Floor Statements

Mr. President, in the Christian faith, there is a saying: ``Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'' I rise today to talk about that kind of sacrifice, that kind of love, and ultimately that tragedy in the death of a man who is a hero.

Officer Brian David Sicknick was many things. He was a loving son to his parents, Gladys and Charles Sicknick; a loving brother to Ken and Craig Sicknick; and a loving partner of 11 years to Sandra Garza. He loved his two dachshunds, Sparky and Pebbles, and he took great care of them.

Many of us got to know Officer Sicknick because he served in the Capitol Police Department. He was someone who loved his job and understood that every day when you put on that uniform, when you come to the Capitol of the greatest power on the planet, the United States of America, that wearing that uniform, wearing that badge, you had a sacred duty to protect this sacred space.

I am proud to say that Officer Sicknick was a Jersey guy through and through. He was born in New Brunswick, NJ, raised in South River, and he lived a life committed to the greatest calling you can have, which is to serve others, to protect others, to defend not just your Nation but her citizens. He was a member of the New Jersey Air National Guard. He loved his country. And I am proud to say he loved Jersey too. He was a New Jersey Devils fan. He proudly, in his work and commitment, served his country in the 108th Security Forces Squadron in Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan.

Officer Sicknick was a reliable and cherished colleague. If you talk to those who knew him, they knew that he was a man of honor and decency and kindness. They knew he loved this job. He loved being a Capitol Police officer. He loved serving this Nation. He loved helping people. He loved his work.

That love is evident in so many stories shared by his family and friends, people who, in this time of painful grief, are still celebrating the life he lived even though it was cut short by hate. People speak to his character and the qualities, the values that made him so special. He was kind. He was patient. Like many of those who rise in their service to this country, he was humble. And he was selfless.

You talk to people who knew him really well, and they remember him as the kind of officer who would go out of his way, not just in his service to those of us who frequent the Capitol but to make sure that his colleagues, his fellow Capitol Police officers, were also doing OK. He was not just a leader; he was a servant. And they remember him living with that sense of honor and that sense of duty. They remember him as the kind of person who would stand courageously in the face of a colleague, who would sacrifice for them, who believed that service meant commitment, meant bringing your grit and your guts and your love. And that is what he did.

On January 6, 2021, when a violent mob attacked this Capitol, Officer Sicknick stood for America. He stood for this Capitol and all of its inhabitants. He was steadfast. He was courageous. He stood in the breach to protect the lives of the Members of this body, their staffs, personnel. He faced down terrorist attackers and sacrificed himself, his own safety, his own security, and ultimately his life in the name of love of country and of the countrymen and--women.

Officer Sicknick is the very definition of a hero, and he deserves to be remembered for the richness of his life, the way that he loved, and the devotion that he gave this Nation. That he is no longer with us today is a grievous tragedy, and it is also a crime. This great man was murdered. This crime demands the full attention of Federal law enforcement officials. Anyone who still harbors doubt about what happened here on January 6 should think of him.

On January 6, when extremists, when terrorists, when White supremacists attacked our Nation's Capitol, they took the life of one of our officers. They spilled his blood. They took a son away from his parents. They took a sibling away from his brothers. They committed this treachery while waving flags, claiming solidarity--some of them-- with law enforcement, but it was hate--it was hate; it was hate--that brought terror to our Capitol and the death of one of our sons.

So many of the words that led up to that day, the lies that were told, the incitement and the encouragement, came from the highest office of our land to dotted members of authority across our country-- these collective actions that led to the moment, the terrorists who are directly responsible as well.

In the aftermath, a hero, a Capitol Police officer, is dead-- a champion, a hero. This is a senseless tragedy, an awful crime. I am not alone when I say to Officer Sicknick's family and loved ones that we-- that I vow to hold those responsible for this heinous crime accountable.

We must honor Officer Sicknick's heroism and sacrifice not just with our words but by what we do here in the coming days, what we do as a nation, how we all take responsibility in the aftermath of a horrific moment.

Officer Sicknick died for this country. He did not die in vain. We, the living, must--must--continue with his level of courage as we tell the truth, as we hold others responsible and for account, as we try to live in the spirit that he lived: with humility, honor, courage, kindness, love, decency.

May Officer Brian Sicknick always be remembered for his service to the country he loved, and may we rise to his example and honor him. All those who have fallen in defense of this Nation, may we honor them in how we live for this country.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. Vice President, I can only think of two times in American history that individuals laid siege to our Capitol, stormed our sacred civic spaces, and tried to upend and overrun this government. One was in the War of 1812, and the other one was today.

What is interesting about the parallel between the two is they both were waving flags to a sole sovereign, to an individual, surrendering democratic principles to the cult of personality. One was a monarch in England, and the other were the flags I saw all over our Capitol, including in the hallways and in this room, to a single person named Donald Trump.

