WASHINGTON: The US Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh on Saturday in the closest such vote in more than a century, amid controversy over sexual abuse allegations against him.

The Senate voted 50-48 to approve Kavanaugh as more than 1,000 protesters rallied in Washington against a nominee who had to overcome questions over his candor, partisan rhetoric and lifestyle as a young man.

The months-long battle over the nomination has roiled American passions — the vote was disrupted on several occasions by angry protests in the gallery — but handed Trump one of the biggest victories of his presidency.

Controversial nominee gets 50 votes against 48 as protesters rally in Washington

It drew the line under a bruising nomination process defined by harrowing testimony from a woman who says Kavanaugh tried to rape her when they were teenagers — and by his fiery rebuttal.

The two-vote margin of victory made it the closest confirmation vote since 1881, when Stanley Matthews, President James Garfield’s pick, sealed a 24 to 23 win.

The confirmation means Trump has succeeded in having his two picks seated on the court — tilting it decidedly to the right in a major coup for the Republican leader less than halfway through his term.

It reflects a high water mark of the Trump presidency: Republican control of the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and the judiciary’s top court.

But the Kavanaugh spectacle, fueled by extraordinary accusations and counter-claims in nationally televised hearings, and tense battles over an 11th-hour FBI investigation to address the assault allegations, has inflamed political passions.

Just hours before the vote, scores of protesters broke through barricades and staged a raucous sit-in protest on the US Capitol steps, just feet away from the imposing doors to the Rotunda.

As protesters chanted “Shame!” and “November is coming!” police took several dozen protesters down the steps and put them in plastic flex-cuffs.

Kavanaugh’s confirmation process has laid bare the partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill and the political polarisation of America just a month before midterm elections.

His promotion to the Supreme Court also stands as a demoralising defeat for Democrats who had battled hard to block the 53-year-old judge at all costs.

But Senator Ed Markey insisted ahead of the confirmation that it would only galvanise Democrats to deliver a “devastating” blow to Republicans at the ballot box.

“The Democrats are going to pivot to the election, and we’re going to turn this nomination into a referendum on whether or not Donald Trump can be trusted to name federal judges or to continue to control an absolute monopoly on creating public policy in the United States,” Markey told reporters.

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2018