Brett Kavanaugh sworn in as 114th Supreme Court justice

WASHINGTON >> Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice Saturday night after the bitterly polarized U.S. Senate narrowly confirmed him. The Senate vote delivered an election-season triumph to President Donald Trump that could swing the court rightward for a generation after a battle that rubbed raw the country’s cultural, gender and political divides.

Kavanaugh was quickly sworn in at the court building, across the street from the Capitol, even as protesters chanted outside.

The near party-line Senate vote was 50-48, capping a fight that seized the national conversation after claims emerged that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted women three decades ago — which he emphatically denied. Those allegations magnified the clash from a routine Supreme Court struggle over judicial ideology into an angrier, more complex jumble of questions about victims’ rights, the presumption of innocence and personal attacks on nominees.

Acrimonious to the end, the battle featured a climactic roll call that was interrupted several times by protesters in the Senate galleries before Capitol Police removed them. Vice President Mike Pence presided over the roll call, his potential tie-breaking vote unnecessary.

Trump, flying to Kansas for a political rally, flashed a thumbs-up gesture when the tally was announced and praised Kavanaugh for being “able to withstand this horrible, horrible attack by the Democrats.”

The vote gave Trump his second appointee to the court, pleasing conservative voters who might have revolted against GOP leaders had Kavanaugh’s nomination flopped. Instead, “It’s turned our base on fire,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters.

Democrats hope that the roll call, exactly a month from elections in which House and Senate control are in play, will do the opposite, prompting infuriated women and liberals to oust Republicans.

“Change must come from where change in America always begins: the ballot box,” said Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, looking ahead to November.

Sen. 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.

Republicans hold only a 51-49 Senate majority and therefore had little support to spare.

It was the closest roll call to confirm a justice since 1881, when Stanley Matthews was approved by 24-23, according to Senate records.

Within minutes, dozens of political and advocacy groups blasted out emailed reactions.

Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List, which contributes to female Democratic candidates, assailed the confirmation of “an alleged sexual assailant and anti-choice radical to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. But we will carry that anger into the election. Women will not forget this.”

Kay Coles James, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, called the vote “a victory for liberty in America” and called Kavanaugh “a good man and good jurist.”

The outcome, telegraphed Friday when the final undeclared senators revealed their views, was devoid of the shocks that had come almost daily since Christine Blasey Ford said last month that an inebriated Kavanaugh tried to rape her at a 1982 high school get-together.

Since then, the country watched agape as one electric moment after another gushed forth. These included the emergence of two other accusers; an unforgettable Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at which a composed Ford and a seething Kavanaugh told their diametrically opposed stories, and a truncated FBI investigation that the agency said showed no corroborating evidence and Democrats lambasted as a White House-shackled farce.

All the while, crowds of demonstrators — mostly Kavanaugh opponents — ricocheted around the Capitol’s grounds and hallways, raising tensions, chanting slogans, interrupting lawmakers’ debates, confronting senators and often getting arrested. Capitol Police said 164 were arrested, raising that count in recent days well into the hundreds.

Inside the Senate, resentments fanned by the battle showed no signs of receding.

Schumer called the GOP’s push for Kavanaugh “one of the least transparent, least fair, most biased processes in Senate history.” McConnell said a vote for Kavanaugh showed that the Senate was “a chamber in which the politics of intimidation and personal destruction do not win the day.”

Democrats said Kavanaugh would push the court too far, including possible sympathetic rulings for Trump should the president encounter legal problems from the special counsel’s investigations into Russian connections with his 2016 presidential campaign. And they said Kavanaugh’s record and fuming testimony at a now-famous Senate Judiciary Committee hearing showed he lacked the fairness, temperament and even honesty to become a justice.

But the fight was defined by the sexual assault accusations. And it was fought against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement and Trump’s unyielding support of his nominee and occasional mocking of Kavanaugh’s accusers.

About 100 anti-Kavanaugh protesters climbed the Capitol’s East Steps as the vote approached, pumping fists and waving signs. U.S. Capitol Police began arresting some of them. Hundreds of other demonstrators watched from behind barricades. Protesters have roamed Capitol Hill corridors and grounds daily, chanting, “November is coming,” ”Vote them out” and “We believe survivors.”

