Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, Congress has one task over the next 2 weeks, and it is relatively straightforward: to keep the government open and avoid a pointless and costly shutdown that would hurt most Americans. And as we do that, there is one priority that we can't afford to neglect or punt, and that is providing disaster aid to communities across the country that are still waiting.

All across our country, in more than 20 States and territories, millions of Americans are reeling from disasters: wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, floods. And having lost their homes, their communities, their livelihoods, they count on the Federal Government to help.

For people on Maui, help is needed immediately. More than a year after the deadly fires that leveled an entire town, claimed 102 lives, and stole just about everything from those lucky enough to survive, nothing is normal yet. Survivors in temporary housing are being forced to move every few months. Many have moved five times in the last year, shattering any semblance of stability that they have been able to cobble together. Meanwhile, not a single home has been rebuilt so far. Not a single home has been rebuilt so far. That is a dire emergency for any community in any scenario, but it is especially worrying given that temporary housing assistance from FEMA is due to expire in 5 months.

The long and difficult recovery is squeezing survivors in other ways as well. With fewer jobs and smaller paychecks, people are having to figure out whether they can afford the most basic necessities. A recent poll of Maui wildfire victims found that 70 percent of survivors are cutting back on food and groceries--70 percent cutting back on food in the United States of America--and more than half are cutting back on medicine and other healthcare expenses.

So it is no surprise that people whose families have lived on Maui for generations are considering giving up and leaving the island altogether. And worse, thousands more are on the cusp of doing the same. For Lahaina to fully recover, it needs its people. For Lahaina to recover, it needs its people. And what those people need right now is tangible help--help with building a home, with finding a job, help with rebuilding their small businesses--the kind of help that will finally provide a reprieve from the constant worrying about what is next and hope that a better future awaits them after months of unimaginable suffering.

Providing that kind of help and relief to our fellow Americans in their hour of need is central to the promise of the Federal Government. There are not that many things that the Federal Government absolutely must do. There are not that many things that the Federal Government absolutely must do, but one of them is, when there is a disaster and a State or a county or an island or a reservation or a town is devastated by a natural disaster and the impact of that natural disaster exceeds the ability for that local unit of government to handle it, the President declares a disaster. And then FEMA comes in.

After that, HUD comes in with the support of the Congress through a program called Community Development Block Grants-Disaster Recovery. What does that mean? It is flexible funding for those communities to rebuild. FEMA came to the table and did the disaster response. Now we have to recover. People are not recovered. People are not recovered.

So we have an opportunity not to do something extraordinary but to do

something absolutely essential. We have an opportunity not to pass the Civil Rights Act but to do the thing that Congress always does, do the thing that Congress always does, which is, when a community gets flattened, we are there.

Now, the good news is that even though the House proposal for a continuing resolution sort of fell flat on its face for other reasons-- because it was 6 months and because it had this other nonsense in it-- it did have $10 billion for disaster recovery. Now, that was a very narrow program called the Disaster Relief Fund, which absolutely needs those dollars, but the Republican House position is to fund disaster relief in the continuing resolution. We have got the chair and the ranking member in the U.S. Senate and the chair and the ranking member in the U.S. House of the Appropriations Committee saying they want to do disaster relief. We are not fighting about this as a partisan issue. We are not fighting about this as a partisan issue.

So we have an opportunity, again, not to do something unusual but to do the thing that we have always done. What would be unusual is to keep communities waiting for years now--years now. Wildfires in New Mexico. Unfortunately, there are some wildfires in Nevada as we speak. Twenty States waiting on help: Mississippi, Texas, Florida. All over the country, these communities need help.

A lot of stuff we do is really hard. A lot of stuff we do is really partisan. This is neither of those things. We just have to decide that among the things that the Federal Government does is that we come to the table for any American when a disaster hits. Let's get this done.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, for so many people in Lahaina, next week marks 1 year since the worst day of their lives. They watched in horror as wind-whipped fires barreled into town at blistering speed and sent everything in their path up in flames. They saw the only homes and places they had ever known and lived in fall around them. And with just minutes to escape, they gathered whatever they could and ran for their lives.

