[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 188 (Tuesday, October 26, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S7349]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS

  Mr. SCHUMER. Well, Mr. President, today is going to be a busy day on 
the floor of the Senate. Last week, I filed cloture on five of 
President Biden's nominees to serve as U.S. district judges, and today, 
we are going to begin working on these nominees.
  Even as Senate Democrats proceed on our agenda to help working and 
middle-class families and tackle the climate crisis, we will not relent 
on speedily filling the vacancies in our Federal judiciary with 
qualified, mainstream, and diverse jurists.
  Yesterday, we took a big step forward towards achieving that goal by 
confirming Myrna Perez to serve on the Second Circuit, one of the most 
important courts in the land, and the judges we will begin considering 
today continue that effort: more civil rights lawyers, more diverse 
candidates, more Federal defenders.
  To date, the Senate has now confirmed 13 nominees to serve on our 
district courts, with 20 overall lifetime appointments to the Federal 
bench. Many of these individuals are knocking down longstanding 
barriers to the halls of justice: the first Native American judge, the 
first Muslim-American district judge. And among all of the President's 
nominees to date, over half--over half--are women. We are proud of 
that.
  In a broader sense, President Biden's judicial nominees are also 
expanding and rewriting the rules of who merits consideration for the 
bench. Our Federal courts have long been presided over by former 
corporate lawyers and prosecutors and men. To be sure, many of these 
individuals have served admirably as judges, and I have been proud to 
support many of them over the years. But our Federal judges, more than 
ever--more than ever--are an essential component of our democracy, and 
they should better reflect the richness and diversity of our Nation--
not just demographic and cultural diversity, as important as that is, 
but professional diversity, too.
  We need more judges who know what it is like to defend people who 
normally can't afford attorneys. We need more judges who have fought 
for those who have faced discrimination in the workplace or because of 
the color of their skin. We need more judges who understand the 
economic hardship that so many people have and when they are forced to 
sign documents and other things that will hurt them economically. And 
we need judges who have been in the fight against these efforts--
stronger than they have ever been, unfortunately--to undermine our 
democracy.
  We need our Federal bench, in other words, to mirror our country as a 
whole. That is how we restore balance to the bench and strengthen 
people's trust in the Federal judiciary.
  So, as a Democratic majority, we are going to keep working this week 
to make sure these nominees are confirmed by this Chamber. I hope both 
sides can work in good faith to move the process along quickly and in a 
bipartisan fashion.

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