During her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has, as the New York Times put it, “weathered escalating Republican attacks on her record,” over multiple days of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
She’s been asked by Sen. Ted Cruz about critical race theory through the dramatic brandishing of children’s books. She’s been asked by Sen. Lindsey Graham about her religion “on a scale of 1–10.” And on Tuesday, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who has already misrepresented Jackson’s stance on abortion rights among other things, asked the nominee, to “provide a definition for the word ‘woman,” really in order to push anti-trans talking points.
On Saturday Night Live segment “Weekend Update,” Cecily Strong played Sen. Blackburn in a skit discussing her fellow Republicans questions to Judge Jackson, and Strong’s in-character responses are exactly the kind of baseless, misleading things Blackburn has been going in on during the hearings. Strong ends the whole thing with a face-melter that’s a joke but…remember, people really think (and legislate) like this.
“If you don’t know what a woman is, how the hell you gonna take her rights away? Can I get an amen?”
Ugh. Fuck.