When Will the Final Confirmation Vote Happen?
The Senate's schedule is always fluid, but Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said he expects the final vote Monday evening.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell arrives for a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans on Monday as they work toward the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
On Friday, the full Senate narrowly voted to start considering the nomination. McConnell moved to limit debate by submitting a cloture motion, which had to "lie over" for one calendar day.
Republicans voted to invoke cloture about 1 p.m. Sunday, starting a 30-hour countdown before the final confirmation vote, likely around 7 or 8 p.m. Monday.
Vice President Mike Pence said Saturday he would preside over the final vote, although Democrats said that showed disregard for the health of lawmakers and staff after several of his aides tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
Which Senators Will Break With Their Parties?
The final tally will hew closely to the party division: 53 Republican votes and 47 Democratic votes.
Almost all GOP senators have cheered Judge Barrett as a brilliant and fair jurist; many have also lauded her as a strong conservative who will cement the court's leanings by replacing its leading liberal, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The majority leader noted Judge Barrett's confirmation will be harder to reverse than any piece of legislation.
"A lot of what we've done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election," McConnell said Sunday on the Senate floor. "They won't be able to do much about this for a long time to come."
Only one Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, has said she will vote against confirmation.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Saturday she would vote to confirm Judge Barrett because "she is qualified by any objective standard." That marked a reversal from what she told Alaska Public Media shortly before Justice Ginsburg's death last month: "I would not vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. We are 50-some days away from an election."
Democrats have uniformly decried the quick process leading to a confirmation barely a week before Election Day.
They point to 2016, when GOP senators refused to consider President Barack Obama's nominee for a vacancy that opened in February because it was a presidential election year. Republicans say the principle applies only when the Senate and the White House are controlled by different parties, an idea the chamber's top Democrat lambasted on Sunday.
"The majority leader has subjected the Senate to a long and tortured defense of this cynical power grab," said Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "No, Republicans all swore this was a principle -- their word, not mere incident of who controls the Senate and the presidency. The transparency of this new excuse does not cover up the hypocrisy, does not change it one bit, and everyone knows it."
Democrats have coalesced behind that argument, including the only Democrat who voted to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and the Democrat facing the toughest re-election race, Doug Jones of Alabama.
However, there is one Democratic senator who has not declared a position: Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, whose 2018 election marked the first time Arizona sent a Democrat to the Senate in 30 years. She has supported many of President Donald Trump's judicial nominees, even some opposed by nearly all other Democrats.
Sinema talked with the nominee Friday and said in a statement Sunday that she was "concerned about Judge Barrett's inconsistent views on legal precedent, and how those inconsistencies impact her obligation to interpret and uphold the rule of law."
What Can Democrats Do?
In short, not much.
The Senate long required a supermajority to approve judicial nominees, which generally required some support from the minority party. But in 2013, Democrats took the "nuclear option" and dropped the confirmation threshold to a simple majority for all lower court judges; Republicans extended the change to the high court in 2017.
Democrats have implored Republicans, boycotted meetings, attended virtual rallies, held daily press calls and thrown up procedural roadblocks. Schumer forced seven time-consuming roll call votes on Friday alone, including on motions to indefinitely postpone consideration of Judge Barrett's nomination or send it back to the Judiciary Committee.
Senators took to the chamber's floor in the rare Sunday session, bashing the election-year action as hypocritical and calling Judge Barrett a threat to the Affordable Care Act, although experts say it's far from clear she would provide the decisive vote to strike down the whole law. Republican senators and the judge herself have emphasized the overall ACA may survive even if the individual mandate is overturned.
Democrats faced pressure from their base to put up a spirited opposition. During a news conference Thursday, protesters opposed to Judge Barrett's confirmation shouted at Democratic senators, "You haven't done shit!"
Ultimately, Republicans can proceed because the rules only require a simple majority and they have the votes.
When Would a Justice Barrett Participate in Cases?
The most recently confirmed justices received their judicial commission and were sworn in within a day of their confirmation, so the high court could see a Justice Barrett fill the ninth seat as soon as Monday or Tuesday.
Justices generally don't participate in decisions for cases argued before they joined the court, so a Justice Barrett likely would not take part in the 10 cases that argued since the court began a new term earlier this month, including fights about religious liberty, smartphone software copyrights, immigrant deportation and the Fourth Amendment.
However, she would be seated in time to hear a slew of other major cases involving the special counsel's Russia probe, federal agencies' power, LGBTQ discrimination in foster care and, of course, the ACA case that's set for argument Nov. 10. She could also help decide some pre-election voting fights and any post-election disputes about determining the winner.
--Editing by Michael Watanabe.
Update: This article has been updated with details from Sunday's Senate action.
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