Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, last week, America and Illinois lost a hero. Lorenzo Cervantes was his name. He had been a steelworker living in the small town of Sterling, IL, in the Rock River Valley. That is an hour or two west of Chicago.

Mr. Cervantes was 98 years old. When he was a young man, he set out to save the world. He joined the U.S. Army in February of 1943, during World War II, before he had reached the age of 20. He was a member of an elite group. There was an American-Canadian commando unit known as the First Special Service Force, a top-secret band of brothers operating deep behind enemy lines.

The Forcemen, as they were known, earned the nickname ``The Devil's Brigade'' from terrified Nazi soldiers and officers who said that they seemed to appear out of nowhere in the dead of night, like devils.

That unit he served in suffered one of the highest casualty rates in the war. Listen to these figures. Of the 2,400 men who fought with the unit, 2,300 of them were either killed or wounded, but they never lost a mission--not one.

The First Special Service Force existed for only 2 years, but the spirit of that force lives on in the Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALS, Marine Raiders, Canadian Special Operations Regiment, and, frankly, all of today's military Special Forces.

For decades after World War II, the very existence of that unit remained top secret and classified. The Forcemen didn't tell anyone what they had done in the war, not even their families. Like Lorenzo Cervantes, they quietly returned home, married, raised families, and lived ordinary lives.

In 2015, some 70 years after the end of World War II, they were finally honored for their service, and Congress awarded them the Congressional Gold Medal.

I had the privilege of meeting two other Forcemen from Illinois at that Gold Medal ceremony. Casey Celske was one of them. He fought with the Devil's Brigade at the Battle of Anzio--one of the Allies' greatest surprise victories. He was among the first Allied soldiers to enter Rome and liberate it from the Nazis.

Mr. Celske died 3 years ago, also age 98. After the war, he had returned to Illinois and married. He and his wife had 11 children--11.

In 1995, 50 years after the war ended, Mr. Celske and one of his sons decided to go back to Europe to take a look and see the places where the First Special Service Force had fought and to visit the towns that the Force liberated.

Near the Anzio beachhead, they spoke to an Italian man. When the man realized who they were, he dropped to his knees, broke out in tears, and thanked Casey Celske of Illinois.

The Italian man said to his son: This is one of the soldiers who saved our village.

Casey Celske turned to his son and said: All these years, I wondered what I was doing. Now I know.

I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Casey), the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons), the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray), and the Senator from Michigan (Mr. Peters), are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, this Capitol Building has served as the backdrop for some of the most notable moments in America's history. In this building, wars have been declared, peace treaties have been signed, and the march toward progress has either moved forward or has been stopped in its tracks.

Today, the Members of this Senate have the opportunity to take a monumental step forward. We will vote to confirm a once-in-a-generation legal talent, a jurist with outstanding credentials and a lifetime of experience, and the first-ever African-American woman to serve as Justice of the Supreme Court--Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Judge Jackson's confirmation will be a glass-shattering achievement for America.

Consider this moment in history. When the Supreme Court first met in this building in 1801, there were 1 million slaves in this Nation--a Nation of 5 million people. This very building was built with the labor of enslaved people.

And at the time the Court met, neither Black Americans nor White women had a constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. Women had no place in that first Supreme Court chamber, and Black women would only enter to clean it in the dark of the night.

We know what followed. America's battle to end slavery saw a bloody civil war and decades of efforts to break down racial barriers, and the efforts continue to this day.

Our struggle to enfranchise and empower women did not end with the 19th Amendment, 102 years ago. It continues to this day, as well, as we strive to give our daughters the same opportunities we give our sons.

This confirmation of the first Black woman to the Supreme Court honors the history that has come before it. It honors the struggles of the past and the men and women who waged them.

And this confirmation draws America one step closer--one step--to healing our Nation, one step closer to a more perfect Union.

Nearly a century after our founding, we guaranteed the rights of citizenship, finally, to every American, including, for the first time, those who were born into bondage, with the ratification of the 14th Amendment.

It took a long century later for us to expand the bounds of liberty again. We ensured the Federal Government could vigorously protect the right to vote, the most fundamental of rights, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

One victory for progress begat the next.

Two years after the Voting Rights Act, we confirmed the first Black American to ever serve on the Supreme Court--Justice Thurgood Marshall. But I would like to remind you: That was 50 years ago.

Now, with the passage of that time, we are beginning to write another chapter in our Nation's quest for equal justice under the law, and that chapter begins with three letters: K-B-J.

With Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation to the highest Court in the land, we are not only making history; we are carrying on a great American tradition: elevating one of our Nation's best and brightest legal minds to an honored position of service.

There is no one more deserving of this high honor. As we have learned over the past month, she is the best of us. She has devoted her life to serving our country. She has done so at every level of the Federal judiciary, and at every turn, she has distinguished herself.

But I hear the critics say she is soft on crime. I wonder how they explain that she was endorsed by the largest law enforcement organization in America, the Fraternal Order of Police, as well as the International Association of Chiefs of Police, as well as an army of Federal prosecutors who have appeared in her courts.

She is dedicated to protecting judicial independence, to advancing freedom and liberty, and deciding every case, as she says, from a neutral posture. That is exactly what you will find in evaluating nearly 10 years of service on the bench.

I hear Senators come to the floor and say: Well, there is one opinion I disagree with.

For goodness' sake, she has issued almost 600 written opinions in 10 years on the bench in the district court. She has been reversed a small percentage of the time. Her work speaks for itself, and when you evaluate it, you will find out she is thoughtful and evenhanded.

As the American people saw during last month's hearing in the Judiciary Committee, Judge Jackson has the right judicial temperament. Calm, collected, she answered every question, even when the questions were hostile and confrontational. She answered them with dignity and grace and stood by for more than 24 hours of questioning.

She is a proven consensus builder. She has been confirmed by the Senate on a bipartisan basis more than three times--three times, I should say--and soon, we hope, she will be confirmed again by a bipartisan majority.

She has earned the support from leaders across the political and ideological spectrum. Civil rights leaders,

leaders in law enforcement, former Federal judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans--all of them have lined up proudly to endorse her.

Perhaps most importantly, Judge Jackson will help ensure that the law works for the people and that the people understand the workings of the courts.