It is a testament to the generosity and camaraderie that typifies Hawaii that, even amid all of that panic and chaos, so many people put their loved ones, their neighbors, and total strangers before themselves. In their darkest hour, their first instinct was to provide help. In that moment, everyday people became eternal heroes.

The outpouring of kindness continued far beyond those first few hours. As the grim and heartbreaking reality of death and destruction set in, people did everything that they could to ease the burden, even if just a little bit. Everybody pitched in--not because they were asked but because they saw that their ohana needed help.

For the survivors who lost everything in an instant, no amount of help is ever truly enough. Mr. President, 102 people died that day; 2,200 structures, most of them homes, flattened. More than 12,000 residents were displaced overnight. And so the process of recovery was never going to be quick or easy. This was always going to be a yearslong effort, riddled with stubborn realities to confront and difficult challenges to overcome.

And in spite of the grace and good will of the community, in spite of a robust Federal response since the very beginning, there is still so much unmet need and unfinished work. And, understandably, people are worried and anxious and exhausted. They are tired of having to uproot their families from one temporary housing unit to the next, every few weeks or every few months. They are tired of wondering what the future holds and if that future will be on Maui at all. They worry about their friends and their neighbors grappling with depression and post- traumatic stress from the lingering trauma of the fires. They worry about their kids missing out on school and getting left behind.

One year later, people's lives are nowhere near back to normal. National headlines may have moved on, but life for survivors has not. They still need help.

From the very next day after the fires, following President Biden's disaster declaration, the Federal Government mobilized a sweeping recovery effort that has delivered more than $300 million in aid to date.

Here in Congress, Senator Mazie Hirono, Representative Jill Tokuda, Representative Ed Case, and I worked with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to deliver disaster relief funding and get survivors the help that they deserve.

And while we should be clear-eyed about the long road ahead, it is worth, just for a moment, reflecting on the progress that has been made. After a year of round-the-clock work from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, debris removal is entering the final stretch and is expected to be completed in the coming months. Water and wastewater services have been fully restored as of 2 weeks ago. And a temporary campus for King Kamehameha III Elementary School was built from the ground up in just 95 days and opened its doors to students in April.

That progress is real. And it is the reason for hope that things can and will improve. But there is still so much work left to do. Housing remains the number one issue. Businesses still need help as tourism lags. And people of all ages need expanded access to mental health resources and other healthcare.

Every part of the government--whether it is Federal, State, or county--has a responsibility to help the survivors get back on their feet.

And right now, for Congress, that means passing the President's domestic supplemental appropriations request, which includes significant investments in the CDBG-DR Program; that is, Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery. CDBG-DR has, for decades, been the lifeline for disaster survivors across the country, giving them flexible, long-term assistance to rebuild their homes and their businesses and their neighborhoods. This is a proven program that has helped revive dozens of devastated communities and has to be extended for the survivors on Maui as they try to recover.

For the people of Lahaina, the past year has been a year of uncertainty and unease; unspeakable grief and heartache; impossible choices; a year of what ifs and what's nexts. Nothing will ever fully replace the people and the things that were lost on that harrowing day about a year ago.

But what we can do is be there for them as they recover, for as long as it takes, every step of the way. That is our responsibility, and that is our promise.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, after a long time of talking over the ways social media is harming kids and debating what to do about it, this week, the Senate is taking some action.

For years, kids have been swimming in a toxic stew of bullying and harassment, glorified violence, and constant false comparisons, and the results have been absolutely catastrophic--record rates of anxiety and depression, unimaginable levels of suicidal ideation and self-harm, an alarming epidemic of loneliness and low self-esteem.

These things are not a given. They did not just happen overnight. The fact that young children as young as 8 or 9 or 10 can feel so sad and so helpless that they think they would be better off not living at all--that is a uniquely modern malady inflicted by social media.

Sadness in kids is not new, but a pandemic of youth depression is new. The fact that it is a relatively recent phenomenon is also cause for us to have some hope. It does mean that this is fixable. This is not the way it is supposed to be. This is not the way it has always been. It means that if we choose to take some pretty commonsense steps, we can finally get kids the help they need, and commonsense steps are exactly what the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act are.

I am proud to cosponsor both bills, which will provide important tools to protect the safety and privacy of kids online. I want to thank Senators Blumenthal and Merkley for their early leadership on both these bills.

