A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing the Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.

James Baldwin once said:

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing

can be changed until it is faced.

That is why we are here again today, to face the history of lynching in this country. From 1882 to 1986, the U.S. Congress failed to pass anti-lynching legislation when it had the opportunity more than 200 times.

We have an opportunity, once again, to right this wrong and face the ugly history of lynching in America. Let's recall this stain on America's history. Lynching is an act of terror. It is murder.

These were summary executions. Victims of lynching were dragged out of their homes. They had ropes wrapped around their necks. They were hanged on trees. In many cases, they were castrated and burned as crowds of people watched and applauded. The premise underlying all of these acts was that Black people were not full human beings.

According to the Equal Justice Initiative, lynching was used as an instrument of terror and intimidation 4,084 times during the late 19th and 20th centuries.

In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy, was lynched in

Mississippi after being accused of offending a woman in her family's grocery store. When Emmett Till's mother held open her son's casket at his funeral, the image of his body became one of the starkest examples of racial violence in America.

These lynchings, I think no one can deny, were acts of violence. They were needless, horrendous acts of violence, and they were motivated by racism. Lynchings were crimes that were committed against innocent Americans. These crimes, for the most part, did not go without consequence. They rarely were followed by an arrest or the charging of a crime or the prosecution of a crime or the punishment for the crime. Of course, the victims of these acts and their families never received justice in our courts of law or in their community.

This is an uncomfortable history to think of, to talk about, and understandably makes many people uncomfortable because of the violence we are describing, because it is part of America's history, because it is something we have never truly acknowledged and recognized, in terms of the crime it was, the crime it is, and how we, through our laws, must recognize the seriousness of it.

Today we have that opportunity, and we must recognize the context in which we discuss it today. Just in the last month, we have had difficult and high-profile conversations about slavery and blackface, issues that are claimed to be part of a bygone era. However, it is clear that in many ways our past is our present.

Lynching is not a relic of the past. In 2011, three men in Brandon, MS, murdered an African-American man, James Craig Anderson. They robbed him, beat him, and ran him over with a truck. That is modern-day lynching.

Let's be clear. No one should have to fear for their life because of their race, national origin, religion, or sexual orientation. We must confront hate directly.

In December of 2018, our Senate colleagues, I am proud to say, voted unanimously, in a bipartisan way, to pass the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act, which I proudly introduced with Senators Booker and Scott. After 100 years and more than 200 failed attempts in the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Senate finally spoke the truth about lynching.

Today I have reintroduced the bill and will ask the Senate to pass it again. The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act is a historic piece of legislation that would make lynching a Federal crime for the first time in American history. With this bill, we finally have a chance to speak the truth about our past and make clear that these hateful acts should never happen again and, God forbid, they do, we are making clear there will be swift, serious, and severe consequences.

We can now finally offer some long overdue justice and recognition to the victims of lynching and their families. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said: ``The time is always right to do what is right.''

I now yield the floor to my friend and colleague, the great Senator from the great State of New Jersey, Cory Booker.

Thank you, Senator Booker. Happy Valentine's Day to you.

Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 488, introduced earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time.

I know of no further debate on the bill.

Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you to all of our colleagues.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Thank you.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Harris for her partnership and leadership on this bill. I also thank my colleague and my friend, Tim Scott from South Carolina, for his leadership and partnership on this legislation.

As Senator Harris just said, this is not the first time we have come down to the floor of the U.S. Senate to implore this body to recognize lynching for what it is--bias-related terror. It is not the first time we have come down to this body to try to right the wrongs of history. After numerous attempts--dozens and dozens--during the height of lynchings in the United States, this body failed to act. This body did not stand up to protect American citizens and condemn the horrors of lynching.

In December of last year, as Senator Harris and I were standing here, this body actually made a historic decision. It was a profound moment, an emotional moment. They made the decision to pass the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act by unanimous consent--no opposition.

After a long, painful, and shameful history of this body, the U.S. Senate finally voted unanimously to make lynching a Federal crime. Unfortunately, the bill was not taken up in the House before the end of the last Congress. So we are here today with the hope and expectation that for the second time this body will make history by passing Federal anti-lynching legislation and that, for the first time in history, this bill will actually become the law of the land.

Senator Harris referenced the Equal Justice Initiative, which documented over 4,000 cases of racially motivated lynchings between 1877 and well into the 20th century. Lynchings were used to terrorize, marginalize, and oppress Black communities, to kill human beings in order to sow deeper fear, inequality, and injustice for generations.

The use of lynching to inflict racial terror is ugly, disturbing. It is a tragic part of our history, but we know its legacy does not just live in our history books. Less than 2 weeks ago, an actor and activist was brutally attacked in Chicago by two men yelling racial and homophobic epithets.

