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      Republican Hawley’s attack on supreme court nominee Jackson is wrong, says senator

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      Republican Hawley’s attack on supreme court nominee Jackson is wrong, says senatorSenate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin says Hawley’s attacks should be ignored in confirmation hearings this week The Missouri Republican Josh Hawley is wrong to attack Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s supreme court nominee, and should be ignored in confirmation hearings this week, the Senate judiciary chair said.How Ketanji Brown Jackson became Biden’s supreme court nominee – podcastRead moreHawley, the Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin said, is “part of the fringe within the Republican party … a man who was fist-bumping the murderous mob that descended on the Capitol on 6 January of the last year.“He doesn’t have the credibility he thinks he does.”If confirmed, Jackson will be the first Black woman on the court. If Democrats hold their 50 votes she will be installed, via Kamala Harris’s vote as vice-president.Jackson has attracted Republican support before and some have indicated they may back her this time. Jackson’s confirmation will not affect the balance of a court which conservatives dominate 6-3, as she will replace another liberal, the retiring Stephen Breyer.Hawley is however one of several hard-right members of the judiciary committee, alongside Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, to harbour presidential ambitions. Such senators could see attacking a Biden nominee as a way to appeal to supporters.This week, in tweets echoed by the Republican National Committee, Hawley highlighted a potential line of attack.“I’ve noticed an alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children,” Hawley said.He did not raise the issue when he questioned Jackson last year, before voting against her confirmation to an appeals court. The White House said the senator was pushing “toxic and weakly presented misinformation”.Jackson sat on the US Sentencing Commission, an agency meant to reduce disparity in federal prison sentences. The sentencing expert Douglas Berman, an Ohio State law professor, has said her record shows she is skeptical of the range of sentences recommended for child pornography cases, the subject seized upon by Hawley.“But so too were prosecutors in the majority of her cases and so too are district judges nationwide,” Berman wrote.Durbin told ABC’s This Week: “As far as Senator Hawley is concerned, here’s the bottom line – he’s wrong. He’s inaccurate and unfair in his analysis.“Judge Jackson has been scrutinised more than any person I can think of. This is her fourth time before the Senate judiciary committee. In three previous times, she came through with flying colors and bipartisan support, the last time just last year.“And now Senator Hawley is making these charges that came out of nowhere. The independent fact checkers … have discredited his claims already. They should have. There’s no truth to what he says.“And he’s part of the fringe within the Republican party. This was a man who was fist-bumping the murderous mob that descended on the Capitol on 6 January of last year. He doesn’t have the credibility he thinks he does.”This week, Politico demanded Hawley stop using for fundraising purposes a picture of his famous raised-fist salute to protesters before the deadly attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters. Hawley indicated that he would not stop using the image.12:30PM: Senator Josh Hawley pumps his fist at pro-Trump crowd gathered at the east side of the Capitol before heading into the joint session of Congress. #Jan6NeverAgain #TheBigLie pic.twitter.com/rEFsfLY4x9— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) April 16, 2021
      On ABC, John Barrasso of Wyoming, a member of Senate Republican leadership, was asked if Hawley was guilty of “character assassination” in his attack on Jackson.“The whole process is going to be fair, respectful and thorough,” Barrasso said, adding that he found Jackson “clearly, very intelligent”.Using a key Republican attack line in an election year, Barrasso added: “Going through the record, there are some concerns that people have about her being perceived as soft on crime. That’s all going to come out with the hearings but they’re going to be respectful, they’re going to be thorough and they’re going to be fair.”Asked if Hawley’s attack was fair, Barrasso said: “Well, he’s going to have his opportunity to question the judge as will all the members of the committee.“The last time we had a hearing with [Brett] Kavanaugh, he was accused of being a serial rapist with no evidence whatsoever. So, I think we’re going to have a fair process and a respectful process, unlike what the Democrats did to Justice Kavanaugh.”In fact Kavanaugh – who denied allegations of sexual assault detailed by an alleged victim in confirmation hearings – was the second of three justices installed by Republicans under Donald Trump. The third, Amy Coney Barrett, was jammed on to the court shortly before the 2020 election, after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, told CBS’s Face the Nation he and Jackson “had a very good conversation”. He asked her, he said, to “defend the court” against those who say Democrats should expand it beyond nine justices to redress its ideological balance.Mug shot: Republican Josh Hawley told to stop using January 6 fist salute photoRead more“Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Breyer both publicly opposed court packing,” McConnell said, “that is trying to increase the number of members in order to get an outcome you like. That would have been an easy thing for [Jackson] to do, to defend the integrity of the court. She wouldn’t do that.”The man who drastically shifted the balance of the court in part by denying a nomination to Barack Obama in 2016 and swiftly confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett four years later also said: “I haven’t made a final decision as to how I’m gonna vote.”Hearings begin on Monday. Jackson is expected to make a statement and answer questions. Harvard-trained, she spent two years as a federal public defender. That makes her the first nominee with significant criminal defense experience since Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American on the court.The American Bar Association has given Jackson its highest rating, unanimously “well qualified”.Janette McCarthy Wallace, general counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said she was excited to see a Black woman on the verge of a seat.“Representation matters,” Wallace said. “It’s critical to have diverse experience on the bench. It should reflect the rich cultural diversity of this country.”
