Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson are set to begin Monday, and Republicans are already signaling their plan to attack her for providing legal representation to people imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay. In doing so, lawmakers are revealing a belief that certain people don’t deserve a quality legal defense — undermining a key pillar of the U.S. judicial system.

The GOP concedes that in her role as a Washington, D.C., public defender, Jackson did not choose her clients, but nonetheless accuses her of being too enthusiastic in their defense. “Jackson’s advocacy for these terrorists was ’zealous,’ going beyond just giving them a competent defense,” the Republican National Committee says on its website in a takedown of Jackson. Continue Reading