Here is the truth about Biden’s pick.
Following President Joe Biden’s announcement he would be nominating Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), has expressed his disapproval of Biden’s pick.
Graham, a member of the Judiciary Committee, stated on Friday that Jackson’s nomination meant the “radical left” had won. The South Carolina Republican had previously urged Biden to choose South Carolina district court Judge J. Michelle Childs.
Childs’ most vocal supporter, Biden ally Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, had been touting Childs’ experience and background as an advantage, saying her nontraditional Supreme Court background, which included attending non-Ivy League colleges like the University of South Carolina and the University of Florida, meant she would be an asset to the Supreme Court bench.
Graham agreed, pointing to Jackson’s Ivy League education as part of his critique, saying, “The Harvard-Yale train to the Supreme Court continues to run unabated.”
But, if Biden were to select Childs, he could have faced an uphill battle among progressive groups, who were critical of Childs’ past sentencing decisions, in particular a 2009 case where she handed down a sentence for 12 years to a man for nonviolent marijuana charge.
Graham alluded to Biden bending to the whims of progressives, saying in his statement that, “The attacks by the Left on Judge Childs from South Carolina apparently worked,” adding that he expected “a respectful but interesting hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee.”
Despite Graham’s reservations, he was one of three Republicans who voted for Jackson to be appointed Judge on the D.C. Circuit of the Court of Appeals.