On Friday, in the moment that made clear Kavanaugh would prevail, Collins delivered a speech saying that Ford’s Judiciary Committee telling of the alleged 1982 assault was “sincere, painful and compelling.” But she also said the FBI had found no corroborating evidence from witnesses whose names Ford had provided.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who has repeatedly battled with Trump and will retire in January, wavered but also backed Kavanaugh.

When Trump nominated Kavanaugh in July, Democrats leapt to oppose him, saying that past statements and opinions showed he’d be a threat to the Roe v. Wade case that assured the right to abortion. They said he also seemed too ready to rule for Trump in a possible federal court case against the president.

Yet Kavanaugh’s path to confirmation seemed unfettered until Ford and two other women emerged with sexual misconduct allegations from the 1980s.

Kavanaugh replaces the retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was a swing vote on issues such as abortion, campaign finance and same-sex marriage.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE:

Mitch McConnell walked onto the Senate floor for the big vote to save Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination with a secret: He didn’t know how it would turn out.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Senate majority leader is often seen as a masterful tactician. But he was watching and waiting like the rest of the nation to see if his Republican senators would advance President Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court. Without that vote on Friday, there would be no triumphant final roll call today.

Kavanaugh’s confirmation was always going to be difficult, but over the past few weeks it had veered terribly off course. Three women had accused the judge of sexual misconduct, bringing a #MeToo reckoning to Capitol Hill and transforming the nomination fight into a bitter dispute that pushed the polarization of the Senate to new extremes.

This account of how Republicans brought Kavanaugh back from the brink is based on roughly a dozen interviews with administration officials, senators, aides and others. Some asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal details about private discussions.

The rescue campaign was as bold as the Democratic effort to stop Kavanaugh. It included long-distance arm twisting from a former president, a locker room-style pep talk that helped change the game and decisions made up to the last minute.

THE LOW POINT

The White House was near crisis mode, its lowest point, with dire calls flooding in about whether the president was going to pull the nomination. Republicans had just secured a deal with Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyers on ground rules for her testimony to the Judiciary Committee about her allegation that Kavanaugh assaulted her when they were teens. And now a new accuser, Deborah Ramirez, had come forward to claim Kavanaugh exposed himself to her when they were freshmen at Yale.

Republicans knew the hell that would befall them if they bailed out. But this was a moment when Trump’s ability to shape events was limited.

Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican, was publicly wavering on Kavanaugh. And his party badly needed him back in the fold.

Flake had been central to the effort to slow voting and allow Ford a chance to testify. And Republican Sen. Susan Collins had been in constant contact with him. With Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the trio had forced GOP leaders to give Ford a chance to tell her story.

Another Republican, Utah’s Sen. Mike Lee, gave Flake a call. The two had grown close on long flights to Washington and have a lot in common, including their Mormon faith.

But the president himself has never had much influence over the three senators. They are the most independent Republicans in the chamber, and Flake had been forced into early retirement for his criticism of Trump. With Trump on the sideline, White House Counsel Don McGahn became the White House’s liaison to the trio.

McGahn had talked to McConnell, the president and others, saying they had to come up with something to change the dynamic. From the well-staffed war room for the nomination on the White House campus and beyond, the consensus answer was simple: Kavanaugh had to tell his side of the story. He would do an interview on Fox News.

“We’re basically in a political campaign here,” said Scott Jennings, a longtime McConnell political consultant. “We have two candidates — the accuser and the accused.”

WHO IS THE REAL KAVANAUGH?

It was a painful interview, full of repetitive talking points and Kavanaugh’s sidelong glances at his wife.

The most memorable moment? Perhaps the 53 year-old judge giving a rambling account of his youthful virginity.

The performance rattled some in the West Wing, including the president, who told allies he was frustrated and concerned about how the judge would hold up before the Judiciary Committee.

The No. 2 Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, acknowledged “it’s extremely awkward to be talking about such private matters on TV.”

But some in the White House saw it as “game changing” play that served its purpose in denying the accusation and providing a video that could be played over and over again. It also hit a key demographic audience of slightly older Republican-leaning women whose views would be important come November.

