WASHINGTON – The Senate was poised to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh as the next Supreme Court justice Saturday afternoon by one of the narrowest margins in the institution’s history, as a throng of angry protesters gathered at the steps of the Capitol.
The vote, expected at 3:45 p.m., will cap off a brutal confirmation fight that has underscored how deeply polarized the nation has become under President Donald Trump.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in an interview with The Washington Post, underscored his confidence in Kavanaugh’s denials of allegations of decades-old sexual assaults and decried the “mob” of protesters who had descended on the Senate.
“I never thought Judge Kavanaugh would withdraw,” McConnell said. “When your integrity is attacked like his was, a withdrawal was certainly no solution to that, so we were in the fight to the finish.”
[Susan Collins to vote yes on Kavanaugh, effectively ensuring his confirmation]
After the remaining votes fell into place on Friday, Democrats, in a show of defiance, spent all night making impassioned floor speeches against the nomination and continued into Saturday morning. They voiced fears about how Kavanaugh would rule on an array of issues, including abortion rights and executive power, and highlighted the allegations of sexual assault that roiled his confirmation process for the past three weeks.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said that by confirming Kavanaugh, the Senate would be sending a deeply troubling message both to the nation’s girls and women – “your experiences don’t matter” – but also to its boys and men.
“They can grab women without their consent and brag about it,” Murray said. “They can sexually assault women, laugh about it. And they’re probably going to be fine. They can even grow up to be president of the United States or a justice on the Supreme Court.”
Women for Kavanaugh, and many others who support this very good man, are gathering all over Capitol Hill in preparation for a 3-5 P.M. VOTE. It is a beautiful thing to see – and they are not paid professional protesters who are handed expensive signs. Big day for America!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 6, 2018
Murray was first elected to the Senate in 1992, in the wake of the chamber’s 52-to-48 vote to put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, the last time issues of gender were so starkly highlighted in a confirmation process. If confirmed as expected, Kavanaugh will join a nine-member court that includes Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment by law professor Anita Hill.
The Democrat’s speeches, delivered to an almost-empty chamber, were part of their strategy of using the full 30 hours of debate time automatically granted to senators, allowing them to delay the final vote on Kavanaugh until late afternoon.
As they spoke Saturday morning, a throng of protesters who were predominantly women first gathered outside the Supreme Court, chanting “yes means yes, no means no, Kavanaugh has got to go,” and “this is what democracy looks like.” Several women told stories to the crowd of their own experiences with sexual assault.
As the vote drew nearer Saturday afternoon, hundreds of protesters arrived outside the Capitol, with several dozen sitting on the building’s steps. Dozens were arrested, raising their fists as police escorted them away, and some broke through police barricades.
There were chants of “the whole world is watching” and “vote them out” and signs that included “Kava Nope” and “We’ll remember in November.”
[Why Susan Collins is voting to confirm Kavanaugh, in her own words]
Trump falsely suggested in a tweet that many of those who gathered were Kavanaugh supporters: “Women for Kavanaugh, and many others who support this very good man, are gathering all over Capitol Hill in preparation for a 3-5 P.M. VOTE. It is a beautiful thing to see – and they are not paid professional protesters who are handed expensive signs. Big day for America!”
On Saturday, a few Republicans appeared on the Senate floor to explain their upcoming votes in support of Kavanaugh.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, noted he had previously served as attorney general in his state and said he strongly believes those who commit sexual assault should be punished. But he said he also believes in the presumption of innocence.
“We do not want a system of guilty until proven innocent in America,” he said.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., delivered a blistering, two-hour speech, starting at 4 a.m., in which he read testimonies from more than 30 rape and sexual assault survivors who had written to him after Kavanaugh’s nomination.
“I’ve received a lot of letters,” he said to a silent chamber, almost an hour into his speech. “I’m going to read more of them now.”
By the early morning hours, the Democratic reaction to the disappointment of Kavanaugh’s expected nomination had started to crystallize. Several senators framed it as a deep injustice that would lead to lasting cultural change.
The confirmation of Kavanaugh, 53, would cement a conservative majority on the nation’s highest court as he replaces the swing vote of retired justice Anthony Kennedy.
