Political Quotes

“Mr. President, this is a very sad day for the Senate. At a time when Leader McConnell brags about confirming more judges than anyone has done in a very long time, he feels the need to invoke the terribly destructive and disproportionate procedure of the nuclear option in order to fast-track even more of President Trump's ultraconservative nominees to the Federal bench. Before I discuss that in greater detail, I want to note for the record that Democrats were prepared to confirm the nomination of Mr. Kessler by unanimous consent, so the cloture vote we had was unnecessary. If you have been listening to Senators debate this issue in recent days, you have heard a lot of claims and counterclaims about cloture votes, about rates of confirmation for circuit and district courts in different Congresses, about judicial vacancies and other arcane things that may not sound very illuminating. So I want to start by making clear what this debate is really all about. I want to issue a warning about what is at stake in this fight. Underneath all of the statistics, what Leader McConnell, President Trump, and Republicans in the Senate are trying to do is use the courts to adopt the far-right agenda that Republicans know they cannot enact through the legislative process. Why can't they? Because it is an agenda the American people reject, an agenda set by the far right, which Republicans in the Senate follow.…”