This is Melanie in Charlotte, the furry children and iron joying spring out on the new screened in porch, also known as an expensive caddo.

This podcast was recorded on...

5.57 pm on Tuesday, March 22nd.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will still be trying to herd the cats back into the house. Enjoy the show.

I love that.

It sounds like someone who just had worked on it. Still feeling it.

Hey there, it's the MPR Politics Podcast. Susan Davis, I cover Congress.

I'm Kelsey Snall, I also cover Congress.

And I'm Dominic Amatson, our Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

And today is the second day of Judge Katanji Brown-Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

But it was the first of two days in which she's fielding questions from senators.

Now, as we tape the podcast, the hearing is still going on. We're about nine hours into it.

But we've got a pretty good sense of the issues that senators are choosing to highlight and why.

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, he's the top Republican on the panel.

He focused a lot on her judicial philosophy.

Here's how Judge Jackson laid out how she views the law.

I am doing the work and have done the work for the past 10 years that judges do to rule impartially

and to stay within the boundaries of our proper judicial role.

And in one exchange, Judge Jackson's answer about how she interprets the Constitution sounded more like a conservative justice like the late Antonin Scalia.

Instead, the Supreme Court has made clear that when you're interpreting the Constitution, you're looking at the text, at the time of the founding.

And what the meaning was then as a constraint on my own authority.

Domenico, did that surprise you?

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