Supreme Court pick Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation — what happens

Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings concluded Thursday, bringing her one big step closer to becoming the first Black woman to sit on the nation’s top court.

Jackson, a 51-year-old federal judge and President Joe Biden’s first Supreme Court pick, will likely have to wait at least two weeks before the Senate votes on her confirmation. But her performance in the hearings only appeared to make Democrats more confident that her nomination will prevail.

Jackson can win confirmation with the support of merely 50 senators in the evenly split chamber, where Vice President Kamala Harris holds the tie-breaking vote. No Democrats have signaled they will vote against her.

The Senate Judiciary Committee aims to vote on Jackson’s nomination on April 4, Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Wednesday evening. If it passes, the nomination will move to a final vote in the full Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday that he will push “to have her nomination come to the floor in short order.” The Senate “is on track” to confirm Jackson “by the end of this work period,” or an April 8 deadline, he added.

The hardest part, for Jackson at least, appears to be behind her. Over two grueling days of hearings, Jackson endured more than 23 hours of questioning from the Senate Judiciary Committee that at times appeared hostile — and occasionally grew emotional.

Jackson and her husband, who sat behind her throughout her appearances before the committee, both teared up after Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Alex Padilla of California praised her historic nomination.

“I hope to inspire people to try to follow this path, because I love this country, because I love the law, because I think it is important that we all invest in our future,” Jackson said while wiping her eyes at one point late Wednesday.

Republican members grilled Jackson on her lengthy resume, as well as a range of conservative wedge issues with tenuous connection to her nomination, such as critical race theory and transgender rights.

They focused by far the largest part of their scrutiny on Jackson’s sentencing record in a handful of cases involving crimes related to child pornography.

GOP senators have suggested Jackson’s record shows a pattern of being too lenient in sentencing child-porn offenders, though fact-checkers have disputed those characterizations.

Jackson maintained a deliberate speaking pace and rarely raised her voice throughout both days of hearings. She did show increasing hints of exasperation as Republican members spent hours on the child-porn cases.

In one exchange, Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked Jackson if she regretted one such sentencing decision. The judge replied: “What I regret is that in a hearing about my qualifications … we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on this small subset of my sentences.”

The panel’s Democrats heaped praise on Jackson, defended her against the criticism and at times seethed about her treatment by…