Senate confirms Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh
The Senate has confirmed Brett Kavanaugh as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, putting a second nominee from President Donald Trump on the highest court in the land.
Mr Kavanaugh was confirmed 50-48 during a historic roll call vote in the Senate chamber.
The two-vote margin is one of the narrowest ever for a Supreme Court nominee.
The vote unfolded with demonstrators shouting “I do not consent” as the roll call on Mr Kavanaugh began.
The vote ends a bitter struggle over Mr Kavanaugh’s nomination, inflamed by accusations that he sexually assaulted women in the 1980s.
Mr Kavanaugh denied the accusations in sworn testimony.
When Mr Trump nominated Mr 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 ready to rule for Mr Trump if federal authorities probing his 2016 campaign’s alleged connections to Russia try to pursue him in court.
Yet Mr Kavanaugh’s pathway to confirmation seemed unfettered until Christine Blasey Ford accused him of drunkenly sexually assaulting her in a locked bedroom at a 1982 high school gathering.
Two other women later emerged with sexual misconduct allegations from the 1980s.
Mr Kavanaugh foes cast him as a product of a hard-drinking, male-dominated, private school culture in Washington’s upscale Maryland suburb of Bethesda. He and his defenders asserted that his high school and college focus was on academics, sports and church.
Democrats also challenged Mr Kavanaugh’s honesty, temperament and ability to be nonpartisan after he fumed at last week’s Judiciary hearing that Democrats had launched a “search and destroy mission” against him fuelled by their hatred of Mr Trump.
Mr Kavanaugh replaces the retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was a swing vote on issues including abortion, campaign finance and same-sex marriage.