Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Will Be Confirmed As A Supreme Court Justice By The End of Next Week

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday formally scheduled a vote on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court for April 4, triggering a timeline that would put the judge on track to be confirmed as the court’s 116th justice — and its first Black woman — by the end of next week.

The Washington Post reports, Ketanji Brown Jackson on track for confirmation by end of next week:

As the committee met to consider Jackson’s nomination, Republican senators requested a one-week delay on a vote, which has become a standard parliamentary dilatory obstructionist tactic. That will launch a series of procedural votes on the Senate floor next week culminating in a confirmation vote next Thursday or Friday, as long as enough Democratic senators are healthy and present.

With all 50 Democrats and independents expected to support Jackson, virtually assuring her confirmation, most of the remaining suspense surrounds how many Republican votes she will pick up, if any.

“I’m still hopeful. I still think there’s a chance,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said of the prospect of bipartisan support.

UPDATE: The mythical moderate from Maine, Susan Collins, who is on the shit list of women’s organizations ever since her support for drunken frat boy/accused sexual assaulter Brett Kavanagh, announced today that she will vote to confirm Judge Jackson. Susan Collins will vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson, becoming first GOP senator to back Biden’s Supreme Court pick.

The White House and Democratic senators are eyeing just a handful of Senate Republicans as potential votes in favor of Jackson. The most likely candidates are Sens. Susan Collins of Maine [check] and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted to confirm Jackson to the federal appeals court last year, and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who opposed her on that occasion but has said for weeks he is keeping an open mind when it comes to her elevation to the Supreme Court.

Romney is meeting with Jackson on Tuesday, and any public reaction on his part will be closely scrutinized.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), a retiring senator whom Democrats consider a long-shot prospect to support Jackson, said that he will meet with her on Tuesday and that questions about expanding the Supreme Court are foremost in his mind. [A non-issue over which Judge Jackson has no control, this is the jurisdiction of Congress.] The nominee was pressed at her confirmation hearing on whether she supports proposals to expand the court — an idea its detractors call “court-packing” — but she declined to weigh in, telling senators [correctly] that it was a matter for Congress to decide.

That exasperated some senators, including Burr. “She didn’t answer it at all,” he said [that is the correct answer you partisan hack], adding that when he meets with Jackson, “I’m going to give her a chance” to answer.

Democrats say the issue is irrelevant to Jackson’s qualifications for the Supreme Court. But some Republicans have focused on it in part because some of the liberal activists who support Jackson also support court expansion. [So guilt by association?]

Monday’s committee vote is expected to yield an 11-to-11 vote, with the panel splitting along party lines. That would send the nomination to the evenly split Senate, with Vice President Harris casting the tiebreaking vote if necessary.

This is inexcusable. There is literally no objective reason for any member of the Senate to reject Judge Jackson’s confirmation, other than their own buffoonish partisan hackery and misrepresenting the record of Judge Jackson. Judging a Judge on Race and Crime, G.O.P. Plays to Base and Fringe;  GOP drops any subtlety in centering the Jackson nomination fight on race.

Critics of Jackson’s Child Sex Abuse Sentences Backed Judges With Similar Records (because they are Republicans):

Several Republican senators repeatedly and misleadingly suggested during this week’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson had given uncommonly lenient sentences to felons convicted of child sex abuse crimes.

But all of the Republican critics had previously voted to confirm [Republican] judges who had given out prison terms below prosecutor recommendations, the very bar they accused Judge Jackson of failing to clear.

These Trump judges failed Hawley’s sentencing test for Jackson.

AP FACT CHECK: Republicans skew [lie about] Jackson’s record on crime:

Republican senators characterized Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s judicial views as extremist and soft on crime, using her confirmation hearings to air a line of conservative grievances that relied at times on distortions of her record.

Over the first two days of hearings, Jackson was the subject of misleading rhetoric on critical race theory, her pandemic-era rulings and the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainees she represented as a public defender.

Fact Check: Attacks on Judge Jackson’s Record on Child Sexual Abuse Cases Are Misleading, Republican lawmakers criticizing the Supreme Court nominee have taken the judge’s remarks and sentencing decisions out of context, and distorted her record.

Durbin, at the committee meeting, praised Jackson’s poise at her confirmation hearing, and he applauded the “majority of members on both sides” for being fair and respectful. Durbin had harsher words for some Republicans who spent their questioning time suggesting Jackson was “soft on crime” or trying to paint her as unusually lenient in her sentencing of child pornography offenders.

“Now this may play well to the QAnon crowd and the fringe conspiracy theorists who helped drive the insurrection on January 6th, 2021, but the American public sees it for what it is,” Durbin said, referring to the widely debunked conspiracy theory whose adherents believe, in part, that some politicians and celebrities belong to an international cabal of pedophiles.

Republicans promised ‘no circus’ at Jackson’s hearing. Then the clown car rolled in.

A gang of 6 right-wing senators devolved the Supreme Court proceedings into an abject and pusillanimous circus

Republicans boast they have not pulled a Kavanaugh. In fact, they’ve treated Jackson worse.

The Respectful Supreme Court Hearing That Wasn’t

This isn’t the U.S. Senate. It’s more like day care.

The GOP’s attacks on Ketanji Brown Jackson are nasty even by Republican standards

The Exploitation of Judge Jackson

Forget advise and consent. This is smear and degrade.

QAnon Cheers Republican Attacks on Jackson. Democrats See a Signal.

Criticism of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sentencing decisions emerged as a theme among Republicans — and renewed debate about the party’s stance toward QAnon.

Republican Senators Play the QAnon Game

How the Media Normalized QAnon Smear of Historic Black Nominee

Republicans make Jackson’s hearing all about their own victimhood

Ketanji Brown Jackson exposes the real judicial radicals

Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing reveals Republicans’ racist fears

Ketanji Brown Jackson Is Qualified For The Job. So The GOP Went After Her Blackness.

The Jackson hearings show a GOP in decay

And this is just a sampling of reporting and commentary on the MAGA/QAnon cult of white Christian Nationalist racist and sexist senators in the GQP. Not one of them is fit to serve in political office.