      The Associated Press contributed to this report
      TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)RepublicansDemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ginni Thomas, wife of Clarence Thomas, attended rally preceding Capitol attack

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      Ginni Thomas, wife of Clarence Thomas, attended rally preceding Capitol attackConservative activist who runs a political lobbying firm, says she briefly attended rally but left before Trump addressed crowd Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has admitted attending a rally which preceded the January 6 attack on the US Capitol but denied helping to plan it.Critics accuse CPAC of becoming pay-to-play as Trump loyalists gain powerRead moreIn an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, Thomas, a conservative activist who runs a political lobbying firm, said she briefly attended the rally near the White House on 6 January 2021 but left before Donald Trump addressed the crowd.Trump used his address to tell supporters to “fight like hell” in support of his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud. A bipartisan Senate report said seven deaths were connected to the assault on Congress which followed.Thomas said brief attendance at the rally was the full extent of her involvement.“I was disappointed and frustrated that there was violence that happened following a peaceful gathering of Trump supporters on the Ellipse on 6 January,” she told the Free Beacon, a conservative site.Investigations by the New York Times and the New Yorker have raised questions about Thomas’s ties to organizers of the January 6 rally.According to the Times, Thomas sits on the board of a rightwing group that circulated “action steps” after the 2020 election, in an attempt to keep Trump in power.One of the organizers of the rally told the Times Thomas was a peacekeeper between various factions. Thomas denied those allegations.“I played no role with those who were planning and leading the 6 January events,” she said.The Times told the Free Beacon it stood by its “fair and accurate” reporting.Thomas, who has been involved in conservative activism for decades, also categorically rejected any suggestion her political activities present a conflict of interest for her husband. Some judicial ethics experts have called on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from cases involving causes with which his wife has been involved.However, Ginni Thomas’s comments on the morning of 6 January only intensified questions about her husband’s possible conflicts of interest.In a series of Facebook posts that are no longer visible, Thomas said “LOVE MAGA people!!!!” and “GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING!”She later added a note that the posts were written before the attack on the Capitol, according to Slate.Clarence Thomas: supreme court could be ‘compromised’ by politicsRead moreThomas has insisted her activism has no bearing on her husband’s rulings, saying they have kept their careers separate since he was confirmed in 1991.“Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles and aspirations for America,” Thomas told the Free Beacon. “But we have our own separate careers and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me and I don’t involve him in my work.”Justice Thomas’s critics will closely scrutinize his work related to the Capitol attack.In January, he provided an early hint about his opinion of efforts to investigate January 6. The supreme court rejected Trump’s request to stop a House select committee accessing his White House records.Only one justice dissented: Clarence Thomas.TopicsClarence ThomasUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Clarence Thomas: supreme court could be ‘compromised’ by politics

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      Clarence Thomas: supreme court could be ‘compromised’ by politicsThe court is set to rule this year on divisive issues including abortion, gun control, the climate crisis and voting rights

      The Agenda: how the supreme court threatens US democracy
      The US supreme court could “at some point” become “compromised” by politics, said Clarence Thomas – one of six conservatives on the nine-member court after Republicans denied Barack Obama a nomination then rammed three new justices through during the hard-right presidency of Donald Trump.Who has more influence on supreme court: Clarence Thomas or his activist wife?Read more“You can cavalierly talk about packing or stacking the court,” said Thomas, whose wife, Ginni Thomas, has come under extensive scrutiny for work for rightwing groups including supporting Trump’s attempts to overturn an election.“You can cavalierly talk about doing this or doing that. At some point the institution is going to be compromised.”Thomas was speaking at a hotel in Salt Lake City on Friday.