Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Senate vote

Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney on Monday brought to three the number of Republican senators to say they would vote in favor of supporting Ketanji Brown ...

Her confirmation would, however, do little to change the ideological balance of the court, in which conservatives outnumber liberals 6-3. She showed dignity, grace and poise,” Durbin said. “She stayed calm and collected. While I have not and will not agree with all of Judge Jackson’s decisions and opinions, her approach to cases is carefully considered and is generally well reasoned.” Democrats and the White House hope to confirm Jackson to the lifetime position on the court before Congress recesses for the Easter holiday on Friday. The 51-year-old was confirmed by the Senate to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit last year with the support of three Republicans: Collins, Murkowski and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. A vote on that discharge petition took place in the Senate on Monday evening, where it was approved by 53 to 47, clearing the way for the Senate to debate and ultimately give final approval of her nomination.

Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney announced Monday evening they'll vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination to the Supreme ...

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Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah become the second and third Republicans to announce support for Jackson, joining Sen.

In the end, I suppose, that’s the only thing that matters,” Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “But I wish more Republicans would look at the case here, look at the record and vote to confirm Judge Jackson.”If Jackson is confirmed as expected, her ascent to the Supreme Court is likely to be a key element of Biden’s legacy, in no small part because he would be installing the first Black woman in the court’s more than two centuries of existence.The confirmation battle shows how much more partisan Supreme Court nominations have become in recent decades. “As a Supreme Court justice, she would be able to give the benefit to criminals nationwide.”Cruz, a former and potential future presidential contender, made the connection between Jackson’s nomination and the GOP political case against Democrats plain in his comments Monday.“Her record demonstrates that it is 100 percent certain she will vote to overturn the death penalty and that repeatedly she will vote to overturn strict sentences on violent criminals, to release violent criminals from jail, to overturn strict punishments on sex offenders,” he said. “I’m proud we can bear witness to it.”After the tie vote confirmed no committee Republicans would support her, Durbin said he was “disappointed” by the outcome but expressed hope — with Murkowski and Romney still deliberating — that multiple Republicans would ultimately back her on the Senate floor.“I thought that Judge Jackson was going to be the messenger of good news that the Senate Judiciary Committee was changing,” Durbin said. “Judge Jackson’s reinterpretation of a law I helped to write doesn’t give me that confidence.”At Monday’s meeting, Durbin praised Grassley but made pointed comments about other Republicans on the Judiciary Committee. Without naming names, he took umbrage at those who “repeatedly interrupted and badgered Judge Jackson and accused her of vile things in front of her parents, her husband and her children.”“It is unfortunate that some moments in our hearing came to that,” he said. “But now that you’re talking about the Supreme Court,” he said, “you’re making policy, not just bound by it.”Channeling Democrats’ frustration at Jackson’s treatment, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) focused Monday on GOP attempts to “create a caricature of a human being” and noted that for all of the soft-on-crime attacks, she had the support of law enforcement and victims-rights organizations.Booker, who gave an emotional speech during the hearings on Jackson’s behalf, said he had heard — particularly from Black women — about the “absurdities of disrespect that we saw Judge Jackson endure.”“We are going to have our political substantive disagreements, but it was the treatment in some of these questions that triggered a hurt in so many people I know and have encountered,” Booker said. Activist to the core.”Graham voted last year to confirm Jackson to the appeals court seat she now holds — a vote he took after Jackson’s decision in the immigration case.He explained his change of heart Monday by saying he was inclined to defer to presidents on lower-court nominations. Well, I’ll tell you what: When you vote to confirm justices who released criminals over and over and over again in a way that is wildly out of the mainstream, it is the Democrats’ fault.”Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) pushed back on the GOP claims, noting that the sentences Jackson handed down in the child porn cases usually met or exceeded the recommendations of federal probation officials — and she made note of several Republican-nominated judges who had made similar judgments in sentencing those types of cases.“I don’t think they should be dragged into this just because they happened to make decisions that were below guidelines,” she said of the GOP judges. Multiple GOP senators have cited her criminal sentencing record in their opposition, with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) calling her nomination part of “an ideological mission to make the federal bench kinder and gentler to criminals” as his party gears up to run on law and order in November’s midterm elections.Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, announced his expected opposition to Jackson at the top of Monday’s meeting, citing “fundamental different views on the role of judges and the role that they should play in our system of government.”Grassley accused her of being evasive under questioning and of adopting a “lenient approach to criminal law and sentencing.” He focused not on the child pornography cases but on her decision to reduce the felony sentence of a “drug kingpin” under the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill passed during the Trump administration.Jackson, Grassley said, made “a terrible and dangerous misinterpretation” of the law in choosing to halve the sentence of Keith Young, who was serving a 20-year term for drug trafficking and firearms convictions. Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah become the second and third Republicans to announce support for Jackson, joining Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who publicly backed the judge last month.All 50 members of the Democratic caucus also backed Jackson in a 53-to-47 procedural vote Monday evening, but the late-breaking support of the two GOP senators represented a minor triumph for President Biden and congressional Democrats who were eager to put a bipartisan stamp of approval on a nominee whom many Republicans had eagerly painted as a soft-on-crime leftist radical.How Ketanji Brown Jackson’s path to the Supreme Court differs from the current justicesIn a statement, Murkowski praised Jackson’s qualifications and temperament, as well as her “demonstrated judicial independence” and “the important perspective she would bring to the court” as a former Supreme Court law clerk, federal public defender, trial judge and now appeals court judge.Her decision, she added, “also rests on my rejection of the corrosive politicization of the review process for Supreme Court nominees, which, on both sides of the aisle, is growing worse and more detached from reality by the year.”In his own statement, Romney also praised Jackson, declaring his support after concluding that she is a “well-qualified jurist and a person of honor.”The two Republicans made their statements just hours after a Senate panel deadlocked on her nomination along party lines, capping off several frenetic weeks of personal meetings, days of rigorous testimony and hours of intense sparring about her judicial record.The Senate Judiciary Committee spent more than three hours debating Jackson’s nomination Monday, with its 22 members clashing over Jackson’s qualifications for sitting on the nation’s highest court. Attacking Jackson’s nomination Monday, Cotton said the judge “habitually sympathizes with criminals over victims” and acted as “more of a defense attorney for criminals from the bench than a judge.”“As a trial judge, Judge Jackson could only give the benefit of the doubt to one criminal at a time,” he said. Monday’s floor vote discharged Jackson from the panel and set up a final confirmation vote to take place as soon as Thursday.Democrats, determined to win some bipartisan backing for Jackson, took pains to hail the pathbreaking nature of her nomination as they pressed for her confirmation Monday. Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) called the panel’s vote a “historic moment” and said Jackson would bring “the highest level of skill, integrity, civility and grace” to the court.“Hers is a uniquely American family story, how much hope and promise can be achieved in just one generation,” he said. Jackson on course for confirmation, with 2 more GOP senators in favorThe Supreme Court nominee is now poised to win final approval by the end of the weekThe Senate Judiciary Committee debated Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson's qualifications on April 4, leading to a tie vote on her advancement.

Republicans on the Judiciary Committee assailed her record and fought Democrats' efforts to speed her path toward confirmation as the panel prepared to vote ...

The G. O.P. opposition was underscored anew on Monday when all 11 Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voted against the nomination. That prompted Democrats to use an unusual procedure to force the nomination out of the deadlocked panel with a vote of the full Senate, which agreed to the move by a vote of 53 to 47. Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined a third Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, in lending their support to Judge Jackson, defying deep resistance in their party to the nominee.