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WASHINGTON - Endangered Senate Democrats got their freedom to campaign for next month's midterm elections and in exchange Majority Leader Mitch McConnell got something he highly values - votes on 15 of President Donald Trump's judicial nominees.
The deal struck by the two parties on Thursday allowed the Senate to wrap up its work until after the Nov. 6 midterm elections. The hiatus comes as a relief to a cadre of Democratic incumbents who face difficult races in states that voted for Trump in 2016. McConnell, R-Ky., had threatened to keep senators in Washington, voting on Trump's nominees, until Election Day.
But ultimately Democrats paid McConnell's ransom to get their incumbents back home.
Under the deal, the Senate started voting Thursday evening on the 15 judicial nominees. An additional package of executive-branch nominees is set to be confirmed later Thursday by unanimous consent, two Senate aides familiar with the deal said.
Three of the judicial nominees are to the circuit courts; the remainder are district court nominees.
Once the Senate confirms the 15, as expected, Trump and McConnell can take credit for installing 84 judges to lifetime appointments on the nation's courts - two on the Supreme Court, 29 appellate judges on the circuit courts and 53 on the district courts.
Roughly one of every six appellate court judge on the circuit courts will be a Trump nominee.
The Senate deal comes less than a week after McConnell's decision to "plow right through" opposition to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh left Democrats fuming - and some liberal activists demanding that they withhold consent for any additional confirmations.
"My suspicion is, they're not too happy after last week, but this isn't about them being happy," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the No. 2 GOP leader, said before the deal was reached. "This is about the price of getting home, and particularly with a lot of Democrats running for reelection, I suspect they would like to get home."
That ultimately proved to be the case, but as late as Thursday afternoon, Senate Democrats were still working through some internal resistance to the idea that they ought to consent to anything with Republicans - let alone more judicial confirmations.
"There's a fair amount of residual heat" from the Kavanaugh showdown, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said as he walked into a caucus lunch.
On Wednesday, several members of the liberal wing of the Democratic caucus indicated they would play no part in any deal to accelerate additional Trump nominees. And under Senate rules, accelerating anything requires the consent of all 100 senators.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., for instance, said he wanted "regular order" for all Trump-nominated judges - shorthand for a process that could eat up three days of floor time per nominee.
But by Thursday other liberals - mindful of the political reality faced by their red-state colleagues - were striking a more moderate tone.
"The fact of the matter is, we don't have the votes to stop these nominees," said Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii. "I do know that the elections matter, and I'd like to enable my colleagues to go home, and every day that goes by that they're not touching base with their constituents is not a good thing."
Facing tough races are Democratic Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida and Jon Tester of Montana.
McConnell appeared happy to threaten to keep those lawmakers in Washington, voting on Trump's nominees - even though it isn't only Democrats who are itching to get out of town.
Several Republican incumbents, including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Dean Heller of Nevada, face tough races of their own. Cruz, facing an unusually robust Democratic challenger in Rep. Beto O'Rourke, said Thursday he had no desire to stay and vote on judges: "I'm always happier to be in Texas," he said.
In an interview aired Thursday by NPR, McConnell said he was "increasingly optimistic" about holding the majority as the Kavanaugh fight energized Republicans by reminding GOP voters of what is at stake in the midterms.
"I think it makes a huge difference," he said. "Lose the Senate and the project of confirming judges is over for the last two years of President Trump. That, I think, is a scary prospect to the people who like what we've been doing on the judge project, and I hope will help us hold on to our majority."
Republicans hold a razor-thin 51-49 advantage.
Cornyn this week described the nominees that Republicans wanted confirmed as "not controversial," but two of the three appeals court nominees - David Porter and Ryan Nelson - emerged from the Senate Judiciary Committee on party-line votes. The third, Richard Sullivan, had some Democratic support.
"There are some that are clearly controversial," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Thursday.
Trump and McConnell have put a heavy emphasis on judicial nominations - not only confirming Supreme Court justices like Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch but installing more than two dozen appeals-court judges in Trump's first 21 months in office, a record pace.
That Democrats would consent to accelerating that effort infuriated liberal activists already incensed at how Republicans muscled Kavanaugh onto the bench despite allegations of sexual misconduct.
Hirono said that Democratic voters need to keep an eye on the bigger picture.
"I hope that our supporters understand that what we need to be focusing on is the outcome of the 2018 elections," she said. "Our base needs to make sure that they and everybody else they can think of can go to the polls so that we can actually stop these nominees from getting through. Right now, we do not have those votes, and I think they understand that."
The House, whose Republican majority is more at risk than the Senate's, has been on recess since Sept. 28. Both chambers will reconvene in Washington on Nov. 13, where they will immediately face a lengthy to-do list topped by an early December government funding deadline - setting up a bitter partisan fight over money for Trump's southern border wall.
Also on the agenda are potential House leadership battles in both parties, finalizing a contentious farm bill and possible consideration of the revised trade deal that the Trump administration negotiated recently with Canada and Mexico.