“By doing this,” he said, “you continue to chip away at the respect of the institutions that the next generation is going to need if they’re going to have civil society.”The court is set to rule this year on divisive issues including abortion, gun control, the climate crisis and voting rights. Conservative victories are expected. The conservative-dominated court has already ruled against the Biden administration on coronavirus mitigation and other matters.The US constitution does not mandate that the court consist of nine justices. Some progressives and Democratic politicians have therefore called to expand it, in order to reset its ideological balance. Democrats in Congress last year introduced a bill to add four justices and Joe Biden has created a commission to study expansion.Few analysts think expansion is likely to happen.Republican senators are currently attacking Biden for his campaign promise to nominate a first Black woman to the court, a promise he fulfilled by nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace the retiring Stephen Breyer.Republican presidents have nominated justices on grounds of identity, most recently when Trump said he would pick a woman to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the liberal lion who died in September 2020.Ignoring their own claims about the impropriety of confirmations in election years, made in denying Merrick Garland even a hearing to replace Antonin Scalia in 2016, Senate Republicans installed Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline Catholic conservative, as Ginsberg’s replacement.In Utah on Friday, Thomas also voiced a familiar conservative complaint about so-called “cancel culture”, the supposed silencing of voices or world views deemed unacceptable on political grounds.He was, he said, “afraid, particularly in this world of cancel culture attack, I don’t know where you’re going to learn to engage as we did when I grew up.“If you don’t learn at that level in high school, in grammar school, in your neighborhood, or in civic organizations, then how do you have it when you’re making decisions in government, in the legislature, or in the courts?”Thomas also attacked the media for, he said, cultivating inaccurate impressions about public figures including himself, his wife and Scalia.Ginni Thomas has faced scrutiny for her involvement in groups that file briefs about cases in front of the supreme court, as well as using Facebook to amplify partisan attacks.Thomas has claimed the supreme court is above politics – a claim made by justices on either side of the partisan divide.Congress is preparing for confirmation hearings for Jackson. She will be installed if all 50 Democratic senators back her, via the casting vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris. Some Republicans have indicated they could support her too.In Utah, Thomas recalled his own confirmation in 1991 as a humiliating and embarrassing experience. Lawmakers including Biden grilled Thomas about sexual harassment allegations from Anita Hill, a former employee, leading him to call the experience a “high tech lynching”. Biden has also been criticised for his treatment of Hill.‘The Scheme’: a senator’s plan to highlight rightwing influence on the supreme courtRead moreOn Friday, Thomas said he held civility as one of his highest values. He said he learned to respect institutions and debate civilly with those who disagreed with him during his years in school.Based on conversations with students in recent years, he said, he does not believe colleges are now welcoming places for productive debate, particularly for students who support what he described as traditional families or oppose abortion.Thomas did not reference the future of Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed abortion rights. The court on which he sits is scheduled to rule this year on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, concerning whether Mississippi can ban abortions at 15 weeks.The court is expected to overturn Roe. While the justices deliberate, conservative lawmakers in Florida, West Virginia and Kentucky are advancing similar legislation.
      The Associated Press contributed to this report
      TopicsClarence ThomasUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsRepublicansUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Why dissent by conservative justices in voting rights cases is alarming

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      Why dissent by conservative justices in voting rights cases is alarmingDemocrats won two major victories, but a dissenting opinion from three of the supreme court’s justices set off alarms bells Hello, and Happy Thursday,It’s no secret that the US supreme court has been hostile to voting rights recently. But two recent decisions, I think, highlight why what the court is doing is both alarming and inconsistent.Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterOn Monday evening, the court gave Democrats two major victories, blocking Republican attempts to impose unfair congressional maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. In both states the respective state supreme courts had redrawn them to be fairer – decisions which the US supreme court upheld. Yet even though legal experts expected this outcome, a dissenting opinion from three of the court’s conservative justices set off loud alarm bells for me.The dissent was authored by Justice Samuel Alito (and joined by Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch in the North Carolina case). The three justices wrote that they would have blocked the state supreme court maps from going into effect. They pointed to a provision in the US constitution, the elections clause, that explicitly gives state legislatures the authority to set the “time, manner, and place” of federal elections. That provision, they said, likely means that state supreme courts can’t impose a new map, even if the one the legislature adopts violates a state’s constitution.