Garland, Fudge confirmed in bipartisan votes
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Merrick Garland to be the next U.S. attorney general and Marcia Fudge to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development in strong bipartisan votes.
The confirmation of Garland, a widely respected veteran judge, comes as President Joe Biden has vowed to restore the Justice Department’s reputation for independence.
Democrats have praised Garland, a federal appeals court judge who was snubbed by Republicans for a seat on the Supreme Court in 2016, as a highly qualified and honorable jurist uniquely qualified to lead the department after a tumultuous four years under former President Donald Trump.
Many Republicans praised him as well, saying he has the right record and temperament for the moment. He was confirmed 70-30.
Garland will inherit a Justice Department still shaken from working under Trump, who insisted that the attorney general and the department must be loyal to him personally, battering the department’s reputation.
In the last month of Trump’s presidency, Attorney General William Barr resigned after refuting Trump’s false claims that widespread electoral fraud had led to his defeat.
Trump’s pressure on officials, particularly on Barr and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions over the department’s probe into his campaign’s ties to Russia, prompted abundant criticism from Democrats over what they saw as the politicizing of the nation’s top law enforcement agencies.
“After Donald Trump spent four years — four long years — subverting the powers of the Justice Department for his own political benefit, treating the attorney general like his own personal defense lawyer, America can breathe a sigh of relief that we’re going to have someone like Merrick Garland leading the Justice Department,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said ahead of the vote. “Someone with integrity, independence, respect for the rule of law and credibility on both sides of the aisle.”
Senate Republican Leader Mitch Mcconnell — who prevented Garland from becoming a Supreme Court Justice in 2016 when he blocked his nomination — said he was voting to confirm Garland because of “his long reputation as a straight shooter and a legal expert” and that his “left-of-center perspective” was still within the legal mainstream.
Garland’s nomination was widely seen as a redemption after Mcconnell had blocked his Supreme Court nomination, taking a huge political gamble after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia by saying that the next president should get the pick, not outgoing President Barack Obama.
Trump was then down in the polls, but Mcconnell’s bet paid off when the Republican won the presidency. Garland’s nomination floundered for nine months, and he never got a hearing.
“We can never erase the sad memory of what happened to Judge Merrick Garland five years ago in the United States Senate, but we can give this remarkable man an opportunity to write a new chapter of public service in his life,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-ill., said before the vote.
Earlier, senators voted voted 6634 to make Fudge the first Black female HUD secretary.
Fudge, who has represented parts of Cleveland and Akron in the House since 2008, is a former mayor and a longtime advocate for the needy.
She said at her confirmation hearing in January that her first priority would be protecting the millions of people who have fallen behind on rent or mortgages during the pandemic, telling senators that “we cannot afford to allow people in the midst of a pandemic to be put in the streets.”
Shortly after she was confirmed — and minutes before she resigned — Fudge took the last vote of her House career in support of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, which would provide billions in housing assistance to low-income households.
Like Garland, Fudge won the support of numerous Republicans, including Mcconnell.
“These aren’t the nominees that any Republican would have picked for these jobs,” Mcconnell said ahead of the vote. “But the nation needs presidents to be able to stand up a team so long as their nominees are qualified and mainstream.”
In another 66-34 vote later Wednesday, the Senate confirmed Michael Regan, making him the first Black man to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.