- Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has enough votes to be appointed to the Supreme Court.
- GOP opponents tried to make their case against her one last time before the confirmation.
- Conservative values, debunked claims were the last-ditch arguments.
Senate Republicans powerless to stop Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation to the Supreme Court tried to rain on her parade anyway by airing more grievances against her Thursday just before the vote.
Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina held a press conference ahead of the final confirmation vote to explain why they were not going to support Jackson.
Cruz said that he expected Jackson would, as a Supreme Court justice, consistently undermine conservative values including free speech, religious liberty, and gun rights. He also went back through her sentencing record, continuing the line of attack GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee used during the nomination hearings regarding her handling of child pornography cases.
"She is an extreme outlier on the question of crime," Cruz told reporters at the US Capitol.
Graham, who voted to appoint Jackson to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last year but favored South Carolina judge Michelle Childs as Breyer's replacement, repeated the debunked claim that Democrats blocked conservative judge Janice Rogers Brown from becoming the first Black woman on the Supreme Court two decades ago.
"The reason she's not the first African American woman on the Supreme Court is because they filibustered and denied her that ability. They held her ideology against her, and said she was too extreme," Graham said.
FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan project by The Annenberg Public Policy Center, reported several weeks ago that while Democrats did initially oppose Brown's nomination to US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2003, then-President George W. Bush never nominated her for the Supreme Court.
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