If you are disposed to hold Sen. Ted Cruz in minimal high regard — a sentiment shared by more than a few of his colleagues in the United States Senate, among others — then his performance at the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings was fully in character: a demagogic, bad-faith effort on Tuesday to imply that she would bring a racially focused agenda to the Supreme Court, coupled with a “soft on child pornographers” assault today.
The same can be said of Missouri’s Josh Hawley, whose attempts to link Jackson to her clients as a public defender have been condemned even by many conservatives. Ditto for Arkansas’ Tom Cotton, whose “do-you-think-criminals-should-be-in-prison?” rants made him seem like Inspector Javert after the Adderall had run out. …
As a critique of the nominee, the arguments of Cruz and his fellow Republicans did not border on the absurd — they fell over the cliff. If, for instance, there was any evidence that Jackson brought any affinity for critical race theory into her judicial work, you might have thought someone would have unearthed it in Jackson’s decade-plus service on the federal bench.
But judging Cruz and company by that standard misses the point. This was not a group of senators engaging in skeptical or serious questioning of a Supreme Court nominee. This was a trio of presidential candidates appealing to the base that will choose the next Republican White House nominee. And from that perspective, the trio accomplished what they set out to do. More broadly, these efforts fit perfectly into an approach that has rewarded the GOP for more than half a century: peeling away traditional Democratic voters with the twin factors of race and crime.
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[It’s] important to understand the dynamic that is playing out at these hearings. This was the chance for a trio of presidential aspirants to display their embrace of the most toxically powerful currents flowing through our politics, and to do it while confronting a nominee who symbolizes that primal fear of “replacement” — the sense that “they” are taking power from “us,” which has made Tucker Carlson a powerful political presence and which continues to make Trump his party’s likely next nominee.
As an inquiry into the merits of a Supreme Court nominee, the performances of Cruz and company was a disgrace. As political stagecraft, it was “mission accomplished” (Greenfield 1-3).
It was Wednesday, the third day of Judge Ketanji Jackson’s confirmation hearings for a seat on the Supreme Court, and Senator Ted Cruz had finally run out of time. Each member of the Judiciary Committee had been given a ten-minute opening statement, a half hour to ask questions in a first round, and twenty minutes more in a second. (Since there are twenty-two committee members, that added up to a marathon.) Cruz had used his time to wave in the air children’s books on a reading list at the private school that one of Jackson’s daughters attends, and where the judge sits on the board, demanding to know whether she thinks “that babies are racist”; asking her to speculate about whether he could sue Harvard if he were to “decide I was an Asian man”; and, most of all, to claim that he had discerned a disturbing “pattern” in the sentences that Jackson had handed down, as a federal judge, in cases involving child pornography. He had brought a chart, with several of the cases listed, on which he made various calculations. He wasn’t getting anywhere—perhaps because Jackson’s sentencing record is not, in fact, radical or outside the mainstream, and also because she had done a good job of standing up to him—but that didn’t stop his hectoring.
That was the situation when Senator Dick Durbin, the committee chair, banged his gavel. Cruz gestured as if to wave him away, and demanded more time. “I know you don’t like this line of questioning,” he said. Durbin answered, “I just want you to play by the rules.” He tried to recognize Senator Chris Coons, but Cruz kept at it—“You can bang it as loud as you want!”—with each sentence he directed at Durbin seeming to move to a more accusatory, more conspiratorial, and more irresponsible level: “You don’t want her to answer that question?”; “Why do you not want the American people to know what happened in the Stewart case, or any of these cases?”; and “Apparently, you are very afraid of the American people hearing the answer to that question.”
Tell Ted Cruz to be quiet and he’ll insinuate that you’re part of a scheme to hide the truth about the sexual abuse of children from the American public. As it happens, that is one of the key themes in the Qanon family of conspiracy theories, as Cruz and his fellow-Republicans certainly know. Similarly, they know what they are doing in trying to paint Jackson, who would be the first Black woman on the Court, as someone whose sympathies and loyalties are with criminals, not victims—and who perhaps has some hidden agenda regarding the exploitation of children. There has always been something off-putting, to say the least, about Cruz’s self-important approach to peddling muck, but his performance at the Jackson hearings was sordid even by his standards. (He blithely recited descriptions of the materials in the various cases, for example “sadomasochistic images of infants and toddlers.”) And he was not alone: Senator Josh Hawley had taken an early lead in hyping the question of Jackson’s child-pornography sentencing record, and the Republican senators on the committee jumped in, with most at least referring to that concocted issue.
Cruz and Hawley are both potential 2024 G.O.P. Presidential contenders; the fact that they see this line of attack as an opportunity says something about the current market of ideas in their party. …
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Confirmation hearings are often said to be shadow plays in which nominees concentrate on giving noncommittal answers. The haranguing, besmirching, and condescension directed at Jackson called for something more. The various moments when she seemed to decide that she was not going to let herself be bullied were fascinating to watch. Facing Cruz, she didn’t just dodge his questioning. She firmly, calmly, smartly pushed him away, rhetorically speaking. (Interestingly, the two of them overlapped on the Harvard Law Review; Jackson, who is a member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, said that, if confirmed, she planned to recuse herself from a case involving affirmative action and the university.) She took the opportunity to show who both she and Cruz are. And yet, the experience must have been rough. (Sorkin 1-3).
Tensions flared between Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and his Democratic colleagues on the third day of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, as Cruz criticized how the proceedings were being run and one senator in the hearing accused him of performing for television cameras.
Cruz caught heat from Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, on two separate occasions in the daylong proceeding. Durbin tried twice to move on to questions from other members over Cruz’s objections.
“At some point, you have to follow the rules,” Durbin told Cruz at one point, banging his gavel.
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… Cruz was nearing the end of his 20-minute questioning of Jackson, where he repeatedly asked her to explain her sentencing of child porn offenders. However, he interrupted Jackson — who appeared to grow increasingly frustrated with the exchange — multiple times while she was responding to his questions.
“Why did you sentence someone who had child pornography … to 28 months — 64% below what the prosecutors asked for?” Cruz asked.
Jackson, a former federal trial judge, said Cruz had picked a few cases out of her entire sentencing record to pursue his argument. Cruz — alongside several of his Republican colleagues — has scrutinized Jackson’s sentencing record in an attempt to paint the nominee as soft on crime. The senator has not voted for any of Biden’s judicial nominees.
Fact checkers from multiple news outlets have said Republicans’ comments on her sentencing record are misleading.
“It is to assign proportional punishment,” Jackson said when asked to explain her view of sentencing in cases. “It is to do justice in cases where you have defendants who are convicted of the same conduct, but have different, differing levels of culpability.”
Even as his allotted time to speak ran out, Cruz continued to ask questions on sentencing in the cases, leading Durbin to step in to force the hearing forward and allow the next person to speak. Cruz accused the chair of being afraid the American people would hear Jackson’s response.
Later in the hearing, Cruz attempted to enter into record a letter signed by all but one of the Republican committee members to receive more information on pre-sentencing probation records on the child porn cases in question. Democrats on the committee shut the effort down, noting that it was someone else’s turn to ask questions and that Cruz could submit the letter by hand.
“I know the junior senator from Texas likes to get on television, but most of us have been here a long time trying to follow the rules,” said U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democratic from Vermont and senior member of the committee and currently the longest-serving senator with 47 years of service.
That comment echoed the vague frustrations of another senator from earlier in the day.
“I think we should recognize that the jackassery we often see around here is partly because of people mugging for short-term camera opportunities,” said U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska who sits to the right of Cruz on the committee bench. Sasse was explaining why he didn’t believe cameras should be in the Supreme Court, shortly after Cruz’s first confrontation.
At another point in Cruz's questioning of Jackson, he appeared to dismiss the ability of transgender people to sue for gender discrimination, suggesting that a man could decide to change his gender simply to challenge a gender-based restriction in court.
“Tell me, does that same principle apply to other protected characteristics? For example, I am a Hispanic man. Could I decide I was an Asian man. Would I have the ability to be an Asian man and challenge Harvard’s discrimination because I made that decision?"
Cruz was referring to a lawsuit pending before the court alleging that Harvard University’s affirmative action policies violate the rights of Asians. Jackson replied that she couldn’t answer the question because it was based on hypotheticals (Zhand 1-2).
Ted Cruz thrust several books into the spotlight after his puzzling line of questioning at Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
In a hearing ostensibly meant to assess whether Jackson is qualified to serve on the highest court in the land, the Republican senator brought up critical race theory -- an academic concept taught primarily at the university and graduate levels that has since turned into a political flash point -- in K-12 schools.
As part of his questioning, Cruz presented a handful of books that he claimed were taught at Georgetown Day School -- an elite, private school in Washington, DC whose board Jackson serves on. Among the titles he mentioned were "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction" by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic; "The End of Policing" by Alex S. Vitale and "How to be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi.
Cruz focused the bulk of his questions, however, on two children's books -- "Antiracist Baby" and "Stamped (For Kids)." And his characterizations of those titles were largely distorted.
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The book: "Antiracist Baby," written by Ibram X. Kendi and illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. It's a picture book for children.
The claim: Cruz said he was "stunned" by the ideas in the book.
"One portion of the book says, 'Babies are taught to be racist or antiracist -- there is no neutrality.' Another portion of the book: They recommend that babies 'confess when being racist,'" he said at the hearing. Cruz added that the book is taught to students at Georgetown Day School to children ages 4 to 7, asking Jackson, "Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist?"
The reality: Cruz's characterization takes the ideas found in the book out of context.
In "Antiracist Baby," Kendi contends that children are not born racist but learn racist attitudes from an early age from the world around them. To counter those messages, Kendi writes, parents and caregivers should help children learn to be antiracist.
The book encourages children to openly acknowledge differences in skin color, rather than pretending they don't exist. It asks them to celebrate differences across cultures, to not see any one group as better or worse than another and to be constantly learning and growing. It invites them to talk openly about race and admit where they might have fallen short.
