[Page S3213]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Judicial Nominations

  Mr. President, and on judges, today Senate Republicans are holding 
their first hearing on judicial nominees under Donald Trump's second 
term. The last time Donald Trump was in the White House and Republicans 
held the Senate majority, this Chamber mutated into a conveyor belt for 
hard-right judges who sided with special interests and not the American 
people. Most were radically out of step with mainstream America; others 
were barely out of law school; and many were handpicked from the ranks 
of the Federalist Society not for their fairness but their ideological 
fealty to a hard-right philosophy that hurts average Americans every 
day.
  When it comes to judges, Donald Trump cares about one thing only: 
Will they bow before the King? Will they break precedent and overturn 
rule of law just to appease Donald Trump? That is what he wants.
  Senate Republicans must reject nominees like this. But, 
unfortunately, Senate Republicans are off to a dismal start. Among the 
five nominees testifying today is Joshua Divine of Missouri. Divine is 
a political operative with no judicial experience who has made a career 
of attacking everything from voting rights, to commonsense gun safety, 
to defending government overreach into people's private lives. He 
hasn't been out of law school for 10 years and spent less than half of 
that time practicing as an attorney.
  Senators were not sent here to rubberstamp Donald Trump loyalists and 
put Donald Trump loyalists in black robes. Our duty, our sacred duty, 
is to the Constitution and to provide advice and consent, not blind 
obedience. You would think this would be obvious, but Republicans spent 
their last majority packing our courts with people who had no business 
being judges. At least 10 nominees were rated ``not qualified'' by the 
American Bar Association, an unprecedented number. One nominee had 
never even tried a case.
  Of course, none of this--none of this--matters to Donald Trump. He is 
not in the business of creating an independent judiciary. He is not in 
the business of following what the Founding Fathers constructed as the 
third branch of government. He is cooking up a loyalist bench who will 
do what he wants instead of what the law says.
  Recent reports detail how Donald Trump has been fuming lately over 
judges who haven't been, in his eyes, loyal enough to him. This kind of 
thinking should frighten anyone who cares about judicial independence.
  Confirming judges is one of the most consequential things the Senate 
ever does. It shapes the future of our democracy. Getting it wrong has 
disastrous consequences. When hard-right judges take over, Roe v. Wade 
is overturned, voting rights are gutted, and now the Supreme Court has 
gone so far as to declare Donald Trump immune from prosecution, as if 
he wears a crown and sits as a King above the law.
  This is not democracy. This is not balance. This is not justice.
  So as Republicans begin marching more nominees through the Chamber, 
they face the choice: They can be the stewards of the Constitution and 
protect our democracy, or they can be foot soldiers in Trump's crusade 
to remake the judiciary into his MAGA loyalist bench.
  They must reject MAGA loyalists dressed up as jurists, because once 
the robes go on, the damage lasts for generations.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican whip.