When a sleazy aspiring Republican presidential candidate announced before the confirmation hearings for the first African American woman nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court he intended to smear the highly qualified nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for coddling child predators, even rightwing media denounced Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s fraudulent attack as “meritless to the point of demagoguery.”
That was before all the other Republicans joined Hawley’s nasty sliming of Jackson by browbeating, interrupting and yelling at her as she patiently tried to explain the factors federal judges are legally required to consider in sentencing defendants. Since Republicans couldn’t find any lenient sentences for sexual predators, they focused on seven cases involving possession of child pornography among the 578 cases she handled as a federal judge.
Their ugly public assault on Jackson could be more accurately defined as political pornography. Jackson’s sentences for possession of child pornography, legally defined as depicting anyone under 18, were squarely in the mainstream of all federal judges appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents. Republican senators made the despicable claim Jackson supported child molestation because she sentenced those convicted of possessing child pornography to less than the recommended federal guidelines under the law.
Most other federal judges do exactly the same thing. The bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in 2021 federal judges sentenced those possessing child pornography (not those producing it) below the recommended federal guidelines 70% of the time. Judges say the guidelines are wildly outdated because they were written before computers made thousands of pornographic images available with a few keystrokes.
GOP’s Broken Promises
Judiciary Committee Republicans who promised at the outset to conduct a respectful, dignified hearing on the qualifications of a history-making nominee to the Supreme Court instead turned it into one of the most shameful. By the end, every Republican but one—Nebraska Sen. Ben Sass—joined Hawley’s demand to read confidential, sealed court records in Jackson’s cases to make sure she hadn’t gone easy on any viewers of internet porn likely to go on murderous, child-raping rampages.
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When Republicans could tear themselves away from their disturbing personal interest in child pornography, they asked Jackson nonsensical questions that wouldn’t be asked of any white, male nominee. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham asked Jackson: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are in terms of religion?”—a question that would be illegal in any other job interview. Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked Jackson, “What personal, hidden agendas do you harbor?” and “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” To the latter, Jackson responded: “Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.”
Most Embarrassing Moments
One of the most embarrassing moments for Republicans was when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Jackson’s classmate at Harvard Law School, revealed he didn’t understand the highly regarded antiracist books by Ibram X. Kendi including Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2016, or even Kendi’s 24-page picture book Antiracist Baby written for children ages 4 through 7.
Cruz illustrated his questions with a large blow-up of cartoons of babies from the book. Because children could read the book at Georgetown Day School where Jackson serves on the board, he asked her, “Do you agree with this book … that babies are racist?” She said she didn’t and, of course, Kendi doesn’t either. If Cruz had read all the way to the end, he would have read Kendi’s note to parents and caregivers that children aren’t born racist but learn racist attitudes from the society around them. “It is our responsibility to counter those messages,” Kendi wrote.
Jackson clearly emerged as a legal giant towering over the swarming pack of rabid Republican Lilliputians. But that didn’t make the obscene, cruel treatment of an extraordinarily qualified nominee to the court any easier to take. Jackson must have had flashbacks to being a scared Black freshman entering Harvard immediately treated by the smug, privileged white male legacies around her as if Blacks and women couldn’t possibly be qualified to join in their ruling class.
Stealing the Joy
That’s why New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s effusive, 20-minute “I’m not letting anybody in the Senate steal my joy” speech was the only joyful inspirational moment during the nationally embarrassing Republican mugging of an outstanding Supreme Court nominee.
Booker spoke for every black and brown American who has ever been denigrated and discounted because of the color of their skin. “You’re a person who’s so much more than your race or gender … It’s hard for me not to look at you and not see my mom. I see my ancestors and yours … You have earned this spot. You are worthy. You are a great American.”
Americans of every race have to elect national leaders in both major parties who will treat all Americans with respect and decency.