Joe Biden speaks of ‘historic moment for our nation’ as Democrats give standing ovation after judge’s ascent to supreme court
Politicians and activists kept coming back to one word on Thursday after the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US supreme court: joy.
After two grim years of a deadly pandemic and a democracy in peril, Jackson’s ascent as the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court was lauded as a much-needed ray of hope.
Continue reading...Jackson confirmed 53 votes to 47, and will become first Black woman to serve in court’s more than 200-year history
Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal appeals court judge, was confirmed to the supreme court on Thursday, overcoming a rancorous Senate approval process and earning bipartisan approval to become the first Black woman to serve as a justice on the high court in its more than 200-year history.
After weeks of private meetings and days of public testimony, marked by intense sparring over judicial philosophy and personal reflections on race in America, Jackson earned narrow – but notable – bipartisan support to become the 116th justice of the supreme court. The vote was 53 to 47, with all Democrats in favor. They were joined by three moderate Republicans, senators Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who defied deep opposition within their party to support Joe Biden’s nominee. Their support was a welcome result for the White House, which had been intent on securing a bipartisan confirmation.
Continue reading...Ketani Brown Jackson becomes the first Black female justice on US’s highest legal body after her confirmation passes 53-47
Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the US supreme court has passed the Senate and she will now become the first Black female justice on America’s highest legal body after being nominated by Joe Biden earlier this year.
Jackson’s nomination has been widely praised by women of color, especially after she sustained grueling confirmation hearings at the hands of some top Republicans who seemed dedicated to political points-scoring and whose criticisms often seemed like racist dog-whistling.
Continue reading...The US and its allies are preparing to impose new sanctions on Moscow over civilian killings in Ukraine as the west makes a fresh attempt to cripple Vladimir Putin’s economy and war effort.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the atrocities in his country as “war crimes” while Ukraine authorities said close to more than 4,400 incidents were being investigated.
Continue reading...Nomination advances in Senate after judiciary committee vote splits along party lines
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 Jackson as Joe Biden’s nominee to the US supreme court.
Murkowski of Alaska put out a statement on Monday evening saying: “After multiple in-depth conversations with Judge Jackson and deliberative review of her record and recent hearings, I will support her historic nomination to be an Associate Justice on the US supreme court.”
Continue reading...The Senate judiciary committee meets today, beginning a week expected to conclude with the confirmation of the first black female supreme court justice
Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, is an unsurprising no on Ketanji Brown Jackson. The conservative senator has been vocally against Jackson - he flounced out of her confirmation hearing after wrongly accusing her of having called George W Bush and the former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld “war criminals”.
Following the devastating reports coming out of the Kyiv region, which was retaken by Ukrainian forces last week, Joe Biden is calling for a war crimes trial against Vladimir Putin, the Associated Press is reporting.
Continue reading...Ruling throws out Wisconsin’s redrawn electoral map, which included a new district to account for Black population growth
Even for experts who closely follow the US supreme court, there was something stunning about an emergency decision from the justices on Wednesday.
In an unexpected move, the court decided to throw out new districts for the state legislature in Wisconsin that had been picked by the state supreme court. But what was even more surprising was that the court’s conservative majority seemed to go out of its way to attack the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important civil rights laws designed to prevent discrimination in US elections. “Extra headspinning,” was how Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, described it. “Bizarre,” observed Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. David Wasserman, a redistricting expert at the non-partisan Cook Political Report, tweeted that the supreme court had entered “uncharted territory”.
Continue reading...The US is imposing new financial sanctions against Iran following the country’s missile attack on a target in Iraq earlier this month, the treasury department has announced.
Iran sent at least 12 ballistic missiles into Erbil, Iraq’s northern Kurdish regional capital, on 13 March. They landed close to a US consulate under construction, but did not cause any damage or injuries, the state department said.
Continue reading...Adam Kinzinger vows to ‘get to the bottom’ of insurrection after Clarence Thomas’s wife reportedly urged White House to overturn Trump’s election defeat
Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican members on January 6 committee, on Sunday vowed to “get to the bottom” of events surrounding the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol but refused to reveal whether the panel intends to question Ginni Thomas – wife of US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas – over reports of her urging the White House to overturn Donald Trump’s election defeat.
Senior Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said Clarence Thomas must recuse himself from relevant cases and warned the integrity of the supreme court is at stake.
Continue reading...Stash of messages from Clarence Thomas’s activist wife released to January 6 committee have raised conflict-of-interest concerns
Calls have erupted for ethical conflict-of-interest rules on America’s top court after it was revealed that Ginni Thomas, wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The Washington Post reported that it had obtained a stash of 29 text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows, then Trump’s top White House aide, which were exchanged in the tumultuous days after the November 2020 election. In the texts, Thomas blatantly urged Meadows to do anything he could to subvert the democratic result so as to frustrate Joe Biden’s victory and keep Trump in power.
