Durbin: Garland likely to get confirmation vote next week

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Monday that Merrick Garland, President Biden’s nominee for attorney general, is expected to get a final confirmation vote next week.

Durbin said the Judiciary Committee will vote on Garland’s nomination March 1, setting up a floor confirmation vote for later that week.

“We’re hoping to have the markup in Judiciary next Monday and to have this on the floor that same week,” Durbin told reporters during a break in Garland’s confirmation hearing.

Durbin said Republicans agreed to hold Garland’s committee vote until the following week after Democrats agreed not to hold his confirmation hearing during the Presidents Day recess week.

“We reached an agreement not to have this hearing during the recess so that Sen. Grassley could return to Iowa,” Durbin said of Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the senior Republican on the panel.

A Senate floor vote would cap a Senate confirmation saga that dates back to March 2016, when then-President Obama tapped Garland to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court.

The Senate, controlled by Republicans at the time, refused to hold a hearing or vote on Garland’s nomination. GOP lawmakers argued that the winner of the November 2016 election should nominate a successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Biden nominated Garland, the senior judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in January to serve as attorney general.