Supreme court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies before US Senate – live | US news

Here are some scenes from outside the supreme court, where Jackson’s supporters have gathered to urge her confirmation.

Several Republicans have raised the issue of court-packing, an idea that has gained traction on the left.

Senator John Cornyn, a Republican of Texas, said he was dismayed that Jackson hasn’t directly engaged with the subject while Graham said she should expect questions about whether she supports expanding the court beyond nine members. Senator Mike Lee, a Republican of Utah, who said he is “sickened” by efforts to “delegitimize” the court through expansion.

“Nine is a number that works. It’s worked now for 152 years and it’s not one we ought to revisit,” Lee said. “We must protect the court.”

Expect to hear more questions about proposed changes to the court over the course of the next few days.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, praised Jackson and noted that she will be filling the seat vacated by justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring.

“You’ve learned from the best,” she said.

“The supreme court is not a political institution,” Feinstein said. “Rather, the court stands above politics and above partisanship.”

The California Democrat said she was honored to be on the committee to consider her historic nomination, but also praised her time as a public defender, service she praised as “very significant and important”.

In 2020, Feinstein announced her decision to step down as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee after facing intense blowback from Democrats about the way she handled the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, just weeks before the presidential election.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, delivered an angry defense of Republicans and their right to ask Jackson “tough questions”.

“It’s about ‘we’re all racists’ if we ask hard questions,” Graham said. “It’s not going to fly with us.” Graham said to “count me in” on diversifying the court but expressed his disappointment that Biden did not choose J Michelle Childs, a South Carolina judge who is Black and was his first choice for the nomination.

“It’s good for the court to look like America,” he said.

He told Jackson that the hearings were going to be “challenging for you, informative for the public and respectful by us.” Like Grassley, he vowed it would not become a circus and told Jackson that she was a “ beneficiary of Republican nominees having their lives turned upside down.”

Graham was one of three Republicans to support her confirmation to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals but suggested in his remarks that he is not likely to support her for the supreme court.

Now that Durbin and Grassley have finished their remarks, each senator on the committee will have five minutes to give opening remarks. Buckle up, because there are 22 committee members. Expect a lot of repetition as Democrats extol Jackson’s record and résumé and pre-but some of the Republican attacks.

Meanwhile, Republicans are raising questions about cases and decisions that they can portray as “soft on crime” or radically liberal, in their view. Expect many references to past supreme court nominations, as many Republicans have already spent ample time decrying the way conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were treated during their hearing.

“Let’s make a few things clear: Judge Jackson is no judicial activist,” said Vermont senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat. “She is not a puppet of the so-called Radical Left. She’s been praised by Republican-appointed judges for her jurisprudence. Lawyers of the right and the left who appeared before her in court have called her judicious and even-handed.”

Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the committee, congratulated Jackson on her nomination and welcomed her family to the hearing. Her husband and daughters are in the audience.

He vowed that the hearing would not become a “spectacle based upon alleged process fouls,” he said, drawing a contrast with the Kavanaugh hearing.

“We’re off to a very good start,” he said. “Unlike the start to the Kavanaugh hearings, we didn’t have repeated, choreographed interruptions of chairman Durbin during his opening statements, like Democrats interrupted me for more than an hour during my opening statement.”

“What we will do is ask tough questions” about Jackson’s record, he said.

In previewing some of the questions Republicans might ask, he lamented that the committee hasn’t received all of the documents related to her time on the US Sentencing Commission. He also talked about rising violent crime rates and the “influence” of progressive groups on Biden’s judicial nominations.

Though groups like Demand Justice, a progressive group that backs Jackson’s nomination and was singled out by Grassley, have helped raise the importance of the judiciary among Democrats, the influence the group has on the process pales in comparison to conservative groups like the Federalist Society, which effectively grooms and short-lists judicial nominees for Republican presidents.

With the clack of a gavel, Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin opened the hearing. He began by noting Thomas’s hospitalization and wishing him a speedy recovery. He then laid out the rules, asking the audience to remain respectful and vowing to remove any loud or unruly protesters.

He then moved into the meat of his argument, touching on the significance of her nomination.

“When the supreme court met for the very first time, February 17, in the Exchange Building in New York, there were nearly 700,000 slaves without the right citizenship in this new nation of nearly 4 million people,” he said.

“The reality is that the court’s members in one respect have never really reflected the nation they serve.”

“It’s not easy being the first,” he continued. “Often you have to be the best, and in some ways the bravest.”

He then sought to rebut some of the attacks that have levied against her, that she is “soft-on-crime” and “rubber stamp” for the left.

“Now there may be some who claim without a shred of evidence that you’ll be a rubber stamp for this president,” he said. To her critics he said: “Your complete record has been scoured by this committee on four different occasions.”

In just a minute, the 22-member panel of the Senate Judiciary Committee will gavel for the historic nomination hearing of Ketanji Brown Jackson.

In a 50-50 Senate with Democrats holding the tie-breaking vote, the overwhelming view in Washington is that Jackson will be confirmed. The outstanding question then is whether her confirmation will attract any Republican support, as Jackson did when she was appointed to the DC court of appeals last year.

Until the last couple of days, Republicans had treaded lightly, promising to be “fair” and “respectful”. However, in recent days, Republicans have started to raise questions about her record related to crime.

“We’re in the middle of a violent crime wave including soaring rates of homicides, and car jackings,” McConnell said last week. “Amid all this, the soft on crime brigade is squarely in Judge Jackson’s corner.”

