Thomas Farr Nomination

Floor Speech

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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, for decades powerful interests have been working to take over our courts and tilt the scales of justice in favor of billionaires and giant corporations. President Trump has been all in, nominating extreme and partisan judges to the Federal judiciary at lightning speed.

Trump's judges can easily fill a ``Who's Who'' of radical, rightwing, pro-corporate lawyers, but today I want to focus on the nomination of one of the worst of the worst: Thomas Farr, Trump's nominee to serve on the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

Thomas Farr has made his name as the go-to lawyer for the rich and powerful. When the rental car company Avis and its franchisee were sued for discriminating against African-American customers, Farr defended the franchisee. When Pfizer was sued for sex discrimination and creating a hostile work environment, Farr was there once again representing the company.

Today, just a few weeks after millions of Americans went to the polls to exercise the basic right at the core of our democracy, I want to focus on one of the most pressing reasons my colleagues should vote against the Farr nomination. His nomination will only deepen a plague of voter suppression aimed at stripping Americans--particularly people of color and marginalized groups--from exercising their lawful right to vote.

Voter suppression is front and center on Farr's resume, including his work for Jesse Helms, the former U.S. Senator and shameless bigot. Farr worked as Helms' campaign lawyer while Helms led some of the most blatantly racist political campaigns in modern history. For example, to decrease Black turnout, Helms' Senate campaign mailed postcards to 125,000 voters in predominantly Black precincts, falsely claiming they could be found ineligible to vote based on specific criteria involving their location and length of residence and warning that they could face criminal penalties if they voted.

That is just the beginning. In recent years, Farr represented the North Carolina Legislature in a case challenging a discriminatory voting bill that, according to one Federal appeals court, targeted African Americans with ``almost surgical precision.'' The legislature conducted research into voting practices that helped increase turnout among African-American voters and then wrote a bill that essentially eliminated each of those practices. Farr was there to defend the legislature when faith groups, civil rights groups, and the Obama administration's Justice Department challenged the discriminatory law. The law was ultimately found unconstitutional by the Federal appeals court and was not reinstated by the Supreme Court. Later, when North Carolina redrew its district lines in ways that discriminated against African Americans, Farr was there once again to defend the legislature.

Thomas Farr's nomination is particularly troubling given the blizzard of efforts in recent years aimed at stopping Americans from casting their votes. State after State has passed restrictive voter ID laws, purged voting rolls, limited opportunities to register, and erected other barriers to the democratic process.

We saw voter suppression rear its head during this year's midterm elections, perhaps most vividly in the State of Georgia. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams ran a grassroots campaign that sought to lift up Georgians from all backgrounds and to lead a record turnout vote among African Americans, LGBTQ individuals, and young people, but her opponent, Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp, not only refused to recuse himself from overseeing the same election that he happened to be running in, but he openly used the power of his office to suppress voters, especially in communities of color.

In North Dakota, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a voter ID law that required prospective voters to present an ID with an address, but not just any ID with an address, one that contained a residential street address. Now, this law disproportionately disadvantaged voters in Native American communities, which sometimes use post office addresses or other kinds of residential addresses, rather than residential street addresses.

What we saw in Georgia and North Dakota was egregious, but it was by no means new. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, since 2010, 24 States, most of which are under Republican control, have implemented measures to make it harder for American citizens to vote.

The Republican Party and President Trump are leading this effort with a bull's-eye on Americans who may not be inclined to vote for them. After the 2016 election, Trump falsely claimed that millions of people voted illegally, and months after taking office, he established a sham voter fraud commission. Trump's Justice Department has been in lockstep, reversing its position in a case challenging Texas' discriminatory voter ID laws, requesting that States turn over voter roll information in an apparent move to purge voter rolls, and filing a brief in an Ohio case arguing that it should be easier for States to purge voters from voter rolls.

Republicans know that every time they try to lock voters out of the Democratic process, they are going to get challenged in court, but they have a plan for that. They have been working at breakneck speed to stack Federal courts with a cadre of conservative Federal judges whose records show that they have no intention of protecting democracy. Why? Because the fight for our democracy is a fight over who government works for. Does it work for the rich and powerful or does it work for all of us?

Putting Thomas Farr on the bench is a way for politicians to wall off access to the democratic process so they can keep on working for billionaires and giant corporations. The Eastern District of North Carolina, the district in which Farr has been nominated to serve, is 27 percent African American. Yet the Federal court has not had an African- American judge--not one, not ever.

President Obama attempted to change that by nominating two impressive African-American women to serve as judges in that district, individuals dedicated to ensuring that every American had an equal opportunity to democracy, but Republican Senators refused to allow their nominations to move forward. Now Republicans want to hand that seat to a man who has made it his job to make it harder for North Carolinians to exercise the right to vote.

The literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses of the Jim Crow era may be of a bygone era, but today, Americans--and particularly Americans of color--face new, steep barriers to the ballot box. Farr has made it his job to ensure that those barriers remain in place.

If we truly believe that our court should defend equal justice under law, then every Member of this Chamber must vote no on Thomas Farr.

Sanders-Lee-Murphy Resolution

Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Sanders-Lee-Murphy resolution to stop the U.S. military's involvement in the Saudi Arabia- led bombing campaign in Yemen. I am a cosponsor of the resolution, and I thank the Senators for their strong leadership on this important issue.

The resolution would direct President Trump to stop our involvement in Saudi-led military operations in Yemen unless Congress provides specific authorization. It would allow our counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida and its affiliates to continue, but it would ensure that the United States is not giving the Saudis a blank check.

For over 3 years, Saudi-led coalition warplanes--refueled and armed with missiles by the United States--have been bombing Yemeni territory to counter Iranian-backed militias. Thousands of Yemeni civilians have been killed as a direct result of this dangerous proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but when I asked the general who leads our forces in the Middle East about it earlier this year at an Armed Services hearing, he said we weren't even keeping track of where those U.S.-armed and U.S.-refueled planes were going, and he couldn't tell me what they hit when they got there.

I am glad the Trump administration has finally come to its senses and halted its refueling support to the Saudi-led coalition, but this is too little, too late. It is too late to save as many as 85,000 Yemeni boys and girls under the age of 5 who have already starved to death, and it is too little to save the countless children and families who are currently starving as famine spreads throughout Yemen.

Instead of taking decisive action to address this humanitarian crisis, the United States continues to sell weapons and provide other support to the Saudi-led coalition. The administration continues to cover for Saudi actions, the most recent in a rambling, incoherent, shameful statement from the President himself.

I know that Iran's actions in Yemen are destabilizing. Iran is making the conflict worse, and that is unacceptable. But let's be clear. Saudi Arabia is the one receiving American weapons and support. The ugly truth is that the United States is complicit in the deaths and devastation in Yemen, and we need to hold our partners and our allies accountable. We need to end U.S. support for this war, and we need to end it now.

Remember who we are dealing with here. The CIA has reportedly confirmed the clear involvement of senior Saudi officials--up to and including Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman--in the horrifying brutal murder of Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi last month. That tells us everything we need to know about this so-called ally.

It is long overdue for Congress to take real action to help put a stop to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. I will vote against any additional arms sales to the Saudis while the war in Yemen continues.

I will stand with my colleagues in both parties as they press for accountability in Jamal Khashoggi's death.

I will vote for the Sanders-Lee-Murphy resolution today, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

The Yemeni people are suffering, but we can do something about it. It is time for Congress to grow a backbone and act.

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