WASHINGTON (NBC News) – The Senate confirmed judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court Friday in a mostly party-line vote that reflected weeks of bruising political fighting which deepened congressional divides and changed the nature of high court appointments in the future. iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — In a historic moment, the Senate on Friday voted 54-45 along party lines to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court as the 113th justice, marking the end to a bitter, partisan battle in the Senate. It was one of the rare moments when the president — who was in Florida at Mar-a-Lago as the Senate voted on Friday — was front in center in the nomination process. When Democrats blocked the nomination on Thursday with a procedural filibuster, Republicans responded by making a dramatic and historic change in the Senate rules to allow Gorsuch and all future Supreme Court nominees to pass through the Senate with a simple 51-vote majority instead of the previous 60-vote threshold. What this means is that in the future the majority party can simply confirm all nominees by majority vote, something the filibuster-breaking rule was designed to prevent (the Senate wanted more than a majority consensus on crucial legal issues). The confirmation was also a vindication of the bare-knuckled strategy of Senate Republicans, who refused even to consider President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick, Judge Merrick B. Garland, saying the choice of the next justice should belong to the next president.
Neil Gorsuch is confirmed as the 113th justice of the Supreme Court of the United States by a 54–45 vote in the United States Senate after invocation of the "nuclear option".