Here Are the Republicans Who Just Helped Confirm Biden’s Supreme Court Nominee
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to the Supreme Court Thursday in a final Senate vote of 53-47, including three Republicans.
SO WHAT
The Republicans defied their party’s leadership and base to back the Democratic win.
WHAT HAPPENED
The vote, capping a relatively brief 42-day confirmation process, put Jackson in line to replace Justice Stephen Breyer when he retires at the end of the court’s summer session.
- Joining a 6-3 conservative majority on the bench, she will be the first black woman to serve on America’s highest court.
WHO VOTED FOR HER
All 50 Senate Democrats voted to confirm Jackson, along with GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah.
- The aisle-crossers broke with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who in a floor speech ahead of the vote lamented “the far left will get the Supreme Court justice they wanted.”
- Conservative members of Congress and media figures have assailed Jackson as a left-wing radical, homing in on her record of leniency in child pornography cases.
WHAT’S NEXT
Breyer, not Jackson, will participate in the rest of this term’s rulings, and she has already pledged to recuse herself from at least part of the biggest case so far scheduled for the next term.
- The challenge to affirmative action in college admissions concerns Harvard University, where she is a member of the Board of Overseers.