Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in Saturday night as the 114th justice of the US Supreme Court, after a wrenching debate over sexual misconduct and judicial temperament that shattered the Senate, captivated the nation, and ushered in an acrimonious new level of polarization—now encroaching on the court that the 53-year-old judge may well swing rightward for decades to come, the AP reports. The bitterly polarized US Senate narrowly confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to join the Supreme Court, delivering an election-season triumph to President Trump, per the AP. The near party-line vote was 50-48 capped a fight that seized the national conversation after claims emerged that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted women three decades ago—which he emphatically denied.
Acrimonious to the end, the battle featured a climactic roll call that was interrupted several times by protesters in the Senate Gallery before Capitol Police removed them. Vice President Mike Pence presided over the roll call, his potential tie-breaking vote unnecessary. Rep. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, confronting a tough re-election race next month in a state that Trump won in 2016 by a landslide, was the sole Democrat to vote for Kavanaugh. Every voting Republican backed the 53-year-old conservative judge. Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, the only Republican to oppose the nominee, voted "present," offsetting the absence of Kavanaugh supporter Steve Daines of Montana, who was attending his daughter's wedding. That rare procedural maneuver left Kavanaugh with the same two-vote margin he'd have had if Murkowski and Daines had both voted.
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