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WASHINGTON — The Senate is slated to take its final vote on the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh later on Saturday, and barring any changes in senators' publicly announced decisions, he’s expected to be confirmed.
President Trump's nomination of Kavanaugh in July has been followed by nearly three months of controversy, a pair of confirmation hearings that consumed Washington — one that examined his judicial thinking, and the other in which the nominee denied allegations involving sexual misconduct by several different women — and two weeks of large-scale protests against the nomination that have swept Capitol Hill. The final vote, which requires a simple majority, comes exactly a month before Election Day.
President Trump looked ahead to the forthcoming vote Saturday morning, tweeting in reference to protests still planned for the hours beforehand.
Kavanaugh poised to become Supreme Court justice
Oct.06.201803:12Friday afternoon, it became clear that Kavanaugh had secured the necessary votes for a successful confirmation. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who had been one of a handful of officially undecided senators, revealed in a lengthy floor speech that she planned to vote in favor of his nomination. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., also previously undecided, quickly issued a statement afterward saying that he plans to vote to confirm the nominee.
Collins praised Kavanaugh’s judicial record and approach and said, while discussing the sexual misconduct allegations facing him, that the “presumption of innocence and fairness do bear on my thinking and I cannot abandon them.”
“In evaluating any given claim of misconduct, we will be ill-served in the long run if we abandon the presumption of innocence, tempting it may be,” she said. “I do not believe that these charges can fairly prevent Judge Kavanaugh from serving on the court.”
Manchin then said in a statement that while he has “reservations” about his vote, he believes Kavanaugh “to be a qualified jurist who will follow the Constitution and determine cases based on the legal findings before him.” Manchin is the only Democrat expected to vote for Kavanaugh.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who announced on Friday that she opposes Kavanaugh's nomination, has said she will ask to be recorded as "present" as a courtesy to Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who supports Kavanaugh and will be walking his daughter down the aisle at her wedding on Saturday while the vote is expected to take place.
"I will, in the final tally, be asked to be recorded as present, and I do this because a friend, a colleague of ours is in Montana this evening and tomorrow at just about the same hour that we’re going to be voting, he’s going to be walking his daughter down the aisle and he won’t be present to vote, and so I have extended this as a courtesy to my friend," she said in a floor speech.
If Daines' vote is ultimately needed Saturday, he has said he will use the private plane of Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont. to return to Washington following the wedding ceremony.
Kavanaugh, who has served on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for 12 years, essentially delivered his closing argument via in an op-ed published Thursday night, saying that he might have been "too emotional" in his congressional testimony last week.
"I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times," he wrote in an article headlined, "I am an Independent, Impartial Judge," published by The Wall Street Journal.
The article was published the same day the FBI made available to senators a report on its speedy investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh. Republicans said Thursday the report had vindicated him, while Democrats blasted it as incomplete.
The investigation looked into the allegation by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her at a gathering of teenagers when they were in high school in the early 1980s. She described her account of the incident in testimony last week before the Senate.
“I believed he was going to rape me,” Ford said about Kavanaugh. "It was hard for me to breathe, and I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me. Both Brett and Mark [Judge] were drunkenly laughing during the attack. They seemed to be having a good time. Mark was urging Brett on, and at times telling him to stop."
Kavanaugh has vehemently denied the allegations and said that his reputation and his family have been “permanently destroyed by vicious an false additional accusations.”
What impact will the Kavanaugh vote have on the midterms?
Oct.06.201802:56The allegations first became public in mid-September, shortly after Kavanaugh testified at a public hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the time, he called the 1973 Supreme Court landmark case Roe v. Wade settled law, saying that it “has been reaffirmed many times over the past 45 years” and the most prominent and most important case was Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992.
Democrats and liberal activists have expressed concerns that Kavanaugh would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade on the Supreme Court, and raised questions about his views on the limits of a president’s power to influence investigations of his own conduct. In his testimony, Kavanaugh said he could not answer questions about whether a president could pardon himself or whether a sitting president can be required to respond to a subpoena.
Throughout the confirmation fight, President Trump has largely stuck by Kavanaugh, who will be his second nominee to be confirmed to the high court. Trump's first nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed to the Supreme Court last year after the Senate changed its rules so that a nominee could be confirmed to the high court with a simple majority.