“If the language of the Elections Clause is taken seriously, there must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections,” Alito wrote.Alito’s dissent embraces an idea called the “independent state legislature doctrine”. Increasingly popular among conservative litigants, it argues that state courts cannot second-guess election rules – whether it be a gerrymandered map or a new voter ID law – passed by a legislature. It would give state legislatures enormous power over elections.The theory largely fell into disuse in the early 20th century, according to a paper by Michael Morley, a law professor at Florida State University. The supreme court has also repeatedly rejected the idea over the last century. But in a handful of cases during the 2020 election, Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Thomas all expressed interest in the idea.The focus on this idea is also notable because it is directly at odds with what Alito and other conservative justices have said recently.Reading Alito’s dissent, I couldn’t help but think of a majority opinion that he, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh signed onto in 2019. In that case, called Rucho v Common Cause, they were part of a majority that said federal courts could not do anything to stop partisan gerrymandering. But, Roberts wrote, state laws and state courts could continue to police it. It was a clear instruction to litigants that they should take their cases about partisan gerrymandering to state courts, which is exactly what they did in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.Now, Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch – and maybe Kavanaugh – seem to be backing away from that position.It’s not the only area of voting rights law where the supreme court has pulled a kind of bait-and-switch recently. In 2013, when a majority of the court, including Roberts, Alito and Thomas, gutted the the heart of the Voting Rights Act, designed to prevent voting discrimination, it pointed to another provision of the law, section 2, as a tool litigants could continue to use. But recently, the court has been slowly chipping away at section 2, too, making it harder to challenge laws under it and stepping in to overrule lower courts that have relied on it to block discriminatory maps. Taken together, the cases show how the supreme court is slowly attacking laws that are supposed to prevent Americans against voting discrimination.One other piece of Alito’s dissent deserves attention because it is, I would argue, hypocritical. In two short paragraphs, Alito explained why he didn’t think it would be a big deal for a court to step in and order North Carolina to adopt new congressional districts after candidates had begun filing for office ahead of the state’s 17 May primary. The public interest favored such a reset, he said, to ensure that districts were constitutional. All candidates would have to do, he said, was file a new form indicating they were running in the districts the legislature, not the state supreme court, had adopted. “That would not have been greatly disruptive,” he wrote.But last month, Alito took the opposite approach when he agreed with an opinion by Kavanaugh saying it would be too disruptive to impose new, non-discriminatory maps for Alabama’s 24 May primary – a week later than the one in North Carolina. Kavanaugh wrote: “Running elections statewide is extraordinarily complicated and difficult. Those elections require enormous advance preparations by state and local officials, and pose significant logistical challenges.”That argument prompted a furious response from Justice Elena Kagan, who said discrimination in Alabama should not get a free pass merely because elections were on the horizon. “Alabama is not entitled to keep violating Black Alabamians’ voting rights just because the court’s order came down in the first month of an election year,” she said.The opposing conclusions Alito reached in both cases underscores the immense discretion he is wielding on the bench to evaluate these claims. In North Carolina, when the legislature’s constitutional rights were at issue, it warranted the supreme court’s intervention. In Alabama, when Black Americans’ voting rights were at issue, he believed the court’s intervention was not needed.Also worth watching…
      A Colorado election clerk was indicted on charges she helped allow unaurthorized access to voting equipment.
      Florida Republicans are on the verge of creating a new office to investigate election crimes.
      The top election official in Texas’s largest county announced she would resign after the county experienced significant voting problems in the state’s primary.
      Newly released records in Wisconsin provide insight into a widely criticized review of the 2020 election.
