December 9, 2021

RACHAEL ROLLINS CONFIRMED AS MASSACHUSETTS US ATTORNEY IN NARROW VOTE:

Rollins will be the next U.S. attorney for Massachusetts after the Senate approved the progressive prosecutor by the narrowest of margins.

Rollins, the Suffolk County district attorney, was confirmed by a 51-50 count, with Vice President Kamala Harris stepping in to cast the tie-breaking vote.

The Senate had to go through the process twice on Wednesday, first voting on cloture and then the final tally, with each vote taking about an hour and both ending with the same count.

Republicans including Arkansas U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton tried to make an example out of the progressive Rollins, framing her as the avatar of what Cotton characterized as “pro-criminal Soros prosecutors” hell-bent on “destroying our legal system from the inside.” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, made similar arguments again on Wednesday.

But Democrats, even the more centrist ones, have steadily backed her in a series of very rare roll-call tallies. Every U.S. attorney for the past several decades had been moved along in looser voice votes, but the GOP made Rollins go through an ultimately deadlocked committee hearing, a narrow full-Senate vote to pull her name out of committee after the tie, and then the two votes on Wednesday that required Harris’ input.

Bay State U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey had jointly recommended Rollins to the Biden administration. Along the nomination process, they’d touted her support from local police chiefs and the fact that violence is down in Boston.

What could go wrong?

Related: Ted Cruz’s Unbelievable List of Crimes That Biden’s New US Attorney For Mass. Won’t Prosecute:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll