[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 185 (Monday, November 26, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7075-S7076]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Nomination of Thomas Farr

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first let me welcome everybody back from 
Thanksgiving, which I hope was a joyous one for everyone here today.
  On a subject not so joyous, the majority leader has indicated that 
the Senate will move to the pending nomination of Thomas Farr to the 
Eastern District of North Carolina. I have been in the Senate long 
enough to see a whole bunch of questionable nominees, frankly, from 
both parties, but Thomas Farr is unquestionably one of the worst. It is 
hard to believe President Trump nominated him. It is even harder to 
believe Senate Republicans are considering him again.
  This is a man who stands for disenfranchisement of voters, 
particularly minority voters. That is what he stands for. You can try 
to parse it any way you want, but that is what he has done. That is not 
America.
  In addition, he has spent his long legal career working against the 
rights of unions, but he has demonstrated to be a dyed-in-the-wool 
partisan with particular hostility to voting rights. We all know North 
Carolina has done more to hurt voting rights than just about any other 
State. That is an ignominious title for a State that is trying to be 
more progressive and forward-looking. We all know that.
  We also know Justice Roberts will go down in history as one of those 
who worked to take away voting rights when he authored the Shelby 
decision and more or less stated that he didn't believe discrimination 
existed any longer so we wouldn't need section 5 of the Voting Rights 
Act. That allowed people like Mr. Farr and those in North Carolina to 
do a wholesale taking away of voting rights, particularly those of 
minorities.
  After challenging multiple congressional maps drawn by North 
Carolina's Democrats, Farr vigorously defended the congressional maps 
drawn by North Carolina's Republicans. Even this conservative Supreme 
Court, often so insensitive to the voting fairness and rights of 
minorities--the Supreme Court actually overturned this map for 
discrimination--not partisanship, discrimination.
  Farr defended North Carolina's restrictive voting laws. The law, 
passed by a very conservative Republican legislature, requested data on 
the use by race of a number of voting practices. After receiving the 
data, North Carolina Republicans made five changes to voting and 
registration, every one of which disproportionately hurt the voting 
ability of African Americans. Under the law, even citizens who showed 
government employee IDs, student IDs, or IDs used to receive public 
assistance were not allowed to vote.
  Here is what the Fourth Circuit said--again, not a liberal court 
circuit. It said: The law had ``discriminatory intent'' and ``targeted 
African Americans with almost surgical precision.'' Farr, as he 
defended this law, said it was a minor inconvenience for voters. This 
is despicable. That law is particularly designed to prevent African 
Americans from voting, and we are nominating such a man to the court of 
appeals, when he was chief cook and bottle washer for much of the time 
these laws came about. I don't care what your party is, and I don't 
care what your political ideology is. How can you elevate this man to 
the court?
  Remarkably, Mr. Farr was involved in another sordid affair regarding 
the voting rights of African Americans. In 1990, Farr was a lawyer for 
the reelection campaign of Jesse Helms, during which the Department of 
Justice alleged that 120,000 postcards had been sent overwhelmingly to 
Black voters, intending to intimidate them from voting. Isn't that 
amazing? That man is the man we are elevating.
  I believe the Republican Party is going to have huge trouble in the 
future and will shrug its shoulders or say: Oh, this is political 
correctness. No, it isn't. It is because they tolerate things just like 
this--not all but too many. Right now, we only have one person on the 
other side of the aisle who has said he will vote against Farr. I don't 
care what the marching orders are, they are wrong.
  Here, in response to a question from Ranking Member Feinstein, Farr 
denied that he had participated in any meetings in which the postcards 
were discussed before they were sent. However, the Deputy Chief of the 
Voting Section of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division 
said Farr's response was contrary to the facts. In effect, that DOJ 
person was saying Farr did participate. We don't know the exact 
circumstances of the mail, but at a minimum, it is disturbing that Farr 
was involved, often directly, in defending multiple attempts by North 
Carolina Republicans to disenfranchise African-American voters.
  As the Congressional Black Caucus said, ``Had the White House 
deliberately sought to identify an attorney in North Carolina with a 
more hostile record on African-American voting rights . . . than Thomas 
Farr, it could hardly have done so.'' It is well said.
  I don't care if you are a Republican; I don't care if you are a 
Democrat or something in between, we should not elevate a person to the 
Federal bench who has spent a good part of his career defending those 
who want to undermine the rights of Americans to vote.
  Let's look at the circumstances of this nomination. You know, Mitch 
McConnell brags as to how many seats he has filled. These seats were 
held

[[Page S7076]]

back because we respected the blue slips when we were in the majority, 
and there were a lot of empty seats. Well, this one is the longest 
running judicial vacancy in the United States.
  Why, you might ask, has the seat remained open for so long?
  Republican Senators blocked two Obama nominees, both of whom were 
African-American women. Let me say that again. Republican Senators from 
North Carolina--they may not have been, but they were in the circuit--
blocked two Obama nominees, both of whom were African-American women. 
Yet now we put this man in that place--all because Leader McConnell and 
Chairman Grassley changed the rules and eliminated the last bit of 
comity by eliminating the blue slip? Either of those women would have 
been the first African American ever--not just the first African 
American woman but the first African American ever--to serve in that 
judicial district, when the population of that district was 27 percent 
African American. Two women were knocked out by Republican Senators 
under the tradition of the blue slip--both African American--in a 
district that was 27 percent African American.
  They are not on the bench, and we are nominating this man who has 
stood steadfastly against the right of people--in this case, Black 
people--to vote. That is despicable. Considering Farr's record on 
voting rights--on the disenfranchisement of African-American voters, in 
particular--his nomination to the Eastern District vacancy is not just 
a dash of salt in the wound, it is the whole shaker.
  I plead with my Republican colleagues. After an election in which 
voting rights and voting suppression were major issues in States like 
Georgia and Florida and at a time when our President always says 
elections are fixed and that Americans should have faith in the 
wellspring of our democracy--the right to vote and to have votes 
counted and correctly tabulated in a fair way--what message does the 
Senate send if it approves Farr's nomination?
  This is our democracy. For the first time in the history of America, 
nasty creatures are gnawing at its roots. The tree could fall down. I 
hope it will not. It is a strong tree, but it could fall down, and it 
will be aided and abetted by those who put people like Mr. Farr on the 
bench. I vociferously oppose his nomination, and I urge my colleagues 
to do the same.