Sen. Susan Collins urged Democrats not “rush” to confirm President Joe Biden’s pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

Said Collins: “I felt that the timetable for the last nominee was too compressed. This time, there is no need for any rush. We can take our time, have hearings, go through the process—which is a very important one. It is a lifetime appointment, after all.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)), who famously refused to give the last Democratic Supreme Court nominee a Senate hearing or vote, said he’s ready to give President Biden’s pick to the high court “a fair look,” The Hill reports.

Said McConnell: “I’m going to give the president’s nominee, whoever that may be, a fair look and to not predict. We don’t even know who the nominee is.”

“Ken Langone, a billionaire investor and Republican donor, contributed to Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) political action committee days after the conservative Democratic lawmaker said he would not support President Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion social and climate spending package,” CNBC reports.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) told the West Virginia MetroNews that he’s open to supporting President Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court, even if the pick is more ideologically liberal than he is.

Said Manchin: “Whoever he puts up will have experience and we’ll be able to judge them off of that. But as far as just the philosophical beliefs, no, that will not prohibit me from supporting somebody.”

A new OH Predictive Insights poll in Arizona finds 44 percent of Republican voters surveyed said they see Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) favorably, compared with just 42% of Democratic voters.

Charlie Sykes: “As near as one can tell, the strategy behind last week’s show-defeat on voting rights was designed to pressure or shame the two mavericks into line. If that was, indeed, the plan, it failed spectacularly, and ushered in a particularly awkward era of bad feelings.”

“So a reminder: the first rule of having a razor-thin majority is not to torch bridges, razors, or the boats you sailed in on. You may be angry or disappointed with a colleague, but a rational political party will always remember that someday they may need them. Someday is now.”

“Even so, it’s still likely that both Manchin and Sinema will support anyone Biden picks, because they have both consistently supported his lower court picks —- including one of the front-runners for the SCOTUS seat, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.”

“But this should also be a time to go back over the math: The Dems cannot count to 50 without Manchin or Sinema. Without them, the GOP controls the senate.”

Politico: “Democrats are eyeing a timeline similar to what Republicans used to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett, which was about a month between her nomination and confirmation. The tight timeline doesn’t reflect an overall rush.”

“Aides have said Democrats may consider confirming his replacement before this SCOTUS term is over, but delay the succession until after Breyer leaves his seat vacant.”

Punchbowl News: “And let’s clear up something here – Republicans can’t block a Supreme Court nomination in the Judiciary Committee or on the floor as long as all 50 Senate Democrats stick together and back Biden’s nominee. Democrats don’t need Republicans to hold a confirmation hearing in the Judiciary Committee, and they don’t need them to vote in committee in order to advance a nomination.”

Nathanial Rakich: “The Senate has been remarkably efficient at passing President Biden’s judicial nominees so far: During the first year of his presidency, 42 of Biden’s district-court and appeals-court nominees have been confirmed — more than any president since John F. Kennedy.”

“And crucially, Democrats have been united behind those nominees. The next time a Democratic senator votes no on one of Biden’s judicial picks, it will be the first time. That means that even Manchin and Sinema have 100 percent track records of supporting Biden’s judicial nominees.”

“Senate Democrats say they plan to move speedily to consider President Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Stephen G. Breyer, following the lead of Republicans who raced through the nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a matter of weeks before the 2020 elections,” the New York Times reports.

“Holding a bare 50-seat majority that is under severe threat in November’s midterm elections, Democrats acknowledged the need to act fast, particularly since an illness or death of one of their members could deprive them of their numerical advantage and greatly complicate efforts to fill the seat.”

Politico: Why not to expect a scorched earth fight over Breyer’s replacement.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) broke his silence over the censure of his colleague Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), with a campaign spokesperson saying he disagreed with it and she should not be singled out over her opposition to changing the Senate’s filibuster rules, the Arizona Republic reports.

Punchbowl News: “In the Senate alone, Sinema joins Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA, Pat Toomey (R-PA), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Richard Burr (R-NC) in the ‘censured by their state party’ column after they voted to convict Trump last year following his Senate trial. Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Mitt Romney (R-UT) avoided that title, although they were criticized back home.”

“It’s kind of mind-blowing to consider that 5 percent of the current Senate has been censured by the same state organizations that helped elect them in the first place.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Senate Republicans are “laughing all the way to Election Day” because “they have not had to cast one bloody vote” on the Democrats’ roughly $1.2 trillion social spending and climate package, which is stalled in the upper chamber, The Hill reports.

Said Sanders: “What has bothered me very much is the Republicans are laughing all the way to Election Day. They have not had to cast one bloody vote… which shows us where they’re at. And we have got to change that.”

“Kyrsten Sinema was censured by the Arizona Democratic Party on Saturday morning, after the senator’s longstanding opposition to modifying Senate rules to pass voting rights bills culminated in the legislation stalling in Congress,” Politico reports.

Washington Post: “While the reprimand has no practical consequences, it reflects the growing estrangement between the first-term senator and her fellow Democrats, who have been angered by her willingness to help stymie the party’s agenda on issues such as the minimum wage and voting rights.”