On April 7, the US Senate Confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to SCOTUS by a vote of 53 to 47.
The GOP members of the Judiciary Committee — especially Lindsay Graham — have spent a lot of time whining, complaining and griping about the fact that a Democratic president nominated a Black woman to the SCOTUS.
You might think the Democrats, or someone, somehow prevented the GOP from nominating a black woman to the SCOTUS.
Since Judge Janice Rogers Brown was confirmed to the appellate court bench, where she served for 12 years until 2017, the GOP has successfully placed these people on the SCOTUS:
- Roberts
- Alito
- Gorsuch
- Kavanaugh
- Barrett
Fact: Republicans never nominated former Judge Janice Rogers Brown to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the GOP had wanted to nominate a black woman to the court, they would have done it.
They could have done it — they had at least five opportunities to nominate a black person to the SCOTUS.
Instead, GOP Presidents (GW Bush and Trump) nominated and placed five white people — four men and a woman — on the SCOTUS.
Trump nominated three of the five, all of them people he picked from a list he got from the Federalist Society, to whom he outsourced the SCOTUS Justice selection process. He also explicitly said he would only nominate judges who would definitely vote to revoke Roe v. Wade. (This was a prerequisite for being chosen by the Federalist Society.) This means he would only choose judges with the same explicitly predefined judicial philosophy and agenda.
One more thing: Republicans have lost absolutely nothing with Judge Brown Jackson joining Scotus. The “conservative“ justices still maintain a majority on the court, by a 6–3 margin, the same margin that existed before Justice Breyer announced his retirement. Those six Justices still have the power to make abortion illegal and revoke the rights of gay people to marry in every state in the United States, two longstanding “conservative” goals.
The US Senate confirmed judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to SCOTUS. That did happen, and it is a good thing.
That most of the Republican senators walked out of the Senate chamber during the applause and recognition following Judge Brown Jackson’s confirmation to the Supreme Court constitutes one of the most egregious examples of rude, obnoxious, and childish behavior I have ever seen a group of “adults“ demonstrate.