WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday as she takes her first steps toward confirmation.

Democrats and the White House are pushing for a swift timeline, hoping they can vote on her confirmation to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer by mid-April.

Jackson first met with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York.

"I've read and studied the judge's career. I've heard so many good things from so many people, and now I look forward to meeting her in person and sort of fleshing out all the great things that we've read about," Schumer said Wednesday prior to his meeting with Jackson. "Seeing her in person is a great thing. I am just so pleased the president has nominated someone with such amazing qualification and breadth of experience."

She also met with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, who posed for photographs with the judge.

Jackson will continue to make the customary rounds of Senate visits Wednesday as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares for hearings. She'll also meet with the committee's chairman, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, its ranking member, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.

If confirmed, Jackson would be the court's first Black female justice. Confirmation hearings are expected to start in mid-March

President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night that Jackson was "one of our nation's top legal minds."

Days before the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the Senate will vote on filibuster rules changes to advance stalled voting legislation that Democrats say is needed to protect democracy.

In a letter Monday to colleagues, Schumer, D-N.Y., said the Senate “must evolve” and will “debate and consider” the rules changes by Jan. 17, on or before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as the Democrats seek to overcome Republican opposition to their elections law package.

“Let me be clear: January 6th was a symptom of a broader illness — an effort to delegitimize our election process," Schumer wrote, “and the Senate must advance systemic democracy reforms to repair our republic or else the events of that day will not be an aberration — they will be the new norm.”

The election and voting rights package has been stalled in the evenly-split 50-50 Senate, blocked by a Republican-led filibuster and leaving Democrats unable to mount the 60-vote threshold needed to advance it toward passage.

Democrats have been unable to agree among themselves over potential changes to the Senate rules to reduce the 60-vote hurdle, despite months of private negotiations.

Two holdout Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have tried to warn their party off changes to the Senate rules, arguing that if and when Republicans take majority control of the chamber, they could use the lower voting threshold to advance bills Democrats oppose.

President Joe Biden has waded cautiously into the debate — a former senator who largely stands by existing rules but is also under enormous political pressure to break the logjam on the voting legislation.

How the Senate rules would be changed remains under discussion.

Voting rights advocates warn that Republican-led states are passing election legislation and trying to install elections officials loyal to the former president, Donald Trump, in ways that could subvert future elections.

Trump urged his followers last Jan. 6 to “fight like hell” for his presidency, and a mob stormed the Capitol trying to stop Congress from certifying the state election tallies for Biden. It was the worst domestic attack on the seat of government in U.S. history.

The U.S. House voted to approve a short-term funding bill by a vote of 254-175. The vote followed passage in the Senate.

The bill, which allows the government to remain open until early December, now heads to President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the stopgap spending legislation would also provide aid for those reeling from Hurricane Ida and other natural disasters, as well as funding to support Afghanistan evacuees from the 20-year war between the U.S. and the Taliban.

While Congress moved to avert one crisis, it’s putting off another.

Democrats were forced to remove a suspension of the federal government's borrowing limit from the bill at the insistence of Republicans.

The top priority for lawmakers at the moment is keeping the government funded to avoid a shutdown. But Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns that if the debt limit isn't raised by Oct. 18, the country would likely face a financial crisis and economic recession.

"At that point, we expect Treasury would be left with very limited resources that would be depleted quickly. It is uncertain whether we could continue to meet all the nation's commitments after that date," Yellen wrote in a letter to lawmakers earlier this week.

Yellen warned that waiting until the last minute to address the debt ceiling can cause harm to business and consumer confidence, raise borrowing costs for taxpayers, and negatively impact the credit rating of the U.S. for years to come.

"Failure to act promptly could also result in substantial disruptions to financial markets, as heightened uncertainty can exacerbate volatility and erode investor confidence," she wrote.

Meanwhile, Democrats are struggling to find a way to pass President Joe Biden's proposed $3.5 trillion budget plan that would fund social programs like universal pre-K and other programs focused on working families — a plan that faces roadblocks from some moderate Democrats.

In order to get the bill passed, Biden will need the support of nearly all 50 Democratic senators due to the current 50-50 split in the Senate.

At a press conference Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a positive outlook on negotiations, saying that they are in a "good place" and that she does not plan to delay a vote on the package.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is likely to become the Senate majority leader following a pair of Democratic pickups last week in the Georgia runoff elections, said last week providing Americans with additional stimulus funds will be his first priority.

The Senate’s majority leader sets the agenda for the chamber. When Democrats along with President Donald Trump called on stimulus checks to grow from $600 to $2,000 per person late last month, current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked the bill from getting a vote despite a majority of senators indicating they would support the proposal.

Additional stimulus also has the support of members of the House, who already voted in favor of increasing the last round of stimulus checks to $2,000, and President-elect Joe Biden.

“One of the first things that I want to do when our new senators are seated is deliver the $2,000 checks to the American families,” Schumer said last Wednesday morning.

But things changed quickly after Schumer’s speech. Following last Wednesday's riot at the Capitol, Democrats have found a new goal: Impeaching Trump.

While the House is expected to move swiftly on impeaching Trump on Wednesday, the US Senate is not set to reconvene until next week. On Tuesday, Schumer requested McConnell to call senators back to Washington to hold an immediate trial of Trump. Democrats say that Trump’s comments last Wednesday incited a riot at the US Capitol. Five people died in last week’s riot.

“I've asked him to call the Senate back. All he needs is my agreement. I'm still minority leader, and his agreement, he's majority leader. And we could come back ASAP and vote to convict Donald Trump and get him out of office now, before any further damage is done,” Schumer said.

Schumer and Democrats are hoping to have a trial concluded by the time Biden takes office on Jan. 20, but without McConnell’s consent, that proposition is practically impossible.

Having a trial drag into the start of Biden’s administration could hamper Biden’s ability to get approval for additional stimulus. Biden acknowledged that an impeachment trial after he takes the oath of office could slow down his push for additional stimulus.

"Can we go half day on dealing with the impeachment and half day getting my people nominated and confirmed in the Senate, as well as moving on the package?" Biden said “That's my hope and expectation."

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A group of three Democratic senators, including the majority leader, introduced draft legislation Wednesday that would decriminalize marijuana on the federal level.

Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Ron Ryden (D-Ore.) held a press conference to present the draft bill.

Joining @SenSchumer & @RonWyden to announce our legislative draft that will:
Legalize marijuana
Expunge marijuana arrest records
Reinvest in communities most harmed by the drug war
It’s past time we take steps to fix decades of failed drug policy. https://t.co/SyrwUy9Liq

— Sen. Cory Booker (@SenBooker) July 14, 2021

“We are all joining together to release draft legislation to end the federal prohibition on cannabis. This is monumental because at long last, we are taking steps in the Senate to right the wrongs of the failed war on drugs,” said Schumer.

The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act would remove marijuana from the federal list of controlled substances, expunge nonviolent federal cannabis-related criminal records, and start regulating and taxing the drug.

“We also very much believe in the expungement of records because of the historical overcriminalization,” said Schumer.

Schumer said people shouldn’t have to live with criminal records for the rest of their lives if they are caught with a small amount of marijuana in their possession.

“Expunge those records. Let these people become productive citizens without that criminal record, that severe criminal record hanging over their heads,” said Schumer.

Booker said the bill would also seek to reinvest in the communities that have been the most harmed by the "War on Drugs."

The next step in the effort to get the bill passed is getting further input from stakeholder groups, according to Schumer.

Booker said at the briefing that this is the first time in history that the majority leader of the U.S. Senate is leading the call to end prohibition of marijuana. He said it was also noteworthy that Ryden, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was joining them.

While taking questions from the press, Schumer admitted that he doesn’t currently have the votes needed to pass the bill, but a “large majority” of his Democratic caucus supports it. He said he’ll show them the draft legislation and negotiate.

The legalization of cannabis remains popular in the U.S. A Pew Research poll released in April found 91% of American adults say either that marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use, or that it should be legal for medical use only. Fewer than 8% said it shouldn’t be legal for use by adults.