Senate confirms Amy Coney Barrett but controversy follows her to the Supreme Court
Senate Republicans finished their race Monday to confirm Amy Coney Barrett and boost the long-running conservative advantage on the Supreme Court, where her actions on consequential cases in the coming days and months could amplify calls to revamp the high court and change Senate rules to do so.
Barrett narrowly won confirmation in a 52-48 vote Monday evening almost entirely along party lines to fill the vacancy left by the death last month of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She joins the court in time to consider legal fights over the presidential election and to decide whether the entire 2010 health care law should be wiped out.
Democrats decried Republicans for what they called a sham and hypocritical confirmation process so close to the Nov. 3 elections that will determine control of the White House and the Senate. Four years earlier, Republicans refused to consider President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick B. Garland, for eight months because they said it was too close to a presidential election.
“The truth is, this nomination is part of a decadeslong effort to tilt the judiciary to the far right to accomplish through the courts what the radical right and their allies, Senate Republicans, could never accomplish through Congress,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Monday.
But Democrats were powerless to stop Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from strengthening the long-running advantage for justices appointed by Republican presidents from 5-4 to 6-3, including a third appointee by President Donald Trump. The political spotlight will quickly shift to the Supreme Court docket. What happens there, and at the ballot box, will shape whether Democrats and their allies press for actions to rebalance the court such as adding more justices to recoup what they consider a stolen seat.
Those fixes would almost certainly require the end of the Senate’s longstanding rules that allow the minority party to block legislation, and some Democrats suggested that might need to be done no matter how the Supreme Court’s rulings come down...
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