Senate Republicans won a key vote Friday to advance embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to his final confirmation vote. The majority-Republican Senate voted 51-49 to end debate on Kavanaugh, setting him up for his final hurdle on his path to the high court. One Democrat and one Republican voted against their parties, but another GOP senator, Susan Collins, said she would announce her final stance on the judge later in the afternoon. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, a key swing vote who has kept her decision on Kavanaugh under wraps, voted against the cloture motion. On the Democratic side, Sen. Joe Manchin of deep-red West Virginia voted for it. Collins and Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., two other closely watched GOP lawmakers, both voted yes on cloture.

Collins had announced how she would vote a few hours earlier. She told reporters that she would say whether or not she would to confirm Kavanaugh at 3 p.m. ET on Friday. After the cloture vote, Murkowski told an NBC News reporter that she had changed her mind about the judge on the way to the vote. Garrett Haake tweet The procedural vote was scheduled a day after senators viewed a non-public FBI report on allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. The supplemental probe of the high court nominee — his seventh in total — was ordered last week by President Donald Trump after Flake said it would be "proper" to allow up to seven days for the feds to look into some of the claims against Kavanaugh. Republicans touted the FBI's final report, which they said showed "no hint" of misconduct by Kavanaugh. But Democrats and opponents of Kavanaugh called foul, suggesting Trump's "limited in scope" order was insufficient. Murkowski, who does not face re-election until 2022, told reporters outside the Senate chamber that the cloture vote itself was "a mistake," adding that "we'll see what happens tomorrow," NBC News reported.