Lynching is not a relic of the past. We are seeing in the present pernicious evil, and we still have yet to confront this in this body. Bias-motivated acts of violence and intimidation in America are actually on the rise. Hate crimes are on the rise for the third year in a row. Hate crimes against Black Americans are on the rise. Hate crimes against Jewish Americans are on the rise. Hate crimes against LGBTQ Americans and Muslim Americans are on the rise. This is unacceptable. Justice for the victims of lynching has been too long denied, and as we look forward we must collectively in this body make a strong, unequivocal statement.

The last time Senator Harris and I came to the floor with this request, I read from an excerpt of a speech given by Congressman George Henry White, the first Member of Congress to introduce an anti-lynching bill more than a century ago and the last Black Member of Congress to serve for decades following Reconstruction.

In 1901, in the last speech he ever gave on the floor, the last speech of a Black Congressman for decades, he said about the terror of lynching: ``This evil peculiar to America, yes, to the United States, must be met somehow, some day.''

For too long in this body, in the U.S. Congress, we have relied on the inevitability of ``some day'' when it comes to addressing this profound injustice. For too long we have failed--failed--to ensure justice for the victims of lynching, and failed to make clear that in the United States of America, in this great country, lynching is and always has been not just a Federal crime but a moral failure.

We have the opportunity right now, again, to make history in this moment. We have the opportunity right now to recognize the wrongs of both our history and our recent past, to honor the memories of those so brutally murdered, and to leave a legacy that future generations can look back on. We will know, after some 200 attempts in this body in more than 100 years, that on this day, this moment in American history--notably Valentine's Day; as one leader once said, ``Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public''--that on this day, we can right this wrong.

I would like to recognize the Senator from California.

Mr. President, today I am reintroducing the Stronger Enforcement of Civil Penalties Act along with Senator Grassley and Senator Leahy. This bill will help securities regulators better protect investors and demand greater accountability from market players. Even after a financial crisis that devastated our nation's economy, we continue to see calculated wrongdoing by some on Wall Street, and without the consequence of meaningful penalties to serve as an effective deterrent, I worry this disturbing culture of misconduct will persist.

Today, the amount of penalties the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) can fine an institution or individual is restricted by statute. During hearings I held in 2011 as Chairman of the Banking Committee's Securities, Insurance, and Investment Subcommittee, I learned how this limitation significantly interferes with the SEC's ability to perform its enforcement duties. At that time, a Federal judge had criticized the SEC for not obtaining a larger settlement against Citigroup, a major player in the financial crisis that settled with the agency in an amount that was far below the cost the bank had inflicted on investors. The SEC explained that a statutory prohibition against levying a larger penalty led to the low settlement amount. Indeed, then SEC Chairman

Mary L. Schapiro in 2011 also explained that ``the Commission's statutory authority to obtain civil monetary penalties with appropriate deterrent effect is limited in many circumstances.''

The bipartisan bill we are reintroducing seeks to update the SEC's outdated civil penalties statutes. This bill strives to make potential and current offenders think twice before engaging in misconduct by increasing the maximum statutory civil monetary penalties, directly linking the size of the penalties to the amount of losses suffered by victims of a violation, and substantially raising the financial stakes for repeat offenders of our nation's securities laws.

Specifically, our bill would expand the SEC's options to tailor penalties to the specific circumstances of a given violation. In addition to raising the per violation caps for severe, or ``third tier,'' violations to $1 million per offense for individuals and $10 million per offense for entities, the legislation would also give the SEC additional options to obtain greater penalties based on the ill- gotten gains of the violator or on the financial harm to investors.

Our bill also strives to deter repeat offenders on Wall Street through two provisions. The first would allow the SEC to triple the penalty cap applicable to recidivists who have been held either criminally or civilly liable for securities fraud within the previous five years. The second would allow the SEC to seek a civil penalty against those who violate existing federal court or SEC orders, an approach that would be more efficient, effective, and flexible than the current civil contempt remedy. These changes would greatly improve the SEC's ability to levy robust penalties against repeat offenders.

Slightly more than half of all U.S. households are invested in the stock market. All of our constituents deserve a strong cop on the beat that has the necessary tools to go after fraudsters and pursue the difficult cases arising from our increasingly complex financial markets. The Stronger Enforcement of Civil Penalties Act will enhance the SEC's ability to demand meaningful accountability from Wall Street, which in turn will increase transparency and confidence in our financial system. I urge our colleagues to support this important bipartisan legislation.