Now Kavanaugh had to show the senators themselves — and the public — his human side. Not the Yale-educated judge, but the fire in the belly. He would soon have that opportunity at the Judiciary Committee hearing with Ford.

Her testimony came first, and it captivated the nation. Had the hearing ended there, some senators said, Kavanagh might not have had a chance. Trump called McConnell, concerned.

But McGahn cleared the side room where Kavanaugh was waiting with his wife. He told the judge this was no longer about judicial philosophy. He needed to be authentic. It was his time to speak, in his own words.

Kavanaugh got the message. He walked to the witness table, adjusted his nameplate and — alternating between angry outbursts and stifled sobs — told the committee he was innocent. He didn’t do the things the accusers said he did. And he was not going to let this destroy his life.

He’s crushing it, texted one staffer to another.

It was risky strategy that created a partisan Rorschach test. Democrats saw Kavanaugh as unhinged, hysterical, trafficking in Clinton conspiracy theory. Republicans were thrilled, seeing a counterpunch from a qualified nominee unjustly accused.

Trump called McConnell again, this time pleased. “Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him,” Trump tweeted. “His testimony was powerful, honest, and riveting.”

But what the senators saw was something else. Collins, watching from her Capitol hide-a-way, had more questions. And for Murkowski, it was the moment that would begin to change her mind — against the nominee.

THE ANTEROOM

The phone rang the next day in the anteroom off the Judiciary Committee.

It was George W. Bush on the line.

The former president had been a big backer of Kavanaugh, the young lawyer who had worked for him as counsel and staff secretary at the White House. Bush was calling Flake, who had abruptly brought the hearing to a standstill.

They were supposed to be voting to send Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate, but Flake was considering a delay to allow for an FBI investigation into the allegations of misconduct.

McConnell knew another delay could prove deadly. Tips were flying in to senators’ office, some of them anonymously, and Kavanaugh had been forced onto multiple calls with committee investigators to deny them.

The leader gathered Flake, Murkowski, Collins and others in his office. With his slim 51-49 seat majority, he had no choice but to meet the needs of the wavering Republicans. The plan was set for a one-week FBI investigation.

Then the days dragged on awaiting the agency’s report. One White House aide said it felt like the final days of a presidential campaign.

THE VOTE

The White House view was that fellow senators would be more effective than Trump at persuading the wayward Republicans, and “buddies” were assigned to each of the swing votes to keep checking in with them.

And really, who could persuade Collins, Murkowski or Jeff Flake?

Collins is known for thinking long and hard about issues. Murkowski is as independent as her far-flung state of Alaska, after having won a write-in campaign for re-election that made her seem politically invincible. Flake is a loner of sorts who keeps his own counsel.

When the confidential FBI report arrived in the secure room on Capitol Hill, the three went together for a briefing.

Collins went back for a second read of the report. Flake stayed for three hours digging in. Lee was often by his side.

McConnell kept pushing forward, scheduling the vote for Friday to move forward on Kavanaugh even though he didn’t have the support locked in. He’s usually not one to bluff. But after having declared days earlier, “I’m confident we’re going to win,” he was more subdued the morning of the vote.

Collins tipped her hand, telling reporters on her way to the chamber she was a “yes.” Flake said in a statement he was ready to confirm Kavanaugh. But Murkowski whispered “no” when the clerk called her name.

From his West Wing office, Vice President Mike Pence watched the proceedings on television, poised to step in and break a tie, if needed. Pence’s staff began preparing the motorcade for him to travel to the Capitol.

But with no other Republican defecting, the vote had succeeded.

Flake left the Senate chamber without saying much. Collins later delivered a floor speech that was praised as required reading as she catalogued her reasoning and bemoaned a process that she said looked like a “caricature of a gutter-level political campaign.”

Murkowski delivered her own speech, saying that Kavanaugh’s testimony convinced her he didn’t have the temperament or the impartiality for the job.

The senators were tired. The Capitol cleared out, except for a few Democrats who kept up the argument all night.

Then came Saturday’s roll call. Dramatic and anticlimactic at the same time. McGahn, the White House counsel who’d given the nominee the Thursday pep talk, was in the front row of the gallery.

It was 50-48. The Kavanaugh campaign had won.