For many Americans, what happens in a courtroom can be cold and impersonal. Judge Jackson has made a habit of making it real. She looks people in the eye, walks them through her decision making with patience and empathy, and she reaches every one of her decisions by following the facts and the law, wherever they lead.

She said that her opinions can run long. That is by design, because she wants America to rest assured--whether she writes in the majority, the concurrence, or dissent--they will know exactly where she stands on the most important issues.

Serving as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Judge Jackson's confirmation has been one of the highest honors of my Senate experience.

I want to give a special thanks to the man who spoke before me, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa. His friendship and fairness have really guided our relationship throughout this historic process.

In the weeks since President Biden announced her nomination, Judge Jackson has already lifted the spirit of countless Americans, inspiring a new generation of aspiring jurists and public servants. Millions of Americans see themselves in Judge Jackson--Black Americans, members of law enforcement families, working moms, public high school graduates like her fellow Palmetto Panthers in Florida.

Everywhere I have gone for the last few weeks when I go home-- visiting law schools, going to the grocery store--I have been approached by people who have been following this nomination closely. They tell me how deeply impressed they are with Judge Jackson, even under fire from her critics.

Hannah Amundsen is one of those people. She is a law student in Waukegan, IL, a city on the shores of Lake Michigan. In a letter to my office, Hannah wrote:

If you can see it, you can be it. [And] I'm very excited to

see . . . [America's] first black female justice.

Reverend Krista Alston is a Baptist minister in the city of Chicago. She comes from a long line of Baptist ministers. She calls herself ``a civil rights baby,'' born in 1964, the year LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act.

Rikki Jones is also from Chicago. She has been working for civil rights for nearly 60 years--since she was a teenager.

Well, late last month, Reverend Alston and Ms. Jones, with four other people, drove 11 hours from Chicago to attend an hour of Judge Jackson's hearing.

Rev. Alston said she was moved by the judge's courage, grace, integrity, and wisdom. She imagined what it will be like years from now to tell her future grandchildren what it was like to be in that room for that historic moment.

And Rikki Jones said she had never even expected to hear about a Black woman being nominated to the Supreme Court, let alone to be in the room for her hearing. She said that as she watched Judge Jackson, ``it felt like the fulfillment of everything I've worked for my whole life.''

She thought of all the strong Black women who came before her and helped make the movement possible: Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, and my personal late friend, the Reverend Willie Barrow, a Black woman minister from Chicago who worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King. This moment was about them too, she said.

And this moment is possible because of Judge Jackson and who she is-- her qualifications, her integrity, her record of excellence. She has earned her seat on the Supreme Court.

That is why it is so unfortunate that several Republicans on the Judiciary Committee did not approach Judge Jackson's hearing with that same level of fairness and respect as their colleagues.

Thankfully--thankfully--there are Members of the Senate who are willing to rise above the partisan fray.

I want to particularly commend Senator Susan Collins of Maine, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Senator Mitt Romney of Utah for their political courage and their willingness to support a singularly qualified and historic nominee to the Supreme Court.

You know, when Senator Romney announced his support for Judge Jackson's confirmation, I couldn't help but remember his father, the late George Romney, who served as Governor of Michigan in the 1960s, during the height of the civil rights movement. Governor George Romney knew a thing or two about political courage. As a proud Republican Governor, in 1963, he marched alongside the NAACP Detroit President Edward Turner in support of civil rights. That same year when Dr. Martin Luther King organized a march in Detroit, Governor George Romney declared the occasion ``Freedom Day'' in Michigan.

To my colleague, Senator Mitt Romney, you are your father's son.

This week marks 54 years since the shot rang out in Memphis, TN, claiming the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, an American who spoke with greater moral clarity than nearly any other in our history. The night before he died, Dr. King spoke at a rally in support of the city's striking sanitation workers. There was tension in the air. From the moment he set foot in Memphis, he had received a barrage of death threats.

As Dr. King spoke to the crowd at the Mason Temple, death was on his mind. He said:

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity

has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just

want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the

mountain.

His next words proved prophetic. Dr. King said:

I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may

not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that

we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.

Rikki Jones said that she thought about Dr. King's prophecy when she realized the Judiciary Committee was voting on Judge Jackson's nomination on the anniversary of Dr. King's death. It felt like the prophecy had come to pass.

Dr. King didn't make it to the Promised Land, but Judge Jackson's ascension to the Supreme Court brings us closer to that longed-for place.

I would like to close with one last personal plea to my Senate colleagues. I hope you will think about this. In the years to come, long after we have left the Senate, one of our grandchildren may ask where we were on this historic day, April 7, 2022, when America broke down what seemed like an impossible racial barrier and voted to send the first African-American woman to serve on our highest Court. I will be proud to say I was on the Senate floor, standing at my desk, and casting my vote with pride for the next Associate Justice to the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. I hope my colleagues will join me in sharing this historic moment.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, an hour or so ago on the floor of the Senate was an amazing sight. It has been a long, long time since I have seen the Galleries full. COVID-19 kept us apart. I missed it. I didn't realize how much until those full Galleries were here to witness the vote on the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

It was a time of great celebration for most Members of the Senate and I think for the Nation because we have achieved something which many doubted would occur.

It has been 50 years since the first African American--Thurgood Marshall--was appointed to be a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was another 50 years for us to wait for the opportunity to put a person, a woman of color, on the Court. And we did it today.

Soon, in the coming future, the President will be swearing in Judge, now-Justice Jackson. I am certain that she will be a credit to our Nation. She has already proven that in her lifetime of service.

Many Members of the Senate, of course, were excited and happy about it. I was one of them. I want to thank my colleagues for their kind words, but I also want to acknowledge the obvious.

All of the hard work that led up to this successful vote happened a lot behind the scenes. There were members of our staff who worked long hours--20-hour days--to prepare for this and to be ready to handle the important Judiciary Committee hearings. I would like to acknowledge the staff members on both sides of the aisle who worked tirelessly on Judge Jackson's nomination.

