Raphael Warnock

Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and Dr. Bronaugh, congratulations on your historic nomination to be Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Children in Georgia and across America should be able to get to and from school each day without breathing polluted air.

President Biden has made greening our transportation infrastructure a top priority to help meet his clean energy goals.

I look forward to supporting your confirmation on the floor, and also having you and Secretary Vilsack come to Georgia to meet with farmers of color.

I am very pleased to have my Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act included in the American Rescue Plan, signed into law by President Biden.

This plant would keep Georgia on the cutting edge of a clean energy economy and create at least 2,600 clean energy jobs.

This would produce car batteries to help increase the number of electric vehicles, obviously reducing carbon emissions and fighting climate change.

I was so proud to partner with Senator Padilla to introduce the Clean Commute for Kids Act this week.

We have lost 90 percent of black farmers over the years, and that is a critical loss.

the smart thing to do for our environment is also good public policy in terms of workers and the economy.

I am grateful to know that you will ensure that the voices of farmers of color are heard at the highest levels of our U.S. Department of Agriculture.

They’re attacking our democracy based on a big lie. And the goal is power but it’s rooted in an old mythology that says, as you put it, that somehow, if you give other people, those people access, that somehow that takes something away…

So airlines are not new to dealing with communicable diseases, right, and you have employed medical experts and we ought to have been listening to the experts.

We’ve got to make sure that our communities are safe and that we do everything we can to bend that closer to justice.

The opposite is actually true that when we are open, when we are inclusive, when we embrace one another, we create a society that is good enough for all.

The jury got the verdict right but that does not solve this issue.

When we are talking about criminal justice reform, the need for reform in our policing, if you’re talking about voting rights, a whole range of issues, representation matters.

It's very refreshing and hopeful to hear from these public health experts.

The jury got it right today but that won’t bring George Floyd back. The pain that this family is experiencing is unbearable, the meaning of their loss unspeakable.

So what should we do to support, prioritize, and improve service for people who are living in these areas that are experiencing persistent poverty, both in our cities and our rural counties and across the country?

The truth is we are not investing enough in public transportation, especially in rural and low-income communities.

I want to thank my colleague, Senator Brown, for bringing us together in this way, reading from a letter from a Birmingham jail by Dr. King, April 16, 1963. Dr. King writes: MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN: While confined here in the Birmingham…

Too often in American politics there is a false dichotomy between urban and rural, which plays into the politics of division.

almost all of those hard-won gains have been erased due to this economic downturn created by a once-in-a-century pandemic.

some communities have experienced a profound disproportionate impact.