(WASHINGTON) — Supreme Court confirmation battles are typically remembered for a few searing or pithy exchanges — or, just as likely, not at all.

The memories of and lessons drawn from Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s successful nomination, though, are likely to be as divided as the political climate that produced them. That means partisan takeaways that confirm particular worldviews of 2022 — and, just maybe, a different path that points toward a less overheated political climate.

Jackson’s nomination elicited soaring pride from many Democrats, an emotional reaction driven by her unique life story, deep qualifications, and, with Thursday’s 53-47 Senate vote, her place in history. The Supreme Court will now have its first Black woman justice, and Jackson will serve on the first-ever high court where white men constitute a minority of the membership.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., quoted a famous Maya Angelou poem in celebrating Jackson’s committee vote on Monday: “You may try to write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies. You may trod me down in the very dirt. But still, like dust, I rise.”

It’s fair to say that most Senate Republicans saw the moment differently. For them, Jackson’s nomination was a chance to prosecute Democratic policies and settle scores from past nomination fights — with sometimes strange detours into matters including sentencing for child porn offenses, defining what a woman is and determining whether babies are racist.

Speaking on the Senate floor this week, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., drew an explosive historical through-line connecting the late Justice Robert Jackson to the woman who will now be the newest Justice Jackson, referencing her work as a federal public defender on behalf of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay.

“The last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis. This Judge Jackson might have gone there to defend them,” Cotton said.

President Joe Biden’s decision to name a Black woman to the court meant that it was perhaps inevitable that the confirmation battle would showcase racial tensions as well as political opportunism.

With Democrats controlling 50 Senate votes as well as the vice-presidential ​tiebreaker, there was little doubt from the start that Jackson would be confirmed. But three Republican senators wound up breaking with their party and voting for her — not a huge number, yet a significant marker for who they are and where they want to go from here.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, break fairly regularly with their party on judicial appointments. Both support abortion rights and had voted to confirm Jackson less than a year ago to her most recent federal judgeship, and both said they felt that Jackson’s qualifications merited her confirmation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., joined them in voting for Jackson last year for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. He made clear in his questioning last month, though, that she would be held to account, in part, for how Democrats handled previous Supreme Court confirmations. In explaining his “no” vote now, he blamed what he called her “judicial activism” as well as sentencing in child pornography cases that were part of the public record before last year.

The biggest surprise came from Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who did the opposite of Graham in voting for Jackson on Thursday after voting against her last year. Romney said he dug ​into her record and met with her to help establish in his mind that she is “within the mainstream” and therefore worthy of confirmation.

Like Collins and Murkowski, Romney expressed concern about what it means to have Supreme Court justices confirmed strictly along party lines.

Romney offered a characteristically understated indictment of his colleagues in explaining his vote to reporters: “Perhaps we are going to have to reconsider the process that we are going to pursue in the future.”

Romney was the most recent Republican nominee for president before former President Donald Trump, though that description significantly overstates his sway in the modern GOP. It’s also worth noting that Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees got a total of five Democratic votes, picking up four for Justice Neil Gorsuch, one for Justice Brett Kavanaugh and then zero for Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Modern court confirmation battles combine some of the worst grievances and grudges accumulated over decades with some of the worst new tactics of demonization. Another lasting image of Jackson’s confirmation might be the shot of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, checking his Twitter mentions moments after an aggressive round of questions directed at his former Harvard Law School classmate.

In another slice of choose-your-own-reality politics, Jackson’s ascension to the high court may change nothing in terms of the Supreme Court’s ideology, given that she is replacing Justice Stephen Breyer, whom she once clerked for and remains close with. At the same time, it may change everything when it comes to representation on the court.

Similarly, the process that got her to the Supreme Court speaks volumes about the state of modern politics without changing very much at all. As with so much in 2022, you can watch the same events play out and come away with starkly divergent views of why it matters.

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(BIRMINGHAM, Ala.) — The Alabama legislature has passed two bills focusing on transgender youth: SB 184, which would ban gender-affirming care, and HB 322, which would ban trans students from using bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity. HB 322 also limits LGBTQ content in classrooms due to a last-minute amendment.

SB 184, the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, states that anyone who provides gender-affirming care — including puberty blockers, hormone therapy or physical gender-affirming surgeries — to anyone under 18 could be convicted of a felony and face up to 10 years in prison and a $15,000 fine.

Several Alabama physicians has said the legislation is riddled with misinformation about how gender-affirming care actually affects children.

“When lawmakers attempt to practice medicine with a life without a license, they realize quickly that there was a lot more they didn’t understand than what they thought they did,” Morissa Ladinsky, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, previously told ABC News.

For instance, the bill would ban minors from receiving gender-affirming “surgical procedures,” but in Alabama, such surgeries aren’t allowed until a patient reaches the age of legal majority for medical decisions, which is 19.

The legislation also makes the claim that puberty blockers can cause infertility or other health risks. According to Ladinsky, these potential side effects only present real risks after puberty and are not a risk to youth taking puberty blockers.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Shay Shelnutt, has called gender-affirming health care “child abuse.”

“We don’t want parents to be abusing their children. We don’t want to make that an option, because that’s what it is; it’s child abuse. This is just to protect children,” Shelnutt said Feb. 23 on the state Senate floor.

