Ketanji Brown Jackson says Roe v Wade ‘the settled law of the supreme court’ – as it happened

We are ending our live coverage for the day, thanks for following along. The hearing is on another break, but will continue at around 8.20pm local time with several more senators. For more reading on the hearings:

Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, has followed Tom Cotton by pointing out that that Jackson is supported by victims’ advocacy groups and law enforcement groups. The two then had an emotional exchange about the impact of their parents and ancestors.

“I was born here with an African name that my parents gave me to demonstrate their pride in who they were, and their pride and hope in what I could be,” Jackson said, adding later, “I stand on the shoulders of people from that generation, and I focus at times on my faith when I’m going through hard times. Those are the kinds of things I learned from my grandmother.”

Later, Booker asked her to reflect on her earlier comments about the challenge of being a working mother. She said, in part:

I had struggled like so many working moms to juggle motherhood and my career ... There will be hearings during your daughter’s recital. There will be emergencies on birthdays that you have to handle. I know so many young women in this country, especially who have small kids, who have these momentous events, and they have to make a choice ... I hope for [my daughters] ... seeing me move to the Supreme Court, that they can know you don’t have to be perfect in your career trajectory and you can still end up doing what you want to do. You just have to understand that there are lots of responsibilities in the world. You don’t have to be a perfect mom, but if you do your best and you love your children, things will turn out okay.”

As Tom Cotton sought to paint Judge Jackson as soft on crime in drug cases, he asked the judge about her decisions in a specific case and whether she “contacted the victims”. Jackson responded that in the particular case he was describing, there were no specific victims to contact. Cotton then suggested she was saying there are no victims in drug crimes, which is not what the judge said or implied.

Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, is focusing on crime in his questions, starting with, “Does the United States need more police or fewer police?”

Jackson responded: “The determination about whether there should be more or fewer police is a policy decision by another branch of government ... I will stay in my lane.”

Cotton then moved on to a series of questions about whether Jackson thinks the US should “catch” more criminals and whether sentencing should become harsher, and Jackson has responded that it is up to Congress to make laws and that judges review individual cases. She reiterated that she believes people should be held accountable for their crimes.

Josh Hawley is dismissing reporters who have fact checked his claims about Judge Jackson’s sentencing record, according to PBS journalist Lisa Desjardins, who said she just asked the Republican senator for comment:

The Washington Post fact check said that Hawley had taken some of Jackson’s comments out of context, had mischaracterized the work of the US Sentencing Commission on which Jackson served, and is twisting her record.

We are now on a short break from the hearings. Meanwhile, Senator Mike Braun, a Republican from Indiana, has walked back his earlier comments at a press conference suggesting that the US Supreme Court should have left interracial marriage to the states to decide. In a written statement now, he said, according to NBC News, “There is no question the Constitution prohibits discrimination of any kind based on race, that is not something that is even up for debate, and I condemn racism in any form.”

In his statement, Braun said he “misunderstood a line of questioning that ended up being about interracial marriage”.

Fact checkers across several news organizations have found Republican senator Josh Hawley’s attacks on Jackson to be misleading and a twisting of her record. Hawley, on Twitter and in his remarks today, has repeatedly suggested that Jackson has not been tough enough in her handling of child sexual abuse cases and has not taken this category of crimes seriously.

In response to Hawley’s tweet alleging that Jackson has “opined there may be a type of ‘less-serious child pornography offender’”, the Associated Press concluded, “She opined no such thing. She asked questions about it.” From the AP:

Jackson was vice chair of the US Sentencing Commission when it held a hearing on sentencing guidelines in 2012.

She told the hearing she was surprised at a Justice Department expert’s testimony that, as she put it, some child-sex offenders may actually “not be pedophiles” but perhaps “loners” looking for like-minded company in child pornography circles. Being surprised by an assertion and wanting to know more are not the same as endorsing it.

“So I’m wondering whether you could say that there is a – that there could be a – less-serious child pornography offender who is engaging in the type of conduct in the group experience level?” she asked the expert witness. “They’re very sophisticated technologically, but they aren’t necessarily that interested in the child pornography piece of it?”

From those questions, Hawley extrapolated that Jackson had drawn conclusions, when she hadn’t.

The AP also noted that in 2020 Jackson denied compassionate release on medical grounds to a man convicted in a sex offense case, with the judge saying, “The possession and distribution of [child sexual abuse images] is an extremely serious crime because it involves trading depictions of the actual sexual assault of children, and the abuse that these child victims endure will remain available on the internet forever.”