The sad difference between these two times is one was yet another nation in the history of our country that tried to challenge the United States of America, but this time, we brought this hell upon ourselves.

My colleague from Texas said that this was a moment where there were unprecedented allegations of voter fraud. Yes, that is true. They were unprecedented when the President, before the election even happened, said: If I lose this election, then the election was rigged.

That is unprecedented. It is unprecedented that, before the night of the counting of the vote was even done, that he called it rigged. It is unprecedented that he is fanning the flames of conspiracy theory to create a smokescreen in this Nation to cover what he is trying to do, which is undermine our democratic principles.

But it is not just that. The shame of this day is it is being aided and abetted by good Americans who are falling prey, who are choosing Trump over truth, who are surrendering to the passion of lies as opposed to standing up and speaking truth to power, who are trying to fundraise off of the shame of conspiracy theories as opposed to doing the incalculably valuable, patriotic thing: to speak truth to our Nation. Our democracy is wounded, and I saw it when I saw pictures of yet another insurgency, of a flag of another group of Americans who tried to challenge our Nation. I saw the flag of the Confederacy there.

What will we do? How will we confront this shame? How will we confront this dark second time in American history? I pray that we remember a Georgian and his words. All I can say is we must, in spirit, join together like those Georgians on a bridge called the Edmund Pettus, who joined hands, who were called threats to our democracy, who were called outrageous epithets when they sought to expand our democracy, to save it, to heal it--when they joined arm in arm and said what we should say now, commit ourselves to that ideal, that together, we shall overcome.

(Applause.)

Mr. President, today I wish to speak about S. 1900, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Humanitarian Assistance and Security at the Southern Border Act. I understand there is some important funding in the bill to deal with President Trump's manufactured crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly funding for the Department of Health and Human Services. However, I cannot in good conscience support a bill that provides additional resources to the Department of Homeland Security at a time when we are seeing this agency commit so many gross human rights violations. I want to make my position clear: I do not support this bill in its entirety, and I would have voted against it.

Both U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, CBP, have already benefited from increased funding in fiscal years 2018 and 2019 and, as we have seen, have used that funding to ramp up their inhumane policies. Policies like ``metering'', which forces migrants to wait in Mexico for weeks, sometimes months, in order to enter the United States and claim their legal right to asylum. We know that ``metering'' has resulted in the deaths of families seeking refuge, like Oscar Alberto Martinez and his 23-month-old Valeria just this week. Policies like the zero-tolerance policy, which has separated thousands of children from their families and continues to this day. These policies are unacceptable and do not reflect who we are as Americans. Everyone should be outraged as what is happening at the hand of this administration and DHS.

Just last week Donald Trump tweeted that he would begin ICE deportation raids across the United States. At a time when the Trump administration is claiming that it does not have enough money to deal with the humanitarian crisis at the Southwest border, it is puzzling how DHS has enough resources to conduct large-scale raids all across the United States. How is there money for raids that would terrorize communities yet not enough money for providing soap, blankets, and toothbrushes for children in the government's custody?

Repeatedly, this administration has chosen to implement policies that cost more and are less efficient in order to pursue its extreme immigration agenda. If ICE and CBP are in need of extra funding, then they should implement policies that save money, like further utilizing alternatives to detention, ATDs. The government's own statistics

demonstrate that ATDs work and save money.

People are frightened, and they are returning to the shadows. It is weakening the safety of our communities, and it is an affront to the ideals of the United States. I will not support funding which further endangers the lives of immigrants who have every right to remain in this country and those fleeing violence and seeking shelter in our country. Those of us in positions of power have an obligation to stand up for all people and stand against abuses especially at the hands of our government. Instead of rubberstamping additional funding, I will continue to do this and hold this administration accountable. Thank you.

Madam President, this week marks the 65th anniversary of the Supreme Court's unanimous decision of Brown v. Board of Education.

In Brown, the Justices recognized a profound, moral wrong tearing at the soul of this country--racial segregation in our Nation's schools.

They held fast to the principle inscribed above the entrance to the Supreme Court, ``Equal Justice Under Law,'' and they appealed to a self-evident truth, but not yet realized by our Founding documents, that equal means equal.

Of course, the Supreme Court's decision in Brown didn't stand alone. We needed civil rights activists like Thurgood Marshall, who had built toward this moment to carry the torch forward. We needed a Congress and a White House that would enshrine protections for civil rights, voting rights, and housing rights into law. We needed courts committed to this principle that racism and White supremacy could no longer hide behind the shield of law.

Most of all, we needed the power of the people fiercely demanding equality--students like the Little Rock Nine, who courageously, in the face of State-sponsored hostility, walked through the doors of Little Rock Central High School to jeers and taunts and threats; people like John Lewis, who marched and bled on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma; folks like Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, who lost their lives together in the pursuit of justice; and leaders like King, who pointed us to the mountaintop.

Brown v. Board of Education isn't confined to the history books. The fight for equality and civil rights still continues to this day. Much of this hard-earned progress, unfortunately, almost tragically, is being rolled back.

Now, staggeringly, many judicial nominees for the Trump administration have refused to say whether they believe Brown v. Board of Education was even rightly decided. They can't even affirm the most basic and fundamental principle of American law.

One judicial nominee is set to receive a floor vote this week--Wendy Vitter. She not only refused to say that Brown was correctly decided but even suggested at the time that it was, perhaps, the wrong decision.

The nominee for the second highest job at the Justice Department, Jeffrey Rosen, refused to say whether Brown was rightly decided, even though he would oversee the Solicitor General in day-to-day operations of our Federal prosecutors.

The principle underlying Brown is more than a foundation of our legal system. It is also the foundation of democracy. It goes to the heart of one of the deepest ideals in our Nation--that we are a Nation where equal means equal.

The principle underlying Brown is sacrosanct. It is not something that we in this era, this day and age, should be leaving up to question or even debate.

So I would like to take a moment today to read from the Supreme

Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

This decision wasn't written just for lawyers or students at law school; it was written for the American people, making the case for equal justice under law.

So here we are--Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS. Chief Justice Warren delivered the opinion of the Court, and I quote:

These cases come to us from the States of Kansas, South

Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. . . . In each of the cases,

minors of the Negro race, through their legal

representatives, seek the aid of courts in obtaining

admissions to public schools of their communities on a

nonsegregated basis. In each instance, they have been denied

admission to schools attended by white children under laws

requiring or permitting segregation according to race. This

segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of equal

protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment.

In each of the cases other than the Delaware case, a three-

judge federal district court denied relief to the plaintiffs

on the so-called ``separate but equal'' doctrine announced by

this Court in Plessy v. Ferguson. . . . The plaintiffs

contend that segregated public schools are not ``equal'' and

cannot be made ``equal,'' and hence they are deprived of the

equal protection of the laws. . . . Today, education is

perhaps the most important function of state and local

governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great

expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition

of the importance of education toward democratic society. It

is required in the performance of our most basic public

responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the

very foundation of good citizenship.

Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child

to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional

training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his

environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may

reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the

opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the

state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be

made available to all on equal terms.

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of

children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even

though the physical facilities and other ``tangible'' factors

may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of

equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does. . .

. To separate them from others of similar age and

qualifications solely because of their race generates a

feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community

that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever

to be undone. . . . We conclude that, in the field of public

education, the doctrine of ``separate but equal'' has no

place. Separate educational facilities are inherently

unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others

similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought

are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of

the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth

Amendment. . . . It is so ordered.

It has been 65 years since the nine Justices of the Supreme Court unanimously gave those words the force of law. Today, for any nominee who would enforce or interpret our laws, it should be far beyond debate that Brown was right--the separate-but-equal doctrine has no place in American society.

Sixty-five years on, it is our duty as Americans to continue to fight for equality and justice in America. We owe this not just to ourselves but we who benefit from the blessings of this democracy, sewn by the hands of our ancestors, we who partake of that fruit from their labors. We must recognize those heroes in the generations who advocated, marched, and insisted that this Nation make good on the promise of equal justice under the law.

I stand here upon the shoulders of those who came before. We as a nation have progressed in every generation toward more inclusion, more equality. Our courts and our activists and our citizens who came before have made this a more perfect union. We still have work to do, but we cannot allow ourselves to see undone the progress of our ancestors. We cannot allow ourselves to call into question those sacrosanct ideas enshrined in our law. This is not the time to go back. We must continue to forge a pathway forward.

Sixty-five years ago, our courts acted in the name of justice and equality. It is our duty and obligation to preserve that progress.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, today I wish to speak on the nomination of Janet Dhillon, who is nominated to be Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC plays an important role in protecting American workers. I am deeply concerned that Ms. Dhillon will put the interests of corporations over those of employees, which is antithetical to the mission of the EEOC.

The EEOC is charged with ``enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.'' It also investigates claims of individuals who are retaliated against for complaining about discrimination. Needless to say, the EEOC plays a critical role in protecting American workers and ensuring that our Federal anti- discrimination laws are enforced and not disregarded by unscrupulous employers.

In choosing someone to sit on the Commission, it is critical that the administration select someone with a history of working to advance civil rights and workers' rights. Ms. Dhillon clearly does not have that background.

Ms. Dhillon has spent the vast majority of her career working for and representing the interests of large corporations. Notably, while she was employed at JC Penney, the company was harshly criticized for its handling of a garment factory accident in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,000 people. She also worked at the Retail Litigation Center, an entity that works to limit employees' and consumers' access to justice. These experiences stand in direct opposition to the mission of the

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

Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the nomination of Paul Matey, who has been nominated by President Trump to a New Jersey seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

The Constitution actually charges this body with a sacred obligation. This body is charged by our Founders and by our Constitution with providing advice and consent on the individuals the President nominates to serve on the Federal courts.

Over the last century, the United States has developed a process for carrying out that duty of evaluation, evaluating those nominees, but just a couple weeks ago, the body broke a century-old precedent. Until then, the Senate had never ever confirmed a judicial nominee over the objections of both home State Senators. I looked into this through the Congressional Research Service, and they didn't find a single example where that has ever happened.

During the last century before the Trump administration, you could count on one hand the number of times the Senate had confirmed a judicial nominee when even one home State Senator had objected. That happened four times during the 1980s and once during the 1930s. That is it. But with the nominees now coming to the Senate floor, to this body, it is breaking a longstanding, bipartisan tradition and has jettisoned that rule and that idea. This has already happened--ignoring the objections of one home State Senator--five times.

Now that is happening in a doubling-down capacity. The Senate confirmed Eric Miller to the Ninth Circuit a couple weeks ago, and he was opposed by both of his home State Senators, my friends Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. This was the first time in a century that this body has disregarded the objections of both duly-elected Senators, who know their States, who know their communities. It was a breakdown of this longstanding, bipartisan tradition, this idea that this body is different from the majoritarian body in the House; that in this body, we believe home State Senators should have a say on the nomination of judges. Not that they are in line ideologically--clearly, when you have a Republican President, you are going to see Republican-appointed judges. But this breakdown has now undermined this tradition that in the Senate, we find a way to come together and work together on this sacred duty of putting people into that third branch of government.

What worries me now is this week, the Senate is on the brink of doing it again. Senate Republicans are moving to confirm an individual to the Third Circuit over the objections of both home state Senators--in this case, both home State Senators from New Jersey, Senator Menendez and me. So this moment is personal to me, but more importantly, I want to sound the alarm yet again and not just sit as a bystander to history and let this Senate tradition be eviscerated.

When I first got to the Senate, I made it known that I really wanted to be a member of the Judiciary Committee. It took me years to get on that committee. I am so proud to be on a committee that has an incredible record of doing bipartisan work, whether it was the bill we passed out of committee to protect Robert Mueller or just last Congress when we worked together across the aisle to do comprehensive criminal justice reform.

I know the history of that committee. I have been watching it since I was much younger and had a lot more hair. I knew that this committee-- as Senator Durbin so eloquently described last week in our markup committee--this is a committee whose

Members have worked together to confront many great challenges. But now we find ourselves in a perilous position where important guardrails that were put in place to properly vet judicial nominees are being thrown by the wayside.

The latest development in the Senate is disregarding the blue-slip tradition, which over the last century has enabled home State Senators to have a meaningful role in the nomination process.

In late January of this year, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a markup meeting for 44 judicial nominees. Folks around here were literally calling it the monster markup. At that meeting, I told Chairman Graham, just as I had told Chairman Grassley last year, that the White House had not meaningfully consulted with me or Senator Menendez ahead of that markup. In fact, I pointed out, the White House had not offered to even arrange a meeting between Mr. Matey and me or Senator Menendez. We didn't get an offer of a meeting before the nomination. We didn't get an offer of a meeting before the confirmation hearing. We didn't get an offer of a meeting before the markup.

Chairman Graham said he would make sure that Mr. Matey and I would be able to meet before the full Senate voted on his nomination, and we did. I really appreciate that and Senator Graham being a man of his word. But when I met with Mr. Matey last week, our conversation was refreshingly honest because we both knew it was just a courtesy. We knew this process was completely backward. Two home State Senators had just been rendered completely irrelevant in the selection of a circuit court judge from their State.

I ask any of my colleagues to imagine this: that a person to the circuit court from their community--and Mr. Matey is from my city--that you don't even have a chance to meet with them, have a discussion, ask them questions. If it weren't for my presence on the Judiciary Committee, where I got 5 minutes to question him, this person would have sailed through without any consultation with two home State Senators. I ask my colleagues how they would feel if this happened to them.

This breaking of a century-old precedent has made it clear that we are going to keep on breaking it. This is something that is now going to become a part of this body. Are we all really comfortable with the implications of that?

The Republicans on the Judiciary Committee just voted out two Second Circuit nominees over the objections of their home State Senators-- again, historically unprecedented--and three more nominees to the Ninth Circuit with the very same problem are about to come before this committee.

