Ketanji Brown Jackson

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson to receive rare Republican vote as Collins says yes

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson to receive rare Republican vote as Collins says yesMaine senator says she will vote to confirm Joe Biden’s nominee: ‘There can be no question she is qualified’ The Maine senator Susan Collins will vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US supreme court, giving Joe Biden’s nominee a rare Republican vote as she proceeds towards becoming the first Black woman ever to sit on the nine-judge panel.Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing reveals racist fears of Republicans | Steve PhillipsRead more“I have decided to support the confirmation of Judge Jackson to be a member of the supreme court,” Collins, a Republican moderate, told the New York Times after meeting the nominee a second time.“There can be no question that [Jackson] is qualified to be a supreme court justice.”The confirmation was not in doubt. Democrats need only their own 50 votes in the evenly divided Senate to put Jackson on the court, given the casting vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, had already confirmed his support.But the vice-president’s tie-breaking vote has never been required to confirm a supreme court justice, making Collins’ vote at least symbolically important.Collins’ support also comes at a time of bitter partisan divide that was underscored by hostile and politically loaded questioning of Jackson led by white, hard-line Republican men, prominently including Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley.Ahead of a confirmation vote next week, other Republican moderates could follow Collins and announce support for Jackson. In particular, Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, has said he has not yet decided.Jackson will replace Stephen Breyer when he retires this summer. As Breyer is a member of the outmatched liberal group on the court, his replacement will not alter the 6-3 conservative majority.Republicans including the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have complained that Jackson would not take a position on calls from progressives to expand the court in order to redress its ideological balance, during confirmation hearings last week.Speaking to the Times, Collins said: “In recent years, senators on both sides of the aisle have gotten away from what I perceive to be the appropriate process for evaluating judicial nominees.“In my view, the role under the constitution assigned to the Senate is to look at the credentials, experience and qualifications of the nominee. It is not to assess whether a nominee reflects the individual ideology of a senator or would vote exactly as an individual senator would want.”Supreme court confirmations have become highly political and increasingly rancorous.In 2016, as Senate majority leader, McConnell refused even a hearing for Barack Obama’s final nominee, Merrick Garland, thereby holding a seat open in the hope it would be filled by a Republican president. Collins duly voted to confirm Donald Trump’s first nominee, Neil Gorsuch, the beneficiary of such hardball tactics.Collins also voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second nominee, who vehemently denied accusations of sexual assault.‘You’re my star’: high points of Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearingsRead moreBut Collins voted not to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline conservative installed shortly before the 2020 presidential election in place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal lion, in stark contravention of supposed principles about confirmations close to elections laid out by McConnell four years before.During the Democratic primary in 2020, Joe Biden promised to put a Black woman on the supreme court. Some Republicans voiced opposition to such a promise, disregarding precedent including Trump’s vow to name a woman to replace Ginsburg.In 2021, Collins was one of three Republicans who voted to confirm Jackson to a federal appeals court. The other two were Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – a hostile questioner in Jackson’s supreme court hearings – and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Murkowski has not said which way she will vote this time.Explaining her vote to the Times, Collins cited Jackson’s “breadth of experience as a law clerk, attorney in private practice, federal public defender, member of the US Sentencing Commission and district court judge for more than eight years”.In a tweet, the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, said: “Grateful to Senator Collins for giving fair, thoughtful consideration to Judge Jackson – and all of the president’s judicial nominations.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtUS politicsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing reveals racist fears of Republicans | Steve Phillips

