[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 92 (Tuesday, June 5, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2974-S2975]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Judicial Nominations

  Madam President, on another matter, this week the Senate is 
processing a number of judges. Some of these judges are 
noncontroversial. As I have said in the past, Democrats are committed 
to working with the majority to process these noncontroversial 
nominees, but there are several highly controversial nominees after 
this slate that bear attention.
  Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider the nomination 
of David Porter for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, despite the 
fact that Senator Casey has not returned a blue slip on Mr. Porter, who 
was nominated by the White House over the home State Senator's repeated 
objections. Mr. Porter, like so many of the nominees submitted by this 
President,

[[Page S2975]]

is far outside the judicial mainstream. Throughout his career, he has 
maintained affiliations with anti-LGBT organizations and expressed 
personal views that are contrary to the interests of American workers--
the very people President Trump defends: the American working people. 
He appoints judges who undo their rights, their opportunities, their 
ladders up. This is an example. Unfortunately, the majority is, once 
again, bucking a century-old tradition of respecting the opposition of 
home State Senators and moving forward with the consideration of yet 
another hard-right, anti-working class ideologue.
  On Thursday, the Judiciary Committee will consider the nomination of 
Ryan Bounds for a circuit court seat in Oregon, although neither 
Senator Wyden nor Senator Merkley, the two Senators from Oregon, have 
returned a blue slip on his nomination. Recently, we learned that Mr. 
Bounds had some rather offensive writings that he failed to disclose to 
the bipartisan Federal Judicial Selection Advisory Committee 
established by the two Oregon Senators to recommend potential nominees. 
Nonetheless, of course, the Republican majority, prodded on by the 
hard-right ideologues, is moving ahead with his nomination, over the 
tradition of the blue slips, over these recent revelations.
  Next week, the Senate will likely move to the pending nomination of 
Thomas Farr to the Eastern District of North Carolina, currently the 
longest vacancy in the United States. Part of the reason the State seat 
has remained open for so long is because Republican Senators blocked an 
Obama nominee, Jennifer May-Parker, for nearly 3 years. With Mr. Farr's 
nomination, we have another example of a vacancy that only exists 
because Democrats recognized and respected the blue-slip tradition--a 
tradition the Republicans have so unceremoniously discarded.
  Not only has Mr. Farr spent his long legal career working against the 
rights of unions and the rights of workers to organize, Farr has 
demonstrated himself to be a partisan.
  After challenging multiple congressional maps drawn by North 
Carolina's Democrats, Mr. Farr vigorously defended the most recent maps 
drawn by North Carolina's Republicans which, in fact, were overturned 
by the Supreme Court for discrimination. Mr. Farr also defended North 
Carolina's restrictive voter ID law passed by the Republicans, arguing 
that voter ID was a ``minor inconvenience'' for voters. Might I remind 
my colleagues, this is the same voter ID law that the Fourth Circuit 
Court of Appeals determined was passed with ``discriminatory intent'' 
and which ``targeted African Americans with almost surgical 
precision.'' Those are the Fourth Circuit's words, not mine. That is 
whom we are putting on the bench--people who support laws that 
blatantly discriminate against people of color. What are we coming to 
in this country? Where are our ideals when it comes to picking people 
for the bench? I am sure they can find conservative folks who don't 
have these kinds of egregious pieces of behavior.
  I have long argued that we should judge our judges on three metrics: 
excellence, moderation, and diversity. By dint of his legal career in 
defense of partisan Republican issues, Mr. Farr clearly lacks 
moderation and is even willing to defend the most strident attempts by 
North Carolina Republicans to game the congressional maps and make it 
more difficult for minorities to vote.
  I will strongly--strongly--oppose his nomination, and I urge my 
colleagues to do the same.