I have got quite a team on my side, and I am very proud of them. I want to recognize the following individuals who played an important part in this historic process: Pat Souders, my chief of staff; Joe Zogby, my Senate Judiciary Committee staff director; Dan Swanson, general counsel; Stephanie Trifone, deputy general counsel; Sally Brown-Shaklee, my deputy chief of staff; Maalik Simmons and Miriam Wheatley, my floor staff who are often sitting right in the back of this Chamber; Claire Reuschel and Riley Foti, my schedulers; my press staff, including Emily Hampsten, my communications director; Jenna Valle-Riestra; Maddie Carlos; Theresa Bordenave; and Laura Keller, and many others on my Judiciary team, including Phil Brest, who was my chief nominations counsel--he worked so hard on this, and he is so good--Sarah Bauer, who was right by his side working every minute; and Gabe Kader, as well; Ziya Smallens, speechwriter; Joe Charlet; Vaishalee Yeldandi; Maggie Hopkins; Anna Shepard; David Adeleye; Eric Chung; Eliza Lehner; Samir Sheth; David McCallum; Mady Reno; Katya Kazmin; Rachel Martinez, Yashi Gunawardena; Doug Miller; Chastidy Burns; Nicole Walton; Lane Giardina; and many, many others.

I also would like to recognize some members of Senator Grassley's staff. Now, he--for those who wouldn't know--is my Republican counterpart. I chair a committee evenly divided--11 to 11--and Senator Grassley is in charge of the Republican side. We have developed a strong friendship and trust over the years that really meant a lot during this process.

I want to recognize Senator Grassley's staff members, in particular: Kolan Davis, his staff director of many years; Brendan Chestnut, his chief nominations counsel; and Lauren Mehler, his senior counsel for nominations.

Our two staffs worked very well together in this process, and I really appreciate that. I want to thank Senator Grassley, again, for it.

I want to thank the committee's nondesignated staff, including Heather Vachon, Michelle Heller, Bryan Palmer, Kara Dubbs, Shannon Bartley, Chuck Papirmeister, and others.

I want to also express my gratitude to the larger Senate community who played a part in Judge Jackson's nomination process: the staff of the Architect of the Capitol, the Sergeant at Arms, and of course the men and women of the U.S. Capitol Police Force who were critical to the success of the hearing and markups for Judge Jackson's nomination. More than 1,000 people occupied the chairs in the back of the committee room in the 4 days of hearings. It was the largest gathering, largest crowd, short of the State of the Union Address, in modern memory on the Senate. And today's Gallery attendance, again, was something, a welcome change from the forlorn empty Chamber's Galleries that we have come to be used to.

I also want to thank and add the names of the Senate staff who were so instrumental in supporting the committee's proceedings.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of Senate staff who were instrumental in supporting the committee's proceedings.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I listened to the Republican leader speaking about the Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is coming before the Senate either today or tomorrow, we hope, for a confirmation vote. We have solid support for her nomination on the Democratic side and three Republican Senators who have announced that they will join us to make it a bipartisan majority in her favor.

She is deserving of this. She has an extraordinary background. She has the kind of resume that every lawyer would dream of: to graduate from Harvard Law School and then to clerk at every level of the Federal judiciary, including clerk to the Justice she hopes to succeed, Stephen Breyer; and then to serve on the Sentencing Commission, which is considered one of the more prestigious assignments, trying to rationalize the sentencing under Federal law; and then, of course, to serve on the district court in the DC district and to issue some 570 or 80 different opinions--written opinions--during that time; to be elevated to the DC Circuit Court, often called the second highest court in the land, where she served as well with distinction; and now to be the first African-American woman nominated to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. It is an incredible record.

And she has made the rounds, as they say, in the Senate, visiting 95 or 96 different Senators, sitting down with them privately in their offices, answering any questions or concerns that they wish to express.

So I think she is an exceptional person. If you look at her record in all of these cases that she has handed down written opinions in--as I said, it is close to 600, and 100 of them were criminal cases where she imposed sentences, and some 10 or 15 of those cases which have been highlighted by her Republican critics, relating to the issue of the exploitation of children and pornography, in every single case, she imposed a prison sentence.

So to argue that she is soft on crime is to ignore that reality and to ignore the reality that she is endorsed--endorsed--by the largest law enforcement organization in America, the Fraternal Order of Police. She is endorsed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and other noteworthy organizations, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement, former prosecutors in the District of Columbia.

She has made it very clear that when it comes to applying the law to the facts, she does it with evenhandedness, so much so that she is respected by both sides of the table--the prosecutor's side of the table and the defense side of the table. That takes some doing, but she has achieved it. And

that is why her selection by President Biden is the right person for the right time for the right job. She is going to make history if we give her this confirming vote.

Now, I will tell you, when you publish some 580 to 600 opinions, you are going to find something in one of those opinions to raise. I listened carefully as Senator McConnell went to one of those opinions and drew his own conclusions. I would ask him to take care in accepting that as the fair way to measure a person. People often say that in the U.S. Senate--they ask us: Are you conservative or are you liberal or are you a fiscal conservative? Where do you stand on civil liberties? And people announce a position that they would like to believe they fit in. Then folks go back and look at your voting record and then ask: Well, how do you explain this, Senator? So in any given day, any given vote can raise a question as to a generalization about who you are and what you believe.

For instance, there was a time, as hard as it may be to believe, when people were suggesting amending the Constitution of the United States to make burning an American flag a violation--controversial. All of us revere the flag, but the notion of making this an amendment to the Constitution was a matter of great controversy and debate.

I remember it well in the Senate Judiciary Committee. I came down against it, saying that I revered the flag, but the principles and values behind it were equally or more important to me, and so I opposed flag burning and so did the Senator from Kentucky. Yes, the minority leader, Senator McConnell, opposed flag burning. The organization that agreed with our position was the ACLU. Now, can I generalize from that position which Senator McConnell took years ago that he is an ACLU-type of Senator? It would be wrong to draw that conclusion. There may have been other instances where he agreed with them, but it was rare.

What I am saying is, if you can take one vote and measure a Senator and realize that it falls short of being an accurate and honest measurement, the same thing is true for a judge, to take one opinion and say: Well, she ruled against President Trump on the issue of immigration, therefore, she is an activist liberal judge. She ruled as well for President Trump in other cases in his favor, and ruled against Democratic Presidents when they came up with their proposals before the court. So generalizations are not fair for her or for individual Members of the Senate based on one opinion, one vote, and that is what many are trying to do.

I will also tell you that this notion--and it pains me to even bring it to the floor, but I know it is going to come up in the next day or two--that she is soft on crime. As I mentioned, the law enforcement groups would not be endorsing her if they believed she was soft on crime.

