Biden’s Promise to Appoint a Black Woman to the Supreme Court Irritates Republicans
Without even knowing who Joe Biden will appoint to the US Supreme Court, Republicans lashed out at his promise to elect a black woman for the first time in history.
“I want a candidate who knows how to distinguish between a law book and a fashion catalogue,” said Senator John Kennedy, who as a member of the Upper House Judiciary Committee will participate in the interrogation to which the judge chosen by Joe Biden will have to submit. . Because the Senate is in charge of confirming the federal magistrates.
The Democratic president wants the high court to “look like the country” and will announce his election at the end of February.
In an interview with NBC, excerpts of which aired on Thursday, he said he is focusing on four “incredibly qualified” justices.
Among the names that circulate the most are graduates from prestigious universities such as Yale or Harvard, a federal appeals judge and another from the California Supreme Court.
Republican Senator Roger Wicker, ignoring his qualifications, opined that Joe Biden’s pick would be “the beneficiary of some sort of quota.”
Equally incisive was his colleague Ted Cruz: “What do black women represent? Let’s say 6% of the American population,” he said on his podcast. So Joe Biden “is saying to 94% of Americans, ‘I don’t give a fuck about you.’ He says ‘if you’re a white man, tough luck! If you’re a white woman, tough luck!”
And that of the 115 justices who have been on the Supreme Court since its creation, 107 have been white men, compared to two black men and five women, four white and one Latina.
In the United States, the term Latino encompasses those people of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South American, Central American or Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race, according to the Census Bureau.
– “Dishonest” –
“American presidents have always taken into account a combination of political factors and the personal characteristics of the candidates,” Douglas Keith, a jurist at the Brennan Center for Justice think tank, also told AFP.
Republican Ronald Reagan promised to appoint the first woman to the Supreme Court, choosing Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981. In 1986 he chose Justice Antonin Scalia, in part because of his Italian origins.
Religion also played a role: during the second half of the 20th century, one position was always reserved for a Jewish magistrate and another for a Catholic, without the republicans finding anything wrong with it.
Their current criticism is “dishonest,” concludes Douglas Keith. “The message – he adds – may be aimed above all at his voters.”
For political science professor Michael Tesler, from the University of Irvine in California, they are due to the growing gap between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of racism in the United States.
The left is highly sensitive to the structural difficulties minorities face, and “GOP politics is increasingly animated by the belief that discrimination against whites is just as big a problem,” he writes on an analysis website. FiveThirtyEight statistic.
– “Hint” –
According to a YouGov/Yahoo poll, 87% of Joe Biden voters support the idea of appointing a black woman, while 57% of Donald Trumps oppose.
As the Democrats control the Senate, Joe Biden’s candidate should be endorsed despite the opposition of the Republicans, who have not forgotten the battle that involved confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by Donald Trump.
This time it also announces complicated.
On Thursday, Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla gave a glimpse of what lies ahead during the judicial commission’s review of a black judge’s candidacy for a federal court seat.
“Candidates of color were treated differently during our auditions with innuendos … or hostility regarding their qualifications or opinions,” he said.
Disassociating herself from the frontal criticism of her peers, the Republican senator for the state of Maine, Susan Collins, called on her party to be cautious, while regretting that priority is given to the ethnic origin of the person who is going to be elected.
“There are plenty of Black women qualified for the job and since Democrats have unfortunately been successful in portraying Republicans as anti-Black, this could make it harder to rule out a Black female lawyer,” she said.