G.O.P. senators are pressing Judge Jackson on critical race theory and transgender rights, teeing up their attacks on Democrats as extremists.
As they begin questioning Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Tuesday, Republican senators are previewing many of the attack lines their party plans to use in the midterm congressional elections to portray Democrats as extremists. The televised hearings serve as a high-profile opportunity for Republicans to air cultural grievances that motivate their hard-right base, such as antiracism efforts and transgender rights, as they work to tarnish Judge Jackson in the eyes of the public and generate enthusiasm among voters outraged at her likely elevation to the court. In a release on Monday morning, just as the hearings were beginning, the Republican National Committee painted Judge Jackson as a radical left-wing activist and proselytizer of critical race theory. The term refers to a field of legal study that examines how racism can be embedded in laws and institutions, but has been appropriated by the right as a way to disparagingly describe any discussion of structural racism. The R.N.C. also blasted Judge Jackson for praising The 1619 Project, a series of essays in The New York Times Magazine that reframed the country’s history by putting the consequences of slavery at the center of the national narrative. The project, which was praised by some historians and expanded into a curriculum and best-selling book, has been broadly dismissed by Republicans as “brainwashing,” and G.