In a series of tweets last week, Republican senator Josh Hawley went further, alleging she has “an alarming pattern” of sentencing child pornography offenders to prison terms that were less than those recommended by the sentencing guidelines.

The White House and Durbin defended her against. Jackson comes from a law enforcement family, a point she herself has emphasized in her remarks at the White House.

Still, it’s a theme we expect Republicans to hammer, particularly as they try to weaponize the issue of crime against Biden in this year’s congressional midterm elections.

In a tweet ahead of her confirmation hearing, Biden called Jackson a “brilliant legal mind” who “deserves to be confirmed to the supreme court.”

The tweet included a video of Jackson’s nomination event at the White House, in which Biden introduced the 51-year-old judge as someone who is “committed to equal justice under the law and who understands the profound impact that the supreme court’s decisions have on the lives of the American people.”a pragmatic understanding that the law must work for the American people”.

Jackson has received a rating of “well qualified” to serve on the Supreme Court by the American Bar Association, its highest possible ranking for a judge.

In a letter to Senate Judiciary chairman Dick Durbin, who is the majority whip, and senator Chuck Grassley, the committee’s ranking Republican member, the ABA said it unanimously rated Jackson “well qualified” to serve on the nation’s highest court.

“As you know, the Standing Committee confines its evaluation to the qualities of integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament,” Ann Claire Williams, who chairs the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, said in a statement. “The Standing Committee is of the unanimous opinion that Judge Jackson is ‘Well Qualified’ to serve on the United States Supreme Court.”

Williams will testify about ABA’s ranking before the committee during Thursday’s hearing.

The three most recent Supreme Court nominees, all appointees of former president Donald Trump, received the same rating from the ABA.

Introducing Jackson on Monday will be two people who know her well: Thomas Griffith and Lisa Fairfax.

Griffith was appointed by George Bush to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, where he served until his retirement in 2020. He also served on Biden’s presidential supreme court commission.

He recently wrote to the Senate committee in support of Jackson’s confirmation, in which he noted that he often reviewed her decisions while serving on the Court of Appeals.

“I occasionally differed on the best outcome of a given case,” he wrote. “And in one important case involving the former president, I was one of two judges on a three-judge panel who voted to overturn her decision. However, I have always respected her careful approach, extraordinary judicial understanding, and collegial manner, three indispensable traits for success as a Justice on the Supreme Court.”

Fairfax is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where she is also the co-director of the Institute for Law and Economics. She was also Jackson’s roommate in college and law school at Harvard University.

“Ketanji was a lawyer before she went to law school, always thinking of every side of an issue,” Fairfax told The Washington Post last month.

In the story, Fairfax told the Post that Jackson’s college room was a place where other Black women found comfort and conversation on campus. But it was also a place where Jackson brought together “her very diverse group of friends,” Fairfax said. “She always told us, ‘You have to talk to different people.’”

Griffith and Fairfax will each have five minutes to introduce Jackson to the committee.

A majority of Americans say Jackson should be confirmed to the supreme court, according to a Monmouth University poll released ahead of her hearing on Monday.

The poll finds that Americans support Jackson’s nomination by a more than 2 to 1 margin, with 55% saying she should be confirmed compared with only 21% who say she should not be confirmed.

According to the survey, more than two-thirds of the public believe it is important for the court to reflect the nation’s diversity, and a majority approve of Biden’s campaign promise to appoint a Black woman to the court, a pledge seen as controversial by some Republicans. Just over 4 in 10 Americans disapproved of his decision to make race a factor in the selection process.

Only 19% feel that having a Black woman on the Supreme Court will have a “real impact” on how cases are decided, compared with 46% who say it will have only a “limited impact” and 31% who say it will have no impact at all.

Over the weekend, the supreme court announced that justice Clarence Thomas had been admitted to the hospital after experiencing “flu-like symptoms” and was then found to have an infection.

A court spokesperson said that Thomas, who has been vaccinated and boosted, did not have Covid-19. The court offered no explanation for why it waited two days to disclose that the justice was in the hospital.

According to a statement released late Sunday, Thomas “was admitted to Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington DC on Friday evening after experiencing flu-like symptoms.”

“He underwent tests, was diagnosed with an infection and is being treated with intravenous antibiotics. His symptoms are abating, he is resting comfortably and he expects to be released in the hospital in a day or two,” it said.

The 73-year-old conservative is the longest-serving justice, having been confirmed under George HW Bush in 1991. Thomas’s confirmation hearings were tempestuous, after he was accused of sexual harassment, which he denied.

The supreme court is meeting this week to hear arguments in four cases.

The court said: “Justice Thomas will participate in the consideration and discussion of any cases for which he is not present on the basis of the briefs, transcripts and audio of the oral arguments.”

The news broke hours before Jackson’s supreme court hearing was due to begin. Thomas, a conservative, was only the second Black justice

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of all things politics.

Today we will bring you live coverage from the Senate judiciary hearing, where supreme court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will testify. The four-day spectacle begins at 11am, with opening statements from Jackson and all 22 members of the committee as well as those introducing the judge. If confirmed, she will the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court in its 233-year history.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden will host a secure call with European leaders and allies ahead of his trip to Brussels for an emergency NATO Summit on Ukraine. Later in the evening, the US president will join the quarterly meeting of the Business Roundtable’s CEO to discuss Ukraine.

The White House announced late Sunday night that Biden will visit Warsaw, Poland, during his trip to Europe. There he will meet with Polish president Andrzej Duda to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing humanitarian crisis.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki will brief reporters alongside deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology Anne Neuberger.