Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to vote against Leonard Grasz's nomination to serve as a circuit judge for the Eight Circuit. Mr. Grasz is one of two Trump judicial nominees who has received an ``unqualified'' ranking from the nonpartisan American Bar Association, ABA. I am appalled that Republicans advanced this nominee out of the Judiciary Committee and are bringing this vote to the floor. Republicans have made it their mission to fill our judiciary with radical ideologues. The Trump administration has outsourced judicial nominations to the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, and their nominees have included a nominee who believed in corporal punishment, one who questioned the constitutionality of the 14th Amendment, and one equated a woman's right to an abortion to chattel slavery. Many of these nominees are simply unfit to serve and undeserving of the prestige of receiving a lifetime appointment. No judge nominated by the Obama administration received an ``unqualified'' ABA rating. When asked to clarify their rating for Mr. Grasz, a spokesperson for the ABA said that ``[t]he evaluators and the Committee found that [Mr. Grasz's] temperament issues, particularly bias and lack of open-mindedness, were problematic.…”