GOP shoots down Supreme Court boycott

epublicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are shooting down the idea of boycotting the panel’s vote on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. “There’s not going to be any boycott. There’s zero, not one iota chance that we would boycott,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a member of the committee. The idea of a committee boycott, which has floated around Capitol Hill for weeks, was spun up after 10 Republicans sent Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the committee chairman, a request that he suspend the hearing until they could get pre-sentencing reports tied to child pornography cases that Jackson presided over as a district judge.

Durbin immediately rejected the request, accusing Republicans of trying to go on a "fishing expedition." Asked about the possibility that Republicans would try to bottle up Jackson’s nomination in committee by skipping the vote — a tactic they’ve used in other committees — Durbin said he was talking with GOP senators but acknowledged that it was a “danger.” But several GOP senators are indicating they didn’t support a boycott of Jackson, who, if confirmed by the full Senate, would be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. The Judiciary Committee is split evenly, 11-11, meaning that to successfully boycott and try to bottle up Jackson’s nomination in committee, every Republican would have to skip the committee vote.