John Cornyn: “With that, Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The…”

We want to express our gratitude to Mr Blanche and his staff for working with us on this, and we look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon.

All we had the authority to do what we did, and I think did the best we could.

If there’s not enough votes to confirm him, then Senator Grassley might decide to postpone it. But I don’t think that’s the No. 1 goal right now.

I think we were very close to resolving our differences in a way that was acceptable to the Department of Justice, but it’s clear that the president decided that was unacceptable.