Manchin To Vote For Supreme Court Nominee Jackson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ‑Democratic Senator Joe Manchin on Friday said he would vote to con­firm U.S. Supreme Court nom­i­nee Ketanji Brown Jackson, with the sup­port from the influ­en­tial mod­er­ate sig­nal­ing that she will have the votes to over­come wide­spread Republican opposition.
Manchin’s announce­ment is fur­ther evi­dence that Democrats are unit­ed in sup­port­ing President Joe Biden’s nom­i­nee to be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. With a sim­ple major­i­ty need­ed for con­fir­ma­tion and the Senate divid­ed 50 – 50 between the par­ties, Jackson would get the job even if no Republicans vote for her.
“After meet­ing with her, con­sid­er­ing her record, and close­ly mon­i­tor­ing her tes­ti­mo­ny and ques­tion­ing before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, I have deter­mined I intend to vote for her nom­i­na­tion to serve on the Supreme Court,” Manchin said in a statement.

“Her wide array of expe­ri­ences in vary­ing sec­tors of our judi­cial sys­tem has pro­vid­ed Judge Jackson a unique per­spec­tive that will serve her well on our nation’s high­est court,” he added.
Biden in February nom­i­nat­ed Jackson to replace lib­er­al Justice Stephen Breyer, who intends to retire at the end of June. The com­mit­tee is like­ly to vote on April 4 on send­ing her nom­i­na­tion to the full Senate for a final con­fir­ma­tion vote. Jackson faced two days of hos­tile ques­tion­ing from Republicans dur­ing her con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing ear­li­er this week, with sev­er­al accus­ing her of being lenient in her pre­vi­ous role as a fed­er­al tri­al court judge in sen­tenc­ing child pornog­ra­phy offend­ers. Sentencing experts said her approach was sim­i­lar to most fed­er­al judges. (Story orig­i­nat­ed @Yahoonews)