Senate Republicans seem to be intent on dismantling the century-old process for the vetting of judicial nominees. This is being done methodically--taking it apart piece by piece, whatever it takes to push through these nominees.

The pendulum does swing in this place. I was told by Senators whom I respect--I still remember coming here and sitting down with some of the statesmen in this area on both sides of the aisle. I still remember conversations with Senator Harkin, who is no longer here, and Senator McCain telling me to respect the traditions of this body, to understand that this body, as our predecessors said, should be the cooling of the partisan rage or passions of the time; that we should preserve those parts of this institution that create comity, that force us to come together. But the wound that is being created right now goes to the ability of any Senator in this body to truly represent their State.

Look, the pendulum is going to swing. Eventually, there is going to be a Democratic President. This body will shift again. Every single Senator, should they stay in this body, is probably going to see the time when, because of what we are doing today, they will have no say whatsoever when it comes to their constitutional duty of advice and consent.

My message to my colleagues is this: The feeling I had last week when I met with Mr. Matey is a feeling that everyone in this Chamber is going to have at some point if we do not stop this now. If we continue down this path, you will find yourself rendered irrelevant in the selection of judicial nominees from your State. You were duly elected by the people of your State, and there won't be a thing you can do to stand up for their interests in this process.

This will be a sad chapter if we allow it to be written into our history. It doesn't have to be this way. We could go back in this process. We could say: You know what, this guy is qualified. Why don't we go back and have the process done the right way--have the White House sit down with their home State Senators and see if they can work out a deal, as it was done before, to make sure we have a role in the process the Founders designed.

The guardrails we have established in this body have an important purpose: to enable the Judiciary Committee and Senators to properly vet judicial nominees, to ensure that those nominees are not just qualified to serve but that they are more in the mainstream, not ideologues, and to ensure that they have a good judicial temperament.

We cannot walk away from the longstanding Senate practice of respect for the views of home State Senators about the judges who will serve in their State. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this nomination because of the trashing of the processes that have been a time-honored way of doing things in the Senate. But let me be clear. This is about more than just the dismantling of the Senate procedures. As a Senator, I do have a perspective on the nature of some of the nominees who are being put forward to serve on our courts, and I want to take a moment to speak to that.

The Constitution charges this body with vetting the President's judicial nominees for good reason. It is our duty as Senators to provide a check and balance on those nominations to ensure that people who serve as Federal judges can be fair and impartial. It is our duty to help protect the independence of the judiciary. But over and over, we are seeing that President Trump is selecting nominees precisely because they will bring an ideological agenda to the bench.

This will be seen as we soon consider the nomination of Neomi Rao to the DC Circuit Court. Ms. Rao is a prime example of how the administration is working to politicize our Federal courts to achieve far-right policy objectives that do not sit in the mainstream of America. The examples of this are not just rhetoric; the examples of this are clear.

The DC Circuit Court often gets the last word on legal challenges to important regulatory protections. Who is the person the President has chosen to sit on this court? Ms. Rao has dedicated much of her career as a law professor and as a Trump administration regulatory czar to tearing away critical protections for American citizens.

During her time in the Trump administration, Ms. Rao has overseen efforts to roll back an array of Federal protections, from fair housing to clean air and water, from women's rights to LGBTQ rights, from food safety to workers' rights, to so many areas that impact Americans of all backgrounds and all aspects of American life. She has also criticized landmark decisions by the Supreme Court. Other Trump nominees have not gone as far as she has. She literally criticized Brown v. Board of Education, Lawrence v. Texas, and Roe v. Wade.

Worse still, Ms. Rao has been unwilling to make the firm commitment to recuse herself from legal challenges to regulations that her office reviewed while she was a Trump administration regulatory czar. This is fundamental to the independence of our judiciary.

If you compare her position to others within the Trump administration, you will see that other judicial nominees, including President Trump's prior nominee to the DC Circuit, have pledged to recuse themselves from matters they worked on in the executive branch, but Ms. Rao is refusing to do the same.

Given her long track record of opposing critical Federal protections, the serious concerns about independence and recusal, Ms. Rao is the wrong person to sit on the DC Circuit Court, and I urge my colleagues to vote no on the nomination as well.

Most importantly, I urge my colleagues--all of my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans--who do not want to be rendered irrelevant in the selection of judges from their States to

stop--stop--this evisceration of a longstanding blue-slip tradition in the Senate.

I thank you for the time.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 rise today to speak on the nomination of William Barr to be the next Attorney General of the United States of America.

Last Thursday, I voted against his nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee, as did nine of my fellow Committee Members. I voted against his nomination because of some very serious concerns I have with his record on everything from criminal justice to environmental justice, to defending the economic rights of Americans, the rights of immigrants, LGBTQ rights, and women's rights.