And the notion that she is somehow, in the words of one Republican Senator--that her sentencing ``endangers children,'' that is painful because he said as much in front of her family. And I thought about that, how painful that must have been for her to hear those words. They are not true. And to take one or two situations, each of them unique in their factual circumstances, and to generalize in terms of her position on an issue of that gravity is fundamentally unfair. But we have done it, too, on the Democratic side, and I am going to be the first to admit, as I look back in history, there are things that should have been handled better when Republican nominees were before us.

And the majority of Republican Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Ranking Member Chuck Grassley, I believe, were respectful and dealt with the judge in a fair manner. They asked tough questions, as they were expected to, but did not cross the line into personal attack.

There were three or four who broke that rule, as far as I was concerned, but the vast majority of Republican Senators were factual, were fair, and were basing their questions on sound legal questions before any Supreme Court nominee's consideration. That I think will be talked about over the next couple days, as it should be.

Mr. President, I want to take a moment to thank a former member of my staff who is an extraordinary man. He is smart, he gives wise counsel, and is truly devoted to this Nation. He worked for me for years.

I have worked with Erik Raven since 2014, when I became ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, and Erik was the chief clerk of the subcommittee. The title ``clerk'' is misleading. He was the brains and the operational force behind that subcommittee.

As my right hand, Erik led the massive and critically important effort to appropriate an average of $700 billion a year for our national defense budget. Incidentally, that is about half of our Government's annual discretionary spending--a big assignment--and Erik was the right person for that assignment.

As I mentioned before, my first introduction to the Senate was many years ago, as an intern to a former Illinois Senator, Paul Douglas. Douglas was a respected economist who joined the Marines at age 50-- 50--to defend democracy in World War II. He was badly wounded, became a war hero, and then was elected to the Senate.

Douglas famously said that you don't have to be a wastrel to be a liberal. Douglas fought against waste in government because he understood that every misspent dollar weakens our national defense, every wasted dollar undermines our ability to build a better future. I think Paul Douglas would have liked Erik Raven.

Erik has been a stalwart ally in my efforts to advance our national defense capabilities while also protecting taxpayers' dollars and investing in things like defense medical research and domestic sourcing of the components critical to our defense industrial base.

I traveled with Erik to more places than I can remember. There was one particularly eye-opening visit to a classified facility in a desert outside Las Vegas. You might say it was out of this world. I will also remember a trip we made to Poland and the Baltics in 2018, wherein we discussed the danger of the overreliance on Russian gas and other issues. Today, we see that playing out, tragically, in Ukraine.

It was also a relief to have Erik at my side. His deep institutional knowledge, his sense of humor, and his black bag full of secrets have served me and the committee and America well.

I know that Senator Jon Tester of Montana, the new chair of that same subcommittee, and other Senators with whom Erik worked share my high regard for him.

In his 20 years in the Senate, Erik has worked for Senator Dianne Feinstein, the late Senator Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Senator Inouye, our former colleague Senator Mikulski, and our current chairman, Senator Leahy. To countless Senate staffers along the way, Erik has been a mentor, a cheerleader, and always a friend.

In addition to his public service, he is a pilot and a black belt in karate. He enjoys golfing and running. He is a devoted husband to Ann, his wife, and father to Edward, his 7-year-old son.

Very soon, pending Senate approval, he will be our Nation's next Under Secretary of the Navy.

The Senate's loss is the Navy's and America's gain. I am confident that Erik will excel in his new challenge just as he has in the Senate. I wish him the very best of luck and thank him for his outstanding service.

Mr. President, it has been almost 6 years since the disastrous collapse of the infamous for-profit college chain ITT Tech.

At that time, ITT Tech was one of the largest chains of for-profit colleges in the country--130 campuses spread over 38 States and 40,000 students enrolled. It closed its campuses 2 weeks after the Federal Department of Education barred the parent company from enrolling any more students while using Federal student aid dollars.

I have come to this floor countless times to talk about the deceptive, predatory, desperate tactics of the for-profit college industry at large.

At the peak of its profitability, in 2000 to 2003, it was the hottest sector on Wall Street. Publicly traded shares in for-profit colleges rose 460 percent according to one analysis. In 2010, these for-profit colleges swept up more than $32 billion in Federal student aid dollars. Hundreds of millions more flowed in through the GI bill. For ITT

Tech, the total haul in Federal dollars that year reached $1.1 billion. Six years later, the whole ITT Tech house of cards collapsed in a cloud of scandal, leaving students and taxpayers holding the bag.

Now a new report by the Project on Predatory Student Lending reveals disturbing facts about ITT Tech--their deception, their high-pressure recruiting tactics, and other forms of fraud and abuse that they used to rack up massive profits. The report is entitled ``Dreams Destroyed: How ITT Technical Institute Defrauded a Generation of Students.''

What makes this new report particularly damning is that the details of these abuses came not only from defrauded students but from the company's own recruiters and top executives. Like the internal company memos that finally shed light on the inner workings of the tobacco industry, the ITT records reveal a company that prioritized profits over everything else.

Two years before ITT Tech's collapse, the company's disgraced CEO, Kevin Modany, wrote in an email to his marketing chief:

I do not have anything more important on my agenda . . .

[recruitment] is my personal top priority.

Prospective students were lied to and bombarded with high-pressure tactics to get them to enroll and sign up for more and more and more student loans.

One former ITT Tech recruiter compared the working conditions to a ``sweatshop,'' where all that mattered was hitting a ``quota.''

Appallingly, recruiters were instructed to use the ``pain funnel,'' they called it, which was a set of eight questions designed to reveal all prospective students' vulnerabilities. By identifying a student's pain points, such as working at a dead-end job or feeling unappreciated, recruiters were trained to exploit that pain and present ITT Tech as the solution to this poor student's problems.

ITT Tech then inflated grades and falsified attendance records to keep students enrolled so they could squeeze out more Federal dollars and leave more student debt for the kids. The company routinely, falsely, filed financial aid forms, including stealing students' passwords and signing financial aid forms without the students' knowledge or consent. The list goes on and on.

The result: Modany and the ITT shareholders made millions. Taxpayers got ripped off. Students ended up holding the bag with worthless diplomas, if they finished, and with a mountain of student debt whether they finished or not.

What did Modany think about the students he was defrauding?

Look at his words. This is the man who was the executive who was doing this to these students.

