The NPR Politics Podcast - Ketanji Brown Jackson Is The First Black Woman Nominated To The Supreme Court

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Jackson's experiences working as a public defender and on the federal sentencing commission give her a unique background compared to the sitting high court justices.And Biden's approval ratings are dismal: a majority of Americans — 56 percent — describe his first year in office as a failure.This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and White House correspondent Asma Khalid.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org Hi, this is Teresa on Jekyll Island, Georgia. Today I'm retiring after over 30 years in service to the government of the United States of America. During that time, I've served in the Social Security Administration, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security.

This podcast was recorded at 2.59 p.m. on Friday, February 25th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. For one, I'll no longer be setting an alarm for 5 a.m. Okay, enjoy the show. Oh, congratulations to you. What a great run. Thank you for your service. Yeah. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Nina Totenberg. I cover the Supreme Court. And I'm Carrie Johnson, National Justice Correspondent. So today, I'm Nina Totenberg. I cover the Supreme Court. And I'm Carrie Johnson, national justice correspondent. So today, I'm pleased to nominate Judge Jackson, who will bring extraordinary qualifications, deep experience in intellect, and a rigorous

judicial record to the court. That is, of course, President Biden announcing Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee to the Supreme Court. They spoke and appeared together at the White House this afternoon. My life has been blessed beyond measure. And I do know that one can only come this far by faith. If confirmed by the Senate, she will succeed Stephen Breyer on the court after he retires this summer. So Nina, what should people know about her? That she has an incredibly diverse background. She's not just the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. She is the first nominee since Thurgood Marshall, who has actually represented indigent criminal defendants. And she was a public defender. She served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission at a time when penalties for crack cocaine were so much higher than penalties for

powder cocaine. And the commission reduced those penalties. And Carrie will tell you about that in a minute. She served in law firms large and small. She was a clerk to three federal judges, including Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who she would replace if confirmed. I'm not sure what I've left out, but there's a lot. This woman has done a lot of different things. And as she has said in a speech that she gave a few years ago, she's only the second generation in her family who had anybody go to college. And that her ancestors were most likely on both sides, her mother's side and her father's side, slaves. She is obviously a historic pick. She would be the first black woman to serve on the court.

She did reference that a little bit this afternoon. And if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed as the next associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, I can only hope that my life and career, my love of this country and the Constitution, and my commitment to upholding the rule of law and the sacred principles upon which this great nation was founded will inspire future generations of Americans. She was noting that she shares a birthday with Constance Baker Motley, who was the first Black woman ever to be appointed as a federal judge. Carrie, she comes to the court with a little bit of a different legal background than the other eight justices. You know, she went to Harvard and Harvard Law School, and she clerked for Justice Stephen

Breyer, the man she's now in line to replace. But she has a very rich set of experiences. She has uncles who were in law enforcement, including one who was the former police chief in Miami. Her brother was in law enforcement, including one who was the former police chief in Miami. Her brother was in law enforcement, served in the military. And importantly, she served as a federal public defender. She represented clients that came to her from Guantanamo Bay, detainees there, people who were poor and accused of crimes.

And she represented a lot of those people on appeal. Judge Jackson has since said, since she represented a lot of those people on appeal. Judge Jackson has since said, since she became a federal judge, that that experience really has made her understand that she needed to explain the process to all of the people who came before her in court. And you know what, Sue, there's actually some evidence, some research from scholars at Yale and Harvard, that judges who have experience representing criminal defendants in the system do judge differently, that people in front of them tend to receive shorter sentences and are less likely to be incarcerated. So we're going to see if that pattern holds if Judge Jackson is confirmed by the Senate. The other thing I would mention is that she has a lot of experience handling, in particular, drug offenders.

She served as the vice chairwoman of the Sentencing Commission, which is a really important federal body, bipartisan body. And during her time there, the commission, even though it included some very conservative members, unanimously decided to reduce penalties for some drug criminals. And that meant something like 30,000 people got their sentences reduced. That was a big deal. And it affected in large part Black and Hispanic people in prison. So she has that experience under her belt as well. Supreme Court nominees tend to face very tough questioning, particularly from whatever the party is that didn't nominate

the person. Nina, what are you anticipating her to face tough questions about in her Senate confirmation process? Well, even when she was up for the Court of Appeals, she got quite a grilling from several of the members of the Judiciary Committee, conservative Republican members, particularly Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, who I think sought to imply that perhaps she was sympathetic, personally sympathetic to Guantanamo detainees, for example. And she informed them that every case in which she represented some aspect of the Guantanamo experience, as it were, these were cases that she was assigned to either by the law firm or by the public defender's office. We acknowledge that everybody deserves a defense.

