- President Biden gets a Supreme Court pick.

- The person I will nominate will be the first black woman ever nominated United States Supreme Court.

- Justice Steven Breyer announces his retirement and president Biden vows, his replacement will make history.

- I'm gonna give the President's nominee, whoever that might be, a fair look.

- Setting the stage for Senate debate ahead of the midterm.

Plus.

- We're acting with equal focus and force to bolster Ukraine's defenses and prepare a swift, united response, to further Russian aggression.

- Tensions over Russia and Ukraine intensify, next.

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Once again from Washington, moderator Yamiche Alcindor.

- Good evening, and welcome to Washington Week.

President Biden was busy this week with two major issues.

The Supreme Court and the possible invasion by Russia, of Ukraine.

Now on Thursday, for the first issue, Justice, Stephen Breyer announced the end of, that he would have retired at the end of the Supreme Court term.

That with Breyer leaving, the ideological balance of the court will not change, but this does give president Biden a chance to make history and energize the democratic base.

As a candidate, President Biden pledged to nominate a black woman to the bench.

The promise came with the strong urging of a key political ally of the president, South Carolina Democrat, Jim Clyburn.

- One of the real undercurrent floating throughout the black community was the fact that no black woman had ever been seriously considered for the United States Supreme Court.

- On Thursday, President Biden stood by his word.

- The person I will nominate will be someone of extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity and that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.

- Joining me now to discuss what comes next, Nancy Cordez, chief White House correspondent for CBS news.

Ayesha Rascoe, White House correspondent for NPR and Aryan De Vogue, Supreme Court reporter for CNN.

Thank you all of you for being here, Ariane of course, you're at the Supreme Court, I have to start with you.

Talk about what went in to Justice Breyer deciding to retire at this moment, and also talk a little bit about his legacy and what he leaves behind as he now is preparing to retire.

- Right, Justice Breyer is an optimist, he's a pragmatist, he's also a steadfast liberal.

If you look at his legacy, you've gotta look at his cases, what he cared about.

He cared a lot in recent years about the death penalty.

He thought that that should be revisited.

He thought it was being applied arbitrarily, he wanted the court to take a look at the constitutionality again, that'll be left on the table because liberals didn't join him on that effort.

He also wrote big opinions on abortion over the years, and this term, he was really unhappy when the Supreme Court let that Texas law that bans abortion before most women even know they're pregnant, to go into effect.

He was always a big supporter of the Affordable Care Act, and one of the cases that I remember the most, 'cause he read a dissent from the bench, it was when the court blocked an effort by some school districts to desegregate.

And he said that that was a betrayal of Brown V. Board of Education.

Now, of course there were some liberals who were pressuring him to step down.

They saw what happened to Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she died and her seat went to a conservative and some really wanted him to step down last term, but he had decided to stay.

And that's probably because he thought that he might be able to contribute to the conversation this term, but boy, when you saw what the court did with that Texas case, when they blocked President Biden's attempt to get more people vaccinated, he was really, firmly in dissent, but most of all his legacy, and he talked about this a lot this last year.

In fact, he always brought this up in speeches, is he cared a lot about the institution of the court.

He would say over and over again, that the justices aren't junior varsity politicians that they're divided by the ideological philosophies.

He saw that while a lot of progressives have been saying that they wanted to change the court, maybe change the composition, he wanted the court to stay the same, he cared about its institutional independence.

And more than anything else, he cared about civility.

His colleagues really like him.

Those are the big parts of his legacy.

- A big legacy that he will be leaving behind.

I wanna talk to you about, who are the leading contenders to replace him and talk specifically about the specific judge that Jim Clyburn is pushing for.

- Right, well, as you said, this isn't gonna change the balance of the court, it's gonna be six-three, but there is going to be a younger, maybe a more liberal candidate who takes his place.

On the top of, before we get to Clyburn's pick, on the top of the list, is of course Ketanji Brown Jackson.

She is 51 years old and she's important for a lot of reasons.

One, she's a former Breyer clerk, she has this glittering resume, but she was just confirmed for a lower court position.

That's important, especially if they're going to want to go quickly here.

Another one on the list, Leandra Krueger.

She sits on the California Supreme Court, She worked in the Obama administration in the DOJ, and you talk to anybody there and they think she's brilliant, she could go toe to toe with any conservative.

Now, to representative Clyburn, that's a different kind of name being put forward, because it happens every time the president has these allies, they want him to consider their choices.

And that's Michelle Childs, she's a South Carolina judge, she's actually right now up for appeals court seat.

She'll be interesting to watch.

And then two more people on the list.

