Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court, was eviscerated by Senator Marsha Blackburn in a series of questions that would have been so easy for anyone to answer just a few short years ago.
If you could travel back in time just fifteen years, it would be difficult to explain the line of questioning that left Judge Jackson stammering and unable to form a response.
After all, it was a relatively simple one. Senator Blackburn merely asked Jackson whether she could define the word “woman.”
“I can’t,” Jackson responded.
“You can’t?” Blackburn asked. Blackburn seemed to have expected a response that was at least a bit more substantial than that.
“Not in this context. I’m not a biologist,” Jackson said.
And with that follow-up, Jackson had fallen into the senator’s trap.
“The meaning of the word woman is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition?” Blackburn asked.
“The fact that you can’t give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about.”
Here, Blackburn referred to critical race and gender theory and its impact on schools throughout America.
Jackson, however, was unwilling to comment on those topics. “I’m not sure what message that sends,” she said when asked of trans athletes beating biological women in competitions. “If you’re asking me about the legal issues related to it, those are topics that are being hotly discussed, as you say, and could come to the court,” she said in order to avoid commenting further.
Senator Kennedy also managed to get a quick shot in at Jackson. “When does life begin,” the senator asked.