Brett Kavanaugh confirmed as U.S. Supreme Court justice amid protests

The U.S. Senate has voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court, following a polarizing process plagued by incendiary accusations, hardball politics and rowdy Capitol protests.

The decision marked the end of a fight for the ages between Democrats and Republicans. The near party-line confirmation vote was 50-48 in favour of Kavanaugh.

CBC News is live streaming special coverage from the Senate, and is carrying it live on CBC News Network.

As the vote neared on Saturday afternoon, protesters in Washington pushed through barriers in front of the Supreme Court and went to the U.S. Capitol, where several dozen climbed exterior stairs, only to be removed by police. Raucous demonstrators, largely anti-Kavanaugh, have been a fixture throughout the nomination process and previously raised tensions during the nomination process by confronting lawmakers. On Friday, a further 101 protesters were arrested by U.S. Capitol Police.

But despite demonstrators' rage and resistance, announcements by Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia that they'll support the conservative jurist have likely made Saturday's confirmation vote a formality, an anticlimactic finale to a battle that riveted the nation for nearly a month.

While the Democrats' defeat was all but certain, the Senate remained in session overnight, though the chamber was mostly empty.

Just before the vote, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, called the prospect of Kavanaugh's confirmation "a low moment for the Senate, for the court, for the country."

But Senate Republicans expressed an entirely different tone.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said, "The members of this body are duty bound to ensure we confirm justices of the Supreme Court who are men and women of the highest character and the most superlative qualifications.

"So fortunately, that is just the sort of nominee who stands before us today," McConnell said.

Before the vote on Saturday, Trump reiterated his support for his nominee, saying, Kavanaugh would do a "great, great" job. "He's going in looking very good."

Kavanaugh's opponents raised concerns that he'd push the court further right, including possible sympathetic rulings for Trump. But for the past few weeks, the battle was dominated by allegations that he sexually abused women decades ago — accusations he emphatically denied.

"Millions of Americans, millions of women are watching us today," said New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, one of the Democrats who took to the Senate floor early Saturday to rail against Kavanaugh. "They're waiting to see whether or not, when a woman comes forward and says that she is a survivor of sexual assault, does this chamber, do the individuals here take her seriously?"

Collins says no corroborating evidence

A day earlier, Collins told fellow senators that Christine Blasey Ford's dramatic testimony last month describing Kavanaugh's alleged 1982 assault was "sincere, painful and compelling." But Collins said the FBI had found no corroborating evidence from witnesses whose names Ford had provided.

"We will be ill-served in the long run if we abandon the presumption of innocence and fairness, tempting though it may be," she said. "We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy."

Those passions were on full display in a fight that could energize both parties' voters in elections for control of Congress just five weeks away.

Collins, perhaps the chamber's most moderate Republican, proclaimed her support for Kavanaugh at the end of a floor speech that lasted nearly 45 minutes. While she was among a handful of Republicans who helped sink Trump's quest to obliterate President Barack Obama's health-care law last year, this time she proved instrumental in delivering a triumph to Trump.

Watch Collins explain why she will vote to confirm Kavanaugh:

Manchin, the only remaining undeclared lawmaker, used an emailed statement to announce his support for Kavanaugh moments after Collins finished talking. Manchin, the only Democrat supporting the nominee, faces a competitive re-election race next month in a state Trump carried in 2016 by 42 percentage points.

Chants of 'shame'

"My heart goes out to anyone who has experienced any type of sexual assault in their life," Manchin said. But he added that based on the FBI report, "I have found Judge Kavanaugh to be a qualified jurist who will follow the Constitution and determine cases based on the legal findings before him."

Protesters chanted "shame" at Manchin later when he talked to reporters outside his office.

'Appearance of impropriety'

Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, a fellow moderate and a friend of Collins, became the only Republican to say she opposed Kavanaugh. She said on the Senate floor Friday evening that Kavanaugh is "a good man" but his "appearance of impropriety has become unavoidable."

She added that with Supreme Court appointments lasting a lifetime, "Those who seek these seats must meet the highest standards in all respects, at all times. And that is hard."

In a twist, Murkowski said she will state her opposition but vote "present" as a courtesy to Montana Sen. Steve Daines, a Kavanaugh supporter who is attending his daughter's wedding in Montana this weekend. Murkowski said she'd use an obscure procedure that lets one senator offset the absence of another without affecting the outcome. That would let Kavanaugh win by the same two-vote margin he would have received had both senators voted.

Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, who has repeatedly battled Trump and will retire in January, said he would vote for Kavanaugh's confirmation "unless something big changes."

Vice-President Mike Pence was available Saturday in case his tie-breaking vote was needed.

Limit on debate passed

In a procedural vote Friday that handed Republicans an initial victory, senators voted 51-49 to limit debate, defeating Democratic efforts to scuttle the nomination with endless delays.

That vote occurred amid smouldering resentment by partisans on both sides, on and off the Senate floor.

"What left-wing groups and their Democratic allies have done to Judge Kavanaugh is nothing short of monstrous," the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, Iowa's Chuck Grassley, said before the vote.

Watch Grassley defend Kavanaugh:

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York called the fight "a sorry epilogue to the brazen theft of Justice Scalia's seat." That reflected Democrats' lasting umbrage over Republicans' 2016 refusal to even consider Merrick Garland, Obama's nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia.

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 ready to rule for Trump if federal authorities probing his 2016 campaign's connections to Russia try to pursue him in court.

Yet Kavanaugh's pathway to confirmation seemed unfettered until 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.

Democrats also challenged 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 Trump.

Kavanaugh will replace the retired justice Anthony Kennedy, who was a swing vote on issues including abortion, campaign finance and same-sex marriage.

With files from CBC News