      TopicsUS supreme courtThe fight to voteLaw (US)US politicsUS voting rightsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘We must march forward’: Kamala Harris commemorates Bloody Sunday anniversary in Selma

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      ‘We must march forward’: Kamala Harris commemorates Bloody Sunday anniversary in SelmaUS vice president takes to Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama as congressional efforts to restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act falter US vice president Kamala Harris visited Selma, Alabama on Sunday to commemorate a defining moment in the fight for the right to vote, making her trip as congressional efforts to restore the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act have faltered.Under a blazing blue sky, Harris took the stage at the foot of the bridge where in 1965 white state troopers attacked Black voting rights marchers attempting to cross.Harris called the site hallowed ground on which people fought for the “most fundamental right of America citizenship: the right to vote”.The not-surprising, very bad defeat of Biden’s attempt to protect voting | The fight to voteRead more“Today, we stand on this bridge at a different time,” Harris said before a cheering crowd of several thousand.“We again, however, find ourselves caught in between. Between injustice and justice. Between disappointment and determination … nowhere is that more clear than when it comes to the ongoing fight to secure the freedom to vote.”The nation’s first female vice president – as well as the first African American and Indian American in the role – spoke of marchers whose “peaceful protest was met with crushing violence. They were kneeling when the state troopers charged. They were praying when the billy clubs struck.”On “Bloody Sunday”, 7 March 1965, state troopers severely beat and tear-gassed peaceful demonstrators, including a young activist, the late John Lewis, who later became a longtime Georgia congressman.The images of violence at the Edmund Pettus Bridge – originally named for a Confederate general – shocked the nation and helped galvanize support for passage of the Voting Rights Act.Fifty-seven years later, Democrats are unsuccessfully trying to update the landmark law and pass additional measures to make it more convenient for people to vote. A key provision of the law was tossed out by a US supreme court decision.“In a moment of great uncertainty, those marches pressed forward and they crossed,“ Harris said. “We must do the same. We must lock our arms and march forward. We will not let setbacks stop us. We know that honoring the legacy of those who marched then demands that we continue to push Congress to pass federal voting rights legislation.”In Selma, a crowd gathered hours before Harris was scheduled to speak. Rank-and-file activists of the civil rights movement, including women who fled the beatings of Bloody Sunday, were seated near the stage.The milestone of Harris becoming the nation’s first Black female vice president seemed unimaginable in 1965, they said.“That’s why we marched,” Betty Boynton, the daughter-in-law of voting rights activist Amelia Boynton, said.Is America a democracy? If so, why does it deny millions the vote?Read more“I was at the tail end and all of the sudden I saw these horses. Oh my goodness, and all of the sudden … I saw smoke. I didn’t know what tear gas was. There were beating people,” Boynton said.But Boynton said Sunday’s anniversary is tempered by fears of the impact of new voting restrictions being enacted.“And now they are trying to take our voting rights from us. I wouldn’t think in 2022 we would have to do all over again what we did in 1965,” Boynton said.The US president, Joe Biden, said the strength of the groundbreaking 1965 Voting Rights Act “has been weakened not by brute force, but by insidious court decisions”.The latest legislation, named for Lewis, who died in 2020, is part of a broader elections package that collapsed in the US Senate in February.“In Selma, the blood of John Lewis and so many other courageous Americans sanctified a noble struggle. We are determined to honor that legacy by passing legislation to protect the right to vote and uphold the integrity of our elections, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act,” Biden said in a statement.The US supreme court in 2013 gutted a portion of the 1965 law that required certain states with a history of discrimination in voting, mainly in the South, to get US Justice Department approval before changing the way they hold elections, with voting rights activists warning the action is emboldening states to pass a new wave of voting restrictions.TopicsUS voting rightsThe fight to voteKamala HarrisUS politicsAlabamaUS supreme courtUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      This time McConnell holds few cards to stop Biden’s supreme court pick

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      This time McConnell holds few cards to stop Biden’s supreme court pick Ketanji Brown Jackson can expect little support from across the aisle but Republicans are wary of overreach before midtermsThe photograph is a study in contrasts. On the left, standing stiffly and staring glumly, is Mitch McConnell, 80, the Republican minority leader in the Senate accused of committing professional fouls when confronting judicial confirmations.On the right, at a slightly awkward distance from McConnell, is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, chosen by a Democratic president to be the first Black woman on the US supreme court, smiling warmly at the camera, her posture more relaxed than the senator’s.Clyburn: supreme court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘beyond politics’Read moreThis was one stop for Jackson this week when she began courting senators from both sides of the aisle ahead of nomination hearings that start on 21 March before a vote in the full chamber.For McConnell, who blocked President Barack Obama’s 2016 nominee Merrick Garland then oversaw the confirmation of three conservative justices under President Donald Trump, there are few options this time. Democrats can confirm Jackson without Republicans in a Senate that is divided 50-50 and where Vice-President Kamala Harris wields the tiebreaker vote.Experts predict that Republicans will use the process to score some political points – just as Democrats did in 2020 when they were powerless to block Amy Coney Barrett’s ascent to the court – but ultimately they will not resort entirely to scorched earth tactics.McConnell and colleagues know that Jackson is replacing a fellow liberal, the retiring Stephen Breyer, and so will not change the 6-3 conservative majority on the court. They are also aware that opinion polls suggest a thumping Republican victory in November’s midterm elections and do not want to risk an overreach that might change that trajectory.