I got the news, along with others, Sunday morning about the decision of 10 Republican and Democratic Senators to move forward with the proposal to deal with our Nation's epidemic of gun violence. I had a conversation with Senator Chris Murphy, who has been one of our leaders on the Democratic side, about exactly what that meant and the help that we might be able to offer to him from the Senate Judiciary Committee. I just want to say, at this moment, that I really want to commend my colleagues on both sides, Democrats and Republicans. I believe they made a good-faith effort to negotiate a package of reforms. Senator Murphy, Senator Cornyn of Texas, made it bipartisan, timely, and I believe did an excellent job. Is it the package that I would have written? No--nor yours, Madam President. You would have included things, and I would have included others. But it is within our reach. We have a bitterly politically divided nation. That is a fact. We have a Senate Judiciary Committee evenly divided 50-50. We have a Chamber evenly divided 50-50. So it is difficult to say that any one party or one person will get exactly what they want in this political atmosphere, but it is equally important to note that we have all gone home and gotten the message over and over again.…
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More from Dick Durbin
Now we have a President who claims ‘absolute right to do what I want to with the Justice Department’ and is seeking ‘retribution’ against ‘the enemy within.’
I want to take a moment to respond to [Committee Republicans’] claim at Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing that Democrats never criticized the Biden Justice Department’s actions. This is simply and provably false.
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Ms. Westercamp tried to delete her old tweets so we wouldn’t see them on the [Senate Judiciary] Committee but she failed.