And what we're going to see is that she probably represented some fairly odious people. That happens, and that's the way the system works. But when you look at how she handled herself in her confirmation hearing last April, she was very deft at refusing to be drawn into a conversation, for example, about whether she believed in systemic racism, very deft at avoiding the Guantanamo implication, very deft at all those kinds of issues. And I thought it was particularly interesting that President Biden today said that the Fraternal Order of Police had endorsed her nomination, which is a significant thing. And she has significant

backing from conservative members as well as liberal members of the bar. So I think she's in good shape unless something unexpected happens. It also seems relevant to note that this might not be as contentious of a fight because her nomination isn't going to tip the ideological nature of the court in any way. She would be succeeding Breyer, who she was once a clerk for, that she referenced today. But it doesn't change that dynamic, which seems to me might tone down the temperature around this fight. I think that's probably right. I mean, it's a six to three super majority for conservatives on the court, and it will continue to be that even if she is

confirmed. And then there are the optics. I mean, it's bad enough when you see a row of white guys interrogating in a semi hostile way, a female nominee, but a female black nominee is the optics are really, it's not just she who has to avoid being entrapped in this process. So do the senators. Yeah. Carrie, I remember when she was recently confirmed by the Senate, we talked about her in this podcast and you wisely said then that she would be on the shortlist for any possible Biden nomination.

So congrats on that prediction coming out. But she has had Republican support. She already has had that support in the Senate. Yeah, she's had three Republican senators vote for her in her D.C. Circuit confirmation process, including Lindsey Graham, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins. It remains to be seen whether she's able to peel off those Republican members this time around.

But I've got to tell you, Sue, all day I've been hearing from conservative legal sources of mind who view Katonji Brown Jackson as a personal friend, who talk about meeting up with her in the last several months for a meal and her carrying these enormous briefcases or rolling behind her these enormous briefcases filled with papers she was going to review after dinner, but really wanting to talk about her kids, her two daughters and their kids. So she has fostered over many decades in DC, some really warm personal relationships. And she has a family relationship, Sue, I think you know a little bit more about. I do. And I have to actually make sure I get this right, because it is quite complicated. But my favorite piece of trivia is that she is, and this is confirmed by his former spokesman,

former Speaker Paul Ryan. Okay, bear with me here. She is Paul Ryan's wife's sister's husband's brother's wife. There you go. That's a lot of words. That's a lot of words. I'd note that former Speaker Ryan actually also put out a statement today saying he praised her intellect, her character, her integrity, saying it is unequivocal. So certainly at least has some friends on the other side of the aisle. And that always helps. And that always helps. Sue, Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed in something like a month. What are you thinking or seeing here about Judge Jackson? Well, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has already said he wants the timeline to be similar to Amy Coney Barrett. So this, I think, will move pretty quickly. And as you all have noted, there's no expectation that this is going to be particularly difficult or out of the norm for Supreme Court nominees unless something unexpected were to happen in the process.

But she is on a pathway to be confirmed in the early spring. I also think Democrats feel a sense of urgency about getting her confirmed, because as we've seen in recent weeks, particularly with the New Mexico Democratic Senator Lujan having a stroke and being out of Washington for several weeks, this 50-50 majority is, you know, they need every vote possible. So they want to get this done and safe and in time for Breyer's retirement this summer. Makes sense. All right, Carrie, Nina, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about the latest NPR poll findings on President Biden's job performance. And we're back with Domenico Montanaro and Asma Khalid. Hey, guys. Hey there. Hey. So, Domenico, we've got a new NPR PBS NewsHour Marist, I think I said that all right,

poll out today. And I don't know how else to put this, but it is not looking good for President Biden. No, it's a terrible poll for President Biden. We've been talking about the potential for Republicans to take over the House at the very least in 2022. And if the president's political fortunes are any indication, it doesn't look good for the party. I mean, we asked, especially pegged to the State of the Union that's coming up on Tuesday, whether or not people think President Biden's first year in office has been a success or failure. And pretty stunningly, you have a majority 56% saying that his first year

in office was a failure, with just 39% saying it was a success. And that includes independents, which are a key but shrinking swing group, who are, you know, very much down on his presidency when it comes to not just whether he is, you know, his first year was a failure, but 54% of people said that he's not fulfilling his campaign promises. 52% said that he's done more to divide the country than unite it, even though that was something that he ran on in 2020 was uniting the country. One of the holy crap numbers in this poll for me, and that's a political science term. Yeah, I've heard that one before. The number of independents, you referenced independents, but 66% of independents say

