Jackson tears up as Booker addresses her historic nomination

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson showed the emotional toll of two days of intense questioning when she wiped away tears late Wednesday afternoon as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) broke some of the tension in the room by declaring how grateful he feels for her nomination to the Supreme Court. 

Booker pushed back hard against Republican colleagues on the committee who relentlessly challenged her sentencing of several child pornography offenders while she served as a district judge and accused her of letting child predators off the hook.  

“This is a new low,” Booker exclaimed, asking why Republicans didn’t raise any of the same issues when she was confirmed with bipartisan support to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last year.    

He called the allegations “meritless to the point of demagoguery,” quoting from the conservative National Review magazine. Instead, Booker praised her a mainstream judge.   

“The way you have dealt with some of these things, that’s why you are a judge and I am a politician. You have sat with grit and grace and have shown us just an extraordinary demeanor,” he said, warning that Republican attacks focused on just a few criminal cases are setting a “dangerous precedent.”   

He noted that he had received letters from leaders of victims’ rights groups and survivors of assault supporting her nomination.  

“There is absurdity to this,” he argued. “It is almost comical if it was not so dangerous.”  

Booker noted he was only the fourth Black person ever popularly elected to the Senate and recalled how when he first came to serve, he noticed how Black workers made up a much larger percentage of the Capitol’s population at nighttime, when janitors and other staff take care of the hallways and office rooms.   

“At night when people are in line to come in and clean this place, the percentage of minorities shift a lot,” he said.  

He remembered one Black worker crying and telling him “it’s so good to see you here” in the almost all-White Senate.  

Booker said he felt “in his joy” talking about Jackson’s nomination.  

“I want to tell you when I look at you this is why I get emotional,” Booker told Jackson, his voice quavering with emotion. “You’re so much more than your race and gender. You’re a Christian, you’re a mom. Your intellect.   

“For me, I’m sorry, it’s hard for me … to look at you and not see my mom, not to see my cousins,” he said.  

He said many people of color are feeling joy over her historic nomination. 

“You have earned this spot, you are worthy. You are a great American,” he said.  

As Booker’s speech reached its crescendo, tears started rolling down Jackson’s cheeks, which she dabbed with a tissue.  

He exhorted her to keep up her stamina as she had only five more senators’ questions to sit through. At this point she exhaled and wiped her face.  

When Booker told the nominee, “God has got you,” murmurs of assent could be heard from the audience, which included members of the Congressional Black Caucus.  

It was one of the most powerful moments of the three days of often tense hearings. 

When Durbin called a for a ten-minute recess after Booker finished speaking, former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who has helped shepherd Jackson’s nomination on the Hill, walked up to the New Jersey senator and hugged him.  

Jordain Carney contributed.  

This story was updated at 7:04 p.m.