There are several Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who really, really want to be president and think they have a shot at it if they just manufacture enough big Fox News moments for themselves. Sen. Ted Cruz was the first of them to get his chance to question Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in her Supreme Court confirmation hearing, and he worked hard to grab every possible moment on whatever highlights reel Fox puts together this evening.
The words “my work as a judge” made repeated appearances in Jackson’s responses to Cruz, because his questions kept being so completely irrelevant to … her work as a judge. You know, the thing she’s there to discuss in a giant public job interview.
Cruz zeroed in on critical race theory, because while Jackson is not known to have any particular association with critical race theory, she is a Black woman, so under the transitive property of racism, it is a relevant question.
Cruz asked Jackson about her own understanding of CRT, to which she responded with a brief definition, followed by the point that “It doesn’t come up in my work as a judge, it’s never something that I’ve studied or relied on and it wouldn’t be something that I would rely on if I was on the Supreme Court.” He then insisted, using an out-of-context line from a 2015 speech, that she had said she does use CRT. Except, as Jackson responded, she was not talking about the judicial work of sentencing, she was talking about the vast range of legal academic areas relevant to sentencing policy as set by sentencing commissions. It doesn’t relate to what she does as a judge.
But Cruz didn’t bother pretending he was interested in how Jackson’s work as a judge relates to CRT when he asked about children’s books about race and racism that are taught at Georgetown Day School, which Jackson’s children have attended and where she sits on the board.
He literally asked a Supreme Court nominee about children’s books at a private school. Jackson was not having it.
“Senator, I have not reviewed any of those books, any of those ideas,” she responded. “They don’t come up in my work as a judge, which I am respectfully here to address.” She also noted explicitly that the board of trustees of Georgetown Day School does not control or even have any input into the curriculum.
Funny story, by the way: The private school where Cruz sends his own daughters has books by Ibram X. Kendi—one of the authors Cruz was so upset about—in each of its three libraries. Perhaps he should question himself next time.
Judging by the tweets from the Republican Party and various right-wing media types, Cruz achieved what he set out to do: He looked like a big tough anti-anti-racist (that’s pro-racist, if you’re doing the math) warrior in a series of brief video clips. The fact that none of this was relevant to Jackson’s work as a judge is fine by them.