the first year in office has been a failure. I mean, those should be bone shaking numbers for the Democratic Party, for anyone that's on the ballot in November, because independents are so critical to those tight swing races that are going to decide those House and Senate majorities and the governor's races and the statehouse races. I mean, all up and down the ballot. This is just these are numbers that suggest it could be a real drag on the party to have a president that is currently today, really unpopular with the last sort of group of swing voters in the country. Yeah, it's really bad. I mean, you think about even suburban voters, we've seen a decline in suburban voters by double digits in their approval of President Biden in just the last two months. So you know, you're

really seeing over and over again, these metrics add up to spell trouble for Democrats. And when you look at why, it's clear that inflation has now jumped to the top concern for Americans, far and away from anything else, including the pandemic. We had 38% of people saying that inflation should be President Biden's top priority. And there's been some criticism of how President Biden has communicated about inflation, frankly. You know, I will say inflation is something that we've seen the Democratic Party, that we've seen President Biden shift on in terms of how he's been speaking about it. It's something that analysts and pollsters had been flagging, I want to say going back to like May, June of last year,

a recognition that people were really frustrated with rising prices. And, you know, I will say there is a lot of truth to the fact that a president has limited power to actually change something on inflation. But people want empathy. They want the sense that the president understands where they're coming from. And one thing, I guess I will say, Domenico, that I have been struck by in looking at the poll and the story that you wrote is just a sense of how hardened the opposition is against President Biden. Because, you know, I will say when I go out with him on assignments and trips, you will often see on the corner this gaggle of a couple dozen people, protesters with signs,

holding up signs that say, let's go, Brandon, or sometimes there's a lot of profanity. These are really nasty messages. And, you know, President Biden, whether or not you agree with his politics, is somebody who, as a person, has tried to tamp down the rhetoric, the polarization, I would say. He has tried to appeal to this spirit of bipartisanship. Yes, you have this intensity of disapproval that Biden is seeing that frankly mirrors the intensity of approval that former President Trump had. So you can sort of see how the people who were strongly approving of former President Trump have now shifted to strongly disapprove of the current president. Do you think one of the core problems that Biden has as a president is that as a candidate, he never really enjoyed the kind of like wild eyed base support that other presidential nominees tend to enjoy most recently Donald Trump and Barack Obama. I mean, you just

don't meet a diehard Biden voter the way that you did other candidates. Well, it's certainly not the same of former President Trump. I mean, you know, there aren't, you know, Build Back Better hats out there the same way that you saw Red make American Great Again hats. It's kind of a joke to think that that would even be the case, you know. And I think what the issue is, and what pollsters and I were talking about with this to sort of unpack this a little bit, is that we're in an era of such intense partisanship that we are really in an era of base politics. If you don't have your base support really strongly behind you in American politics now with a shrinking center, it makes it very, very difficult

to, you know, enact your legislation to win elections. And I think we're seeing that in the intensity of approval for President Biden. Only 14% in this survey said that they strongly approve of the job that he's doing. For context, that's lower than at any point in former President Trump's presidency. So it makes it very difficult if you don't have that base of support. Now, we should also point out, though, this is not measuring Biden against another potential opponent. This is measuring Biden for Biden and what people approve of the job he's doing now. And I think it does reinforce that the 2020 presidential election

was about what? Donald Trump. But to your point, Domenico, the midterms are often a referendum on the president in power. And what's the sort of better referendum than a president's approval rating? And so it doesn't really matter, I guess, for looking at this November, whether or not Biden is running against anybody, because a whole slate of candidates across the country are going to, in theory, be running against President Biden. And I think that's why you're seeing so many Democrats retire, frankly. You know, in addition to COVID, the economy, there's another crisis that the president is dealing with, and that's Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I do think it's perhaps maybe too early to tell how that may play politically for him. But some of the early polling suggests that, like many things in this country,

it falls along partisan lines. And whether you think that the president has acted appropriately and is doing enough or not often comes down to whether or not you're a Republican or a Democrat. Domenico, the poll also asked about Supreme Court nominees and potentially some good news there for Biden. Yeah, I mean, one positive finding, as you noted, is that 61% said that they approve of Biden saying that he will appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court, which that's what he did today in naming Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

So, you know, that is something that's interesting because you had a lot of conservatives and Republicans hitting Biden initially saying that this was some kind of form of affirmative action despite the qualifications that were high for all of the candidates that Biden had interviewed and were out there on the short list. So we've seen that fade as a criticism, and you have to wonder if that has something to do with public opinion. We're a long way away from midterm election day, but we're also not that far away either. I mean, I think politics season is really taking over. When you're a president that's this far down in the polls, this close to an election, I guess it's like, how deep is the hole? How hard is it to turn that trajectory around in six, seven, eight, nine months? How deep is an abyss? You know what I mean?