Continue reading...Hearings on Biden’s supreme court nominee resume with chair chiding Republicans for ‘showcasing election talking points’
The second round of senators’ questioning of Ketanji Brown Jackson unfolded on Wednesday after a marathon 13-hour judiciary committee hearing with the supreme court nominee the day before.
The latest hearing began with a review of the previous day’s proceedings, as the Democratic chairman, Dick Durbin, criticized some of his Republican colleagues over their questioning of Jackson.
Continue reading...Court took issue with decision to add an additional Black-majority state assembly district in the Milwaukee area
The US supreme court threw out Wisconsin’s new state legislative maps on Wednesday, in a ruling that boosts Republicans and takes aim again at one of the last remaining provisions to protect voting discrimination.
The ruling is the latest of many in recent years in which the US supreme court has been hostile to voting rights. In an unsigned ruling, the court took issue with the decision to add an additional Black-majority state assembly district in the Milwaukee area, raising the total in the map to seven. The Wisconsin supreme court picked the plan, drawn by Tony Evers, the state’s Democratic governor, earlier this month.
Continue reading...Asked about her views of the second amendment’s right to bear arms, Jackson said that the supreme court had already established it as a “fundamental right.”
“There is precedent in the supreme court related to various rights that the court has recognized as fundamental,” she told Grassley. She added: “The court has said that the 14th amendment substantive due process clause does support some fundamental rights, but only things that are implicit in the ordered concept of liberty or deeply rooted in the history and traditions of this country, the kinds of rights that relate to personal individual autonomy.”
In that speech, I talked about my my parents growing up in Florida, attended and had to attend racially-segregated schools because by law when they were young, white children and black children were not allowed to go to school together.
And my reality, when I was born in 1970 and went to school in Miami, Florida was completely different. I went to a diverse public junior high school, high school elementary school. And the fact that we had come that far was to me a testament to the hope and the promise of this country, the greatness of America that in one generation – one generation – we could go from racially-segregated schools in Florida to have me sitting here as the first Floridian ever to be nominated to the supreme court of the United States. So yes, senator, that is my belief.
Continue reading...Nominee talked of ‘historic chance’ to be the first Black woman on supreme court – but first she had to listen to a lot of white men
History was made Monday, as the first Black woman ever nominated to the US supreme court testified to the Senate judiciary committee. But before Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson could speak at her confirmation hearing, she first had to listen to a lot of white men.
The Senate confirmation hearings for Jackson started Monday, giving the judge and every member of the judiciary committee the opportunity to deliver remarks about her nomination.
Continue reading...With the clack of a gavel, Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin opened the hearing. He began by noting Thomas’s hospitalization and wishing him a speedy recovery. He then laid out the rules, asking the audience to remain respectful and vowing to remove any loud or unruly protesters.
He then moved into the meat of his argument, touching on the significance of her nomination.
Ketanji Brown Jackson promised to defend the US constitution and what she called the “grand experiment of American democracy” in her opening remarks to the Senate confirmation hearings that could see her become the first Black woman to sit on the US supreme court since in its 233 years of existence.
Jackson, 51, addressed the Senate judiciary committee on Monday at the start of four days of potentially bruising partisan wrangling over her nomination. She struck a conciliatory tone, stressing her ideological neutrality.
Continue reading...Court says 73-year-old could be released in next couple of days after infection symptoms began abating
Justice Clarence Thomas has been admitted to hospital because of an infection, the supreme court said on Sunday.
Thomas, 73, has been at Sibley memorial hospital in Washington DC since Friday after experiencing “flu-like symptoms”, the court said in a statement.
Continue reading...Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin says Hawley’s attacks should be ignored in confirmation hearings this week
The Missouri Republican Josh Hawley is wrong to attack Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s supreme court nominee, and should be ignored in confirmation hearings this week, the Senate judiciary chair said.
Hawley, the Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin said, is “part of the fringe within the Republican party … a man who was fist-bumping the murderous mob that descended on the Capitol on 6 January of the last year.
Continue reading...Conservative activist who runs a political lobbying firm, says she briefly attended rally but left before Trump addressed crowd
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has admitted attending a rally which preceded the January 6 attack on the US Capitol but denied helping to plan it.
In an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, Thomas, a conservative activist who runs a political lobbying firm, said she briefly attended the rally near the White House on 6 January 2021 but left before Donald Trump addressed the crowd.
Continue reading...The court is set to rule this year on divisive issues including abortion, gun control, the climate crisis and voting rights
The US supreme court could “at some point” become “compromised” by politics, said Clarence Thomas – one of six conservatives on the nine-member court after Republicans denied Barack Obama a nomination then rammed three new justices through during the hard-right presidency of Donald Trump.
“You can cavalierly talk about packing or stacking the court,” said Thomas, whose wife, Ginni Thomas, has come under extensive scrutiny for work for rightwing groups including supporting Trump’s attempts to overturn an election.
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