A resolution recognizing the importance of paying tribute to those individuals who have faithfully served and retired from the Armed Forces of the United States, designating April 18, 2019, as "Military Retiree Appreciation Day", and encouraging the people of the United States to honor the past and continued service of military retirees to their local communities and 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, 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, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 118 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

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