6 Republicans who used the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings to throw out the wildest right-wing memes

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Going into this week’s Senate affirmation listening to of Ketanji Brown Jackson for a Supreme Court docket seat, one may need assumed that the GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee would act, nicely, poorly. Josh Hawley, for one, had telegraphed as quickly as March sixteenth that he would search to painting the candidate as “comfortable” on criminals. This appeared to largely stem from the truth that Jackson was as soon as a public defender, a job that may be a linchpin of our adversarial justice system. What was more and more clear as soon as Ketanji Brown Jackson sat down for her official affirmation listening to, nevertheless, was {that a} gang of wing-nut senators (Hawley included) would search to devolve the proceedings into an abject and pusillanimous circus. Here’s a grim round-up of a few of their fairly unbelievable–and regularly bigoted–buffoonery: 

Marsha Blackburn

Marsha BlackburnSen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., listens to senators opening statements in the course of the affirmation listening to for Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Bidens nominee for Affiliate Justice to the Supreme Court docket, on Monday, March 21, 2022. (Invoice Clark/CQ-Roll Name, Inc through Getty Photos)

Blackburn, the senior senator from Tennessee, determined that as an alternative of exploring the nuances of legislation, she’d relatively make a number of red-meat sops to her base by pursuing the “culture-war” path (i.e. rank transphobia).

On Tuesday, she went out of her technique to ask Jackson the now infamously irrelevant query: “Are you able to present a definition of the phrase ‘girl’?”

RELATED: Republicans get the science behind sexual distinction mistaken throughout Supreme Court docket nominee listening to

Jackson’s wise retort was that she wasn’t a biologist, which sadly led to Blackburn rambling additional about transgender rivals in school sports activities in addition to a disquisition in regards to the vaporous evils of progressive schooling. She additionally went on a weird screed a few temporary Jackson co-authored at a non-public legislation agency twenty years in the past, whereby pro-life protestors in a “buffer zone” exterior of Massachusetts abortion clinic had been described as “hostile” and “noisy.” Blackburn needed to know if Jackson would describe her that method if, say, they bumped into one another at church. Jackson famous she would not, though it could not essentially be an off-base judgment. 

Ted Cruz

Ted CruzSen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) holds up a ebook on antiracism as he questions U.S. Supreme Court docket nominee Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson throughout her Senate Judiciary Committee affirmation listening to within the Hart Senate Workplace Constructing on Capitol Hill, March 22, 2022 in Washington, DC. Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s choose to switch retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court docket, would change into the primary Black girl to serve on the Supreme Court docket if confirmed. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Photos)The place to start?

Amusingly, Ibram X. Kendi’s kids’s ebook Antiracist Child has shot to the high of bestseller charts after Cruz made some extent of blowing up particular person pages as a visible help for his questioning time.

“Do you agree with this ebook that’s being taught with youngsters that infants are racist?” was his massive second to rail on important race concept, but it surely appeared as if what individuals (on the opposite aspect of the aisle, not less than) might agree on was that Cruz was shedding his thoughts. The said impetus of this line of questioning was that Jackson serves on the board of Georgetown Day Faculty in Washington D.C., a faculty that features the ebook on its curriculum. Cruz appeared to neglect, conveniently or in any other case, that his personal kids attend a faculty with the same mission.

This, amazingly, wasn’t all. He additionally took the time to dismiss Christine Blasey Ford’s credible accusations of sexual assault in opposition to Brett Kavanaugh as merely the results of Kavanaugh’s supposedly excusable “teenage courting habits”–and made a head-scratching digression about whether or not it could be potential for him “to determine as an Asian man.” This ostensibly needed to do with affirmative motion, in some way?

Josh Hawley

Josh HawleySen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) holds up his cell phone as he questions U.S. Supreme Court docket nominee Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson throughout her Senate Judiciary Committee affirmation listening to within the Hart Senate Workplace Constructing on Capitol Hill, March 23, 2022 in Washington, DC. Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s choose to switch retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court docket, would change into the primary Black girl to serve on the Supreme Court docket if confirmed. (Drew Angerer/Getty Photos)QAnon subscribers may need made it to the massive stage.