“It would be difficult for the Republicans to stop it and a very strong, aggressive effort to block her confirmation could be perceived as being racially motivated,” said Edward Fallone, an associate professor at Marquette University Law School. “They’re already in a favorable position for the midterm elections and the last thing they want to do is erode that by getting accused of being racist at this time. So they should just stay out of the way.”But that will not necessarily prevent some Republicans using racist dog whistles to rile up the Trump base, as they have before.At a confirmation hearing last November, for example, the Republican senator John Kennedy told Kazakh-born Saule Omarova, nominee for comptroller of the currency: “I don’t mean any disrespect: I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade.” She replied: “Senator, I’m not a communist.”Fallone commented: “There are certainly going to be the Republican loose cannons but the question would be whether one of the more mainstream Republicans slips up and makes a comment that’s perceived as racist.”There was an early preview of the potential for bigotry this week when, after Biden championed Jackson in his State of the Union address as “one of our nation’s top legal minds”, Tucker Carlson, an influential host on the conservative Fox News network, remarked: “It might be time for Joe Biden to let us know what Ketanji Brown Jackson’s LSAT score was.”LSAT is the Law School Admission Test. Critics noted that Carlson never made a similar demand for the LSAT scores of white justices appointed by Trump.Jackson has served since last year on the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit after eight years as a federal district judge in Washington and worked earlier as a supreme court clerk for Breyer. She is related by marriage to the former House speaker Paul Ryan, now a board member at the parent company of Fox News.Democrats hope to confirm her before the Easter recess starts on 11 April. She was accompanied this week by Doug Jones, a civil rights lawyer and former senator from Alabama. After a 40-minute meeting, the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, told reporters: “She deserves support from the other side of the aisle, and I am hopeful that a good number of Republicans will vote for her, given who she is.”But McConnell has raised questions about Jackson’s short record as an appellate judge, which includes only two opinions so far. “I am troubled by the combination of this slim appellate record and the intensity of Judge Jackson’s far-left, dark-money fan club,” the senator from Kentucky said.It was a clue that the days when supreme court justices were confirmed with more than 90 bipartisan votes are long gone and that most Republicans are likely to oppose Jackson, despite her receiving support from the Fraternal Order of Police and former judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans.Even so, few predict a bareknuckle fight that will dominate national headlines like the confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh, who faced allegations of sexual misconduct from his teenage years.Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of the progressive pressure group Demand Justice, said: “They have nothing to turn it into a battle over. At the end of the day, Republicans still control a supermajority of the supreme court so the substantive stakes are not there for them.“There’s nothing in Judge Jackson’s record that they could turn into a rallying cry on their side either so I do think that it will be a somewhat muted battle. Or perhaps, as too often seen with women of color who are judicial nominees, unfortunately it may end up devolving into some racist and misogynist attacks. But it won’t be based on her record at all.”Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina were the only Republicans to vote to confirm Jackson to the appeals court last year. While Collins appears open to voting for Jackson again, Murkowski has said her previous vote did not mean she would be supportive this time. Graham had advocated for a different candidate from his home state, federal judge Michelle Childs, and expressed disappointment that she was not Biden’s pick.But, along with rightwing media, some outside advocacy conservative organisations are attacking Jackson’s nomination.The Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) has launched a $2.5m campaign trying to make the case that a “liberal dark money network” helped get Biden elected, pressured Breyer to retire and is now seeking to replace him with “a rubber stamp for their unpopular and far-left political agenda”.Curt Levey, president of the conservative Committee for Justice, said: “The strategy on our side is not to really try to stop her but to try to make some larger points. I think JCN is making a point about dark money groups pressuring Biden to choose the most progressive of the three choices [the other frontrunners were Childs and California supreme court justice Leondra Kruger].”Levey’s own group does not see it as worthwhile to spend money on TV adverts, however. “We can be effective on those larger points but I don’t think there’s any amount of commercials you could run that would stop her from being confirmed.”It is a pragmatic view shared by John Cornyn, a Republican member of the Senate judiciary committee, who is due to meet Jackson on 10 March and does not expect surprises. He told reporters: “She’s not new to us. Given the fact that she’s not going to change the ideological balance on the court … we all have a pretty good idea what the outcome is likely to be.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtUS SenateRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Clyburn: supreme court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘beyond politics’

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      Clyburn: supreme court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘beyond politics’South Carolina congressman extracted Biden’s promise to instal first Black woman on court