He said: ``Take off the gloves with the student and slug back. Do not hold back in any way, and anything that we can put out there to question the legitimacy of his complaint we should most definitely do so. We need to call him out publicly.''

That is the kind of respect they had for these students.

Many of these students, as the majority leader knows, were first- generation college students. Their mothers and fathers were so proud that they were at ITT Tech--that they made it into college. Mom and dad thought they would have to work extra hours, but it would be worth it. It was a fraud from start to finish--a fraud on American taxpayers and a terrible fraud on these students and their families.

Modany was equally contemptuous of public officials who asked questions about ITT Tech's business practices.

This 2015 email is a racist tirade against an Education Department official, Rohit Chopra, a longtime foe of predatory lenders who is now Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Mr. Modany rails that Mr. Chopra ought to be jailed at Guantanamo and waterboarded.

Now, you might say, ``That's great, but ITT Tech is gone. Why does it matter?''

First: There are still tens of thousands of ITT Tech students who were defrauded. Under the Higher Education Act's Borrower Defense provision, their loans should be discharged by the Education Department.

The evidence revealed in this report--evidence collected by the Education Department and numerous State attorneys general--clearly shows that fraud was rampant and systemic at ITT Tech.

The Department should do more to provide ITT Tech borrowers with the relief to which they are entitled under the law--without requiring individual applications.

The second reason is stated in the report's conclusion, which asserts ``ITT was able to escape responsibility for its financial insolvency by declaring bankruptcy in September 2016. Its executives simply walked away from the disaster they created.''

Kevin Modany was fined $200,000. But that is essentially a parking ticket for a man who made $36 million defrauding students, taxpayers, and investors between 2007 and 2014.

The Federal Government must use its authority to hold for-profit college executives personally accountable. Claw back some of their fat profits to repay students and taxpayers.

And third, the for-profit college industry continues to prey on students using the same tactics as the band of thieves at ITT Tech.

For-profit Ashford University and its former parent company Zovio were just found to have given students false or misleading information about career outcomes . . . cost and financial aid . . . and transfer credits . . . to get them to enroll. Sound familiar?

Ashford was ordered to pay more than $22.37 million in penalties.

But . . . Zovio recently sold Ashford to the University of Arizona while continuing to operate much of the school.

What actions will the Education Department take to protect students . . . and taxpayer dollars . . . at the now-renamed Arizona Global Campus--formerly Ashford?

I've spoken about these matters with both Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Rich Cordray, head of the Department's Federal Student Aid office.

I'm glad the Biden administration has committed publicly to improving enforcement at the Department of Education.

There are other ITT Techs out there. For the sake of students and taxpayers, the Education Department under this administration must begin to use its immense enforcement authority to protect them from the swindlers and conmen.

Mr. President, I have been talking about for-profit colleges for a number of years. Luckily, we have a President and a Secretary of Education who are putting watchmen in place, guardians of students in place, who believe that it is more important that kids are treated fairly and honestly than it is for some executive to make millions of dollars off of an abuse of the system.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons) and the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object. I have to ask myself, why now? Why does the junior Senator from Missouri bring this bill to the floor of the U.S. Senate today?

When you think back, this matter has been considered. Originally, the guidelines were considered in 1984. The question of child pornography came back to us in 2003.

In 2005, there was a Supreme Court case about applying the guidelines on sentencing to these types of cases--a case known as Booker. We know that in 2005, that decision was handed down.

We know that in 2012, the Sentencing Commission said to Congress and to the world that you need to do something here. These guidelines that you promulgated don't reflect the reality of today.

We know, as well, that the guidelines were written--some were written in an era when the materials we are talking about were physical materials. And we now live in the world of internet and access to not just tens and hundreds but thousands of images, if that is your decision.

And all these things have happened, and we come here today--today. I don't know exactly how many years the Senator from Missouri has been in the Senate, but to my knowledge, this is his first bill on this subject that he has presented in the last few weeks. And I wonder why--why now?

Are there valid questions about sentencing guidelines? Certainly, there is no question about it. I said as much, and he quoted me.

The Sentencing Commission told us over a decade ago, in 2012: You have got a problem here. The world has changed, and the law doesn't reflect it.

But this is the first time, to my knowledge, that the Senator from Missouri or any Republican Senator has tried to enact legislation on the subject. Why now? Well, I know why. He said as much. It is because we are now considering the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

This Senator has suggested over the course of the last 2 weeks in hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee that somehow this judge--this judge who is aspiring to the Supreme Court--is out of the mainstream when it comes to sentencing in child pornography cases.

It is no coincidence that the Senator from Missouri comes to the floor today while Judge Jackson's nomination is pending on the Senate calendar. It was discharged from our committee by a bipartisan vote in the Senate last night. It is no coincidence that he is raising this issue within hours or days before her confirmation vote. It is one more, very transparent attempt to link Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation with this highly emotional issue of Federal sentencing when it comes to child pornography or child exploitation.

There are some political groups--at least one well-known political group--that manufacture theories about child pornography, pedophilia, and the like and that even inspire deadly reactions to them, and they are cheering this on. I have seen their reactions already, this morning, in the newspaper. They are watching this and hoping that someone can keep this issue alive on the floor of the U.S. Senate--for them.

The Senator from Missouri has even gone so far as to make the outrageous claim that this woman, Judge Jackson--the mother of two wonderful girls, whom I had a chance to meet, a mother who comes to this issue not only as a judge but as the sister and niece of law enforcement officials who have been part of her family--in the words of the Senator from Missouri, that this woman ``endangers children''-- ``endangers children.''

I will yield when I am finished.

One conservative former prosecutor called Senator Hawley's charges ``meritless to the point of demagoguery.''

I have read so many reviews of the Senator's charges against this judicial nominee, and not one of them gives him any credence. They basically say: What you are dealing with here is a complicated area of the law, a controversial area of the law, and to try to ascribe to this one nominee these motives, these outcomes, is baseless and meritless.

Consider this: How can this judicial nominee possibly have the endorsement of the largest law enforcement organization in America--the Fraternal Order of Police--the endorsement of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and many other law

enforcement groups--how could she possibly have all of that and be as wrong on a critical issue as the Senator from Missouri has asserted?

How is it possible that the American Bar Association took a look at all of her contacts as a judge, as a lawyer, as a law student and came up with 250 individuals who knew her personally, appeared in court with and against her, judged her in her individual capacity as a lawyer--how can the American Bar Association interview those 250 and find no evidence of the charges that have been made by the Senator from Missouri? How is it possible that they would review all of this and miss such a glaring fact? They didn't.

