Republicans Have Already Started Attacking Biden’s Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson

Topline

A number of Republican lawmakers and officials swiftly criticized President Joe Biden’s nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Friday, painting the D.C. Circuit Court judge as “radical”—despite favorable comments about her in the past and a modicum of bipartisan support for her confirmation to the federal appeals court.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks after President Joe Biden introduced her as his nominee to the … [+] U.S. Supreme Court at the White House on February 25.

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Key Facts

The Republican National Committee criticized Jackson in a statement as a “radical, left-wing activist who would rubberstamp Biden’s disastrous agenda” and vowed to “make sure voters know just how radical Jackson is.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement he would “carefully [review]

Jackson’s nomination,” but noted he had voted against her appeals court confirmation and said she “was the favored choice of far-left dark-money groups.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who voted for Jackson’s confirmation to the appeals court but publicly pushed Biden to nominate a different judge to the Supreme Court, said Friday that Jackson’s nomination “means the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, noted he was “troubled by aspects of [Jackson’s] record” when he considered her appeals court nomination last year.

Some Republicans also criticized Democrats’ plan for a swift confirmation process—even after the GOP-controlled Senate rushed through Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation in 2020—with McConnell calling for a “rigorous, exhaustive review” of Jackson’s nomination and Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) saying Americans “cannot afford for this process to be rushed.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) criticized the timing of Biden’s announcement of Jackson’s nomination right after Russia invaded Ukraine, claiming the president was “putting the demands of the radical progressive left ahead of what is best for our nation.”

Contra

Despite some Republicans’ attempts to characterize her as “radical,” Jackson received three GOP votes when she was confirmed to the D.C. appeals court in 2021—from Graham, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)—and Vox notes Republican senators struggled to find a clear line of attack against her nomination to that court at the time. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) noted before Jackson was announced as the nominee that she “didn’t have these outrageously partisan statements” during her last confirmation hearing and “it’s hard to find something tangible in her record to object to.” Jackson has also garnered praise from former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who she’s related to through marriage, who said Friday that despite their differing political views, his “praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, and for her integrity, is unequivocal.”

What We Don’t Know

Whether Graham, Collins and Murkowski will vote for Jackson again. Graham’s statement Friday signaled that he may not support Jackson’s confirmation this time around, while Collins said in a statement only that she would “conduct a thorough vetting” of Jackson’s nomination, though she praised the judge as “an experienced federal judge with impressive academic and legal credentials.” Murkowski said before Jackson’s nomination that her past support for the judge doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll vote for her Supreme Court confirmation, telling Alaska Public Media that “there is a pretty tangible difference between being on a district court, a circuit court and then this Supreme Court.”

What To Watch For

The Senate to most likely confirm Jackson despite the GOP criticism. Jackson can be confirmed even without Republican support, assuming that all 50 Democratic senators vote for her with Vice President Kamala Harris as a tiebreaker. Republican leadership is also unlikely to try to block Jackson’s confirmation, CNN reports, given her appointment will not change the ideological makeup of the court and the potential poor optics of opposing a Black woman being appointed to the court.

Key Background

Biden nominated Jackson to fill the vacancy left by Justice Stephen Breyer’s imminent retirement, fulfilling the president’s campaign promise of naming the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. Republican attacks started even before Jackson was announced as Biden’s pick, with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki slamming Republicans in January for “obliterating their own credibility” by attacking the still-unnamed nominee. Prior to being confirmed to the D.C. Circuit Court last year, Brown served as a federal district judge in Washington, D.C., on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, as a clerk for Breyer and as a public defender. Vox notes Jackson hasn’t really issued rulings on “hot-button” partisan political topics like abortion while on the federal bench, but has been criticized on the right for having the support of left-wing judicial activist organization Demand Justice and issuing several narrow rulings against the Trump administration, including its immigration policies. Most notably, Jackson ruled in 2019 that former Trump White House counsel Don McGahn had to testify as part of the House’s inquiry into Russian election interference, declaring in her ruling, “Presidents are not kings.”