Nomination of Vanita Gupta

Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I appreciate that. I want to acknowledge my speaking time was far earlier. I am supposed to be presiding right now, but I did not want to get between. I am but a mouse in the U.S. Senate, as a junior person. Those are two elephant titans over there.

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Mr. BOOKER. I appreciate the indulgence of the Presiding Officer. I wanted to just give general remarks about Vanita Gupta, but I would love to weigh in and maybe pick up exactly where Senator Durbin left off.

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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I appreciate Senator Durbin quickly wrapping up his remarks and indulging me. I had some prepared remarks, but I want to break away from them.

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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, thank you very much for the recognition.

I think--I am not sure, but I think I am the only Senator here who lives in a low-income, Black and Brown community in the U.S. Senate. I live in a beautiful neighborhood in the beautiful Central Ward of Newark, NJ.

We don't mistake wealth with worth. In fact, I went off to get a fancy education. I may have gotten my B.A. from Stanford, but I got my Ph.D. on the streets of Newark, learning from some of the most incredible people I have ever encountered in my life.

If there is one lesson that I have learned early in my days, in the 1990s, living in the Central Ward of Newark at the height of the drug war, it is that this War on Drugs was not a War on Drugs; it was a war on people--and not all people but certain people. It was a war on poor people. It was a war on Black people.

And it was destroying lives. People were getting criminal convictions for doing things that two of the last four Presidents admitted to doing--simple possession, getting criminal convictions for it.

And here is what is even more anguishing at a time in the opioid addiction where everybody now is on the same page that people who are addicted deserve to have treatment. Back in those days, churned into the criminal justice system were African Americans, for simple possession, who were in desperate need of compassion and care and love and treatment.

And this gets me to Vanita Gupta. I watched the two statements that my friend and colleague from Texas put up, there--screaming--the difference between those two statements: I don't support the legalization of all drugs, but I do support the decriminalization of small amounts of drugs and getting people help and not a lifetime scarlet letter of being a convicted criminal.

She does not support the decriminalization of all drugs. I am glad to see that she is looking at the challenge that we have in this country of arresting people who need help.

And my friend Senator Durbin, with great patience and not relying on raising his voice like I do, a real gentleman, said it simply: Vanita Gupta is not a partisan. She is a patriot.

Look at her career. I mean, my mom used to tell me: Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you say. In other words, judge a person by what they have done in their life, how they have lived, where they have sacrificed, what commitments they have made.

You chart Vanita's career, from her activism in law school to defend the Constitution, from her very first assignment as a lawyer in Texas defending an outrage of injustice--and winning. Where are the people lining up to criticize her in those days working in her nonprofit work?

And then, for the great high salaries of Department of Justice workers, she goes to lead the Civil Rights Division. Are there people coming forward from their experiences? Are there police officers, are there police agencies, are there police groups coming forward to say: When she had that high and vaunted position in the Department of Justice, did she do something that so showed her partisanship?

Not one. In fact, quite the contrary to that, group after group of police organizations are coming forward and saying: She is not a partisan; she is a patriot. I stand by her. She is not a Democrat or a Republican; she is an honest broker, a fair actor who pursues justice.

She has conservatives who are partisans supporting her. I mean, that is the thing that gets me. We see partisan appointees all the time in here, but here is a woman who actually got people--Mark Holden from the Koch brothers organization is supporting her.

So I understand that maybe people are taking words and twisting them. There is not a Member of this body who hasn't had that experience, when the intention, the good will, the honesty behind the words is distorted and twisted by millions of dollars from outside organizations that somehow want to destroy this woman.

I know Vanita Gupta. She is not just somebody I have a professional relationship with. I confess to the floor of the U.S. Senate, she has been my friend for years. I had occasion to talk to her dad, not during this time when she was nominated--months ago.

God, the stories he related about her, the pride that beamed through the telephone about her, about how he came from India with $8 in his pocket, with an immigrant's dream, and now he gets to see his daughters living lives of service, and how his children were wired this way, to so appreciate this Nation as immigrants, to know that this Nation was formed around the highest ideals of humanity, and to see his two daughters pursuing the cause of our country to make this a more perfect Union around the ideals of liberty and justice. That is Vanita Gupta's life.

I have had private conversations with her for years about these issues that now she is being accused on. And she is not some radical partisan. She has a heart and a compassion for human beings that, to me, inspires my actions.

And this is what hurts the most because somehow I have seen it in our society, when a woman stands up and is strong and defiantly dedicated to ideals that are not made real in reality, they are attacked again and again and again. I have seen it in my own party between Presidential candidates. The treatment that the public and the press gives one who is the woman is far different than the same standards they put to the man.

And then--God bless America--there is something about women of color that seems to really get them outrageous attacks. I have seen it through my culture's history. They hunted Harriet Tubman. They despised Sojourner Truth. They belittled Rosa Parks.

There seems to be something about strength, something about talent, something about being willing to tell the truth that generates something, that tries to relegate Black women and women of color to be hidden figures in history.

I see it in every element of our country--even in the medical profession, for God's sake. Even when you control for income and education, Black women giving birth, their pain is not attended to; they are underestimated for the struggles they are in; and they die four times more often than White women.

So with this woman I have known for years, I have seen her in private and public. I have seen her go to work with Republicans, join arm in arm with them in bettering our country. I have seen her serve from her twenties and thirties. I have seen her be, in every step of her career, committed to our country, sacrifice for it.

Here we stand on the Senate floor. And I tell you, on the day after the verdict of George Floyd, where I saw other patriots tell the truth on the stand, police officers break with the waves of history, the streams and currents, to tell the truth, this is a moment that I have to tell the truth.

This is a good American, a great American, honest, committed, who has sacrificed for her country. And in a time of injustice still, where our jails and our prisons are filled with people who are hurt, when we, the land of the free, have one out of every four incarcerated people and, get this, one of out of every three incarcerated women on the planet Earth in our jails and prisons--where almost 90 percent of them are survivors of sexual assault--this is the time we need more compassion; this is the time we need more empathy; this is the time we need more civic grace toward one another.

And Vanita embodies that. She stands for that in every fiber of her being. Her career echoes with that spirit. Should we confirm her to this position, I promise you here on the Senate floor before the flag of my country, she will do this Nation proud, committed. She will never mistake popularity for that purpose. She will never be distracted by the partisan games going on in the Capitol. She will be committed to the higher calling.

I ask my colleagues to step back for a moment and see the truth of who she is, who police organizations say she is, who prominent conservatives say she is, to see the person her dad says she is and elevate this incredible person, this incredible woman of color, to a position that desperately--to a nation that desperately needs this kind of leader.

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