The Senate voted Thursday to confirm PresidentJoe Biden’s lifetime appointment of JudgeKetanji Brown Jacksonto the Supreme Court.
Once Jackson takes the oath of office this summer, she will become the first Black woman justice,fulfilling a campaign promisethat Biden made during the 2020 presidential election.
The Senate chamber erupted in applause once Harris said, “This nomination is confirmed.”
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Before making his selection, Biden said it would not be based on ideology andpredictedhis nominee would get at least one Republican vote.
In the end, therewere three: Sens.Susan Collinsof Maine,Lisa Murkowskiof Alaska andMitt Romneyof Utah joined 50 Democrats to pave the way for Jackson to be seated on the country’s highest court despite widespread GOP opposition, in particular to Jackson’s record as a defense attorney and sentencing judge.
Jackson, 51, watched the vote with Biden at the White House, Minyon Moore, an adviser who was part of the team assisting her through the process of getting confirmed, told PEOPLE in a phone interview Thursday.
“She was excited to be in the Roosevelt Room of the White House,” said Moore, who was with them Thursday watching the vote on television. “She was excited to see the president when he came in the door. She’s still pinching herself that this moment is actually her moment … She was taking pictures of vote.”
Jackson and the president alsotook a selfiein what Moore said was an “organic” moment that “just kind of happened.”
Asked what the president told Jackson on Thursday as they watched the vote, Moore revealed to PEOPLE, “He said he was proud of her. He was proud of how she handled the hearings. You could just see that he was just simply very, very proud.”
Jackson’s family was not in the room. Her husband, Dr. Patrick Jackson, was in surgery Thursday but received a phone call from President Biden, Moore said.
“It was so lovely to see how he was how she was smiling as he was talking to Dr. Jackson,” Moore told PEOPLE, adding that they were reading texts her children as the votes came in.
Ahead of the vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called Jackson “brilliant” and “one of the most experienced individuals ever nominated to the Supreme Court.”
He also acknowledged that history took place in the crowded chamber on Thursday. “By confirming Judge Jackson today we are taking a bold step forward toward reaching the full realization of our country’s promise,” he said.
“We will make it far more likely that girls across America will feel precisely what Judge Jackson felt herself when she was a kid: Nobody can stop me. I can do this, too. I am brilliant, too. I belong, too,” he continued, calling the milestone a “giant bold and important step on the well-trodden path to fulfill our country’s founding promise.”
“This is a great moment for Judge Jackson,” he also said, “but it is an even greater moment for America.”
“I am here standing on the shoulders of generations of Americans who never had anything close to this kind of opportunity,” Jackson said, appearing emotional but composed. “This nomination is significant to a lot of people, and I hope that it will bring confidence, it will help inspire people to understand that our courts are like them, that our judges are like them. Doing the work, being part of our government: I think it’s very important.”
Ketanji Brown Jackson.Tom Williams/AP/Shutterstock
Jackson currentlyserves on the U.S. Court of Appealsfor the D.C. Circuit. Republicans Sens. Murkowski, Collins and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina all voted to confirm her to that role in 2021.
He even invoked the name of his preferred nominee, saying, “The fact that so many of these left wing radical groups that would destroy the law as we know it declared war on Michelle Childs and supported you is problematic for me.”
Also during the hearings, Graham used his allotted time to probe Jackson’s views and record of experience to air still-simmering grievances about the confirmations of Trump-nominated Justices Barrett Brett Kavanaugh. At one point, referencing Barrett’s hearings,he asked Jackson, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are, in terms of religion?”
Other Republican senators on the committee found time to bring up perennial hot-button political issues like abortion, transgender rights and critical race theory.
The answer, Blackburn said, “underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about.”
“I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist or though they are not valued or though they are less than, that they are victims, that they’re oppressors,” Jackson said. “I don’t believe in any of that.”
Ketanji Brown Jackson.Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty
The questioning was also, at times, heartwarming in that it reflected thehope, celebration and prideof breaking down a racial barrier.
As members of her family — including her teenage daughter Leila Jackson, who wasphotographed beaming with prideat her mother on the first day of the hearings — sat behind her, Democratic Sen.Cory Bookerof New Jersey praised Jackson for how she handled combative questions from some of his colleagues.
“You faced insults here that were shocking to me — well, actually not shocking,” Booker said. “But you are here because of that kind of love, and nobody is taking that away from me.”
“I want to tell you, when I look at you, this is why I get emotional,” he added. “I’m sorry, you’re a person that is so much more than your race and gender. You’re a Christian. You’re a mom. It’s hard for me not to look at you and not see my mom… I see my ancestors and yours.”
“You have earned this spot. You are worthy. You are a great American,” he noted as Jackson wiped her tears with a tissue.
“This country gets better and better and better,” Booker said. “When that final vote happens, and you ascend onto the highest court in the land, I’m going to rejoice. And I’m going to tell you right now, the greatest country in the world, the United States of America, will be better because of you.”
source: people.com
