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Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

Date: Oct. 11, 2018
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights Government Operations

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the nomination of Eric Dreiband to serve as Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division. His nomination is an affront to the mission of the Civil Rights Division, the career attorneys, and to everyone in our country dedicated to advancing civil rights.

Created in 1957, the mission of the Civil Rights Division is to ``enforce[e] federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status and national origin.'' The Civil Rights Division has been indispensable in helping our country combat housing discrimination, voting rights abuses, and hate crimes. It has also intervened in cases of police misconduct in certain situations.

Mr. Dreiband is the wrong person to lead the Civil Rights Division. He has spent his entire career advocating for weaker antidiscrimination laws. He has testified in Congress against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act, and ban- the-box regulations.

Looking at this record, Mr. Dreiband will do more to undermine than to protect efforts to prevent discrimination. How can someone devoted to fighting against antidiscriminatory laws now be charged with leading an agency that enforces antidiscrimination laws? It is almost as if the Trump administration is ``trolling'' the agency itself with Mr. Dreiband's nomination.

Unfortunately, under Attorney General Sessions, the Department of Justice has already rolled back Obama-era guidance that terminated the Federal Government's use of private prisons, helped protect vulnerable transgender students, and the Cole memo which allowed prosecutorial discretion in sentencing for drug cases. Mr. Dreiband's record suggests he will continue these attacks on civil rights.

The Assistant Attorney General of Civil Rights Division should be someone that will vigorously protect minority rights and aggressively expand civil rights for all Americans. Mr. Dreiband has shown that he is not that person.

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