U.S. Senate votes to 'go nuclear,' clearing the way for Trump's high court pick
Republicans had fallen short of the 60-vote super-majority needed to expedite Neil Gorsuch appointment
The U.S. Senate has voted to "go nuclear" and eliminate the filibuster for President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee and future court picks.
The move could change the Senate and court for generations. It came Thursday on a procedural motion.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell raised a point of order to change the rules "under the precedent set on Nov. 21, 2013," when Senate Democrats, who were then in the majority, made the same move for lower court and executive branch nominations.
Senate triggers <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/nuclearoption?src=hash">#nuclearoption</a> with 48 yeas; 52 nays to clear the way for a simple-majority vote to confirm Gorsuch
—@matt_kwongEarlier, Republicans failed to end a Democratic bid to block the confirmation vote, which is why they quickly resorted to the rule change dubbed the "nuclear option" to allow approval of Neil Gorsuch a day later.
The Senate voted 55-45 to successfully filibuster the nomination of Gorsuch.
Republicans said Gorsuch would be confirmed on Friday one way or the other.
"This will be the first and last partisan filibuster of the Supreme Court," McConnell said on the Senate floor on Thursday ahead of the vote.
'Turning point in history,' says Chuck Schumer
"In 20 or 30 or 40 years, we will sadly point to today as a turning point in the history of the Senate and the Supreme Court, a day when we irrevocably moved further away from the principles our founders intended for these institutions: principles of bipartisanship, moderation and consensus," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor.
Senate confirmation of Gorsuch, 49, would restore the nine-seat court's 5-4 conservative majority, enable Trump to leave a lasting imprint on the country's highest judicial body, fulfilling a top campaign promise by the Republican president.
Republicans have called Gorsuch superbly qualified for the job and one of the most distinguished appellate judges on the bench, and they blamed the Democrats for politicizing the confirmation process.
Democrats accuse Gorsuch of being so conservative as to be outside the judicial mainstream, favouring corporate interests over ordinary Americans in legal opinions, and displaying insufficient independence from Trump.
"This isn't really about the nominee anyway," McConnell said. "The opposition to the this particular nominee is more about the man who nominated him and the party he represents than the nominee himself."
Democrats expressed anger that the Senate, under McConnell's guidance, refused last year to consider Democratic former president Barack Obama's nomination of appellate judge Merrick Garland to fill the same high court vacancy that Trump elected Gorsuch to fill.
The nine-seat Supreme Court has had a vacancy since conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016.