It's pretty bad. These are pretty bad numbers as far as the state of the country. I mean, 30% of the country thinking that the country is headed in the right direction, even though seven and 10 think that the pandemic is nearing its end. So people are just in a really foul mood. And when they're in a bad mood, they take it out on the people in power. And the people in power right now are Democrats. And if the Democratic base is not as fired up for Biden or Democrats and don't come out to the polls, and the Republican base is angry and fired up and wants to go to the polls, well, you know how that ends. Democrats still have a chance, obviously, to hold the Senate. They still feel like that's a real possibility. They could

even pick up a seat or two, they think. But the climate has to get somewhat better between now and the fall for them to mitigate some of these losses. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back. And it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop talking about, politics or otherwise. And since this is my first time back in the host seat in many, many months, I will use host privilege and go first. Go for it. Own that. The thing I can't let go this week is AP reporter Philip Crowther. I don't know if you saw him on

Twitter, but he's had quite a good week in that he is a reporter for AP. He's on the ground in Kiev and he has been reporting in multiple languages, so much so that clips of him doing newscasts in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German and my favorite Luxembourgish back to back to back to back. There's been a war with Russian backed forces in the east. I don't even know how the human brain can like do that. He also apparently is teaching himself arabic show off um and he can also speak catalan which is like a dialect uh spoken in the northern part of spain so i am just uh wildly impressed by this man it is wild to me to see someone

flip so seamlessly from language to language to language, and especially in like a high-stakes situation like a war zone, right? Like it's not even – like the pressure is on on top of everything else. So, sir, I salute you. You are an amazing reporter. At least I think you are. I can't understand anything that you're saying. You're like, we can only watch your English reports, but your Portuguese could be

terrible for all I know. Asma, what can't you let go of this week? Okay, so earlier this week, y'all probably know that it was Tuesday, 2-22-22, February 22nd of the year 2022, which is amazing. And apparently it's like a very historic date that, I mean, really has never come around before if you think about it, right? We've never had a date like this. And so people were apparently like planning weddings on this important date. I think we actually had a timestamp of somebody who was getting married on this day. Yeah. And people had babies on this day. And this Can't Let It Go does go out. Shout out to Elena, one of our producers, for the inspiration here. She did give this to me, that there was a couple in Texas who had a baby

who was born on Tuesday at 2.22 p.m. in delivery room number two, two weeks early. What? Get that. You know, when I hear stuff like that, I feel- I mean, it's just kind of amazing. I feel people like that have a destiny. I don't know what it is, but the alignment of all of that is like, you're either going to save the world or destroy it. I don't know.

You're destined for greatness. You know what else that day was? It was Tuesday. Yeah. That baby should play the lottery. Or it's the sign of the end of times. I don't know. It's really a coin flip these days.

Oh, gosh. That's a real, like, Debbie Downer way to think about this. I thought she was, like, destined for greatness, this baby. Domenico, what can't you let go of? I can't let go of Hank the Tank. You guys know what I'm talking about? Hank the Tank is a very large bear in California, in Lake Tahoe, because residents there have been complaining that this bear,

this massive 500-pound bear, has been going through their houses, they've ransacked some 30 properties, taken stuff. But it turns out that Hank the Tank is a myth. That actually, Hank the Tank is not one bear, but three not-so-small bears. So I don't know what to make of that except for the fact that maybe don't go after Hank. He's not working alone here. It's like Ocean's Eleven, but with bears.

Is that my million dollar film script? Did I just have a great idea? Make this like a live action. Has anyone thought about whether it's the Tahoe residents terrorizing the bears? I mean, weren't they kind of there first? Well, in this age of CSI, the Fish and Wildlife Service, actually got DNA of the bears, knowing that's how we know it was three bears and not one, because DNA exonerated Hank as being solely the one who did this crime. Apparently, Hank has actually gotten into people's homes while they were in the home.

Can you imagine how terrifying that would be to have a 500-pound bear walk into your house? Okay, that would freak me out. Yeah, yeah, I'm not down with that. All right, I have to get to work on my Ocean's Eleven but it's bears movie script, so that's going to be a wrap for us today. Our executive producer is Mathoni Matori. Our editors are Eric McDaniel and Krishnadev Kalamur.

Our producers are Lexi Schapittle and Elena Moore. Thanks to Brandon Carter. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.