President Biden announced Friday that he had picked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee for the Supreme Court. Biden described her as "a proven consensus builder, an accomplished lawyer, [and] a distinguished jurist."
Biden then yielded the microphone to Jackson, who began "by thanking God for delivering me to this point in my professional journey."
Some conservatives, however, were less than thrilled with Biden's choice. In a Saturday opinion piece for Fox News, Carrie Severino, who heads the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, called Jackson "a politician in robes" and accused her of being bad for business, soft on illegal immigration, and hostile toward the pro-life movement.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Biden's decision to consider only Black female candidates for the Supreme Court would "humiliate" and "degrade" America. "[Y]ou should be elevated in America based on what you do ... not on how you were born, not on your DNA, because that's Rwanda," Carlson said Friday night, according to The Guardian.
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin called Carlson's comments "[t]he perfect distillation of white supremacy."
W. James Antle III argued for The Week that Biden should have chosen Judge Michelle Childs, who would have gotten more Republican votes but would not have made the Democratic Party's progressive wing quite as happy.
If confirmed, Jackson would become the first Black woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court. Jackson currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Senate confirmed her to that position in a 53-44 vote in June 2021.
Jackson previously served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, whose seat she would be filling.
She would also be the first Supreme Court justice to have worked as a public defender.