I want to go through those concerns here on the floor today, but I also want to be clear that Mr. Barr has been nominated at a time of extraordinary challenge when it comes to defending rights in this country. This is a crisis.

We are in a moment in history when, after years of attacks on civil rights by this President and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, some of our most fundamental democratic principles--the rule of law, separation of powers, equal protection under the law--are hanging in the balance. We now face a full-blown crisis when it comes to rolling back the rights of Americans.

From community to community across the country, we see what it looks like when the Department of Justice fails to pursue justice for all Americans.

It looks like hate crimes in this country are on the rise for the third year in a row but a Department of Justice that rolls back protections for LGBTQ Americans instead of strengthening them.

It looks like more than one-third of all the LGBTQ youth in the country missing school because they feel unsafe but a DOJ that refuses to fight for them and protect them against State laws that target transgender students.

It looks like unchecked voter suppression of Black Americans in Georgia, Native Americans in North Dakota, and the voter ID and voter purge laws across the country that tried to target and suppress minority voters but a Justice Department that has stood by and failed to take on one single voting rights case during the last 2 years.

It looks like communities that are being poisoned by corporate polluters pushing their costs of doing business onto neighborhoods least able to defend themselves, making their land and air and water toxic but a DOJ that has made it easier for polluters to get settlement agreements while cutting its own enforcement capacity to hold those corporate polluters accountable.

It looks like corporate malfeasance continuing to target the most vulnerable while DOJ enforcement of corporate penalties drops by 90 percent during the first 2 years of the Trump administration.

It looks like doubling down on the failed war on drugs, which is known to be not a war on drugs but a war on the American people-- disproportionately low-income Americans, disproportionately mentally ill Americans, disproportionately addicted Americans, and disproportionately Black and Brown people--which is exactly what Jeff Sessions did when he directed all Federal prosecutors to ``charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense'' and seek the highest penalties in nonviolent drug crimes.

It looks like unarmed Black men being killed by officers in their own homes and backyards, Americans of color being disproportionately stopped and arrested without adequate systems of accountability, but having a DOJ that limits the use of consent decrees that can prevent systemic abuses of power by law enforcement and can actually help to make law enforcement better, more accountable, more effective, rebuilding and repairing the trust

between law enforcement and communities necessary to create safe and strong communities.

Of course, it looks like children fleeing violence, being ripped from the arms of their parents, of their mothers at the southern border, 6- year-olds being thrown into cages, and an untold number of children who still have not been reunited with their families because of the DOJ's so-called zero-tolerance policy.

Right now we see a Justice Department whose leadership over the past 2 years has failed countless communities, from low-income Americans who are being victimized by large corporations with bad actors to individual Americans who are trying to have their basic, fundamental rights protected.

The Justice Department has failed the American people, and, most of all, it has failed to seek that ideal we all hold dear, which is equal justice under the law. That is why, at this moment in history, during this crisis of conscience, during this crisis of moral leadership, we need an Attorney General who grasps the urgency of the moment, who is aware of the impact of the Department of Justice on communities across this country, and who is willing and prepared to protect our most fundamental rights in every community for every American. That is the ideal of justice; that is the ideal of patriotism.

What is patriotism but love of country? You cannot love your country unless you love your fellow country men and women. What does love look like in public? Justice, justice, justice.

I appreciate that Mr. Barr took the time to sit down and meet with me. It was after the hearings; yet at my request, he finally agreed to come and meet with me. There was no staff in the room. It was an honorable gesture--a gesture of courtesy. We had a chance to have dialogue about his record, his experiences, his perspectives as well as mine. I appreciate that. It is a constructive first step.

I appreciate his willingness to listen to me and talk about his record of mass incarceration. I even appreciate his willingness to accept the book I gave him--I hope he reads it--titled ``The New Jim Crow'' by Michelle Alexander.

I continue to have concerns about Mr. Barr's ability and willingness to be the kind of Attorney General this country needs at this pivotal moment in American history. I am concerned because throughout his career, time and again, and during his confirmation process, Mr. Barr has demonstrated not only that he holds troubling views but also that he has an alarming lack of knowledge about the crises that make our justice system so broken right now, at a time when the United States continues to lead the globe, to lead the planet Earth and all of humanity in the sheer number of people we incarcerate.

One out of every four people incarcerated on the planet Earth is right here in the United States, the land of the free. One out of every three incarcerated women on the planet Earth is right here in America, the land of the free. I say, again, that they are not the wealthy; they are not the privileged. As my friend Bryan Stevenson says: We have a nation that treats you better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent.

