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How the Supreme Court confirmation process works
CNN
Joe Biden has nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, fulfilling the President's promise to pick a Black woman. Here's what to know about the confirmation process in the Senate.
What happens next?
There will be hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin. Activist groups and senators will pore over Jackson's record. Usually the candidate is a judge -- and Jackson sits on the federal appellate court in Washington, DC -- but there's no requirement in the Constitution that the person be a judge or even a lawyer. That's just the recent custom.
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Amid Democrats’ shock and bickering over how much to respond to President Donald Trump is a deeper question rippling through leaders across the Capitol and across the country: How much should they rely on the same institutional and procedural maneuvers they used during the first Trump term, and how much are they willing to wield their own wrecking balls?
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In less than a month in office the Trump administration has simultaneously dismantled foreign aid programs that support fragile democracies abroad and put on leave federal workers who protect US elections at home in a move that current and former officials say abandons decades of American commitments to democracy.
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Sen. Mitch McConnell was a generational force for the Republican Party — using procedural tactics and political will to stymie much of former President Barack Obama’s agenda, hand President Donald Trump key first-term political victories and deliver a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority. Now he’s the odd man out.