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发帖数: 61690 | 1 The Senate is moving up a final vote on Neil Gorsuch's Supreme Court
nomination after Republicans changed the rules to help him clear an initial
hurdle.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced that the Senate
will vote on Gorsuch's nomination roughly two hours after they convene on
Friday morning.
Democrats could have forced Senate Republicans to stay in Washington until 6
:50 p.m. on Friday if they wanted to use the upper chamber's rulebook to
drag out debate time as retribution for Republicans using the "nuclear
option."
Instead, McConnell's announcement means a final vote on President Trump's
nominee will take place shortly before noon on Friday.
The decision to speed up a vote requires the agreement of every senator,
including each of the 45 Democrats opposed to Gorsuch's nomination. Any one
lawmaker could have objected to McConnell's request to schedule the earlier
vote.
Gorsuch's confirmation is all but guaranteed after Republicans invoked the
so-called nuclear option earlier Thursday, nixing a 60-vote procedural
hurdle on Supreme Court nominees.
The move allows Gorsuch and future Trump picks to now clear the upper
chamber with a simple majority.
After the rule change, senators voted 55-45 to move to a final confirmation
vote on Gorsuch's nomination.
Democratic Sens. Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Heidi Heitkamp
(N.D.) sided with Republicans on the procedural vote. The three Democrats
— who are each up for reelection next year in states carried by Trump in
November — are the only Democrats expected to vote to confirm Gorsuch on
Friday.
"I put party politics aside to support Judge Gorsuch because he is a most
qualified jurist," Manchin said earlier Thursday after Democrats temporarily
blocked his nomination.
McConnell and other GOP senators defended their decision to change the rules
, arguing it was the only way Gorsuch and other Republican appointees could
get confirmed to the bench.
“Our Democrat colleagues have done something today that is unprecedented in
the history of the Senate. Unfortunately, it has brought us to this point,"
McConnell said leading up the rule change. "We need to restore the norms
and traditions of the Senate and get past this unprecedented partisan
filibuster." |
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