Mr. President, I would like to bring the Senate's attention to the bipartisan Preserving Teacher Loan Forgiveness for Military Spouses Act of 2018, which I am introducing today with Senators Cornyn and Jones. This legislation eliminates a barrier for teachers in military families to earn federal student loan forgiveness for their years of public service.

The Department of Education's Teacher Loan Forgiveness program rightfully incentivizes teachers to commit to students in our lowest income school districts in exchange for up to $17,500 in Federal student loan forgiveness. Teachers qualify for the Federal student loan forgiveness once they have taught full-time for at least five consecutive years at a low income school or educational service agency. Teachers who are forced to move in the middle of the school year to follow their spouse's relocation or reassignment to another installation in the United States or abroad lose their accrued eligibility for the program and must restart their five years of service under current law.

Last Congress, a Maryland constituent brought to my attention the barriers her daughter faced when seeking Federal student loan forgiveness despite her commitment to public service. Her daughter, a teacher married to a member of the military, was in the middle of her fifth consecutive year teaching at one of Maryland's lower income schools. As any military spouse knows, relocation or reassignment orders can come at any time, upending the lives of the service member and their family. Rather than being able to complete a fifth year of teaching in a Maryland school, this family had to relocate with three months left in the school year. Despite this family's double commitment to service for our military and our schoolchildren, this military spouse missed the opportunity to have a portion of her Federal student loans forgiven. No military spouse

should be punished for following his or her spouse's relocation or reassignment.

The legislation that Senators Cornyn, Jones and I have introduced is a common sense proposal to allow military spouses to earn the benefits that they have dutifully worked towards and continue to incentivize individuals to teach our hardest to educate children. Our legislation provides a waiver from the Department of Education's Teacher Loan Forgiveness program's five consecutive years of service requirement for qualified military spouses if their spouse is relocated during the school year pursuant to military orders from the Armed Forces. This waiver will allow individuals to remain eligible for the Teacher Loan Forgiveness program should they resume teaching full-time at a qualifying low-income school district within one year of their relocation. In addition, this legislation requires the Department of Education to provide a report to Congress every two years on the number of military spouses who remained eligible for Teacher Loan Forgiveness due to this legislation. In addition, it would allow military spouses that follow their service member overseas to accrue periods of service towards the Teacher Loan Forgiveness program if they teach in one of the Department of Defense Education Activities operated schools.

I urge my colleagues to join in this effort to help families who are wholly committed to public service by supporting the Preserving Teacher Loan Forgiveness for Military Spouses Act. No family committed to service of our country should lose out on earned benefits due to a technicality.

Mr. President. When a U.S. servicemember gives their life in service to their Nation, they often leave behind family who we are equally indebted to. Ensuring that these survivors are provided every opportunity to succeed and get a quality education supports our values and upholds our promise to servicemembers and military families. Unfortunately, our ability to uphold our promise to dependents of servicemembers who were killed in action (KIA) in Iraq and Afghanistan following the attacks on September 11, 2001 has been affected.

As a result of sequestration, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) sent a letter to institutions requiring them to reduce the Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant awards by about 6.2% or almost $400 per recipient for the 2018-2019 award year. These grants are critical for students to use for tuition, books, and room and board and any future cut would be significant for a young college student. Many children and dependents of servicemembers who were KIA in Iraq and Afghanistan are now reaching college age so more and more students will not be receiving as much in grants as they should be getting and rightfully deserve.

Today, I am pleased to introduce with my colleagues Senator Lankford, Senator Tester, and Senator Scott (from South Carolina) a bipartisan bill called the Protecting our Gold Star Families' Act of 2019. This legislation will move the Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant program to the Pell Grant program to stabilize the funding source for these awards and ensure Gold Star families have access to the maximum Pell Grant funding available if they previously did not qualify for Pell Grants. Additionally the bill would align eligibility requirements under existing Department of Veterans Affairs grants such as the Fry Scholarship with ED and the Iraq and Afghanistan Service program to ensure that all Gold Star families are receiving the award.

While Virginia public universities already offer tuition assistance to dependents whose parents were killed in action or were permanently disabled under the state's Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program (VMSDEP), these funds could be used to offset tuition at private institutions and could also cover additional expenses, including room and board, books, and supplies. Over 500 Virginians have attended or are currently attending college at public universities with assistance through VMSDEP and would qualify for these Pell Grants as well.

Our Gold Star families have made the ultimate sacrifice for this country. Helping them afford college is the least we can do. We should give our servicemembers a peace of mind that if anything happens to them, the nation they served will look out for their children and help them access a high-quality education. As more of our post 9/11 Gold Star children are starting to reach college age, now is the right time to improve the program. I hope that my colleagues will incorporate this bipartisan bill in a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.