Floor Statements

Finally, I want to acknowledge Senator Laphonza Butler. She was appointed just over a year ago to finish the term of the late Senator Dianne Feinstein. She took Senator Feinstein's seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. I was honored to chair that committee and work with her every time we met.

Thoughtful, collegial, hard-working--you could always find her ready to proceed forward for as much time as it may take. She sought to advance the ideals of our Nation and give voice to Americans facing critical challenges, from access to reproductive health care to voter suppression.

She is one of the youngest Senators, the third Black woman and 12th Black person to serve in this Chamber and the only Black person ever to chair the Constitution subcommittee. She has brought an important new voice to our debates. We are grateful for her new perspectives and her distinguished service.

As I said, Mr. President, I will have more to say about other departing Senators. For now, I want to say to these Senators: It has been an honor to serve with you, to work with you for the good of our Nation and the good of the world.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Ms. Sinema) is necessarily absent.

Madam President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Anthony Brindisi to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.

Born in New Hartford, NY, Judge Brindisi received his B.A. from Siena College and his J.D. from Albany Law School. After law school, he joined Brindisi, Murad & Brindisi Pearlman, LLP as an associate in Utica. He was a partner at the law firm from 2008 to 2014 and again from 2021 to 2022. He also served as of counsel from 2014 to 2018. As a practicing attorney, he handled primarily civil litigation matters and specialized in personal injury cases.

From 2011 to 2019, Judge Brindisi represented district 119, which includes the Utica and Rome region, in the New York State Assembly. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2019 to 2021, representing New York's 22nd Congressional District.

Since 2022, Judge Brindisi has served as a judge on the New York State Court of Claims in Utica. In this role, he hears civil claims from an eight-county region across central and northern New York. Judge Brindisi has also served as an acting supreme court justice in Oneida County since the beginning of 2024. Over the course of his judicial career, he has presided over 37 cases that have gone to verdict or judgment.

Judge Brindisi has deep ties to the Northern District of New York. He enjoys the strong support of both of his home State Senators, Mr. Schumer and Mrs. Gillibrand, and the American Bar Association unanimously rated him as ``qualified'' to serve on the district court.

Judge Brindisi's background as a litigator, public servant, and State court judge ensures that he will be an asset to the district court. I am proud to support his nomination, and I ask my colleagues to join me.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Ms. Sinema) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Ms. Sinema) is necessarily absent.

Madam President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Elizabeth Cheryl Coombe to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.

Born in Ridgewood, NJ, Ms. Coombe earned her A.B. from Hamilton College in 1989 and her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1992.

After graduating from law school, she clerked for the Honorable Diana E. Murphy on the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota.

Ms. Coombe began her public service career as a staff attorney at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 1994 to 1996. There, she focused on the investigation of the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc., and of abusive market making activities in the Nasdaq Market.

From 1996 to 1997, she worked as a trial attorney in the Civil Division, Commercial Litigation Branch, National Courts Section at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Then, between 1998 and 2003, Ms. Coombe served as an assistant U.S. attorney (AUSA) in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.

Since 2003, Ms. Coombe has held several roles of increasing responsibility in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York, including as: AUSA; team leader and Plattsburg office supervisor; deputy criminal chief; criminal chief; and most recently as first assistant U.S. attorney. In her current role, she oversees all criminal, civil, and appellate litigation conducted by more than 50 attorneys throughout the district.

Throughout her 30-year public service career, Ms. Coombe has tried approximately 19 cases before a jury and 20 bench trials.

The American Bar Association rated Ms. Coombe as ``well qualified,'' and her nomination is strongly supported by her home State Senators, Mr. Schumer and Mrs. Gillibrand.

With more than 20 years of experience serving as a Federal prosecutor in the Northern District of New York, Ms. Coombe is well-positioned to continue her service to the district on the Federal bench.

I am proud to support her nomination.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Ms. Sinema) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Manchin), the Senator from Arizona (Ms. Sinema), and the Senator from Michigan (Mr. Stabenow) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to complete my remarks before the recess.

Mr. President, I want to echo comments just made by the majority leader Senator Schumer, of my gratitude to the Democratic caucus for giving me an opportunity to continue to serve as the whip.

The whip, I am often asked what it is all about, what is this job.

And I say the skills that are necessary for this job I developed in the first grade, to be able to count up to 60, if needed, and to be able to count up to 41 in a position of resistance. That is an overstatement, of course, but not much.

I thank my colleagues for giving me this opportunity over the last 2 years and looking forward to the next 2.

