[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 140 (Tuesday, September 10, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Page S5903]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Judicial Nominations

  Mr. President, now on another matter, as we reconvene this week, the 
Democratic leader announced the Senate would, in his words, ``continue 
confirming the Biden-Harris administration's well-qualified judges and 
nominees.'' Nearly all the way through the administration's term, our 
colleagues would be right to wonder: What does he mean by ``well-
qualified''?
  The Biden-Harris administration described Julie Su as well qualified 
to serve as Secretary of Labor after presiding over $30 billion in 
unemployment fraud in her home State of California.
  Undoubtedly, the White House also sold Rachel Rollins as well 
qualified to serve as U.S. attorney in her home State of Massachusetts, 
a position from which she resigned last year after she was caught 
attempting to influence an election and lying about it to 
investigators.
  So it may be worth taking the term ``well-qualified'' with a grain of 
salt--even more so when you consider who is in this administration's 
pipeline of upcoming nominees.
  There are, of course, the ones about which the Senate has learned 
alarming and disqualifying details since we began our consideration, 
like Adeel Mangi, whose associations with terrorist apologists and 
advocates for cop killers seem only to have grown as the Judiciary 
Committee questioned him under oath; or Sparkle Sooknanan, who couldn't 
seem to give our colleagues on the committee a straight answer about 
the nature of her involvement in advocacy for hedge funds' right to 
collect on Puerto Rican debts; or Embry Kidd, who misled the committee 
about his record of letting sex offenders off easily.
  There is the one so staggeringly unfit for life tenure on the Federal 
bench that the Judiciary Committee rejected her nomination itself: 
Sarah Netburn, whose political activism from the bench and failure to 
render timely decisions on the compensation claims of grieving 9/11 
families cast doubt on both her ethics and her professional competence.
  And there are the ones who, without a heavy dose of nepotism, 
wouldn't have seen the inside of a Senate hearing room--from Kevin Ritz 
to Karla Campbell to Julia Lipez.
  So the Democratic leader would have to forgive some of us for not 
suspending our disbelief. I can assure our colleagues that Senate 
Republicans are no more inclined today than we were in July to 
rubberstamp radicals for the Federal bench.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority whip.