For the first time in the age of social media, Congress is taking meaningful action to confront the very worst of the internet's ills. It has been a long and difficult journey to get to this moment, not least because some in Big Tech have done everything in their power to protect profits over kids. So it is to the credit of everyone involved in these bills that we are here, overcoming stiff opposition and inertia, to finally enact something.

It is a good step, but we have to do a lot more because we have yet to address the fundamental question of, when is it appropriate for a child to be on social media?

We have more than enough data, more than enough lived experience, more than enough scientific expertise to know that social media is harming kids' brains, pushing them down rabbit holes, plunging them into deep and dark places. We know that even adults aren't equipped to process the dizzying amount of information available online at all times, and that is to say nothing of the hate and the vitriol and the abuse served up on an endless loop by coercive algorithms.

That begs the question--why is a 7-year-old or an 8-year-old on TikTok to begin with? Why are young boys and girls, instead of playing with their friends outside or learning an instrument, getting radicalized or starving themselves because of something they saw on Instagram?

The fact is, we need to delay the onset of social media use. There is no safe cigarette. There are no settings that are going to solve this problem.

My bipartisan bill, the Kids Off Social Media Act, which I introduced earlier this year with several of my colleagues, will finally set the legal minimum age for social media use to 13. It will also ban platforms from targeting kids under 17 with powerful black box algorithms designed to keep them scrolling for hours on end. These are reasonable proposals. These are proposals that can be implemented. These are proposals that will pass constitutional muster.

So the question in front of us is, Why in the world is a 9-year-old allowed on TikTok when we know that the stubborn facts operate like this: The longer people spend time on your platform, the more money you make in ad revenue. OK. That stands to reason. The more people that use your site, the more money you get to make. Here is the stubborn fact that Meta and Twitter and TikTok and everybody else actually stumbled upon. They weren't searching for it, but they stumbled upon it. How do you get people to stay on your website? How do you get people to stay on your social media platform? The most reliable way to get any user to stay on a social media platform is to upset them. So you have these publicly traded companies, some privately held, but they all have an obligation to try to maximize profit. To maximize profit, you have to maximize eyeballs. In order to maximize eyeballs, you have to systematically upset, alienate, anger, make sick a whole generation of children.

We don't have to do this to ourselves. It is not impermissible for us to set a minimum age for a product for children. There is a compelling government interest and there is a compelling moral interest for us to take this action.

The bottom line is, our kids need help, and after a series of fits and starts, we are starting to deliver it. Progress, however overdue and however incremental, ought to be recognized and celebrated, but let's also remember that our work here is just beginning. The scale of the ongoing crisis and the needs of kids who are thoroughly overwhelmed online demand that we do more, and we must do more in the months and years ahead.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, last month, Hawai`i tragically lost a true surfing legend in Tamayo Perry.

Tamayo was many things: a renowned surfer, an accomplished actor, a beloved lifeguard, a man of deep faith, and a cherished neighbor. Born in the small town of Hau`ula on Oahu, Tamayo was an audacious waterman whose dexterity in surfing and understanding of the sea was second to none. He turned his passion into a profession at a young age through a combination of grit, focus, and commitment that enabled him to overcome any challenge he faced in the water. Accolades and awards soon followed at the Pipeline Masters and elsewhere as he competed against the world's very best surfers.

Later, following an accident that he described as a ``near-fatal experience,'' he turned his own brush with death into a teachable moment for young surfers in Honolulu, instilling in them surfing etiquette and safety. His lessons have and will continue to help save countless lives.

As an actor, Tamayo was known for roles in movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and Blue Crush. But even as he found fame globally, he never lost touch with his roots in Hawai`i. Those who knew him back home saw someone with immense skill and drive, with positivity and grace to match. They saw someone who was extraordinarily generous and loving, right to the very end--and they loved him dearly in return. For them and his ohana, Tamayo's untimely death is devastating, eased only by knowing that he spent his final moments where he was happiest: in the water.

I join everyone in Hawai`i and around the world in mourning Tamayo's loss. May his memory be a blessing.

Madam President, I want to thank everybody for being part of this series of very compelling speeches about the atrocities that the U.S. Government perpetrated against the first peoples of the United States.

