A divided Senate Judiciary Committee was set Monday to vote on the historic Supreme Court nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as Democrats seek to seal her confirmation by the end of the week.
The panel kicks off with a vote on whether to move ahead with Jackson’s bid to become the first Black woman justice in the court’s 233-year history.
Even if all Republicans on the committee vote against Jackson as expected, Democrats can still move the nomination to the entire Senate floor.
Democrats will then seek to push the nomination through the evenly divided Senate by the end of the week with a final vote insight for President Biden’s trailblazing pick to replace her mentor, retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.
Jackson only needs the votes of all 50 Democrats to win confirmation because Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tie-breaking vote.
She has also already won the support of at least one GOP lawmaker, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, meaning her confirmation is all but inevitable.
Two other Republicans, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, are still undecided.
One moderate Democrat, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., has not publicly announced her stand but is expected to support Jackson.
Jackson stands on the brink of making history as the third Black justice and only the sixth woman to sit on the high court. Democrats cheer her deep experience in her nine years on the federal bench and the chance for her to become the first former public defender on the court.
Despite Jackson’s solid and extensive legal experience, some right-wing Republicans turned her confirmation hearing into an ugly partisan fight over issues, including her supposedly lenient sentences for child molesters and her defense of terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.
Even though the committee vote won’t derail Jackson’s bid, the potential tie vote signifies how divisive nominations for the court have become.
The committee hasn’t deadlocked on a nomination since 1991, when a motion to send the nomination of current Justice Clarence Thomas to the floor with a “favorable” recommendation failed on a 7-7 vote amid sexual harassment allegations.
Either way, Democrats are ready to spend time on the discharge Monday afternoon, if necessary. The Senate would then move to a series of procedural steps before a final confirmation vote later in the week.
