Supreme Court, impeachment, Jan. 6 committee: How Sen. Susan Collins has bucked the GOP
Sen. Susan Collins is going rogue – again.
The GOP senator on Wednesday said she would back the historic nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, breaking with her party and delivering a bipartisan victory to President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, has shown an independent streak and a willingness to work across the aisle on some of the most closely watched votes in the divided Senate.
She has cut against her party in voting for the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump and for a commission to study the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, while backing congressional colleagues who faced heat in their home states for their perceived lack of loyalty to Trump.
Last year, she was a key figure in the negotiation of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law.
Now, she is supporting the Supreme Court nominee put forward by a Democratic president less than two years after voting against Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, now an associate justice on the court.
Collins previously voted to appoint Jackson to her current seat on the D.C. circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Supreme Court: GOP Sen. Susan Collins will vote for Ketanji Brown Jackson
On Wednesday, she said the process of confirming Supreme Court justices is "broken," with senators basing votes on their ideology and whether the justice would deliver their desired rulings on key cases.
"In my meetings with Judge Jackson, we discussed in depth several issues that were raised in her hearing. Sometimes I agreed with her; sometimes I did not," Collins said. "And just as I have disagreed with some of her decisions to date, I have no doubt that, if Judge Jackson is confirmed, I will not agree with every vote that she casts as a Justice."
Here are some of the votes and issues where Collins has disagreed with her own party.
Trump's impeachment
Collins emerged as a key vote in both of Trump's impeachment trials.
In the first, she joined Sen. Mitt Romney, of Utah, as the only two Republicans to vote in favor of using subpoenas for witnesses or documents to be used in the Senate trial over Trump's dealings with Ukraine. That vote failed.
When it came time to vote on whether Trump was guilty of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, however, Collins voted with the Senate majority in acquitting Trump.
Poll: Two-thirds of Americans back Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for Supreme Court
That changed in Trump's second impeachment trial. After a mob of rioters left a nearby Trump rally to storm the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Biden as president, Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection.
Collins was one of seven GOP senators to vote guilty at the second Senate trial. Speaking on the Senate floor at the time, Collins said Trump had abused his power and failed to uphold his oath of office.
"That attack was not a spontaneous outbreak of violence. Rather, it was the culmination of a steady stream of provocations by President Trump that were aimed at overturning the results of the presidential election. The president's unprecedented efforts to discredit the election results did not begin on Jan. 6. Rather, he planted the seeds of doubt many weeks before the votes were cast on Nov. 3," she said.
More: 32 Republicans voted for Biden's infrastructure bill. Here's who attended the signing ceremony
Jan. 6 commission
Collins bucked her party again when it was time to vote on whether to form a bipartisan group in the mold of the 9/11 commission to study the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
In May 2021, the Senate needed 60 votes to form the commission but fell six votes short, with Collins joining six other Republicans voting in its favor Collins had tried to broker a compromise to help form the commission, but it still fell short.
"The American people, and particularly the men and women of the Capitol and District of Columbia police forces who fought so valiantly that day, deserve answers and recommendations that an independent, bipartisan commission would be able to provide," she said in a prepared statement at the time.
She has been more critical of the Jan. 6 committee that ultimately was seated in the House. In August, she criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to block two of the Republicans House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had nominated. Collins called the commission "partisan." Two other Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, and Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, sit on the panel.
"I respect both of them, but I do not think it was right for the speaker to decide which Republicans should be on the committee," Collins said during a CNN interview in August.
Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation
Collins has voted six times to confirm justices nominated by presidents from both parties to the Supreme Court. Jackson will be her seventh.
Her lone vote against a Supreme Court nominee came in 2020 as her party rushed to confirm Barrett, Trump's third nominee to the court.
Barrett was confirmed by a slim margin – 52-48 – in a vote that solidified a 6-3 conservative advantage on the court just days before the election.
Collins was the only Republican to vote against Barrett's confirmation, saying at the time that her vote was not a reflection on Barrett's qualifications but on what she believed to be a precedent the Senate set when it refused to vote on then-President Barack Obama's nominee to the court in 2016.
In 2016, Collins supported holding a vote on Merrick Garland, Obama's nominee to the court eight months before the election. The GOP-controlled Senate at the time, though, decided that the winner of the election, not the outgoing president, should nominate the court's next justice.
"What I have concentrated on is being fair and consistent, and I do not think it is fair nor consistent to have a Senate confirmation vote prior to the election," she said in 2020.
Bipartisan infrastructure deal
Collins also was a key player in delivering Biden a bipartisan victory during the first year of his presidency.
She was part of the group of 21 senators – 11 Republicans, nine Democrats and one independent – who negotiated the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal Biden signed into law last year.
Bipartisan deal: Biden signs landmark infrastructure package in major win for domestic agenda
As the infrastructure bill passed the House last year, Collins said the group that negotiated the deal was "determined to break through the partisan gridlock" as it sought a "long-overdue infrastructure investment for the American people."
The bill will invest billions in roads, bridges, public transportation, power grids, broadband internet and other physical infrastructure.
Contributing: Ledyard King, Savannah Behrmann, Bart Jansen, Matthew Brown, Nicholas Wu, Cristal Hayes, Joey Garrison