Courtney Roark, the Alabama policy & movement building director for the youth-led reproductive rights nonprofit URGE, slammed the bill’s passage as an attack on bodily autonomy for trans youth and their families.

“In yet another attack on our bodies, our autonomy, and our desire to live happy and healthy lives, Alabama politicians have passed and signed into law a bill that would criminalize doctors, principals, teachers, school counselors and nurses for providing gender-affirming care and support to trans and non-binary youth,” Roark said. “Trans and non-binary youth in our state and across the country already face extraordinary barriers to accessing the liberated and joyous lives they deserve.”

HB 322 would require students in public K-12 schools to only use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their assigned sex at birth.

Alabama state Rep. Scott Stadthagen, the sponsor of the bill, said the bill does not target transgender students.

“Almost every school district in this state is dealing with this issue with opposite genders wanting to use opposite bathrooms,” Stadthagen has said in debate. “I find this to be a safety issue. It is for protection of our students.”

An amendment to this bill would also prohibit classroom instruction or discussion on sexual orientation or gender identity for students in kindergarten through the fifth grade in public K-12 schools. The language mirrors the controversial so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bills popping up across the country.

LGBTQ suicide awareness group The Trevor Project condemned the passage of such bills.

“On likely the last day of Alabama’s legislative session, lawmakers have added last-minute votes to push the most extreme anti-transgender agenda we’ve seen to date — all within a matter of hours,” said Sam Ames, director of advocacy and government affairs for The Trevor Project.

“These policies are not only cruel and unnecessary, they are unpopular among a majority of Americans,” they continued. “Criminalizing doctors, isolating trans youth from their support systems and stigmatizing conversations around LGBTQ identity will only fuel more bullying, anxiety and suicide risk among these youth.”

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(WASHINGTON) — With masks no longer required and mitigation measures seen by some as a thing of the past, a coronavirus resurgence is spreading among the tight circles of the Washington elite.

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the latest high-profile Washington dignitary to test positive for COVID-19.

Pelosi, 82, is currently asymptomatic, according to a spokesperson for her office.

“The Speaker is fully vaccinated and boosted, and is thankful for the robust protection the vaccine has provided,” the spokesperson said Thursday. She said Pelosi received her second booster shot last month.

Pelosi’s positive test comes amid a flurry of other positive cases among individuals who attended the elite Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington on Saturday.

As of midday Thursday, at least 32 guests at Saturday’s dinner have tested positive for COVID-19, Tom DeFrank, the president of the Gridiron Club, told ABC News.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, and Jamal Simmons, the communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris, were among the guests at the dinner who announced this week that they have tested positive.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, one of two Republican lawmakers to attend the dinner, also announced late Thursday she tested positive.

“Senator Collins has tested positive for COVID-19 and is currently experiencing mild symptoms. The Senator will isolate and work remotely in accordance with CDC guidelines,” a statement from her office said.

Although some attendees were wearing face coverings, most guests were not wearing masks, DeFrank said.

In recent weeks, a growing number of positive COVID-19 infections have also affected members of President Joe Biden’s inner circle, with the White House acknowledging many close calls following meetings or events with individuals who subsequently tested positive.

Pelosi attended an event at the White House on Tuesday where she interacted with former President Barack Obama, who tested positive last month, as well as Biden. She also attended an event at the White House Wednesday where she again interacted with Biden. She was maskless at both events, as were other attendees.

Asked about Biden’s contact with Pelosi, White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday said Biden tested negative on Wednesday night and insisted Biden wasn’t a CDC “close contact” because they weren’t within six feet for 15 minutes.

Among those close to Biden who have tested positive is his sister, Valerie Biden Owen, who also attended the dinner Saturday. She is experiencing mild symptoms, her publisher said in a statement on Thursday.

Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., who attended the Tuesday event with Biden and Harris, announced she tested positive Thursday and was experiencing mild symptoms.

Psaki, who recently tested positive for a second time, told reporters on Wednesday that the White House continues to take “stringent” and “strict” protocols to protect the president from potential infection.

“We take additional measures that go beyond what the C.D.C. protocols and requirements are to ensure that we are doing everything we can to keep the principals safe, the president, the vice president and others in the building,” Psaki said.

When asked by ABC News whether the White House plans to test the president daily in the coming weeks, given the uptick in COVID-19 cases seen across Washington, Psaki said that such measures have “not deemed to be necessary at this point.”

The vice president also had brushes with the virus in recent weeks. In addition to Simmons testing positive this week, her husband Doug Emhoff contracted the virus in mid-March.

Harris will follow guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends that individuals who are up to date on their vaccinations get tested at least five days after interacting with someone with COVID-19, according to her office. As no quarantine is needed, she will continue with her public schedule.

Separately, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser joined the growing list of those infected with COVID-19, tweeting on Thursday morning that she had tested positive for the virus.

The mayor said she is experiencing “allergy-like symptoms.”

The District of Columbia in February officially ended its district-wide mask mandate. The White House and the U.S. Capitol quickly followed suit to make face coverings optional.

The district is currently at a “low” community level for COVID-19, per CDC standards.

ABC News’ Molly Nagle, Justin Gomez, and Mariam Khan contributed to this report.

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