The New York Times fact-checker said GOP lawmakers were “misleadingly portraying” Jackson “as uncommonly lenient” on people convicted of possessing child sexual abuse images. The Times noted that a conservative writer in the National Review has characterized Hawley’s attack as a “smear”, writing, “It is not soft on porn to call for sensible line-drawing. Plenty of hard-nosed prosecutors and Republican-appointed judges have long believed that this mandatory minimum is too draconian.”

And here’s another fact check from a constitutional law scholar, via The Recount:

Senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, is now up and has started by asking Jackson whether she has been accused of sexual assault or harassment. Jackson confirms she has not.

Hirono went on to counter Josh Hawley’s attack by noting other judges confirmed by GOP members on the Senate judiciary committee also departed from child sexual abuse sentencing guidelines:

In response to Hawley’s insinuations that she was not tough enough on defendants in child sexual abuse cases, Jackson has explained in detail how sentencing works, saying, “What a judge has to do is determine how to sentence defendants proportionately consistent with the elements that the statutes include, with the requirements Congress has set forward ... Judges are doing the work of assessing in each case a number of factors that are set forward by Congress, all against the backdrop of heinous criminal behavior ... and Congress has given judges factors to consider.”

Jackson said she has to consider the facts and the recommendations of government and the probation department in sentencing, adding, “You’re questioning whether or not I take them seriously or if I have some reason to handle them in a different way than my peers or in a different way than other cases, but I assure you I do not.”

Hawley said: “I am questioning your discretion and judgment.” He asked her why she was not tougher on an 18-year-old in a case involving child sexual abuse images.

Jackson explained that she was following guidelines and responding to specific facts in the case, and sentenced him to three months in federal prison.

Josh Hawley, Republican senator from Missouri, started his questions with detailed descriptions of child sexual abuse cases and accusing Jackson of not being tough enough on offenders. Here’s the response from a White House spokesperson, saying Halwey’s remarks are “embarrassing” and a signal to QAnon conspiracy theorists:

22 Mar 202217.17 EDT

Martin Pengelly

Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, is now questioning Jackson. There was an interesting nugget from Punchbowl News this morning, on Hawley and why he is pressing his attack on the judge over her past sentencing of offenders convicted over child sexual abuse images.

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Hawley’s attacks have been widely judged to lack substance or fairness and the White House and senior Democrats have pushed back forcefully.

But Hawley is widely held to be among Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee who may wish to grandstand for the purpose of boosting their credentials as possible contenders for the presidential nomination in 2024.

On Monday, Hawley told Punchbowl: “I’m not going to run for president. I’m not a candidate in 2024. Hopefully for the Senate, if the people of Missouri will have me.”

Hawley also told Punchbowl he “liked” Jackson, and added: “I want to be careful here not to cast aspersions on her personally because I like her, and I think she’s a good person. I want to be clear on that.

“But she may [have] a philosophy of the law. To me, that’s what this is about – her record, and her philosophy.

“This way, [Jackson] knows exactly what I’m going to ask. And we’ll have an informed conversation … This is a smart person. She will come, and she will have her notes and whatever else on these cases. And she’ll say, ‘Here’s why I did what I did, here’s my thinking,’ and that’ll be illuminating.”

Hawley also responded to criticism from the White House and Democrats including Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate judiciary committee chair, regarding his use of the child sexual abuse images issue as an attack line.

“It tells me that they, the White House and Democrats, are really worried about this issue,” he said. “You’ll notice that they wouldn’t actually talk about it on the committee.”

On Tuesday, Jackson did talk about it, after being teed up by Durbin.

“As a mother and a judge who has had to deal with these cases, nothing could be further from the truth,” she said, adding that child abuse cases were among the most difficult she dealt with. She described child pornography as a “sickening and egregious crime”.

Jackson said she imposed “significant sentences” and emphasised that she always told offenders the consequences of their crimes by reading them victims’ statements.

Here’s some more about Hawley:

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, has asked Jackson to clarify the context of her Harvard Law Review article she wrote in 1996 while she was in law school about child sexual abuse cases (an article that some Republicans have seized on). The judge responded:

I was trying to do what law school students do, which is analyze a new set of legal provisions. These laws were new, and I was trying to assess what criteria courts could use to look at them. I was not making an argument about them at all.

As the hearing unfolds in the Hart building, senators are reacting to Jackson’s testimony in real time.

Senator Mike Braun, a Republican of Indiana who is not on the Judiciary committee, told reporters today that the court should have left the decision of abortion up to states. Asked if he applies that view to other landmark decisions, including interracial marriage, Braun said yes. “If you are not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you are not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too,” he said.

