‘Very left-leaning.’ Brown Jackson, Biden’s SCOTUS nominee, gets no love at CPAC
.JPG "Attendees show their support for former President Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022, in Orlando, Fla.")
As President Joe Biden basked in praise from supporters on Friday after nominating Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court, Republicans who descended on Orlando for one of the largest conservative gatherings of the year slammed him over the choice.
“How is that not racist?” said U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican, referring to Biden’s pledge in Feb. 2020 to nominate a Black woman if there was a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Biden made the promise during a debate, ahead of a closely watched Democratic primary in Norman’s state.
“How is that not making, leaving everybody else, rather than going on ... philosophy? On the judicial temperance, on the judicial decision-making?” said Norman during a panel on the judiciary system at the Conservative Political Action Conference or CPAC.
Biden’s choice to nominate Brown Jackson, who grew up in Miami, has drawn the ire of his political opponents. Republicans at CPAC characterized Brown Jackson as a Harvard elite and former public defender who often took opportunities to take shots at former President Donald Trump and “very, very left-leaning.”
“He picks a public defender who is going to side with criminals because that’s where she comes from, that’s her background, that’s her guiding philosophy, at a time that law and order is scarce in so many parts of our country,” said Jeff Bartos, a Republican running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. “In the midst of a war in Europe that just broke out, the last thing our country needs is a divisive bitter fight.”
Brown Jackson’s uncle was the police chief in Miami in the 1990s, and her brother was a Baltimore police officer for seven years.
The conversation during a panel called “Will judges do their job?” on Friday afternoon was a peek into how Republicans are shaping the message that Brown Jackson’s nomination is part of a broader ideological battle with leftists even if conservative justices still dominate the highest U.S. court and as justices are set to decide highly controversial cases like a challenge to abortion access.
“She’s 51. She’s going to be deciding cases for the next 40 years, or more,” said Bartos.
Brown Jackson, a graduate of Miami Palmetto High School, earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University, and later served as law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, the retiring justice she’s been tapped to succeed. She had received bipartisan support for her confirmation last year to the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, widely considered the second most powerful court in the country because it handles many cases pertaining to the federal government.
She needs 51 votes in the evenly split U.S. Senate to be confirmed.
This story was originally published February 25, 2022 at 9:03 PM.
