With the support of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to the Supreme Court seems inevitable.
But, do Republicans have any options to prevent or, at the very least, delay Jackson’s confirmation vote?
Technically, yes.
One option is for Republicans to boycott the committee vote, a tactic that has been used before in other committees. Republicans have dismissed the possibility of resorting to this tactic. But, on Monday, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee requested a delay of the vote until Monday, April 4. A vote from the full Senate is expected April 11.
Is something brewing on the Republican side? If Republicans aren’t planning a boycott, do they have any other options to stop Jackson? Republicans are using this delay to dig further into Jackson’s record. As we’ve previously reported, the White House apparently attempted to withhold key information regarding Jackson’s sentencing of child porn offenders, knowing that it had the potential to put her confirmation in the evenly divided Senate in jeopardy.
While a boycott of the committee vote has been dismissed, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Jackson will make it to the floor of the full Senate with the committee’s support.
Here’s how that would work.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is evenly split, with 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans, and nominees typically need majority approval to advance to the full Senate. Currently, none of the Republican members on the Senate Judiciary Committee have expressed support for Jackson — hardly surprising, given her troubling record of leniency for child pornography offenders and evasiveness about her judicial philosophy — but this poses a potential problem for Democrats because Jackson’s nomination could end up deadlocked in committee.
I urge you not to get excited; this doesn’t mean that Jackson is doomed if Republicans are united against her in the committee vote.
“Should every Republican in committee vote against Jackson, thereby deadlocking the panel, Schumer would have to move to discharge her nomination,” explains ABC News. “That would take a bit more time, potentially endangering Democrats’ goal of having Jackson confirmed to the high court before April 8, when the Senate begins a two-week recess in observance of the Easter holiday.”
In spite of the rules, it’s still possible that Jackson can receive a full floor vote without majority approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Party-line votes from the Senate Judiciary Committee are not uncommon, so it’s by no means unprecedented for a Supreme Court nominee to make it out of committee without any support from the opposition party. But Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durban (D-Ill.) would very much like to see Jackson’s nomination make it out of committee with at least one Republican vote.
Related: Ketanji Jackson’s Record on Sentencing Child Porn Offenders Is Worse Than We Thought
Republicans may not be able to stop Jackson’s confirmation; she appears to have majority support in the full Senate. But if anything was made clear during her hearings, it’s that she’ll be a very dangerous addition to the court, and a rubber stamp for the radical left — likely more reliably leftist than Ruth Bader Ginsburg. At least RBG knew there were fundamental differences between women and men.
For too long, Republicans have tried to play nice with the Democrats, despite no reciprocation. If the only stand Republicans can make is to delay Jackson’s confirmation by not voting her out of committee, they should do it. Democrats have voted against Republican nominees to the court for far less.