They told us, under oath, that they were asked point blank: Is her sentencing standard soft on crime? different than other judges?

The answer was no, no.

The net result of it was that the American Bar Association found this nominee, whom the Senator from Missouri charges with these outrage claims--they found her to be unanimously ``well qualified''-- unanimously ``well qualified.'' Yet the Senator from Missouri believes that he has discovered something that the whole world has missed. Unfortunately, he is wrong, and he doesn't admit it.

When Judge Jackson is confirmed to the Supreme Court--and I pray that she will be later this week--it will be in part because she is a thoughtful, dedicated person who has worked as a judge for over 10 years. She has published almost 600 written opinions. She has had 100 cases wherein she has imposed criminal sentences and a dozen-plus cases involving children.

What the Senator from Missouri has done is to cherry-pick arguments from one small part of her service on the bench that has been debunked across the board. But let me say it again: Judge Jackson's sentences were appropriate exercises of discretion as a judge in applying the law to the facts in difficult cases.

It is interesting to me how the Senator from Missouri has carefully drawn lines to exclude Trump appointees to the bench who have done exactly what this judge has done as well--so-called deviate from the guidelines when it has come to sentencing. In fact, one judge from his State, from the Eastern District of Missouri, whom he has personally endorsed as a good judge--and he may well be--has followed the same practice as this judge. Did he raise that at all in the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Missouri judge who was doing the same thing as Judge Jackson? No, nothing.

There is nothing about these judges that is deviating from other- than-accepted practices. When 70 to 80 percent of sentences handed out by judges across America are using the same standard, Judge Jackson is in that mainstream, along with judges whom this Senator from Missouri has endorsed.

If this issue needs to be addressed--and I believe it does--we can do so if we do it carefully, and we should do it carefully. Make no mistake, I don't back off from my words. As a father, as a grandfather, as a caring parent, I sincerely consider this to be one of the most serious crimes--the exploitation of children. I can't think of anything worse.

The pornography issue certainly is out of control because of the internet and because of those who are making a dollar on it. We should take it very seriously--very seriously. It changes and destroys lives. But let's make sure we do this in the right way.

What have we done in the Senate Judiciary Committee?

It is great for the chairman to stand on the Senate floor and talk about the issue.

Well, what have you done, Senator?

Let me tell you what I have done, and I think the Senator from Missouri knows it.

We have done what we can to address this issue from many different angles. The committee held a hearing on the FBI's failure to properly investigate allegations against Larry Nassar for assaulting young athletes, Olympic gymnasts included, which enabled the abuse of dozens of additional victims. We called them on the carpet. We put them under oath. We brought the testimony forward. We didn't back away from the issue of child abuse.

Following that hearing, I introduced the Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act, with Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee. The Senate has now passed this bipartisan legislation, which would enable those survivors of child sex abuse to seek civil damages in Federal court no matter how long it takes the survivor to disclose the facts of the case.

The committee has also unanimously reported a bill which the Senator from Missouri knows well, the EARN IT Act, which is legislation he has cosponsored with Democratic Senator Blumenthal that will remove blanket immunity for the tech industry for violations of laws related to online child sexual abuse material.

I make no apologies for our approach on this, and there is more work to be done.

I want to tell you that I am tempted to leave it just at that but for one part, one thing I am concerned about.

Our Federal sentencing guidelines have been advisory, not mandatory, since the Supreme Court's 2005 ruling in the Booker case. This bill now being offered on the floor in a very quick fashion by the Senator from Missouri attempts to create mandatory sentencing guidelines for a single category of offense. It is not clear whether it passes the constitutional test of Booker. It could be a waste of time. We don't need to waste time in a critical area of the law that has been so controversial and has been considered and reviewed over decades.

Even so, it is a dangerous slope to go down. Imagine a world wherein every time it was politically advantageous--whether it was a Supreme Court nominee or a headline in the paper--that some Senator could come forward, disagree with a Federal judge in a particular case, and say: Let's pass a mandatory minimum sentencing guideline to take care of the matter.

That is no way to approach the law in a fashion that is used for deterrence and punishment. We need to be thoughtful about it. A subject of this seriousness, of this gravity, deserves more than a driveby on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

I invite my colleague to do his work on this issue as we all should-- the work that is required, the work that is required by the seriousness of this matter.

I object.

Mr. President, after 27 minutes of debate on the floor of the Senate, the Senator now believes we are prepared to change the law that has been debated for decades. He has put in a bill introduced 7 days ago. It has been 7 days he has had passion for this issue--enough to introduce legislation.

If you want to take on a serious issue, take it on seriously, and that means doing the homework on it. Yes, have a hearing. Of course, have a hearing. We want to make sure the people from the Sentencing Commission and others are part of this conversation. It isn't just a matter of throwing charges out against a nominee.

If you want to be serious about it, then admit the obvious: In 70 to 80 percent of cases involving child sexual abuse material, Federal judges struggle with the same sentencing that we have set down. In light of Supreme Court decisions, we understand--I ask for order, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I will say, as far as I am concerned, this is a serious matter that should be taken seriously. You don't become an expert by, 7 days ago, introducing a bill and saying: I have got it. Don't change a word of it. Make it the law of the land. Make it apply to every court in the land.

No. We are going to do this seriously. We are going to do it the right way, and we are going to tackle an issue that has been avoided for more than two decades, when you look at the history of it.

I find this reprehensible--the pornography, this exploitation of children--and there are no excuses whatsoever, but I am not going to do this in a slipshod, make-a-headline manner. We are going to do it in a manner that is serious, one in which we work with prosecutors, defenders, judges, and the Sentencing Commission, and get it right. It is time to get it right.

We wrote this law some 19 years ago, before the internet was as prevalent in society as it is today. Let us be mindful of that as we attack this problem and address it in a fashion that is befitting the Senate and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez) is necessarily absent.

Mr. President, Europe has seen its share of horrors over the last century: the atrocities of World War I, World War II, as well as the Bosnian war. Ukrainians, in particular, suffered under the rule of Joseph Stalin. During the tragedy known as Holodomor, millions of Ukrainians died of starvation--forced starvation.

