Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tried and failed to vote the Senate out of session Monday night, as the GOP reversed his last-ditch effort to derail judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Late Monday, Schumer announced that he would hold an emergency, near-midnight vote to send the Senate out of session until after the presidential election, effectively ending all votes before November, preventing the Senate Judiciary Committee from electing to send Barrett’s nomination to the Senate floor, and blocking the GOP from seating Barrett on the Supreme Court before the presidential election.
Schumer touted the effort on social media.
“I am forcing a vote tonight to adjourn the Senate until after the November election,” he tweeted. “The GOP in the middle of a national election is using an illegitimate process to jam through a Supreme Court nominee to rip away health care from millions. Democrats are fighting to stop it.”
The idea was a novel one, particularly given that many Democrats spent the last week complaining that Republicans were distracting from efforts to pass a coronavirus-related stimulus package by focusing on Barrett’s confirmation. Adjourning the Senate would effectively guarantee that no relief bill would pass in the next two weeks, despite Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) decision Monday to hold the White House and Senate to a 48-hour negotiation timeline on that very issue.
“Because our Republican colleagues have made such a mockery of the Supreme Court confirmation process, we are not going to have business as usual here in the Senate,” Schumer said during his time at the podium Monday night.
He followed his speech up with a demand that Republicans take a roll call vote on the Community Reinvestment Act — a banking regulation that Congress hasn’t touched or considered in months and that the Trump administration addressed way back in January — as a way of further stalling the confirmation process.
“Because our Republican colleagues have made such a mockery of the Supreme Court confirmation process, we are not going to have business as usual here in the Senate,” Schumer said Monday. “Tonight I will move to bring up a vote under the Congressional Review Act and force Action on a resolution to undo the Trump administration’s gutting of the Community Reinvestment Act.”
The GOP struck quickly, putting an end to Schumer’s plan.
“Republicans in a 48-42 vote pigeonholed Schumer’s request,” The Hill reported Tuesday morning. “The Senate is expected to come back into session on Tuesday.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) did gavel the Senate back into session as expected on Tuesday. A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing is expected on Thursday, and it will likely result in judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination being passed to the full Senate on a party-line vote. The full Senate is expected to debate Barrett’s potential confirmation Friday and into Monday and take a final vote on Monday afternoon or Tuesday.