A divided Senate voted Monday night to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, capping a lightning-fast Senate approval that handed President Trump a victory only days before the election and promised to tip the court to the right for years to come. She was sworn in almost immediately after at a ceremony at the White House.

Inside a Capitol mostly emptied by the resurgent coronavirus pandemic and an election looming in just eight days, Republicans overcame unanimous opposition by Democrats to make Judge Barrett the 115th justice of the Supreme Court and the fifth woman ever to sit on its bench. In a 52-to-48 vote, all but one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, who herself is battling for re-election, supported Judge Barrett, a 48-year-old appeals court judge and protégée of former Justice Antonin Scalia.

It was the first time in 151 years that justice was confirmed without a single vote from the minority party, a sign of how bitter Washington’s decades-old war over judicial nominations has become. The vote concluded a brazen drive-by Republicans, who moved with remarkable speed to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg six weeks before the election. They shredded their own past pronouncements and bypassed rules in the process, even as they stared down the potential loss of the White House and the Senate.

Democrats called it a hypocritical power grab by Republicans, who they said should have waited for voters to have their say on Election Day — the stance Republicans had taken four years ago when they declined even to hold hearings for one of former President Barack Obama’s nominees to the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland. Democrats warned of a disastrous precedent that would draw retaliation if they win power, and in a last-ditch act of protest, they unsuccessfully tried to force the Senate to adjourn.

Republicans said it was their right as the majority party to press ahead, and exulted in their victory.

Courtesy – NewYork Times