Missouri Republican Josh Hawley’s assertion that Jackson was “comfortable” on intercourse offenders began early, the place he took to Twitter to preview his line of assault (by no means thoughts that Jackson was fast to notice that she had, certainly, despatched intercourse offenders to jail). His quick-to-collapse reasoning behind such claims had been partly associated to Jackson’s time on the U.S. Sentencing Fee, the place she participated in a 2012 report that really helpful decreasing necessary minimums for 2 kinds of child-porn offenses. However she was joined on this by Dabney Freidrich, a Trump appointee and U.S. District Court docket choose that acquired an unanimous vote on his nomination by Senate Republicans. In different phrases, Hawley unsurprisingly manufactured a smear and elided key particulars. He is additionally, would not you already know it, a hypocrite on this very subject.

Tom Cotton

Tom CottonSen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) questions U.S. Supreme Court docket nominee Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson throughout her affirmation listening to earlier than the Senate Judiciary Committee within the Hart Senate Workplace Constructing on Capitol Hill, March 22, 2022 in Washington, DC. Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s choose to switch retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court docket, would change into the primary Black girl to serve on the Supreme Court docket if confirmed. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Photos)Tom Cotton, pal of convicted intercourse offender Josh Duggar, picked up the “robust on crime” baton and ran with it into the center of nowhere. Jackson was, he stated, “sympathetic” to a “drug fentanyl kingpin” and wanted to extend her sentences throughout the board. Interesting to a conspiratorial mindset, he provided that “a bunch of elite legal professionals – whether or not they’re judges or federal prosecutors or public defenders or legislation professors – suppose that sentences for little one pornography are too harsh. I do not, and I guess numerous regular Individuals do not both.” Once more, Jackson has despatched intercourse offenders to jail. He was misplaced in his personal weeds. 

Lindsey Graham 

Lindsey GrahamSen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) questions U.S. Supreme Court docket nominee Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson throughout her Senate Judiciary Committee affirmation listening to within the Hart Senate Workplace Constructing on Capitol Hill, March 23, 2022 in Washington, DC. Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s choose to switch retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court docket, would change into the primary Black girl to serve on the Supreme Court docket if confirmed. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Photos)Everyone knows about Lindsey Graham’s antics this week by now. His vexing equal to Cruz’s thought experiment about being Asian was a request that Jackson rank her religion on a scale of 1 to 10, in addition to questioning if she might pretty choose a Catholic. The choose appeared distinctly confused, and Graham’s smugness was relatively off-putting contemplating how a lot he was pushing a theocratic angle within the guise of condemning spiritual discrimination.

On high of this, he had lots to say about Jackson’s phantasmagoric leniency in the direction of intercourse offenders; the irony of this was beautiful, given his grievance-laden ranting about what he perceived as mistreatment of Brett Kavanaugh. As Amanda Marcotte wrote for Salon, Graham gave a spirited audition for “Actual Housewives” by harrumphing out of the room greater than as soon as. 

Mike Braun 

Mike BraunSen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., attends the Senate Well being, Schooling, Labor and Pensions Committee markup on the PREVENT Pandemics Act in Dirksen Constructing on Tuesday, March 15, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Name, Inc through Getty Photos)You may not be used to seeing Mike Braun’s identify within the media commonly, however he made a completely jaw-dropping entrance into the general public consciousness this week by saying that interracial marriage ought to’ve been left to the states and was the results of overzealous activism. He elaborated that Jackson struck him as supporting stated activism. White supremacy was undergirding every one in every of these senator’s questions, far exceeding the extent of mere dog-whistles, and Braun’s remarks had been profoundly unsettling of their implications and connections to wider right-wing Supreme Court docket pastime horses. Braun later made a non-apology.



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