For over 150 years, the U.S. Government stole hundreds of thousands of Native children from their families and communities and forced them into federally run and supported ``boarding schools,'' often far away from their homes. These institutions, by design, worked with efficient, brutal, and systematic diligence to force Native children to abandon their culture, abandon their language, and abandon their very identity through unspeakably cruel punishment, abuse, and neglect. As one school superintendent noted: ``Only by complete isolation of the Indian child from his savage antecedents can he be satisfactorily educated.''

These inhumane policies were part of the government's longstanding colonial project to rob Native people's land through assimilation. The goal was to ``civilize'' Native children by killing the Indian in him and saving the man. That was the motto at the time: Killing the Indian and saving the man.

These were not faraway bad guys. These were employees and agents of the U.S. Federal Government. To hear this history today is appalling, it is infuriating, it is heartbreaking, because as the late Senator Ted Kennedy put it, it ``challenges the most precious assumptions about what this country stands for--cultural pluralism, equity and justice, the integrity of the individual, freedom of conscience and action, and the pursuit of happiness.''

But it is not just the history that demands a reckoning. It is also the lasting legacy of these immoral policies, which continue to this day. The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, which I chair, has heard devastating testimony from survivors, descendants, communities, and leaders about the impact of these schools decades later--a legacy of enduring trauma passed down from parent to child to grandchild to great-grandchild, fracturing families and communities over and over again.

I want you to imagine a Native community with no kids left, just the parents and grandparents. Imagine, not just the trauma for that group of children who were abducted, but what kind of community is left there. As a parent, I would be absolutely catatonic for the rest of my life--across Indian reservations and Hawaiian homelands and Alaska Native communities, from coast to coast in cities and in rural communities. And we see it manifest in so many ways with Native communities, whether it is higher rates of mental health challenges or substance abuse or suicide.

So it is not enough to just face up to the wrongs of the past; although, that is essential. It is equally important to provide justice and support for survivors and descendants. The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act does both of these things. The bill establishes a Truth and Healing Commission as well as several advisory bodies tasked with uncovering the full scope of what took place at these schools. The Commission will provide a platform for survivors to share their experience, for the Nation to hear and acknowledge their pain. Doing so ensures that these stories are preserved and that the atrocities are never forgotten.

Importantly, this bill is sensitive to the trauma experienced by survivors and descendants and requires the Commission to provide them with trauma-informed care.

Ultimately, the Commission's final report will provide a comprehensive account of the boarding school era and recommendations to Congress for future action.

Madam President, before I close, I want to take a moment to directly acknowledge the survivors, the descendants, the families, and the communities that have been devastated by these policies. Some of them are here with us today in the Gallery. Their advocacy and courage have been the driving force behind this bill. And the fact that we have reached this point--having passed the bill unanimously out of Committee and ready to consider it before the full U.S. Senate--is testament to their unwavering commitment to truth and justice.

Their stories will not be forgotten. This bill is not just a legislative act; it is a moral imperative. It is our duty to unflinchingly confront the full scope of this shameful history and help to heal the deep pains this very body helped create.

We can't change the past, but we can and we must shape a better future--a future where the mistakes of the past are never again repeated, where every child can grow up with pride in their heritage and their identity.

I urge my colleagues to join me and Senator Murkowski and all of the previous speakers and the author of this bill, Senator Warren, in supporting this important legislation. Too many have waited too long for truth, for closure, and for justice. By passing this bill, we can finally begin the work.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session for a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, I have one request for committee to meet during today's session of the Senate. It has the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committee is authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following Senate resolutions: S. Res. 769, Youth Mental Health; and S. Res. 770, Disability Pride Month.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table all en bloc.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 25; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that following the conclusion of morning business, the Senate resume consideration of the House Message to accompany S. 2073 and, notwithstanding rule XXII, the cloture motion with respect to the House Message ripen at 2:15 p.m., and the mandatory quorum call be waived; further, at 11:30 a.m., the Senate proceed to executive session and vote on confirmation of the Way nomination pursuant to the order of July 23, 2024; that if the nomination is confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that upon disposition of the nomination, the Senate resume legislative session.

Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, nearly one in five American couples has trouble conceiving, and many of them turn to IVF for help. In the year 2021, more than 85,000 babies were created using this miraculous procedure--truly a miracle. Yet they will also tell you, these parents, that undergoing treatment is hard and long and painful and challenging and expensive and emotionally and physically draining. It is often a last resort. After a long journey of failed attempts, they talk to their doctor, and their doctor says: Would you like to try this? And even that is going to be super expensive and maybe not work. One in five families experiences this trouble, and there is this miraculous treatment that can help you to start a family.

So let's be really clear about what the so-called pro-life movement is about here. It is not about life at all. In this instance, it is specifically about assigning the rights of a fully formed human being to a fertilized embryo in a petri dish so that they can control females--so that they can control females. That is exactly what this is about.

Look, there is a fair amount of spin going around Washington--more than usual--because Republicans understand how angry families are, how angry people who are not yet able to conceive are, and so they are trying to get people to believe something other than their own eyes and their own experience.

But here is the beauty of this place: We talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, and then we vote. There is one opportunity and one opportunity only to enshrine the right to IVF in Federal statutory law.

I don't care what you tweeted. I don't care what you said on cable news. I don't care what the memo from the campaign arm of the Republican National Committee says. In a few minutes, we will know the official position of the Republican conference on IVF, and the Susan B. Anthony list and the MAGA Court and these extreme forces in our society are going to show that the Republican Party is not for IVF.

I wish it were different. I wish we could pass this law. But the beauty of the Senate floor is that everybody will be on the record by the end of the afternoon.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to an exceptional officer in the U.S. Army, MG Thomas J. Tickner, who serves as the chief legislative liaison of the U.S. Army, and will retire from Active Duty after more than 33 distinguished years of active Federal service on 1 September 2024.

Madam President, for years, people were accused of being hysterical for saying Republicans would actually take away people's reproductive freedoms. The prevailing Republican position to ban abortions in almost every instance, with no exceptions, was so outrageous, so cruel, so unpopular that people said: Well, they

would never actually go through with that.

But, 2 years ago, it finally happened. Roe fell, and tens of millions of women across America lost their right to reproductive freedom overnight.

Now, once again, people question whether Republicans will actually go through with the thing that they say they want to do: It is too morally extreme; it is too politically risky. But the fact is, Republicans have shown no restraint whatsoever when it comes to shredding people's reproductive rights.

Overturning Roe was never going to be enough. The project also includes banning birth control and IVF. It doesn't matter how outrageous it is. It doesn't matter how unpopular it is. It doesn't matter that 92 percent of Americans support birth control and that almost 90 percent of women have used it at some point. It doesn't matter that women and families would lose the ability to plan whether and when to have kids. Dismantling reproductive freedoms is central to the Republican agenda. Aside from tax cuts for billionaires, it is kind of their main thing.

No right or freedom, no matter how basic or popular, is off limits until Congress enshrines that right in Federal law. The Right to Contraception Act does exactly that. It enshrines in Federal law the right to birth control, and it protects doctors who are simply doing their jobs by providing it.

This should not be controversial. No matter where you stand politically--if you want several kids or if you want none at all, whether you are religious or an atheist or somewhere in between--this is about the basic principle that people ought to be able to decide what is best for themselves, their bodies, and their families. Yet, over the past 2 years since the fall of Roe, Republican lawmakers in at least 17 States--Nevada, Arizona, Virginia, Wisconsin, Louisiana--have repeatedly killed efforts to protect access to contraception, and Republican-led legislatures in States like Missouri and Idaho are pushing bills to block access to various forms of birth control, including Plan B and IUDs. All the while, you have Donald Trump openly toying with a national contraception ban.

So to say the future of birth control in the United States is in serious jeopardy is not partisan spin. Republicans continue to work at this goal. They want fewer rights, less autonomy, less freedom. The only way to counter their crusade against people's fundamental freedoms is to enshrine this right in Federal statute.

The really cool thing about the Senate floor is this: This is the place where you find out what people actually think. There was a memo from the NRSC--an interesting memo. A lot of people are talking to the media near the train about what they think about contraception, but in 2 hours, we get to know what you think about contraception. We get to know whether you actually want to enshrine this right in Federal statute or you don't. That is the beauty of this place, and that is the beauty of this bill at this time. Everyone will go on the record.

I yield the floor.