Following a partisan battle and a year of contention following the death of Anton Scalia, the Senate has confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Republicans and a handful of Democrats got the federal judge from Colorado across the finish line with a 54-45 vote, one day after opposition Democrats launched a historic blockade of the nominee.
What kind of Supreme Court will we now see if Trump does in fact end up appointing as many new justices as are now reportedly expected?
President Trump congratulated Gorsuch later Friday after his confirmation became official.
"He's going to make the American people proud", he said.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a hearing for Obama's nominee, Chief Judge Merrick Garland, for almost a year - an action that continues to galvanise Democrats.
Erdogan to reconsider European Union membership plans after referendum
Faced with the impending Brexit negotiations and rise in populist and euroskeptic movements Erdogan said Europe is "collapsing". Turkish residents in Greece turned up at the consulate in Athens to cast their ballot on Saturday.
The outcome was a major win for Trump, his biggest congressional victory to date, as well as for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who kept Scalia's seat open after the justice's death in February 2016.
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who has been recovering from back surgery, was absent from the vote. We must fight back, and we must tell senators that they can not stand complacentnow that Trump and McConnell have undermined Senate rules to win a lifetime appointment for their nominee, Neil Gorsuch.
Supreme Court filibusters have been almost unheard of in the Senate, but the confrontation is playing out amid an explosive political atmosphere with liberal Democrats furious over the Trump presidency and Republicans desperate to get a win after months of chaos from Trump. Removing the previous 60-vote threshold means that the majority party has less incentive to find nominees that will garner moderate support and more ideological judges will have an easier path to confirmation in the future when one party holds both the White House and the Senate majority. But then in 2013, with Democrats in charge and Republicans blocking President Barack Obama's nominees, the Democrats did take the step, removing the filibuster for all presidential appointments except the Supreme Court. Republicans responded with the elimination of the Supreme Court confirmation filibusters.
The chamber's majority leader tore up the rulebook after Democrats mounted the first filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee in half a century. Senate Republicans invoked the "nuclear option" Thursday that now will require a simple majority of just 51 votes for Supreme Court nominees to be confirmed.
They disposed of long-standing rules to prohibit a procedural tactic called a filibuster against Supreme Court nominees.
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