Crucially, "Antiracist Baby" advises children to "point at policies as the problem, not the people" and proclaims that "even though all races are not treated the same, we are all human."
The book: "Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You," adapted by Sonja Cherry-Paul and illustrated by Rachelle Baker.
The book is a children's version of the history book for young adults "Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You" by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi -- which, in turn, is an adaptation of Kendi's bestseller "Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racisut Ideas in America."
The claim: Cruz called this book "astonishing."
Turning open the book, he said to Jackson, "On page 33, it asks the question, 'Can we send White people back to Europe?' That's what's being given to 8- and 9-year-olds."
The senator continued, "It also on page 115 says, 'The idea that we should pretend not to see racism is connected to the idea that we should pretend not to see color. It's called colorblindness.'"
Cruz skipped ahead and cited other sentences from the book, including "Here's what's WRONG with this: It's ridiculous. Skin color is something we all absolutely see" and "So to pretend not to see color is pretty convenient if you don't actually want to stamp out racism in the first place."
Finally, Cruz invoked Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and argued that the ideas contained in "Antiracist Baby" and "Stamped (For Kids)" contradict the values of the civil rights icon -- a notion that scholars who have studied King say is a distortion of his work.
The reality: Again, the passages read aloud by Cruz are a serious mischaracterization.
The sentence "Can we send White people back to Europe?" that Cruz references on page 33 appears as an aside in a chapter about the contradictions in how Thomas Jefferson talked about slavery and how he acted. The book explains how some White assimilationists, including Jefferson at one point, advocated sending Black people back to Africa and the Caribbean -- places foreign to many of the people in question.
In explaining the problems inherent in that idea, the book includes this aside: Do you see how racist ideas of today are tied to racist ideas of the past? The phrase "Go back to where you came from" that is sometimes said to Black and Brown people today connects to the "go back" ideas of the past. Now you can trace the origins right back to Thomas Jefferson. (By the way, just imagine what Native Americans and Black people must have wished about their White oppressors: Can we send White people "back" to Europe?)
Here, the sentence "Can we send White people back to Europe?" clearly demonstrates how illogical the idea of sending people "back to where they came from" is.
On page 115, the sentence referenced by Cruz ("The idea that we should pretend not to see racism is connected to the idea that we should pretend not to see color. It's called colorblindness") again appears in an aside in a chapter about the inequities in standardized testing. Although standardized testing appears equal on the surface, the authors argue, not all schools and students have the same resources -- meaning that rewarding schools based on test results deepens existing inequalities. The authors also critiqued the idea that the way to address racism in education was to not focus on it, which is when they pause to address the idea of "colorblindness."
The point that the authors are making in that passage is that ignoring differences in skin color is akin to ignoring racism. It's only by acknowledging those differences upfront, they argue in the book, that society can begin to chip away at the problem (Kaur 1-3).
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said on Thursday that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will "undermine" constitution rights as an associated justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Based on her record, I believe she will prove to be the furthest left of any justice to have ever served on the Supreme Court," he said during a press conference.
"Based on her record, I think we can anticipate that she will vote consistently to undermine the constitutional rights of Americans, to undermine our rights to free speech, to undermine our rights to religious liberty, to undermine our rights under the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms."
In a historic vote on Thursday [April 7, 2022] afternoon, Jackson was confirmed, 53-47, as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. …
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Cruz also criticized Jackson's sentencing record in which he accused her of being lenient when ruling in child pornography cases, saying that she sentenced defendants for short prison terms.
"There is no area of law where her record is more extreme than in criminal law," he said Thursday. "When it concerns criminal law, judge Jackson's record is far, far, far out of the mainstream.
"Not only is her record consistently in favor of very, very lenient sentences for violent criminals, for drug dealers, for those who have committed horrific crimes, but she has a particular pattern of leniency for sex offenders" (Khaled 1).
Works cited:
Greenfield, Jeff. “For Ted Cruz and Company, the Jackson Hearing Was ‘Mission Accomplished’.” Politico, March 23, 2022. Net. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/23/ted-cruz-gop-jackson-hearing-racial-backlash-00019812
Kaur, Harmeet. “What the Children's Books Ted Cruz Referenced at Ketanji Brown Jackson's Confirmation Hearing Really Say.” CNN, March 24, 2022. Net.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/us/ted-cruz-books-ketanji-brown-jackson-cec/index.html
Khalad, Fatma. “Ted Cruz Says KBJ Will 'Undermine' Constitution as Senate Confirms Judge.” Newsweek, April 7, 2022. Net. https://www.newsweek.com/ted-cruz-says-kbj-will-undermine-constitution-senate-confirms-judge-1696117
Sorkin, Amy Davidson. “The Republicans’ Wild Attacks at Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation Hearing.” The New Yorker, March 24, 2022. Net. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-republicans-wild-attacks-at-ketanji-brown-jacksons-confirmation-hearing
Zhang, Andrew. “Ted Cruz Clashes with Democrats during Heated Confirmation Hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson.” Texas Tribune, March 23, 2022. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/03/23/ted-cruz-confirmation-ketanji-brown-jackson/
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