Eleanor Holmes Norton: “I very much appreciate the kind words of my friend from Pennsylvania, and I certainly appreciate his leadership of this…”

“I very much appreciate the kind words of my friend from Pennsylvania, and I certainly appreciate his leadership of this Special Order this evening. It is a subject of immense importance to the American people, none more so, Mr. Speaker, than people of color in the United States of America. So I would like to begin this Special Order by speaking about President Trump's district and circuit court nominees and then about his Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, who serves on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. That is the circuit of my own home district, the District of Columbia. Mr. Speaker, long before I came to the House, I had the distinct honor of arguing and winning a case before the United States Supreme Court. That case was a free speech case where I represented plaintiffs with whom I profoundly disagreed. As we look at the President's nominees, especially to the Supreme Court, one wonders today how these nominees would rule. Let's look first at President Trump's nominees so far to the circuit courts and the district court. This is an amazing, unprecedented figure for the 21st century. His nominees are 90.1 percent white, 2.3 percent African American. Now, one way to look at this is to look at another Republican President. So I said to my staff: Find the racial makeup of President Bush's nominees.…”