Today in one sentence: The Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh; Trump called the allegations against Kavanaugh "a hoax that was set up by the Democrats"; Trump won't fire Rod Rosenstein after all; a U.N. report on the effects of climate change predicts a strong risk of an environmental crises much sooner than expected; and Fox News hired Hope Hicks.

1/ The Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court in a 50-48 vote. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski voted “present,” although she said she opposed the nomination. Joe Manchin was the lone “yes” vote from the Democrats. Kavanaugh is the first justice nominated by a president who lost the popular vote, confirmed by senators representing less than half of the country, while also having his nomination opposed by a majority of the country. (New York Times / Washington Post / CNN / The Guardian / NPR)

  • Chief Justice John Roberts has already received more than a dozen judicial misconduct complaints against Kavanaugh. Roberts has chosen not to refer the complaints to a judicial panel for investigation. (Washington Post)

  • The campaign to impeach Justice Kavanaugh has begun. A petition to impeach Kavanaugh gathered more than 125,000 signatures, but while it takes majority of the House to impeach a federal official, removing them requires a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate – or 67 votes. (Newsweek / NBC News)

2/ Trump called the allegations against Kavanaugh “a hoax that was set up by the Democrats.” He said talk of impeaching Kavanaugh was “an insult to the American public.” (The Hill / Washington Post)

  • Mitch McConnell called for an investigation into the leak of Christine Blasey Ford’s letter to Diane Feinstein, which alleges that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while the two were in high school. (Politico)

  • John Kelly formed a working group to prepare for the possibility of investigations if Democrats win the House. “Subpoenas flowing into a White House create paralysis,” said Neil Eggleston, Obama’s White House counsel. “The whole system stops while everyone tries to comply with subpoenas and prepare to testify.” (Axios)

  • Susan Rice said she’ll decide after the midterm elections on whether to run and try to unseat Susan Collins in 2020, who was the deciding vote to confirm Kavanaugh. Rice was Obama’s national security adviser. (ABC News / Washington Post)

  • Ford has not been able to return to her home due to constant threats, according to her attorneys. “They are not living at home […] The threats have been unending, it’s deplorable.” Ford “still believes [coming forward] was the right thing to do.” (HuffPost)

3/ Trump won’t fire Rod Rosenstein after all, saying they have a “very good relationship.” Trump and Rosenstein met following reports that Rosenstein wanted to wiretap the president and using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. Rosenstein oversees the Russia probe led by Robert Mueller, whose work Trump has labeled a “witch hunt.” (New York Times / CNN / Washington Post / Politico)

4/ A U.N. report on the effects of climate change predicts a strong risk of an environmental crises much sooner than expected. The report finds that the atmosphere could warm by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels by 2040 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, which would cause sea-levels to rise, intensify droughts, wildfires, and poverty, and cause a mass die-off of coral reefs. To prevent 2.7 degrees of warming, greenhouse pollution must be reduced by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, and fully eliminated by 2050. The use of coal as an electricity source would have to drop from nearly 40% today to between 1 and 7% by 2050. Renewable energy would have to increase to about 67%. Trump has mocked the science of human-caused climate change, vowing to increase the burning of coal and intends to withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement. The world is already more than halfway to the 2.7-degree mark and “there is no documented historic precedent” for the scale of changes required, the report said. (New York Times / Washington Post)

poll/ 51% of Americans oppose Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court with 41% supporting it. Among Democrats, 91% opposed his nomination, while 89% of Republicans support it. (CNN)

Notables.

  1. North Korea will allow inspectors to visit a nuclear testing site that Kim Jong Un says he destroyed, according to Mike Pompeo. North Korea has not yet agreed to provide a full inventory of their nuclear arsenal, a move widely seen as the first step toward denuclearization. Additionally, South Korea said Trump and Kim agreed to a second summit. (New York Times)

  2. A Republican operative raised at least $100,000 in an effort to obtain Hillary Clinton’s stolen emails just weeks before the 2016 election. In an email, Peter W. Smith sent wire instructions to “fund the Washington Scholarship Fund for the Russian students” with the donations days after WikiLeaks and DCLeaks began releasing emails damaging to Clinton’s campaign. Robert Mueller’s office has been investigating Smith’s activities. He killed himself in May 2017 – 10 days after describing his efforts to a reporter. (Wall Street Journal)

  3. Federal officials froze all of Oleg Deripaska’s U.S.-based assets, including his mansions in Washington, D.C. and New York City. Deripaska is close with Putin and is allegedly involved in murder, money-laundering, bribery and racketeering. (New York Post)

  4. Fox News hired Hope Hicks as Chief Communications Officer. After she left the White House in February, former Fox News executive Bill Shine took over as deputy chief of staff for communications. (Fox News / CNBC / Variety)

  5. 🇷🇺 What We Learned Last Week in the Russia Probe: GOP operative and anti-Trumper, Cheri Jacobus, said the investigation of an email hacking/catfishing scheme that targeted her has been forwarded to Robert Mueller; Russia’s Deputy Attorney General, who allegedly directed the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, died last week in a mysterious helicopter crash in Russia; the pilot of the helicopter had two bullet wounds; the Russian sovereign wealth fund leader with whom Erik Prince met in the Seychelles, Kirill Dmitriev, “reached out to at least three additional individuals in close contact with the Trump transition team” in the days before Trump’s inauguration; GOP operative Peter Smith, who killed himself in an alleged suicide, solicited and raised at least $100k in his search for Clinton’s emails; Randy Credico told the Senate Intelligence Committee he would plead the 5th in response to a subpoena; Reddit’s CEO admitted that “suspicious” Russian accounts have been active within the past month on the platform; Russian state TV and Russian trolls supported Kavanaugh and condemned what they call “malignant feminism”; Representative Eric Swalwell wrote an op-ed for the Fresno Bee accusing Devin Nunes of burying evidence on Russian meddling to protect Trump and endorsing his opponent, Andrew Janz; a coalition of voting rights activists announced they are filing a federal lawsuit against Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp for “using a racially-biased methodology” to remove roughly 700,000 voters from the state’s voter rolls; and California’s Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill on Friday banning companies from secretly using automated social media accounts to sell products or influence elections. (WTF Just Happened Today)

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