The final vote is set for late Saturday afternoon and needs just a simple majority in the 51-to-49 GOP-controlled Senate.
[Collins’ decision sparks praise from GOP, anger from Kavanaugh opponents]
The Senate advanced Kavanaugh on a procedural vote on Friday, 51-to-49, with one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, voting in support of Kavanaugh, and one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, breaking with her party to oppose his advancement.
The margin on Saturday is also expected to be two votes. But Murkowski said Friday that while she will oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination, she will ask to be recorded as “present” on Saturday’s vote in a courtesy to Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who will miss the vote due to his daughter’s wedding.
The practice, called a “pair between senators,” ensures that the vote margin would be the same had Daines been there, and Murkowski said she was doing so as a reminder that “we can take very small, very small steps to be gracious with one another.”
A two-vote margin would be the narrowest for a confirmed Supreme Court justice since 1881, when the Senate confirmed Stanley Matthews, a nominee of President James Garfield.
Trump nominated Kavanaugh in July to succeed Kennedy, a move that triggered an intense partisan battle over the court’s future well before the allegation of misconduct from Ford. But that accusation, as well as subsequent claims by other women, led the nomination fight to collide with the emotional #MeToo movement that has upended politics, the media and other industries long dominated by men.
Kavanaugh’s initial accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, alleged that he sexually assaulted her at a high school gathering in suburban Maryland in the early 1980s. Two other women came forward to accuse Kavanaugh of misconduct while in high school and college.
Following a hearing that included testimony from both Ford and Kavanaugh, the confirmation vote was delayed a week to allow the FBI to conduct a limited investigation into the allegations of Ford and a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, who alleged Kavanaugh exposed himself while in college. Republicans said the FBI report showed no corroboration of the allegations and exonerated Kavanaugh, while Democrats argued it was too limited in scope to be enlightening.
In a new statement on a GoFundMe page, Ford said she believed and still believes “that it was my civic duty to come forward, but this is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, much harder even than I thought it would be.”
[As the decision loomed, anti-Kavanaugh demonstrators weighed on Collins’ staff]
On Saturday, Ramirez issued a statement saying that witnesses who could have corroborated her allegations were not interviewed by the FBI.
“Thirty-five years ago, the other students in the room chose to laugh and look the other way as sexual violence was perpetrated on me by Brett Kavanaugh,” she said. “As I watch many of the Senators speak and vote on the floor of the Senate I feel like I’m right back at Yale where half the room is laughing and looking the other way. Only this time, instead of drunk college kids, it is US Senators who are deliberately ignoring his behavior.”
Kavanaugh has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2006 and previously worked in George W. Bush’s White House. He served as a clerk to Kennedy in the early 1990s alongside Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first nominee to the Supreme Court.
At a forum at their alma mater Princeton on Friday night, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor worried about how the bitter partisan battle over Kavanaugh will affect the court’s reputation.
“Part of the court’s strength and part of the court’s legitimacy depends on people not seeing the court in the way that people see the rest of the governing structures of this country now,” said Kagan, nominated to the court in 2010 by President Barack Obama. “In other words, people thinking of the court as not politically divided in the same way, as not an extension of politics, but instead somehow above the fray, even if not always and in every case.”
Even if the court splits 5 to 4 on the nation’s most important issues, Sotomayor said, it is important for the public to see that doesn’t create animosity among the nine justices.
“We have to rise above partisanship in our personal relationships,” said Sotomayor, nominated by Obama the year before Kagan. “We have to treat each other with respect and dignity and with a sense of amicability that the rest of the world doesn’t often share.”
With Kavanaugh replacing Kennedy, the court will be composed of five consistent conservatives, all nominated by Republican presidents, and four consistent liberals nominated by Democratic presidents.
First lady Melania Trump weighed in on Kavanaugh’s nomination as she wrapped up her first solo trip to Africa at a stop in Egypt.
Speaking to reporters, she called him “highly qualified” and said, “I’m glad Dr. Ford was heard, I’m glad Judge Kavanaugh was heard, that the FBI investigation was done, completed and that the Senate voted.”
The Washington Post’s Mike DeBonis, Paul Kane and Gabriel Pogrund in Washington and Ezra Austin in Princeton, New Jersey, contributed to this report.