News
PBS NewsHour – March 14, 2022 (11:10)
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, as Democrats aim to confirm the first Black woman justice and many Republicans search for a unified message to oppose her.
Democrats have touted President Joe Biden’s pick as a qualified, “historic” nominee, while Republicans have criticized her record on crime and the support she holds from left-wing groups.
“It’s going to be an historic moment on Monday, as Judge Jackson appears before the committee,”
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said on the Senate floor last week. “Her qualifications are exceptional. In every role she’s held, she has earned a reputation for thoughtfulness, evenhandedness and collegiality.”
PBS NewsHour, March 21, 2022
Ukrainian officials defiantly rejected a Russian demand that their forces in Mariupol lay down arms and raise white flags Monday in exchange for safe passage out of the besieged strategic port city.
Even as Russia intensified its attempt to pummel Mariupol into surrender, its offensive in other parts of Ukraine has floundered. Western governments and analysts say the broader conflict is grinding into a war of attrition, with Russia continuing to bombard cities.
In the capital, Kyiv, a shopping center in the densely populated Podil district near the city center was a smoldering, flattened ruin after being hit late Sunday by shelling that killed eight people, according to emergency officials. The force of the explosion shattered every window in a neighboring high-rise. Artillery boomed in the distance as firefighters picked their way through the destruction.
March 21, 2022 – 2:30 pm (ET)
CNN, March 21, 2022 – 2:00 pm (ET)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/21/politics/what-to-expect-ketanji-brown-jackson-confirmation-hearings/index.html
Associated Press, ,
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-biden-boris-johnson-andrzej-duda-duda-adb431bc8fe12682a65d0ece555b941d
CNN, – March 21, 2022
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has already appeared before the Senate three times in confirmation proceedings for prior roles. But several days of hearings for her Supreme Court nomination this week will be the highest-profile — and likely most contentious — grilling that Jackson has faced from lawmakers.
Democrats have signaled they will highlight the historic nature of her nomination — if confirmed, she’ll be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court — and her qualifications, which lawmakers of both parties have described as impressive.
To open the hearing, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin noted the historical importance of Jackson’s nomination. “Not a single justice has been a Black woman,” said Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. “You, Judge Jackson, can be the first.” But Senate Republicans say they still have questions about Jackson’s record, even as they’ve said they’ll keep proceedings substantive and dignified.
President Joe Biden has added a stop in Poland to his trip this week to Europe for urgent talks with NATO and European allies, as Russian forces concentrate their fire upon cities and trapped civilians in a nearly month-old invasion of Ukraine.
Biden will first travel to Brussels and then to Poland to meet with leaders there, press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Sunday night.
Poland is a crucial ally in the Ukraine crisis. It is hosting thousands of American troops and is taking in more people fleeing the war in Ukraine — more than 2 million — than any other nation in the midst of the largest European refugee crisis in decades.
Biden will head to Warsaw for a bilateral meeting with President Andrzej Duda scheduled for Saturday. Biden will discuss how the U.S., along with its allies and partners, is responding to “the humanitarian and human rights crisis that Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked war on Ukraine has created,” Psaki said.
Weeks after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Leonard Bernstein led a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony near the center of the no-longer divided city.
The American composer and conductor tweaked the German text of “Ode to Joy” in the final movement, replacing the original word “freude,” or joy, with “freiheit,” which means freedom. “Freedom, bright spark of divinity,” the chorus sang. “Thy magic power reunites all that custom has divided. All men become brothers, under the sway of thy gentle wings.”
When Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the US Congress from Kyiv Wednesday, wearing a green t-shirt and sitting next to the blue-and-yellow flag of his country, the speech was also an ode to freedom — and a plea for help to preserve it.
Reuters, – March 21, 2022
Democrats defended Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to become the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, while Republicans vowed to refrain from personal attacks but promised tough questions on her judicial record as a Senate panel on Monday opened her confirmation hearing.
During opening statements in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Democrats hailed the historic nature of her selection and praised her record as a federal appellate and district court judge. Republicans raised questions about her record and tried to link her to advocacy groups on the left, while signaling they would try to paint Jackson as “soft on crime.”
Biden, who has a candidate in 2020 pledged to appoint a Black woman to the court, last month nominated Jackson, 51, for a lifetime job on America’s top judicial body to succeed retiring liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, setting up a confirmation battle in the closely divided Senate.
If confirmed, she would be the 116th justice to serve on the high court.
March 21, 2022 – 5:00 pm (ET)
PBS NewsHour, – March 21, 2022 (05:06)
Ukraine refused again on Monday to surrender the industrial port city of Mariupol. The Russians have besieged the city and offered safe passage for hundreds of thousands of residents who have been trapped for weeks without food, water or power. Nick Schifrin reports on that siege, now the epicenter of this war’s suffering.
PBS NewsHour – March 21, 2022 (12:48)
In the opening remarks of her Supreme Court confirmation hearings on March 21, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson stressed that if confirmed, she would “work productively to support and defend the Constitution and this grand experiment of American democracy that has endured over these past 246 years.”