Since 1980, our prison population in this country alone has grown on the Federal level by 800 percent. You can tell a lot about a nation by whom they incarcerate. In Russia they incarcerate political prisoners. In Turkey they incarcerate members of the media. In this country we incarcerate the poor. We incarcerate Americans with mental illnesses, Americans with disabilities, Americans who are survivors of sexual assault, Americans who are struggling with addiction, people who have faced harm and need help, who often in the system get hurt and experience retribution and not restorative justice. We have a nation where we are locking people up for doing things that two of the last three Presidents admitted to doing.

Mr. Barr has a record of actively pushing the policies that have led to mass incarceration, that have driven up our Nation's prison populations at a time when we need an Attorney General who is willing to follow the lead of this body, which passed criminal justice reform.

When Mr. Barr served as Attorney General during the first Bush administration, he literally wrote the book on mass incarceration. He commissioned a report titled ``The Case for More Incarceration'' and wrote the forward endorsing it. He is an architect of the criminal justice system that is so disproportionate--out of proportionality-- that is ruthless, doing things that other countries, until this body acted, called torture, like juvenile solitary confinement.

At his hearing, Mr. Barr said he recognized that some things have changed over the last quarter century, but he failed to explain how his views on criminal justice have actually evolved. He was describing more of what he was seeing this body and others do, but he didn't talk about his own evolution. He didn't say: Hey, that was my perspective then, and it has changed now.

On the issue of implicit racial bias, I asked him if he acknowledged its well-documented existence in our criminal justice system. Implicit racial bias has been pointed out by both sides of the aisle in this body, by big city police chiefs and a former FBI Director. Time and again, it has been documented by university studies. It is actually in our Justice Department's policies to train people in implicit racial bias. This isn't something that is new. This is something we understand.

When asked about it, Mr. Barr said:

I have not studied the issue of implicit racial bias in our

criminal justice system. . . . Therefore, I have not become

sufficiently familiar with the issue to say whether such bias

exists.

I find this incredibly alarming. There are widely documented instances of racial disparities throughout our criminal justice system from police stops to sentencing, to charges. Racial bias exists even in our school pipeline; with Black kids and White kids having committed the same infractions in school, African-American kids are more likely to be suspended for them.

There is no difference, for example, between Blacks and Whites in the United States of America for using drugs--no differences for Blacks, Whites, Latinos. We have a drug problem in America, and it is equally seen, regardless of race. Whites are more likely than Blacks, in many studies, to deal drugs. Yet, despite this, we live in a country where Blacks are about three times more likely to be arrested for using drugs and almost four times more likely to be arrested for selling drugs.

What does it do when you apply a justice system to certain communities and not to others? It has a multiplier effect of impact. It affects voting rights because States still eliminate the right to vote for nonviolent drug charges. It is called felony disenfranchisement. It affects economic opportunity because if you have one criminal conviction for doing the same things that past Presidents have admitted to doing and Members of this body have admitted to doing, then you can't get a job, you can't get business licenses. Doors are shut to you; opportunity is closed. When you have a justice system that disproportionately impacts certain Americans, those communities then face serious, serious consequences.

As a Villanova study shows, overall, we would have about 20 percent less poverty in America if our incarceration rates were the same as those of our industrial peers. Poverty is more inflicted on those communities of color when they are more likely to be arrested, charged, and convicted because of the existence of implicit racial bias.

But the nominee for the top law enforcement position in our country says he is not sure ``whether such bias exists.''

This should be deeply troubling to all Americans because we believe in an ideal of equal justice under the law. This should be troubling to all Americans because we believe, as King said, ``Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.''

This should be deeply troubling to all Americans because there is a deep lack of faith that people have in our criminal justice system. They are losing faith that they will receive equal treatment.

When the justice system does not operate in good faith, it is hampered in doing its most sacred duty.

Right now there is a lack of belief that people will be treated fairly, a lack of belief that the system works

the way it is supposed to. Mr. Barr's response and his record show me that he will do nothing to address these legitimate concerns in communities all across this country. At a time when he could be a leader, a champion, a light of justice and hope for those who have lost hope, for those who have lost faith, for those who feel left out and left behind, he almost doubles down with a dangerous lack of knowledge about what we all know exists.

If confirmed, Mr. Barr would also be charged with implementing what this body collectively has done to start to reform, for the first time in American history, mass incarceration and increased sentencing.

For the first time since 1994's crime bill, we in this body, with wisdom and in a bipartisan way, have started to go back to more proportionate sentencing. Through the FIRST STEP Act, this body put more justice back into our justice system. It is the first step, but it is the first step in the right direction in decades in our country's history.

I am proud of what we did together. The bipartisan criminal justice reform that this body just passed into law, by an overwhelming vote, is incredible, but it is critical that the FIRST STEP Act be fully and fairly implemented by the Justice Department. Mr. Barr has not demonstrated his commitment to the law or to fixing any part of the broken criminal justice system I have outlined.