I don't think either one of these will actually make it to a confirmation, but they're there for an important reason, and that's Sherilyn Ifill as well as Anita Earls.

These two women are giants in the area of civil rights, President Biden cares a lot about that, he's changed the type of nominees he's put on the lower courts and he wants these to be high on the list as well.

- And Nancy, I wanna come to you.

You've covered and I have to get this right, the last four Supreme Court justices, the last four nominations.

Talk a little bit about what the timeline might look like here, and even though Democrats have that 50-50 split, with the vice-president being able to vote and break the tie there, what could Republicans do to possibly try to slow this down?

- Well, there are a lot of things that they can do to slow it down in a 50-50 Senate.

And actually Yamiche, there are a lot of things that could happen to slow things down, even if Republicans don't do anything.

I mean, that's the problem when you've got an evenly split Senate like this, if just one democratic Senator is sick and can't vote, there are all kinds of things that could happen that would suddenly mean the Democrats don't have the votes they need, if all Republicans decide to vote, no.

And that's why you have a lot of Democrats right now saying, "Let's move fast."

On one hand, Justice Breyer has already said, he wants to stay till the end of this term, that's six months away.

You might say, well, they have time here to move slowly, to go very deliberately, but Democrats are concerned that anything could happen.

Just recently we got an example when one Senator got COVID, tested positive and a vote that they were hoping to have, ended up having to be delayed.

So there are Democrats who are urging the White House not to wait a month to name the president's pick.

They'd like to see a name come up even sooner than that and then they wanna move quickly, to go through the confirmation process, have this jurist come and meet with senators on Capitol Hill, hold confirmation hearings.

And right now they believe that they could even hold a final vote to confirm this nominee, even before Justice Breyer steps down at the end of the term.

They say that they've looked at other cases of where this has happened in lower courts, where someone could get confirmed, say in February, March, April, May and then be seated once Breyer retires in June.

- Well, that could be quick.

And as you said, even someone being seated before Breyer retires at the end of the Supreme Court term, obviously Democrats are motivated to do that.

I wanna talk about though, this pledge that the president made.

In the history of the Supreme Court, 115 justices have served on the bench, but only seven of them were women of color.

After the news broke, after Tuesday, there were people of color who were women, after the news broke, president Biden said he would keep his promise to nominate a black woman, a number of black women in response to that, they talked about what the significance of that would mean to them.

- Having a black woman represent the judiciary branch in the Supreme Court, would be a fortification of my faith in democracy's capacity to heal itself, even after all of these radical ruptures that we've been witnessing.

- It is hard to overstate just how important and powerful and inspiring a moment this is.

- Ayesha, I wanna come to you.

What are you hearing from civil rights leaders, but also from the white house, from black women, about what this moment means to them?

- Oh, well the historic nature of it is not lost on them.

And I think that's why it was so important, especially now when Biden has had a lot of issues as we know and as has often been talked about, with people feeling like he has not lived up to all of his promises, especially, particularly to the black community, when it comes to voting rights, when it comes to policing and other things of that nature.

This gives president Biden a chance to actually deliver and to say that this is a historic moment, you will have a black woman on the Supreme Court, the vice-president will likely preside over and be the tie-breaking vote.

She is a black woman of Black and Asian descent.

And so this will be historic.

This is something that will go down in the history books.

And look, there has been some criticism from some people who have talked about, oh, will this be an asterix by this person's name?

Because he has stated so clearly that this will be a black woman, but you know, I have to remind everyone, look, for many, many years, every person on the Supreme Court, was a white male.

Was that affirmative action?

Like there were years where you could not be anything but a white male and get on the Supreme Court.

And so, that context has to be there.

And in all these years to just now be getting a black woman, in some ways it is absolutely historic and amazing, but there's some sadness there.

- And Ayesha, the context that you bring, I think is so important.

Briefly, I wanna just also talk about the fact that Biden administration officials, they also talk about that he's already nominated a bunch of people to the federal judges and that they've been very diverse.

What are you hearing?

- Yeah, I mean, that is one of the arguments that they make.

When people bring up the fact that voting rights hasn't gotten done and these other things haven't gotten done, they point out the fact that they have appointed an historic number of people of color to the federal bench.

And that this is one of the ways that they are delivering on their promises for equity and for getting diversity and these are very important appointments as we see, over and over again, these are lifetime appointments that have a huge impact on the policies that are carried out by the government, because of the decisions that courts make.

- And Ariane, Ayesha's just talking about the huge impact that these nominees make, that these justices make.

Talk a bit about sort of the issues that are at hand for the Supreme Court.

You talked so eloquently and so smartly about Justice Breyer's background, but talk a bit about the modern day court and the future of the court, what they'll have in front of them.