      Opinion: Jackson will be a superb addition to the court
      The supreme court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson should be placed “beyond politics”, the politician who extracted Joe Biden’s politically priceless promise to instal the first Black woman on the court said on Sunday.Tucker Carlson condemned for Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘Rwanda’ commentsRead moreBiden introduced Jackson as his pick to replace the retiring Stephen Breyer this week.Some Republicans have complained that nominations should not be made on grounds of race or gender – ignoring promises to put women on the court acted on by Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.Others have complained about how Democrats treated one of Trump’s nominees, Brett Kavanaugh, who denied allegations of sexual assault. Others have objected on ideological grounds, for example Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate judiciary committee, claiming the Jackson nomination was the work of the “radical left”.James Clyburn, the South Carolina congressman and House Democratic whip whose endorsement both propelled Biden to the presidential nomination and produced his promise to pick a Black woman, appeared on Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.He said: “This is beyond politics. This is about the country, our pursuit of a more perfect union, and this is demonstrative of another step in that pursuit.”Of 115 supreme court justices, 108 have been white men. Two have been Black men, five women. As well as being the first Black woman on the court, Jackson would be the fourth woman on the current nine-justice panel, joining liberals Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline conservative.Clyburn said he hoped “that all my Republican friends will look upon” the nomination of Jackson as being “beyond politics”.“Let’s have a debate,” he said. “Let’s talk to her about her rulings and about her philosophy. But in the final analysis, let’s have a strong bipartisan support to demonstrate that both parties are still in pursuit of perfection”.No supreme court nomination – or, most observers would argue, hearing or ruling – is ever above politics. If confirmed, Jackson will not alter the balance of a court tilted 6-3 to conservatives by Republican political hardball which gave Trump three picks.Before Biden made his decision, Clyburn and Republicans including Graham and the other South Carolina senator, Tim Scott, championed J Michelle Childs, a judge from their state. Clyburn said it would be important to instal a justice who did not go to Yale or Harvard. Jackson went to Harvard.“It’s more traditional, no question about that,” Clyburn told CBS. “This means that we will continue that tradition, and I am one, as you can see, that’s not so much for tradition. I want to see us break as much new ground as possible.“But … in the final analysis, I think this is a good choice. It was a choice that brings on to the court a background and some experiences that nobody else on the court will have. And I think when you look at not just [Jackson’s] background in the family, life, but also her profession, she was a public defender. That adds a new perspective to the court.”Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas, has pointed out that Jackson has more trial experience than four current justices combined – including the chief, John Roberts.Clyburn also said a successful confirmation process could help Biden politically with Black voters facing difficulties familiar to most Americans, particularly inflation.“When you have an opportunity to make an appointment like you just had,” he said, “and he made an African American appointment, I guarantee you, you see some of that move up. It may not move up with the people who are having income problems, but it will move up to those who have other reservations about the president.”Last year, Jackson was confirmed to the court of appeals for the DC circuit with support from three Republican senators: Graham, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska.‘Leaders lead during crises’ – but Biden’s approval rating hits new low, poll findsRead moreThis year, Democrats will be able to confirm Jackson simply by keeping their 50 votes together and using Kamala Harris’s casting vote as vice-president.But on Sunday Mitt Romney of Utah told CNN’s State of the Union he could vote to confirm Jackson.“Yes,” the former presidential nominee said, “I’m going to take a very deep dive and had the occasion to speak with her about some of the concerns when she was before the Senate to go on to the circuit court.“Look, her nomination and her confirmation would or will be historic. And like anyone nominated by the president of the United States, she deserves a very careful look, a very deep dive. And I will provide fresh eyes to that evaluation, and hope that I will be able to support her in the final analysis.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsRaceDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson will be a superb addition to the US supreme court | Moira Donegan

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson will be a superb addition to the US supreme courtMoira DoneganUnlike most people nominated to the court, Jackson’s career has included advocating for the rights of criminal defendants and the poor She has always wanted this. Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s nominee to fill the supreme court seat left vacant by the retirement of Stephen Breyer at the end of this term, said that she wanted to become a judge one day in the yearbook from her Miami high school. By then she was already a champion in national oratory competitions, sharpening the skills of rhetoric and cadence that are the stock and trade of ambitious lawyers. Her parents – an attorney and a school principal – saw their daughter’s potential, and helped her to hoist herself from her middle-class origins onto the path followed by ambitious lawyers from more patrician backgrounds. She went to Harvard for undergrad and then to Harvard Law, eventually clerking on the court for Breyer himself – a justice known to be particularly picky with his clerkships.She seems to have pursued the law with single-minded devotion since she was very young, committing herself to the profession with all the passion and devotion of a vocation.Tucker Carlson condemned for Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘Rwanda’ commentsRead moreBut her legal career took her to places most supreme court justices’ careers have not: In addition to her standard bona fides in private practice and later on the federal bench, she served on the United States Sentencing Commission, working to assess federal criminal sentencing practices and advocating for reduced sentences for drug offenders. Later, she served as a federal public defender in Washington. This makes her the first former public defender nominated to the court, and the first since Thurgood Marshall with extensive criminal defense experience. Her nomination signals a respect for a field of legal practice with great moral authority but little respect from the legal establishment: advocating for the rights of criminal defendants and the poor.When Biden nominated Jackson to a seat on the DC circuit court just last summer, the post was widely seen as a stepping-stone to the supreme court itself: Jackson had already been all but anointed as Breyer’s successor. She sailed through that confirmation, even bagging three Republican votes. The ease of her last appointment, even amid the backdrop of her future one, suggested that Senate Republicans had not been able to manufacture controversy from her record, a failure on their part that suggests remarkable discipline on Jackson’s. She seems to have behaved in a manner becoming a federal judge her whole life. It’s as if she was born wearing a black robe.And yet for much of the nation’s history, Judge Jackson’s story would have been impossible. Jackson is the first Black woman to be nominated to the supreme court, fulfilling a Biden campaign promise, and she has made her way in a legal profession – and indeed, in a country – that is accustomed to discarding Black women’s talent. In many ways she represents America’s great, if usually thwarted, promise: that hard work by individuals, combined with a moral arc of national history that bends toward justice, can deliver talented and worthy people to success despite the injustices imposed on them for their race, their sex, or their origins. That there has never been a Black woman on the court before is testament to how rarely this promise is kept: Jackson is not the first Black female legal mind worthy of the court, and if she is confirmed, she will serve alongside more than one white man of lesser intellect and character. But though she is the first, she will not be the last.When Jackson joins the court, all of the Democratic appointees will be women. Two will be women of color. That gender disparity is likely to be especially stark in abortion and LGBT rights cases the coming years, as the conservative legal movement builds off its expected success in Dobbs v Jackson, the case that will overturn Roe v Wade this summer, and sets its sights undoing the privacy right that the court has used to protect sexual freedoms. Over its coming terms, the court – whose extreme right bent will not be changed by Jackson’s addition – is likely to approve further abortion bans and restrictions, cut off contraception access, and roll back marriage equality, trans rights, and the legality of gay sex.Dissenting will be three women who stand for the rights of Americans to live lives free of the notion that biology must be destiny, and unencumbered by sex role stereotypes. These women will stand for these freedoms, and others, while a majority of six conservative justices enshrine male supremacy and forced birth into federal law. Jackson’s opinions will likely be oriented more towards young lawyers and the general public than towards her conservative colleagues, who have shown themselves petulant and unwilling to engage in good faith with the arguments of the liberals. It is not an enviable task that Jackson will face on the court, but we can be grateful that she is willing to take it.Nor will her confirmation be easy. Though Jackson has long been the favorite to replace Breyer, in recent weeks a group of conservative Democrats, led by the influential congressman Jim Clyburn, made a concerted push to encourage Biden to nominate Judge Michelle Childs, a federal district court judge from South Carolina. Childs’ nomination would have been a favor to Clyburn, whose endorsement of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential primary is widely credited with reviving Biden’s faltering campaign. But Childs had sparked weariness from the left for her past decisions regarding criminal sentencing and her private practice work on labor disputes. Perhaps it was this criticism that endeared her to Senate Republicans, who issues warm words about Childs and dangled a bipartisan confirmation vote in front of Biden. Now that their preferred candidate has been rejected in favor of one more amenable to progressives, conservatives have endeavored to paint Jackson has an extreme leftist.“If media reports are accurate, and Judge Jackson has been chosen as the supreme court nominee to replace Justice Breyer, it means the radical left has won President Biden over yet again,” tweeted Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican on the Senate judiciary committee who voted to confirm Judge Jackson to the DC circuit last summer.Jackson’s actual jurisprudence reflects scrupulousness more than radicality. While on the DC circuit this past year, Judge Jackson presided over a case called Committee on the Judiciary v McGahn, a lawsuit concerning the Trump administration’s attempt to sabotage a congressional investigation. It’s the kind of case that ambitious judges pray to avoid: high-profile and politically charged, with one party that would declare any unfavorable outcome a process violation.Knowing she was under a microscope, Jackson delivered a measured, thorough, and lengthy ruling declaring that former White House counsel Don McGahn could be compelled to testify before Congress. It was the kind of point-by-point argument meant to be ironclad even to the least sympathetic of readers. But the opinion also contained memorable flashes of rhetoric. “Presidents are not kings,” Jackson wrote. “They do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.” It was the kind of writing that would represent the pinnacle of many judges’ careers. For Jackson, it may be only the beginning.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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