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Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson will begin on March 21, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced Wednesday, a timetable that could put President Biden’s first pick for the nation’s most influential court on track to be confirmed by mid-April. The announcement came as Jackson, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, began her gantlet of one-on-one meetings with key senators as she plunged into the labyrinthine confirmation process, which will include dozens of personal sit-downs and four days of public hearings. (Kim, 3/2)

Judge Jackson, 51, has been confirmed by the Senate three times before. The last time was in June, when the 53-to-44 vote confirming her to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit included three Republicans in support. Yet the votes of even those Republicans are not assured this time around. Once routine, strong bipartisan support for a Supreme Court nominee has become a thing of the past. Changing that dynamic will require Judge Jackson, the first Black woman ever nominated to the court, and Democrats to mount a persuasive case that she is highly qualified and merits a court seat even if Republicans see her as too liberal. (Hulse, 3/2)

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would hear four cases challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a 1978 law enacted to prevent states from breaking up American Indian families and removing American Indian children from their indigenous cultures. The four cases will likely be consolidated under the name Haaland v. Brackeen. But the most alarming of these four cases is Texas v. Haaland, because that case targets a provision of the Constitution that is the foundation of much of the federal government’s power. (Millhiser, 3/2)