Mr. President, this has been one of the busiest legislative times of my time on Capitol Hill. We have been working for 4 years in the Senate Judiciary Committee to fill vacancies in the Federal courts around America. People retire; they pass away; some of them decide to do something else with their lives, creating a vacancy for what was supposed to be a lifetime position.

Over the last 4 years, working with President Biden's White House, we have filled more than 200 slots in the Federal judiciary. Over one- fourth of the existing article III judges have been replaced or given a successor because of the work of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which I chair, and with it, the work on the floor to pass these same nominees, which requires the work of the staff, the majority leader, of course, and the whip on the floor. So I was called into action at both levels for success, and we have quite a record to show for it.

Mr. President, I would like to say a few words about two of my colleagues who will be making farewell remarks today in the Senate; first, Laphonza Butler. She succeeded Senator Dianne Feinstein as Senator from our largest State, the State of California. Dianne Feinstein was a close friend and a seatmate of mine for many years. I can't tell you how many times we sat together, considered nominees and legislation, and listened to one another's speeches. I really respected her so much, and she did an extraordinary job in the Senate.

So when she passed away and Senator Butler took her place, many people wondered who could step into her shoes for this period of time. Laphonza Butler was that person. She was given an extraordinary assignment. She took a slot on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which I chair, and in that position had to get into the daily combat--political combat--that took place in that committee.

I would say, with some immodesty, that it is one of the most challenging committees on Capitol Hill because it has an extraordinarily important agenda when it comes to the political issues before it and because of some of the personalities that populate the chairs of that committee on both sides of the aisle.

Senator Butler brought her own style and her own approach to it and did so, so well. She was able to see the old admonition is true that ``politics ain't beanbag'' in the Senate Judiciary Committee. She stood up for her State effectively and she articulated her positions convincingly and she was always there when needed.

I want to thank her for being part of the process of filling these vacancies in the Federal judiciary with the most diverse group of judges in our history. It is something that will live on long beyond Senator Butler and myself. So I thank her for her friendship, her smile, her determination, and her success on the Senate Judiciary Committee and in the Senate as a whole.

Mr. President, Joe Manchin is going to give his farewell address on the floor. The Senator from West Virginia and I have served together, and I have come to appreciate Joe's politics, and the way he handles decision making. Sometimes I disagree with him vehemently and am frustrated by his position, but I understand he represents his own conscience, his people of West Virginia, and the reality of politics in the State. Time and again, he has made a difference when needed.

I thank him for standing up for some of the judges who have come before us. We couldn't have done it without him, in some circumstances. I think he will be proud in the years ahead to reflect on what these women and men will mean to our country. I also wanted to join in Senator Schumer's happy memories of time off the Senate floor with Joe and his wife Gayle on his boat, which is also his residence, on the Potomac River. There were some wonderful parties there, always, always, always bipartisan. That has been the hallmark of Joe Manchin's career, and it really makes a positive difference in the work of the Senate.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss another topic that has become one of my major concerns throughout my Senate career, fixing our broken immigration system. As the son of an immigrant from Lithuania, my personal story exemplifies the experience of immigrants in this country and just how far the American dream can take you when you are afforded the opportunity.

That is one of the reasons why 23 years ago I introduced the DREAM Act, together with Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, who was then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This bipartisan legislation was very simple. It provided a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants who were brought to the United States as infants, toddlers, and children, allowing them to remain legally in the country, the only home they ever knew, and to have a path to ultimate legality and citizenship.

Eleven years ago, I joined some of my colleagues to form the bipartisan Gang of 8, another effort for immigration reform. We worked hard, four Democrats and four Republicans, and drafted a comprehensive immigration bill that included the DREAM Act. That bill passed the Senate with 68 bipartisan votes. Yet House Republicans refused to even consider it and debate it.

Unfortunately, we haven't made much progress since. Today, as we hear dangerous rhetoric from the President-elect about immigration, I worry for the immigrants and for the future of our country.

We can all agree that any undocumented immigrant found guilty of a serious crime should never be allowed to stay in the United States. But the last time the President-elect was in office, it wasn't just criminals who were deported. We saw parents separated from their young children, some of them still separated to this day, and we saw Dreamers, veterans, and spouses of U.S. citizens deported. They weren't criminals. Many of them were pillars in their home communities.

Next week, I will hold a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee focused on the chaos and cruelty that President-elect Trump's promised mass deportations could bring to our communities and our country.

Mr. President, I rise today to highlight one of the Dreamers whose loss would deeply impact her community and her family. This Dreamer spent her career educating America's future leaders.

This is the 147th story of a Dreamer that I have told on the Senate floor. This young woman's name is Dulce Martinez, better known by her students as Ms. Martinez.

