 1980s. Two other women came forward to accuse Kavanaugh of misconduct in high school and at the university.
Following a hearing with both Ford and Kavanaugh testimony, the confirmation vote was postponed for one week to allow the FBI to conduct a limited investigation into allegations by Ford and his second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, who reportedly revealed that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to college. Republicans said the FBI report did not corroborate the allegations and exonerated Kavanaugh, while Democrats said its scope was too limited to be enlightening.
In a new statement on a GoFundMe page, Ford stated that she believed and continues to believe "that it was a civic duty to speak, but it is by far the most hard that I've ever had to do, much harder than I thought. would be."
On Saturday, Ramirez issued a statement that witnesses who might have corroborated his allegations were not interrogated by the FBI.
"Thirty-five years ago, the other students in the room chose to laugh and look away, Brett Kavanaugh having perpetrated sexual violence on me," she said. "Watching many senators speak and vote in the Senate, I feel like I'm back in Yale, where half of the room is laughing and looking on the other side. Only this time, instead of drunken college students, it is the American senators who deliberately ignore his behavior.
Kavanaugh has served on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2006 and has previously worked at George W. Bush's White House. In the early 1990s, he was a Kennedy employee alongside Neil M. Gorsuch, Trump's first Supreme Court candidate.
Judges Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor were concerned about the impact of Kavanaugh's partisan battle on the court's reputation.
"Part of the strength and legitimacy of the court lies in the fact that people do not see it in the same way as other governing structures in this country," said Kagan, who was appointed to the court in 2010 by the President Barack Obama. . "In other words, people do not think that the court is not divided politically in the same way, nor as an extension of politics, but rather above the fray, even if it is not the same. is not always and in every case. "
Even though the court is dividing 5 to 4 on the country's most important issues, said Sotomayor, it is important for the public to see that this does not create animosity among the nine judges.
"We must go beyond partisanship in our personal relationships," said Sotomayor, nominated by Obama the year before. "We must treat each other with respect and dignity and with a sense of amicability that the rest of the world does not share often."
Kavanaugh replacing Kennedy, the tribunal will be composed of five consistent conservatives, all appointed by the Republican presidents, and four coherent liberals appointed by the Democratic presidents.
The first lady, Melania Trump, took Kavanaugh's nomination into account as she completed her first solo trip to Africa during a stopover in Egypt.
S addressing reporters, she described him as "highly qualified" and said, "I am pleased that Dr. Ford has been heard, I am pleased that Judge Kavanaugh has been informed, that the 39 FBI investigation had been completed and that the Senate had voted. "
Gabriel Pogrund in Washington and Ezra Austin in Princeton, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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