The United States Senate on Thursday voted to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the 116th Justice of the United States Supreme Court. All Democrats in the Senate voted to confirm Biden's SCOTUS nominee, joined by three Republicans: Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah.
Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the 53-47 roll call vote as senators called out votes from their desks on the Senate floor.
Just before the vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the occasion "a wonderful day, a joyous day, an inspiring day for the Senate, for the Supreme Court and for the United States of America."
One of the narrowest Supreme Court confirmation votes in history, the final step in Judge Jackson's path to a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the United States follows a much less chaotic set of hearings than Democrats and their leftist activists made Trump's appointees go through. There were no disruptions inside the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing room as senators questioned Judge Jackson, no baseless accusations of sexual misconduct in anyone's past, no demands for additional investigations, no public criticism of family members, and no Michael Avenatti-type characters.
Instead, Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee engaged in respectful but tough questioning that sought to elicit information about Judge Jackson's judicial philosophy. None was provided.
Concerns about Judge Jackson's stated belief that Critical Race Theory should "meld" with the Constitution to determine judicial decisions were brushed aside as obscure conspiracy theories.
There were questions that sought to get at her underlying ideology, but all Senators and watchers learned was that Biden's Harvard-educated nominee — who was chosen first due to her gender and race — could not even define "woman" nor say when life begins or when the Constitution's protections apply to a life.
Even though Democrats and the White House withheld documents about Judge Jackson's record, Republicans still dug into her record as a member of the United States Sentencing Commission and a judge. Her troubling pattern of giving child porn offenders sentences that were significantly less than federal guidelines recommended was dismissed by the mainstream media as unimportant. The Republicans who asked why Judge Jackson deviated from the guidelines even in cases dealing with egregious offenders were made out to be sexist, racist, or both.
In the end, the damaging information Republicans brought to light in the hearings — that Judge Jackson could not explain her judicial philosophy, doesn't hold a position on natural rights, gave lenient sentences to child porn offenders, etc. — proved unable to sway any Democrats or convince all their fellow caucus members to oppose Biden's nominee. Senators Collins, Murkowski, and Romney broke ranks and chose to help Biden's nominee across the finish line while giving Democrats the ability to say the soon-to-be Justice Jackson was confirmed with bipartisan support. Most inexplicably, Senator Romney chose to support Judge Jackson's confirmation, despite the fact that he opposed her confirmation to a lower court.
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