From New York magazine:
On the surface, Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to the Supreme Court appeared to portend a hopeful future for liberals. She was the bright, youthful (as these things go) face of a more enlightened judiciary.
But appearances can be deceiving. A more accurate picture of the Court’s future could actually be discerned from two other stories that flanked it. The first was Ginni Thomas’s ravings to Donald Trump’s chief of staff — more specifically, the nonplussed response thereto from the Republican Establishment, which is perfectly satisfied to allow a prominent conservative activist to draw on her connection to an esteemed conservative jurist to promote QAnon-inflected conspiracy theories in the highest corridors of power.
The second was Mitch McConnell’s refusal to commit to hold any hearings for a potential Supreme Court vacancy should his party win a Senate majority when prodded by Jonathan Swan. McConnell made it clear that Jackson is likely the last Supreme Court justice Democrats will nominate for years, maybe even a decade or more.
Jackson’s confirmation was a brief, joyful respite. The future is a semi-permanent Republican judicial majority in which, contrary to the visual impression, Thomas’s worldview is much closer to the mainstream and Jackson’s is a relic of a rapidly fading past.
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