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing reveals Republicans’ racist fearsSteve PhillipsRepublicans are becoming so hysterical because people like Judge Jackson pose a revolutionary threat to the status quo “Black Girl Magic” is on full display in the supreme court confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Republicans are apoplectic. The juxtaposition of Jackson’s calm, confident, professionalism with the hostile, cynical and contemptuous questioning by senators such as Texas senator Ted Cruz is an object lesson for the entire world on the ongoing dynamics of systemic racism in the United States.Rather than do their constitutional duty of engage with a prospective supreme court justice on the pressing legal issues of the day, the Republican committee members have opted to throw racist red meat to their rabid white supporters who are gripped by fear of people of color. Cruz led the charge with his attacks on critical race theory, asking Jackson whether she agrees “that babies are racist” and trying to paint the judge as a dangerous person who would force white children to learn about racism.In so doing, Cruz was working from a tried and tired playbook that seeks to dramatize anti-racist demands in ways that fuel white fears about the consequences of Black people attaining positions of power. There is a long history in this country of the leaders of white people trying to force Black people to denounce anti-racist movements as a condition for entry into the highest precincts of power (Cruz is Latino, but his base is largely white). In 2008, the media tried to force Barack Obama to denounce his pastor Jeremiah Wright’s statements forcefully condemning white supremacy. Two decades earlier, Jesse Jackson was dogged by demands that he distance himself from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The point of said attacks is to try to weaken support for the Black person one way or another. Either they distance themselves from Black leaders and movements, thereby diminishing Black enthusiasm, or they refuse to renounce anti-racist voices, and that refusal is then used to scare white people.Cruz and his ilk gravitate to such tactics because white fears about Black people have defined politics in this country for centuries. One of the Republican questioners of Judge Jackson was South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, representative of a state that has been in the forefront of efforts to whip white people into a frenzy about the prospects of Black equality. In 1712, the South Carolina legislature passed the “Slave Laws” – legislation designed to control the behavior of “Negroes and other slaves [who] are of barbarous, wild, savage natures”. South Carolina’s leaders were so extreme in stoking white fears that the state was the first to secede from the Union and turn to violence after Abraham Lincoln’s election on an anti-slavery platform in 1860. Graham’s predecessor, Strom Thurmond, ran for president in 1948, defiantly declaring that, “there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the n—-r race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches!”Today’s Republicans are becoming so hysterical because people like Judge Jackson pose a revolutionary threat to the status quo in that they reveal the ubiquity of Black brilliance. Cruz, Graham and their fellow modern-day Confederates know instinctively that as the public sees how many amazing Black women there are, it becomes much harder to explain why most of the powerful positions in this country are still held by white men. In 233 years, there hasn’t been a single Black woman smart enough to sit on the supreme court? The notion is absurd. So, if it’s not lack of talent, then it must be something else. Like racism and sexism. Exposing this reality is very dangerous to a political party whose power rests on exploiting that racism and sexism (all the while denying it exists).The very fact that Jackson’s nomination is historic and not routine is a profound indictment of the United States of America. Hour after hour, question after question, Judge Jackson – secure in the knowledge that she is simply the latest talented Black woman and not the first – is calmly, confidently and politely taking a wrecking ball to the myth that America is a meritocracy. And the implications of that scare the Republicans to death.
      Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color and author of Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority. He is a Guardian US columnist
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      US supreme court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson deflects Republican attacks – video

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      Republicans pressed their attacks on a range of issues against Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s nominee to become the first Black woman on the US supreme court. Jackson, who had remained even-tempered throughout marathon questioning during her Senate judiciary committee confirmation hearing, showed impatience over repeated questions posed by Republicans who accused her of being too lenient in sentencing in cases involving child abuse images

      Ketanji Brown Jackson faces renewed Republican attacks in Senate grilling
      Ketanji Brown Jackson defends against Republican’s claims on child abuse sentences
      Ketanji Brown Jackson vows to defend US constitution in opening remarks More

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      Republicans turn Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing into a political circus

