Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing: 5 takeaways from Wednesday

CNN
 — 

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson finished her two days of questioning on Wednesday, having spent some 22 hours this week being grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Though there were plenty of lines of contentious questioning from Republicans on Tuesday, some GOP committee members took an even more aggressive approach on Wednesday, repeatedly interrupting Jackson, dismissing her attempts to answer their questions and squabbling with Democrats about whether they were being fair to the nominee.

“To see what this highly qualified, remarkable woman had to face is a shame on those who try to declare themselves as senators,” Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said after Wednesday’s hearing. “It’s beneath this body. It’s beneath the US Supreme Court and it is beneath our great country.”

The Judiciary Committee is poised to vote on Jackson’s nomination on April 4, as Democratic leaders hope to confirm her before their mid-April recess.

Here are the key takeaways from Wednesday:

Several Republicans on the committee escalated the tone and hostility with which they approached Jackson as they attempt to win political points going into the midterm elections.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – as he repeatedly talked over her attempts to explain an immigration policy ruling that had been later overturned – accused her of judicial “activism.” He badgered her for her thoughts on what Justice Brett Kavanaugh had faced in his 2018 confirmation proceedings and interjected repeatedly when she tried to explain her views on why the sentencing guidelines in certain child porn cases were outdated.

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, also interrupted Jackson on several occasions as she tried to respond to his questions about how she had approached the cases in question.

“Would you please let her respond?” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat.

“No, not if she’s not gonna answer,” Cruz snapped back.

“Senator, I didn’t say I’m not going to answer that. My answer is … ,” Jackson tried to say as the senators’ squabbling continued. Cruz continued to talk over her.

Jackson pushed back more sharply to the antagonism from Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri.

He demanded that she say whether she regretted the three-month sentence she had handed down in a child porn case where prosecutors were seeking two years.

“Senator, what I regret is that in a hearing about my qualifications to be a justice on the Supreme Court, we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on this small subset of my sentences,” Jackson said.

While some Republicans are warning that Jackson’s performance in the hearings didn’t win her any GOP votes, that likely won’t knock her off her path to the Supreme Court. The committee’s Democrats were willing and eager to defend her from GOP attacks, and at no point did they seem concerned with how she was handling the tough questions.

“Your patience, dignity and grace in the face of what was, frankly, so offensive treatment is a real testament to your judicial temperament,” Durbin told Jackson at the end of the hearing.

When her nomination heads to the Senate floor, it may well be one of the closest votes in history. As long as Democrats keep their caucus unified, they’ll have the 50 votes they need – with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker – to put Jackson on the high court.

Kavanaugh was confirmed in a 50-48 vote, and times have changed significantly since the Senate approved the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the conservative Antonin Scalia with, respectively, three and zero votes against them.

Jackson may not have even the three Republican votes that supported her DC appellate court confirmation last year. Graham signaled his likely opposition, while the other two – Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – are not on the Judiciary Committee and have not weighed in substantively about her performance this week, nor has Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who signaled some openness to her as well.

Jackson teared up as Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey emotionally addressed the significance of her confirmation and told her she should be proud of how she had handled “insults here that were shocking to me.”

“Nobody’s gonna steal the joy of that woman in the street or the calls that I’m getting or the texts. Nobody’s gonna steal that joy,” Booker told Jackson. “You have earned this spot. You are worthy. You are a great American.”

Jackson…