Biden’s plan to nominate a Black woman also muddies the waters for any Republicans thinking of putting up a fight. The president’s poll numbers have cratered among pretty much all Americans, including Black Americans. A recent NBC News poll shows his approval rating among Black adults has fallen to 64 percent, down from 83 percent nine months ago. The GOP made slight inroads among Black voters while Donald Trump was president, and they hope to continue to grow Black voter support in the 2022 midterms and in 2024. Vociferously opposing the first Black woman to ever be nominated to the court “just wouldn’t be a good look, assuming she’s qualified,” a GOP staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee told Newsweek on condition of anonymity.

“This is not a fight they want to have,” echoed conservative legal scholar Adam White, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

In fact, one of the presumed front runners for the nomination, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who Biden appointed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last year, is almost assured of getting at least a few GOP votes if she gets the nod. Three GOP Senators–Graham, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski–all voted for her when Biden put her up for the court of appeals in 2021. She hasn’t written a single decision for the court in the last year, so there is almost no reason for the three GOP senators to have changed their opinions of her now.