- Right, that's why I think this whole issue of timing is so interesting, 'cause usually the process is two to three months that all changed with Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

The Republicans pushed that through in just over 30 days I think it was.

So now, as Nancy said, the Democrats wanna move quickly, but they don't wanna move too quickly because they don't wanna miss this moment.

And the reason that is, is because, A, this is so historic, the first African-American woman on the court, that's gonna reverberate obviously with young lawyers, young children, and keep in mind, Justice Kagan, Justice Sotomayor often talk about how it was to see Sandra Day O'Connor on the bench and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that means a lot.

But this is a moment for another reason too.

And that's because the Supreme Court right now, as we said, they're discussing whether or not to overturn Rovi Wade, they're discussing behind closed doors, whether to expand gun rights.

Next year, it's affirmative action.

All that is going to be playing out this spring at the same time that we have these confirmation hearings and that means the Democrats are going to be able to engage people that they may not usually be paying attention, they're going to see what happens at the Supreme Court and these heroes are going to be going on at the same time.

- Well thank you much Ariane for joining the show tonight and sharing your reporting.

I wanna now move on to the other of course, big issue of the weekend.

It is the escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

On Monday, the Pentagon announced at 8,500 American troops have been placed on high alert, for possible deployment to Eastern Europe.

And just tonight, president Biden said he would be moving troops to the area and quote "The near term."

The Pentagon also confirmed for the first time publicly, that Russia has enough troops on the border, to invade the entire country of Ukraine.

I wanna also talk about the fact that the president is continuing to warn Russia, that there will be dire consequences if they invade Ukraine.

- I've made it clear early on, to president Putin, that if he were to move into Ukraine, that there'd be severe consequences, including significant economic sanctions, as well as, I feel obliged to beef up our presence, NATO's presence on the Eastern front.

- But Republican Senator Lindsey Graham called for immediate action.

- What we're doing is not working.

The bottom line, Putin deserves to be sanctioned now.

We're talking way too much, we're doing way too little.

- But in an interview with Nancy Cordez that is here with us, democratic Senator Chris Coons, a close ally of the president, he also called for immediate action.

- We need to come together in a bipartisan way and pass a robust package of sanctions that may include some sanctions that would be imposed now.

- Now joining us again, as she did last Friday, is Vivian Salama, she's a national security reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

She is joining us from Ukraine, up early on her side of the world, Vivian, thanks so much for being here.

Tell us what's the latest that you're hearing about what the possible threat is, of some sort of imminent danger.

Is there imminent danger?

What are you hearing from your sources and national security officials?

- Well, Yamiche, it depends who you ask.

The U.S has been hammering the fact that the danger is imminent, that president Putin is moving closer to an invasion.

The Pentagon talks even about sort of the moving around of assets, to indicate that this was more than just a ploy or some sort of a bluff at which a lot of folks in Europe and here in Ukraine are suggesting, they're talking about moving medical units to the border and other things to suggest that they are gonna move fairly soon and so there was a phone call this week between presidents Biden and Ukrainian president Zelensky, where president Biden warned him of the fact that this really is a growing threat, but president Zelensky, who we just saw, sat down with a little while ago for a small press conference with foreign press, insisted that he knows his country better than anyone else and while he does believe that the threat is there, he does not think that it's anything new from what they've been experiencing with Russia, since the last time Russia invaded Ukraine about eight years ago.

And so they continue to downplay the threat, but not only that, they also are urging allies, especially the U.S to stop going out there publicly and sort of placing this fear in people of an imminent attack, because he said repeatedly in this press conference, it's going to have a negative impact on our economy here in Ukraine.

People are gonna start to rush the banks, they're gonna flee the country and they don't wanna see that.

And so the Ukrainian government urging NATO allies to say, yes, we need to work together, we need your help, but we also need you to keep calm and tone it down.

- And I wanna go to Nancy.

Nancy, you're hearing Vivian talk about the discrepancy between president's Zelensky and president Biden.

But I also wanna, I'm interested in the fact that president Biden, his thinking seems to have evolved a bit on this issue, as of course the dynamics have changed.

What's your reporting revealed here?

- Well, I think that the message that he and other U.S officials are trying to send, is aimed at a different audience than Zelensky.

So the president and U.S officials, first of all, are trying to sound the alarm around the world about the possibility of Russian aggression and they're trying to keep NATO together, keep their NATO allies on their side, on the side of strong punishments for Putin, if he does invade.

Zelensky on the other hand, as Vivian pointed out, he's trying to keep his population calm and he's trying to show his population that he's in charge.

And so naturally, U.S officials tell us his language is going to be very different.

