The Senate Judiciary Committee pushed a vote on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court until next week, and decided to consider his nomination on Thursday, Sept. 20, at 1:45 p.m.
Kavanaugh’s nomination was included on the agenda for Thursday’s committee meeting, and it was expected the panel’s Democratic members would request the nomination be held over for one week.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, started the meeting by announcing Kavanaugh’s nomination vote would be held for a week due to Democratic objections. After a few minutes of debate, the committee voted along party lines, 11-10, to set the committee’s vote for Sept. 20 at 1:45 p.m.
Given that timeline, Republican Senate leaders now anticipate a Senate floor vote on Kavanaugh in last week of September, and have been aiming for Kavanaugh to take his seat on the Supreme Court by Oct. 1, the start of the court’s next term.
Thursday’s meeting got off to a raucous start, when Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., made a motion to adjourn the hearing and delay the nomination process. Blumenthal ultimately withdrew his motion and said he was “here under protest.”
“I believe that this nomination is going to be tainted, it will be stained by a badly broken process that has shattered the norms and shattered the norms of this committee,” Blumenthal said.
Blumenthal and his fellow Democrats have mounted a battle over the documents that have been released by the National Archives from Kavanaugh’s tenure working in the White House for President George W. Bush.
Grassley requested documents stemming from Kavanaugh’s time in the White House Counsel’s Office, but did not seek records from his three years as staff secretary.
Democrats have called for documents from that three-year span to be made public and have also protested the withholding of 100,000 pages of records by the White House, which cited executive privilege.
“What in Judge Kavanaugh’s records are Republicans hiding?” asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the committee’s top Democrat.
Feinstein criticized Kavanaugh for his answers during his confirmation hearing, and said he was “evasive and misleading.” She argued there is an unnecessary “march to judgment” on his nomination.
The panel’s Democrats made several motions during the meeting to compel the release of more documents related to Kavanaugh’s White House tenure and draw out the nomination process, though they were all defeated in party-line votes.
Among the motions was one to subpoena documents from Kavanaugh’s three years as staff secretary, and another to subpoena the documents withheld by the White House. Blumenthal made a motion to subpoena several individuals for testimony, including Manuel Miranda, a former GOP Senate aide, and Don Willett, currently a judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Kavanaugh appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his marathon confirmation hearing last week, which included two days of public questioning by the panel’s Republican and Democratic members. The Supreme Court hopeful also received 1,278 written questions from Judiciary Committee Democrats, which he responded to late Wednesday.
Grassley said the volume of questions submitted to Kavanaugh was unprecedented. The follow-up questions to Kavanaugh spanned a range of issues, including abortion, executive power, and the Affordable Care Act.
Democrats have been warning that if Kavanaugh were confirmed to the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion, could be overturned.
Last week, Kavanaugh told the committee’s 21 members Roe was “an important precedent of the Supreme Court that has been reaffirmed many times.” He also called Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that reaffirmed Roe, “precedent on precedent.”
Kavanaugh was also pressed about his purchase of Washington Nationals season tickets, for which he said he was reimbursed by a group of friends, and whether he had ever sought treatment for a gambling addiction, which Kavanaugh said he had not.
If Kavanaugh is confirmed, the ideological leanings of the Supreme Court are expected to shift to the right, as Kavanaugh would be replacing Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court’s swing vote. That change has raised the stakes of his confirmation and led many Democrats to voice their opposition to Kavanaugh from the outset of his nomination in early July.
The Supreme Court hopeful, however, is expected to be confirmed by the Senate, as Republicans control 51 seats. Killing his nomination would require two GOP defections, and so far, no Republican has announced their intent to oppose his nomination.
Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota have also received attention for how they may vote, as the three represent pro-Trump states and voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court last year.
Neither of those three have thus far indicated whether they will support or oppose Kavanaugh’s nomination.