The judge is back in the hearing room. Up first after the break is senator Ben Sasse, a Republican of Nebraska, who begins by telling Jackson that she’s “51% “of the way to the finish line.

Acknowledging how grueling nominations can be, Sasse, in a moment of levity, told her: “These processes are a lot like a proctology exam.”

Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware who is known as a bipartisan broker, emphasized the broadness and diversity of the support for Jackson’s nomination. He touted letters of support from conservative lawyers and judges as well as support from the law enforcement groups, including the Fraternal Order of Police.

Reviewing her record, he said nothing suggests she would be an activist judge or that she was in any way swayed by partisanship or politics. At one point, he quoted the Republican National Committee, which has opposed Jackson’s nomination, claiming she was a “radical” who would be unable to set aside her personal beliefs to rule objectively. Coons then recalled a court case brought by the RNC in 2016, just before the party conventions, in which the Republican organization filed a lawsuit to obtain thousands of documents related to emails sent by Hillary Clinton, at the time the Democratic presidential nominee. Jackson sided with the RNC, and the documents were turned over, Coons explained.

When Coon finished, Durbin announced that the committee would take a brief break. This is expected to be the longest day of the four-day confirmation process.

In a contentious back and forth with Cruz, Jackson forcefully defended her sentencing decisions in cases involving offenders convicted of child sexual abuse.

Cruz brought a chart in which he calculated the difference between maximum sentencing guidelines and the sentence Jackson handed down, in an effort to make the case that she lenient on defendants of child sex crimes, a characterization she rejected. Responding carefully and pointedly, Jackson told Cruz: “Your chart does not include all of the factors,” namely the way in which Congress has told judges to consider sentences in such cases. As a mother and a judge, “I take these cases very seriously,” she said.

Speaking personally, she said the cases were awful to review. She said the evidence in such cases were some of the worst images she’s ever had to review.

“I sometimes still have nightmares” about a woman who she told the committee earlier “cannot leave her house” because of her victimization as a child, Jackson said.

Back to the Hart building, where senator Ted Cruz, a Republican of Texas, is up. He appears to have posters. Cruz was Jackson’s law school classmate at Harvard, where he said they weren’t close but were cordial.

After exchanging niceties, he immediately dove into a culture war question about the 1619 project, which she mentioned in a speech she was asked to give on Martin Luther King Day. Jackson explained the context for the reference and said the project and is not relevant to her work.

Cruz pressed on, asking her to define critical race theory, an academic theory that has sparked conservative outrage in schools. He then held up a series of children’s books about antiracism that are suggested reading as part of the curriculum at Georgetown Day School, a liberal, private school in Washington, where she is a member of its board. Singling out Antiracist Baby, a children’s book by Ibram X Kendi, he tried to get Jackson to say that the school taught critical race theory.

In her first signs of exasperation thus far, she sighed before responding to Cruz that she does not believe children should be made to feel as if they are racist or an oppressor.

Jackson noted that there was a difference between the curriculums for private and public schools and that this was outside her purview as a member of the school’s board, and that none of this had any bearing on her record or jurisprudence.

Cruz’s line of questioning is a reminder that supreme court hearings offer ambitious senators a high-profile platform to score political points. The Texas senator ran for president in 2016 and has expressed interest in running again in 2024.

22 Mar 202214.43 EDT

Joanna Walters

We’re taking a brief detour from Capitol Hill to the White House’s James Brady Press Briefing Room, where national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke to reporters ahead of Joe Biden’s trip to Europe on Wednesday, where he will meet with Nato and European Union leaders in Brussels and then go to Poland, amid the devastating Russian invasion of Ukraine.

He said that Russia “is never going to take Ukraine away from the Ukrainian people” and that “they are never going to complete their mission to subjugate this country.”

Sullivan noted that with Nato and Europe “we are unwavering in our commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty”, no matter the outcome of day to day military conflict or Russian efforts to occupy territory.He also said, in response to a reporter’s question, that in terms of Nato’s Article Five, where an attack on one member is considered an attack on all, that held also for a cyber attack.

And Sullivan said that since Joe Biden’s almost two-hour long call with Chinese president Xi Jinping last week, in which the US president warned his counterpart not to accede to Russian requests for assistance in its war on Ukraine, the US has not become aware of “the provision of any military equipment by China to Russia”.

He added that Biden intended to consult with allies at his meetings later this week to ensure a tightening of unity on this topic, ahead of a planned summit between European and Chinese leaders next month.It was a short briefing, without press secretary Jen Psaki, who has tested positive for coronavirus.