She was brought to the United States from Puebla, Mexico, when she was 14 years old. As a child, she loved school and dreamed of becoming a computer teacher, but when the college counselor told her she wasn't eligible for college, even with good grades, she was crushed. She felt hopeless and dropped out of school. It wasn't until Ms. Martinez started working that she realized her education meant too much to throw away. The skills she was learning on the job helped her to realize just how valuable education was to her and to everyone else.

She enrolled at the Borough of Manhattan Community College to finish her high school credits. She was able to obtain DACA, which allowed her to continue her studies at BMCC, where she received an associate's degree in early childhood education. She graduated with honors.

Ms. Martinez went on to serve as a BMCC mentor and employee, focusing on advocacy for immigrants and undocumented students. She also worked on the City University of New York Women's Centers Council.

Today, Ms. Martinez has her dream as a lead teacher at a Head Start preschool in Brooklyn. She is pursuing a master's degree in early childhood education and conducted field work in early education.

A proud mother of four, Ms. Martinez uses her own life experience to educate and inspire young people. She is the embodiment of the American dream.

Would America be better off if she is deported? No, of course not. She is teaching young children to have a future and to believe in themselves and the basic education that made her life so successful.

DACA was a program put together by President Obama to pave the way for Ms. Martinez to pursue her dreams, but DACA was always intended to be a temporary stopgap until Congress did its job and fixed the broken immigration system by law.

In Ms. Martinez's case, DACA was the opportunity she was looking for to go back to school and to kick-start her dreams. But since President Obama established the program, Republicans have waged a relentless campaign to overturn DACA and deport these Dreamers back to countries they do not even remember. Now this program is hanging by a thread in the courts due to legal challenges from the Republican State attorneys general, and DACA recipients are forced to live with uncertainty day to day.

Last year, a Federal judge in Texas declared the DACA Program illegal, though the decision left in place protections for current DACA recipients while the case is on appeal. Dreamers live in constant fear that the next decision will spin their lives. You and I have heard over and over again when President-elect Donald Trump came before his rallies and described the immigrants he wants to deport as murderers, rapists, terrorists, people with mental problems, and such. It goes on and on, time and again. But, of course, Ms. Martinez did not belong to any one of those categories. She has made a life in America and made America better.

This litigation that I am concerned about prevented at least 500,000 additional Dreamers from registering for the program.

During his first term, then-President Trump tried to shut down the DACA Program, but the Supreme Court blocked him. Now he has pledged to pursue a mass deportation campaign. I am going to do everything in my power to defend Dreamers from being deported from the only country they call home, and I am willing to work with anyone, including President- elect Trump, to pass legislation to give Dreamers like Ms. Martinez a chance.

I urge my colleagues to meet with these Dreamers, come to know them, and in their States, they are going to find that they are making invaluable contributions. These young people are ready and willing to help make America better. Dreamers like Dulce Martinez have earned the right to put down roots, raise families, further their education, and continue contributing to our society, without the threat of deportation hanging over their heads.

It is time for Congress to get to work on a bipartisan basis to defy the so-called experts and to pass the Dream Act and immigration reform. It is the right thing to do, and it is long overdue.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Sparkle Leah Sooknanan to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Ms. Sooknanan earned her B.S. from Saint Francis College in 2002, her M.B.A. from Hofstra University in 2003, and a J.D., summa cum laude, from Brooklyn Law School in 2010.

After graduating from law school, Ms. Sooknanan served as a law clerk to the Honorable Eric N. Vitaliano on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York between 2010 and 2011 and for the Honorable Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 2011 to 2012. Following her clerkships, she joined the U.S. Department of Justice through its honors program as an appellate attorney in the civil division. Ms. Sooknanan then served as a law clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the U.S. Supreme Court from 2013 to 2014.

Following the completion of her Supreme Court clerkship, Ms. Sooknanan joined Jones Day in Washington, DC, as an associate between 2014 and 2019 and, later partner from 2020 to 2021. She spent more than 6 years at the firm representing clients in complex, multifaceted Federal district court and appellate litigation.

In 2021, Ms. Sooknanan rejoined the Department of Justice as Deputy Associate Attorney General in the Associate Attorney General's Office. In the fall of 2023, she moved to the civil rights division to serve as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, the second highest leadership position in the division.

The American Bar Association rated Ms. Sooknanan as ``well qualified,'' and her nomination is strongly supported by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Ms. Sooknanan's experience clerking at all levels of the Federal judiciary, as well as her work in private practice and public service, have prepared her to serve as a district judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

I am proud to support her nomination.