The Senate, which a year ago refused to consider Democratic former President Barack Obama's nominee to the court, voted 54-45 to approve Republican Trump's pick, Colorado-based federal appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch, to the lifetime job.
Gorsuch's confirmation gave a boost to Trump, showing he can get important agenda items through a Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans after the House of Representatives last month failed to pass healthcare overhaul legislation.
McConnell accused Democrats of forcing his hand by trying to filibuster a highly qualified nominee in Gorsuch, 49, a 10-year veteran of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver with a consistently conservative record. President Donald Trump nominated him in January to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died suddenly on February 13, 2016.
Three Democratic senators - Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of IN and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota - joined their Republican colleagues to vote yes on Gorsuch's nomination. One Republican senator, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, did not vote.
The vote was 54-45 and came after lawmakers in a 52-48 party line vote a day earlier approved a rules change introduced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, to cut off debate and allow confirmation of President Donald Trump's nominee by a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes needed.
Erudite but evasive during more than 20 hours of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, Gorsuch largely skated through a Senate process that tripped up Merrick Garland, Obama's nominee, from the get-go.
Even after Gorsuch's confirmation was assured, Senate leaders continued to squabble Friday about the way in which it happened.
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Obstinate Democrats, acting purely on partisan motivations, had tried to block Neil Gorsuch, not because they questioned his credentials, but simply because he was nominated by a Republican president.
Gorsuch will be sworn in Monday. Were he to be replaced by a Trump-nominated conservative justice, the balance of the court would nearly certainly be tipped in a dramatically more conservative direction, and even Kennedy's own legacy on equality for gays and lesbians could be in jeopardy. Each of them are up for election in states that Trump carried last fall, so voting against the nominee could have been costly.
Gorsuch will be the 113th judge to sit on the nation's highest court. In exit polls, 21 percent of voters called Supreme Court appointments "the most important factor" for their votes, and among those people 56 percent voted for Trump. Arkansas has scheduled eight executions for the 11 days after Easter, and it is all but certain that some of those cases will reach the Supreme Court. Supreme Court judges are appointed to life terms.
For many conservatives, Trump's choice of Gorsuch made up for any number of other weaknesses in his candidacy and his administration.
The new justice is also a conservative who adheres to numerous same positions that Scalia did. "I believe in the institution and believe the fact that it is hard to make a law here and that it frequently requires bi-partisan cooperation to do so is a good thing".
After Trump nominated Gorsuch on January 31, he essentially enjoyed a stealth confirmation process, as near daily stories from the White House overshadowed the fight.
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