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      Republicans turn Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing into a political circus Solemn proceedings of confirmation hearing took a nosedive into farce with bizarre moments in Jackson’s epic inquisitionAt 2.54pm on the second day of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings that will determine whether she takes a seat on the US supreme court, the solemn proceedings took a nosedive into farce.Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, turned theatrically to an outsized blow-up of a children’s book, Antiracist Baby by Ibram X Kendi. Pointing to a cartoon from its pages of an infant in diapers taking their first walk, he asked Jackson: “Do you agree with this book… that babies are racist?”“Senator,” Jackson began with a sigh. And then she paused for seven full seconds, which in the august setting of the Senate judiciary committee hearing felt like a year.For the one and only time in the 13 hours of questioning that Jackson endured that day, the nominee appeared flummoxed. Or was it flabbergasted?Here she was, aged 51, with almost a decade’s experience as a federal judge behind her and, if confirmed, the history-making distinction of becoming the first Black woman to sit on the nation’s highest court ahead of her. And she was being asked whether babies were racist?“I don’t believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist or not valued, or less than, that they are victims, oppressors,” she said eventually. When Cruz refused to drop the subject she gave a more direct answer.“I have not reviewed any of those books,” she said. “They don’t come up in my work as a judge, which I’m respectfully here to address.”That Cruz chose to focus on critical race theory (CRT), the years-old academic theory that has become the latest conservative hot-button issue, in his questioning spoke volumes about the brutal social issue politics of today’s Republican party. That he did so to a Black woman lent the exchange the astringency of a racial dog-whistle.Cruz’s attack was not unique. Four hours before he began his interrogation, the official Twitter account of the Republican National Committee posted a gif of the nominee bearing her initials “KBJ” which are then scratched out and replaced with the letters: “CRT”. Critical race theory is an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society.There was another twist to Cruz’s questioning. The private elementary school at which he claimed CRT was being taught – Antiracist Baby and all – is Georgetown Day School on whose board Jackson sits as a trustee. When GDS was founded in 1945 it too made history as the first integrated school, serving both Black and white children, in the nation’s capital.Lest any of the attendants of the hearings inside the Hart Senate office building or following along on television had doubts about Cruz’s motivations, he grilled Jackson on several other racially-charged subjects. He began by vaunting his own anti-racist credentials by expressing the admiration he shared with Jackson for Martin Luther King.Within seconds of that warm embrace, however, the senator segued to a speech that Jackson made in 2020 – on MLK day – in which she referred to the 1619 Project.The project, initiated by the New York Times, seeks to reframe American history by placing the consequences of slavery and the role of African American women front and centre of the national narrative. Cruz asked Jackson if she agreed with some of its more contested conclusions, which he claimed were “deeply inaccurate and misleading”, to which she replied that she had only mentioned it because it was “well known to the students I was talking to”.Again, she stressed, this was a subject that had absolutely nothing to do with her work – or by implication, the job of a supreme court justice.Outside observers were incensed by Cruz’s tactics. “What we saw today was an attempt to assail the character of Ketanji Brown Jackson, because her record is so wholly unassailable,” Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the racial justice organization, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said on MSNBC.Raphael Warnock, the Democratic senator from Georgia and former senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta where King once preached, pondered in the New York Times: “Would they be asking these questions if this were not a Black woman?”There were other awkward moments in Jackson’s epic inquisition, which she survived while barely dropping the perma-smile from her face. There was the moment that Lindsey Graham, Republican senator from South Carolina, flounced out of the hearing having earlier wrongly accused Jackson of having called George W Bush and the then defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld “war criminals”.Yet more bizarre was the episode when Marsha Blackburn, Republican senator from Tennessee, asked Jackson whether she could “provide a definition for the word ‘woman’.” “No, I can’t,” came the curt reply.It was all a far cry from the promise delivered by Senator Chuck Grassley, the top Republican in the judiciary committee, at the start of the hearings. There would be no “spectacle” or “political circus” coming from his side of the aisle.Several Republican senators followed that pledge by channelling QAnon. Senators Josh Hawley from Missouri, Cruz and Graham all pursued the inquisitorial line that Jackson had been unduly lenient as a federal district court judge in her sentencing of sex offenders who consume and distribute images of child sex abuse.Though they avoided stating so explicitly, the senators clearly intended to imply that Jackson’s sympathies lay with pedophiles. That’s a short stone’s throw away from the core conspiracy theory peddled by QAnon, the toxic Donald Trump-supporting online movement.At its “Pizzagate” inception during the 2016 presidential campaign, QAnon fantasised about a child trafficking ring around Hillary Clinton and other Democratic leaders and liberal Hollywood celebrities.As Media Matters has noted, the claim that Jackson was lenient towards sex offenders consuming images of children first surfaced last month. A conservative group American Accountability Foundation (AAF) ran an “investigation” into her writings while a student at Harvard law school in which she explored discrepancies in sentencing policy in such cases.The group misleadingly claimed that her writing exposed her as a radical judicial activist dedicated to “social justice engineering”.Days before the confirmation hearings began, Republican senators had taken up AAF’s lead and were plotting how to use it during the confirmation process. Last week Politico obtained a document that was circulating among the senators in which they rehearsed the claim that the judge “routinely handed out light sentence”, and that the lightest of all were in “child pornography cases”.A pedophile-sympathising, critical race theory-loving, judicial activist, radical leftist social engineer. The vision of the nominee that was presented over hours of Republican grilling made for quite the spectacle.But will the political circus work? “They are trying to find some way to make her look less than qualified,” Nelson concluded. “They failed miserably.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson says Roe v Wade ‘the settled law of the supreme court’ – live

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      Key events

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      2.06pm EDT

      14:06

      Psaki tests positive for Covid-19

      11.33am EDT

      11:33

      Jackson: Roe v Wade is ‘settled law’

      8.58am EDT

      08:58

      Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings continue

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      5.42pm EDT

      17:42

      In response to Hawley’s insinuations that she was not tough enough on defendants in child sexual abuse cases, Jackson has explained in detail how sentencing works, saying, “What a judge has to do is determine how to sentence defendants proportionately consistent with the elements that the statutes include, with the requirements Congress has set forward … Judges are doing the work of assessing in each case a number of factors that are set forward by Congress, all against the backdrop of heinous criminal behavior … and Congress has given judges factors to consider.”
      Jackson said she has to consider the facts and the recommendations of government and the probation department in sentencing, adding, “You’re questioning whether or not I take them seriously or if I have some reason to handle them in a different way than my peers or in a different way than other cases, but I assure you I do not.”
      Hawley said: “I am questioning your discretion and judgment.” He asked her why she was not tougher on an 18-year-old in a case involving child sexual abuse images.
      Jackson explained that she was following guidelines and responding to specific facts in the case, and sentenced him to three months in federal prison.

      5.31pm EDT

      17:31

      Josh Hawley, Republican senator from Missouri, started his questions with detailed descriptions of child sexual abuse cases and accusing Jackson of not being tough enough on offenders. Here’s the response from a White House spokesperson, saying Halwey’s remarks are “embarrassing” and a signal to QAnon conspiracy theorists:

      Andrew Bates
      (@AndrewJBates46)
      Hawley’s embarrassing, QAnon-signaling smear has been fact checked by: @washingtonpost, @nytimes, @AP, @CNN, @ABC, and @NRO:https://t.co/JDHAWH7l3dhttps://t.co/JbPnmE7lbIhttps://t.co/8DuoUg80hGhttps://t.co/fA4hUmeqGyhttps://t.co/fA4hUmeqGyhttps://t.co/UVCtmAImJ2

      March 22, 2022

      5.17pm EDT

      17:17

      Martin Pengelly

      Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, is now questioning Jackson. There was an interesting nugget from Punchbowl News this morning, on Hawley and why he is pressing his attack on the judge over her past sentencing of offenders convicted over child sexual abuse images. More