In the wake of some--but not all--of these atrocities, the world responded by bringing the perpetrators to justice. After World War II, of course, there were the Nuremberg trials; and after the Bosnian war, President Milosevic was charged with crimes against humanity by an international criminal tribunal.

Sadly, now, in 2022, we are faced with the question: How will the world react to the crimes that are now being committed in Ukraine?

Over the past week, we have witnessed the reality of Vladimir Putin's genocidal rampage on the innocent people of Ukraine, and the scenes of brutality in Bucha are seared in our collective memory.

Today, in Bucha, Ukraine, there are mass graves surrounded by bodies hastily shoved into garbage bags, civilian cars crushed like tin cans, and front yards and gardens lined with the dead bodies of innocent Ukrainian people.

One survivor, Antonina Pomazanko, aged 76, watched helplessly as Russian soldiers murdered her daughter, Tetiana. Without provocation, the Russian soldiers opened fire on her home, and the bullets ripped through the gates and fence as Tetiana was standing in the yard. She was killed in an instant.

On Sunday, the New York Times ran a photo of Mrs. Pomazanko looking over her daughter's dead body. Mrs. Pomazanko had covered it with plastic sheets and wooden boards. It was lying in the same spot where she was killed last month.

In the words of Mrs. Pomazanko:

There was so much shelling, I did not know what to do.

There is nothing that will fill the void of loss and despair that Mrs. Pomazanko and millions of Ukrainians feel at this very moment, but there is more--much, much more--that we, as Americans, must do.

The actions of Vladimir Putin harken back to some of Europe's darkest days--the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II, the massacres of the former Yugoslavia--days that we must endure and days which we hope we never have to relive. And as I mentioned, after the Allied Forces liberated Europe in 1945, the world responded. It came together at the historic Nuremberg trials.

When the trials first convened at the Palace of Justice on November 21, 1945, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson delivered the opening statement.

He said:

The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so

calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that

civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it

cannot survive their being repeated.

``Civilization cannot tolerate'' and ``cannot survive'' the war crimes we have witnessed in Ukraine going unpunished.

President Biden recognized that fact on Monday in his calling for a war crime trial for the horrors in Ukraine.

President Lincoln once said to Congress when he proposed an end to slavery:

We--even we here--hold the power, and bear the

responsibility.

It is within the power and the responsibility of this body to deny safe haven in America or anywhere to perpetrators of these heinous crimes.

Under existing law, foreign war criminals who come to the United States, incredibly, cannot be prosecuted. They cannot be held liable in a civil action or even be deported for their heinous crimes. Currently, the War Crimes Act only applies if the perpetrator or victim is a U.S. servicemember or a U.S. national. In other words, it would not cover the Russian officials who are responsible for the commission of war crimes in Ukraine nor cover the Russian soldiers who committed those crimes.

We also don't have a statute or a law in America making crimes against humanity a violation of U.S. law. This was the primary offense prosecuted in Nuremberg, and it was a critical tool for holding violators accountable.

Other grave human rights violations, including genocide and torture, are already crimes under U.S. law that cover any offender found in the United States. This should also be true for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that is why I will introduce the War Crimes Accountability Act.

The War Crimes Accountability Act will ensure the United States has the tools to hold accountable the perpetrators of war crimes and other atrocities. The bill expands the War Crimes Act to cover all war criminals who are in the United States, regardless of where they are from. It fills the gap in our criminal code for prosecuting crimes against humanity so that we can hold perpetrators who come to this country accountable.

This is not just a hypothetical idea. Consider one example: After the massacre of thousands of innocent men and boys in the Srebrenica massacre, a war criminal named Marko Boskic made his way to the United States. When law enforcement tracked him down, they could only charge him with visa fraud, not a war crime or crimes against humanity. We must bring war criminals to justice for their horrific crimes, not slap them on the wrist with a visa technicality.

The United States must never again provide safe haven for perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Our Nation led the first prosecutions for crimes in the Nuremberg trials. It is time for the United States to lead again.

Ultimately, the day will come when Vladimir Putin faces justice, and his name and his regime will be remembered in history alongside the worst of the worst. Until Putin and his sycophants are brought to justice, we cannot waver--we cannot equivocate--in providing Ukraine with all the resources, weapons, and aid they need to triumph over Russia.

Quite simply, the United States of America should never be a safe haven for a war criminal. The United States of America should be holding war criminals responsible for their horrible conduct and what they have done to the poor and innocent people in other places, and they should be held liable on criminal and civil bases. That is what this bill would do. It is an effort to move forward with the cause of justice, but I hope it is only the beginning.

When nations around the world adopt similar laws to the ones which I am proposing, we will make it clear that there are no safe havens left for war criminals. They will pay a price wherever they end up, and that is the way it should be if there is going to be justice.

``Slava Ukraini.''

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, it was just a short time ago in the Senate Judiciary Committee that we voted to advance the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve as the next Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court.

In the coming days, Judge Jackson's nomination will come before the full Senate. We are on track to confirm her this week.

Judge Jackson is an outstanding nominee. She has earned support across the political and ideological spectrums, and her qualifications are second to none. Most importantly, Judge Jackson's record on the bench is one of evenhandedness, impartiality, and independence.

Despite this, not a single Republican on the Judiciary Committee would vote in favor of her nomination. I am disappointed--not surprised, but disappointed. As a result, Judge Jackson will be the first Supreme Court nominee in the modern era to require a discharge from the Judiciary Committee. It is unfortunate, in one respect, given that she is more prepared to serve on the High Court than, perhaps, any nominee in living memory, even by the standards of our Republican colleagues.

During the Trump administration, Senate Republicans laid out what they viewed as being the standards for supporting a Supreme Court nominee. In their own words, a nominee to the High Court should be confirmed if they meet three criteria. Let's take a look at those criteria.

First, Republicans have argued that you must have mainstream, bipartisan support for a nominee. For instance, in speaking out about then-Judge Gorsuch, the senior Senator from Texas said that Gorsuch was ``a mainstream nominee unanimously supported by Democrats in the past.''

Well, lucky for them, Judge Jackson is well within that judicial mainstream, and she has the receipts to show it.

Judge Jackson is supported by multiple Federal judges appointed by Republican Presidents, including Judge Thomas Griffith, Judge Michael Luttig, and Judge Bruce Selya. She is supported by dozens of conservative lawyers, including former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer, and former Solicitor General Charles Fried. She has broad support from law enforcement organizations and former prosecutors.

They keep saying: Oh, she is soft on crime. She has the endorsement of the largest police organization in America--the Fraternal Order of Police--and the International Association of Chiefs of Police and 87 former assistant U.S. attorneys who have prosecuted a range of criminal offenses here in the District of Columbia. Soft on crime? The prosecutors don't think so.

And, like Judge Gorsuch, Judge Jackson has been unanimously supported by Senate Republicans, especially since she was confirmed unanimously by the Senate not once but twice to be a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission and a district court judge.

In short, Judge Jackson has had mainstream, bipartisan support right here in the Senate over and over again.

The second standard laid out by Republicans during the Trump administration was that a Supreme Court nominee must have exceptional legal credentials.

We went for 4 straight days. She faced 24 hours of questioning--24 hours

of question after question after question, written questions, oral questions--over and over. How many questioned her qualifications to be on the Supreme Court? None. Not one.

In 2018, for instance, the Republican leader called then-Judge Kavanaugh an ``absolute all-star,'' specifically mentioning he was a Yale undergrad, Yale Law, and had impeccable credentials.

Judge Jackson passes that same test. She clerked at every level of the Federal judiciary. I can tell you, as a lawyer, that to be a clerk for any judge has great honor and distinction. To be a clerk on all three levels of the Federal court, including the Supreme Court, is extraordinary. It just hardly ever occurs. It did for Judge Jackson.

She served as a Federal public defender, a staff attorney, a commissioner on the Sentencing Commission, and as a lawyer in private practice. Her resume is absolutely star-studded in terms of legal experience. For almost a decade, she served on the Federal bench, handling some 1,100 matters, issuing 600 written opinions. Do you want to know what she thinks about an issue? how she thinks about an issue? Just read the written opinions on every type of legal issue imaginable that came before her.

Altogether, Judge Jackson meets, if not exceeds, the qualifications of previous nominees, and the Senate Republicans have enthusiastically supported them. They should support her.

The third and final standard Republicans have articulated for supporting a Supreme Court nominee is they must have a judicial record and a reputation of evenhandedness.

In 2020, for instance, the Republican leader highlighted then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett's ``openminded judicial temperament,'' Amy Coney Barrett.

Well, by the very same metric, Judge Jackson easily passes muster. Her record on the bench is clearly one of impartiality and independence. She has ruled for and against the Presidents of both political parties. She has ruled for prosecutors and ruled for criminal defendants. She has ruled for employers and employees. In her nearly 10 years on the bench, Judge Jackson has displayed no political or ideological favoritism.

Some people on the far left are upset that she isn't more of an advocate for their point of view. She takes a balanced approach to it. She has never allowed her personal views to influence any outcome, and she has been a model of judicial restraint. She has been guided by precedent, by fidelity to the rule of law, and by an unyielding belief that the Constitution must work for all Americans.

I was listening when Senator McConnell came to the floor and announced that he would not vote for her. The No. 1 reason: She wouldn't take a position on packing the Court--packing the Court. That is a question of changing the composition of the Supreme Court, the number of Supreme Court Justices. There has only been one elected official in recent memory who has changed the composition of the Court--Senator McConnell. You will remember, with the Scalia vacancy, he kept it vacant for more than 8 months and denied President Obama the opportunity to fill it.

What about the issue of the future composition of the Court? Is that a requirement for someone to be supported by the Senator from Kentucky? Obviously not. Amy Coney Barrett wouldn't answer the question. She wouldn't give an opinion. She, like Judge Jackson, said: That is a matter of policy. That is for Congress to decide--and it is.

Judge Jackson easily passed the three tests the Senate Republicans established for supporting a Supreme Court nominee, and she passed the tests with flying colors. She is, simply put, one of the Nation's brightest legal minds. She has outstanding credentials, an unimpeachable character, and an unwavering dedication to the rule of law. She is smart, and it shows.

Judge Jackson also has the temperament. I can't tell you how many times during the course of the 24 hours of questioning she faced last week in the Senate Judiciary Committee that I thought: That is it. I am going to look up at that table, and she is going to stand up and say, ``Enough. My family, we are going home. We have had it.'' She never did--cool under attack, calm under pressure, solid as a pillar.

She has the acumen, the skill--the kind of attributes we demand from a Supreme Court nominee--and she has devoted her life to serving her country, always working to uphold and honor the Constitution. She is dedicated to protecting judicial independence, advancing freedom and liberty, and to making the Court, its work, and its decisions accessible to all Americans.

She told that story of when she was up for the circuit court--that her opinions were long, she said, because she wanted everyone to understand her thinking from start to finish--no mystery here--and that she wanted the people appearing before her to understand what just happened in that courtroom. Why did they win? Why did they lose? What were the issues that were at stake? What did she think about? She takes the time to explain it because she believes in the law, and she wants all of us to understand and believe it as well.

I am going to proudly cast my vote to discharge Judge Jackson from the Judiciary Committee. Later this week, I am going to proudly cast my vote to confirm Judge Jackson as the first Black woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Let's not hurry to leave for an Easter recess--and I am as anxious as everyone to be with our families--and overlook the obvious. This is a seminal moment in American history. We are breaking down a wall that has been standing for too long. There have been 115 Supreme Court Justices in our history, and 108 look like me: a White guy. The others are representing women, representing Latinas, and others. They are, of course, very important in history. This is too.

Judge Jackson is going to be an important part of America, and she is going to inspire a lot of people, particularly young women, to aspire to greatness.

She was discouraged, if you will remember her testimony. She went up to Harvard and toured it during a national debate team appearance. She liked it so much that she went back to her high school counselor in Florida and said: I think I want to apply to Harvard.

The counselor said: Listen, honey. Don't do that. You are going to be so disappointed. Let's think about some other choices for you.

She did it anyway. She was accepted and went up there, knees shaking, wondering if she could cut it. She not only cut it; she set records in terms of achievement, particularly for a person with her background. Her dad worked as a schoolteacher, went to law school, and convinced her that law was the future for her as well.

She has told so many wonderful stories about her family. This is an exceptional woman. She has lived an extraordinary life. She has a beautiful family. She has written a record we can all be proud of. Let's discharge this nomination from the Judiciary Committee and bring it to the floor this week. Let's make history--the right kind of history for America.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.