Ketanji Brown Jackson had me at “Whoa!”
The Senate hearing this week on Jackson’s nomination to be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court had several uplifting moments that captured just how momentous her ascension would be in the story of America’s imperfect striving to live up to its ideals. Let’s not let those moments be overshadowed by Republicans’ false, racially shaded smears — that she has “a record of activism and advocacy” for sexual predators, that she’s “zealous” on behalf of terrorists, and that she “twisted the law” for a drug kingpin.
A particularly moving scene came late Wednesday in Jackson’s exchange with a Democratic senator, Alex Padilla, as the Senate Judiciary Committee ended nearly 24 hours of questioning over two days.