He's going to argue that that an attack is in-imminent, that he's got everything under control, whereas U.S officials say they strongly disagree, they're very concerned that Putin could invade any day now, he's got even more troops surrounding Ukraine than he did a few weeks ago, they are now stationed on the border with Belarus in addition to the border with Russia, and they're very concerned and they're not going to heed Zelensky's pleas to back off of that argument.

They continue to say that they believe an attack could happen at any time.

- And Vivian, of course, Nancy was just talking about sort of Russian troops, but there are of course also American troops now on high alert.

What's your understanding of what it would take, for those American troops to be deployed and for this to be a sort of military issue?

- It's hard to say Yamiche, because the president, president Biden has repeatedly said that he does not wanna to see boots on the ground in Ukraine, and that is largely the consensus among most NATO allies, where they do believe that they have to reinforce European security, but whether or not they would rush to the aid of Ukraine in the event of an invasion by Russia in the form of military action, remains to be seen.

And these troops, by the way, part of the posturing that we've been seeing over the last few years with regard to Russia's complaints about NATO and NATO's complaints about Russia, where it's essentially what comes first, the chicken or the egg?

The Russians blame NATO for carrying out exercises and moving troops into Europe and that say that that's a direct provocation against Russia, and NATO says vice versa, that the Russians continue their aggression and so this is just ramping things up with the escalation that we've now seen along half of the Ukrainian border.

Now NATO allies are saying that they are going to have to ramp things up as well, and so what they're saying is, they're putting these troops on readiness, sort of any kind of state of emergency situation, where, if they need to move quickly, they will, whether they do or not, remains to be seen Yamiche though, and it really does not, it does not seem likely that anything short of an invasion of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, which most folks here believe is pretty far fetched, but with, as Nancy just mentioned, there's soldiers in Belarus about 120 kilometers from Kiev, that threat sort of went up a little bit and so the readiness of troops is really important, just in case.

- And Ayesha, what are the politics at play when you talk to White House officials and in particular, what's going through, president Biden's mind?

as he is thinking about sort of not giving into pressure or the pressure that he's facing to try to sanction Russia.

How does he sanction Russia without also provoking president Putin?

- Yeah, I think that's a part of the issue.

And I actually asked the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki about this very issue this week.

I asked about these calls that they do sanctions now and not wait.

She pointed out there have that there have been some individuals in Russia that have been sanctioned.

But what she said was that the threat of these massive sanctions, including some like export controls, where they would try to block certain exports, technology exports to Russia, that the threat of the sanctions they view as the major deterrents.

And so they feel like that at this point, that is enough.

Part of the issue is that if you do get into sanctions, you do get into this tit for tat, because experts say that Russia will respond.

They're not just gonna take major sanctions on the chin and not do anything about it.

They will respond.

And so there is a concern about a spiraling effect that they want to avoid.

It is interesting that the White House is still saying, and a secretary of defense Lloyd Austin said today, that conflict is not inevitable.

They're still trying to lean into diplomacy.

You have the German Chancellor coming to the White House next week, I'm sure this will be a major topic of discussion and they're trying to find a way out of this.

- Trying to find a way out of this.

Vivian, when you think about sort of what Ayesha is just talking about there, President Biden said, if Russia invaded Ukraine, it would change the world.

You also, of course are coming back here, I know you're heading back to the state side soon.

Talk a little bit about how this might change the world, but also insert a little bit of the politics here.

We have about 45 seconds left, but really, if you can talk about the politics, both domestically, but also the politics globally.

- Well, Yamiche, a ground war in Europe in 2022 is pretty unprecedented and that's what everybody is afraid of.

That we could be entering a new phase and wars now are not just conventional, they're not just boots, they're hybrid, they're cyber, there are a number of other things with technologies, and so that's the main concern.

But for president Biden, the political implications are much larger.

If president Putin succeeds and is able to invade Ukraine, the fear is that it opens the door to other actors, malign actors to continue their own campaigns, namely China in Taiwan, but also many others.

And so a lot of pressure on president Biden to be able to put a stop to this so that he can also send a message to the rest of the world, that this kind of action will not be tolerated.

- That is what you said, a lot of pressure on president Biden.

Thank you so much, Nancy, Ayesha, Vivian, I appreciate you coming on sharing all of your reporting.

Also, we of course, will be continuing our conversation on the Washington Week Extra, find it on our Facebook, YouTube and on our website.

Also on Monday, please watch the PBS News Hour, the show will be focusing on how climate change is changing the long tradition of outdoor ice skating.

Thank you again for joining me, I'm Yamiche Alcindor, Goodnight from Washington.

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