Vox Sentences - Ketanji Brown Jackson, meet the Senate

The Senate begins Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic Supreme Court confirmation hearings; Ukraine refuses to surrender Mariupol to Russia.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Natasha Ishak.

First day of Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings kick off

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

• Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee began four days of Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to be considered for the Supreme Court. [NPR/Barbara Sprunt]

• In their opening remarks, nearly all the committee’s Republicans invoked Democrats’ “constant attacks” on Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 2018. Kavanaugh, unlike Jackson, was accused of sexual assault. [Business Insider/Sonam Sheth]

• Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), the sole Black senator on the Judiciary Committee, described Monday’s hearing as “a day of joy,” sharing a story of Jackson’s daughter, who wrote to former President Barack Obama at age 11, recommending her mother as a Supreme Court justice. [ABC News/Eric Fayeulle]

• If all Democrats hold to the party line, Jackson could be confirmed without GOP support. Still, they are hoping to secure bipartisan support for her appointment. [The Hill]

• Ahead of this week’s hearings, Jackson received numerous outside endorsements, including from the American Bar Association and the Fraternal Order of Police. [Axios/Shawna Chen]

Ukraine rejects Russian ultimatum to lay down arms in Mariupol

• Ukrainian officials refused an ultimatum by Russia to surrender Mariupol, its besieged port city, in exchange for safe passage corridors heading east and west out of the city. [Axios/Rebecca Falconer]

• Mariupol has endured heavy shelling for weeks since the invasion, including a Sunday bombing of one of the city’s art schools, where roughly 400 residents had been sheltering. [CNN/Andrew Carey, Olga Voitovych, and Yulia Kesaieva]

• The incident marks the second time in less than a week that Russian attacks targeted public buildings being used as shelter by residents, following the destruction of the city’s theater. [The Independent/Lamiat Sabin]

• Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of detaining thousands of city residents and deporting them to remote towns in Russia. Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko likened the alleged removals to the expulsion of Jews by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. [Los Angeles Times/Patrick J. McDonnell, Marcus Yam, and Kate Linthicum]

• A surrender of Mariupol would provide a strategic advantage for Russian forces as they attempt to consolidate control of southeastern Ukraine. [The Wall Street Journal/Matthew Luxmoore and Alan Cullison]

A China Eastern flight with 132 people on board crashed in the mountains of southern China, marking China’s worst air disaster in nearly a decade. [Associated Press/Ken Moritsugu]

• Afghanistan is ranked "unhappiest" of 149 countries in a UN survey. Results from the survey, conducted over three years, suggest the country’s quality of life was already at a low before the US military withdrawal that led to the Taliban’s takeover. [Deutsche Welle]

• The US formally recognized Myanmar’s military actions against the country’s Rohingya minority as a “genocide” and pledged $1 million in new funding for an independent examination of the attacks. [BBC]

• A Russian court has banned Facebook and Instagram under the country’s "extremism" law, but excluded WhatsApp, another platform under the Meta company, from its ruling. [NBC News/Kat Tenbarge]

"There can be no talk of any surrenders, laying down of arms. We have already informed the Russian side about this. I wrote: 'Instead of wasting time on 8 pages of letters, just open a corridor.'"

[Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk rejecting Russia’s ultimatum to surrender the besieged city of Mariupol in exchange for a safe passage corridor.]

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