Then, of course, we have industries, from the private prison industry to phone companies charging exorbitant fees in prisons and jails, making a profit off of these injustices, making a profit off policies that penalize and criminalize low-income communities and communities of color and that target refugees of color.

What is happening in our country's criminal justice system today is a human rights crisis. Think about a justice system right now that has people sitting in prison for months before they even get a trial because they can't afford bail or a lawyer. We have a human rights crisis in this country.

We need an Attorney General who recognizes the problem and has a willingness to do something about it, not one who says they are not sure we even have a crisis. This is an extraordinarily challenging time in our history. This Nation was formed under ideals of justice and fairness and equality. It was formed at a time when we mutually pledged to each other--as it says in our Declaration of Independence--``our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.'' This is a country where we are all in this together. This is a country where our values and ideals have to be real for all and not just a select few.

After 2 years, we have seen the Justice Department's relentless attacks on basic fundamental rights by our President and Attorney General. We now need an Attorney General who will work to uphold the values that are most in danger. We need an Attorney General who will fight for equal justice for all, not just the privileged few. We need an Attorney General who knows the difference between ensuring justice is done and does not automatically seek the harshest penalty in every case, with a blind eye to circumstances, or facts, or extenuating circumstances.

We need an Attorney General who will stand up for all of our children, LGBTQ rights, for voting rights, environmental justice, and a fairer justice system. We need an Attorney General who will refocus on the mission of the Department of Justice in seeking justice for every young person who is afraid to go to school because of prejudice and policies that discriminate. We need one who is seeking justice for every elderly man who lived through Jim Crow only to be blocked from exercising his voting rights because of racially targeted voter ID laws.

We need an Attorney General who is seeking justice for Americans who have become entrapped in our broken criminal justice system, whether it is a kid from a community like the one I live in who is being targeted by our ineffective drug laws or kids who have been picked up on the southern border and thrown into a privately run detention center.

We need an Attorney General who is seeking justice for communities whose soil, air, and water are being polluted by massive corporations and that feel no one will fight for them. We need an Attorney General who will live up to the purpose of the Justice Department. This is the call of our country. This is the leadership we need. This is the Attorney General we must insist on, one who will seek justice for everyone in every community from the gulf coast to the Great Lakes, from sea to shining sea.

Mr. Barr has not demonstrated that he understands the fierce urgency of this moment in our history and the imperative for the Attorney General to be deeply disturbed by injustice and to urgently seek justice. For this main reason, I will be voting against his nomination, but if confirmed, I will perform my constitutional duty and provide oversight and accountability. I will continue to work to ensure that our Justice Department lives up to its demands.

I hope this Attorney General, should he be confirmed, learns, sees the vulnerable, understands the challenges of the meek, and understands communities in crisis; that he gets to know people; that he reaches out and sits down with folks to learn and to develop a more courageous empathy, but I will not wait on that.

I will fight every day to make sure our Justice Department seeks justice. If Mr. Barr tries to double down on the failures of a broken criminal justice system, tries to roll back basic rights, or fails to protect voting rights and civil rights, I will fight against his efforts at every step. I will fight for justice that doesn't just take the side of the powerful few but seeks justice for all Americans. That is our obligation--all of us. Whether you sit in this body or you sit in communities across this country, we have gotten to where we are because we all sought justice. Even if it didn't affect our families directly, we knew the call of our country must be about all of us understanding that injustice for one is an injustice for all.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Thank you, Madam President.

I want to thank Senator Harris for her incredible partnership and leadership on this bill, and I want to thank Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina for his leadership and for the consistent examples of character and integrity they both have shown as my partners on this legislation in this body.

As my colleague has said, it has been a very long time coming. For over a century, Members of Congress have attempted to pass some version of a bill that would recognize lynching for what it is--a biased, motivated act of terror.

Today, Senator Harris and I have requested that after a century-- after 100 years and over 200 bills introduced in this body--we finally make lynching a Federal crime in the United States of America.

Thanks to the work of incredible people around this country--truth tellers such as Brian Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative-- today, we have a more comprehensive understanding of just how widespread and purposefully lynching was used as a tool of racial terror and oppression in our history.

We know that the Equal Justice Initiative was able to document thousands of cases--over 4,000 documented cases of racially motivated lynchings between 1877 and 1950. During that time, lynchings were used to terrorize communities. They weren't only vicious acts of murder against individuals, but in many cases bodies were hung trying to drive fear into communities to make them submit to second-class citizenship and inconsistent justice.

The use of lynching as a larger part of terrorism is disturbing. It is a dark chapter of our past and part of our history. Its legacy doesn't just live in our history books. