Judicial Nominations

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, now on another matter, this week, the Senate will continue restoring balance to the Federal courts by considering more of President Biden's judicial appointments.

Over the next 2 days, we will consider Deborah Boardman to serve as district judge in Maryland and Candace Jackson-Akiwumi to serve as judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Together, Ms. Boardman and Ms. Jackson-Akiwumi have had over 20 years of experience as Federal defenders.

I believe that bringing professional diversity as well as personal diversity to the bench should be and is now a top priority. There are plenty of former prosecutors and corporate lawyers wearing black robes. It is time that some voting rights attorneys, civil rights attorneys, and former Federal defenders, like these two nominees, bring their perspectives to the bench.

A final vote on Ms. Boardman's nomination will come this afternoon, and then we will proceed to the nomination of Ms. Jackson-Akiwumi, which we will finish before the end of the week. Again, the Senate will not leave for the week until we finish considering these judges. The Democratic majority in the Senate will continue to swiftly fill judicial vacancies.

On a related note, today, Chairman Peters will ask the Senate to approve two critical cyber security nominees: Jen Easterly to be the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Robin Carnahan to be the Administrator of the GSA. Both of these Agencies play a critical role in our Nation's cyber security.

The threat of ransomware attacks and other cyber crimes is on the rise from State actors as well as cyber bandits who were given sanctuary by our adversaries. We need people at the helm on these important Agencies to focus on hardening our Nation's cyber security. This should be a completely nonpartisan issue, and my Republican friends should not object

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