[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 114 (Monday, June 22, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3115-S3116]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Nomination of Cory T. Wilson

  Mr. President, finally, today, Leader McConnell will move forward 
with the nomination of Mr. Cory Wilson to serve as a lifetime 
appointment on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
  Mr. Wilson is an avowed opponent of the Nation's healthcare law, 
calling it illegitimate and perverse. Even worse, Wilson has a lengthy 
record of support

[[Page S3116]]

for policies that suppress voting rights in the State legislature, and 
in the Mississippi secretary of state's office, he pushed for 
restrictive voter ID laws. He criticized the Voting Rights Act and 
peddled unproven claims about voter fraud. In 2011, he said the NAACP's 
concerns about voter suppression in Mississippi were ``poppycock.''
  We are in the middle of a national conversation about police reform 
and systematic racial justice. Leader McConnell talks about it on the 
floor, and at the same time, he has the temerity to push a judge with 
demonstrated hostility to voting rights, a man who criticized the 
greatest advance in civil rights legislation in the past century, for a 
seat on the circuit court, in which people of color make up 55 percent 
of the population.
  The nomination is so appalling in general that, at this particular 
moment, several Democrats, myself included, have taken the unusual step 
of writing Leader McConnell today to request that he withdraw Mr. 
Wilson's nomination. I believe, if there is sincerity in the remarks 
here about healing racial wounds, then the withdrawal of Mr. Wilson 
will occur, plain and simple. It would be disgraceful for the Senate to 
approve a nominee who has long trivialized voter disenfranchisement and 
racial discrimination at the ballot box. Leader McConnell should halt 
any further work on Mr. Wilson and, instead, work with the 
administration and civil rights groups to find a nominee who will 
actually protect voting rights on the Fifth Circuit.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.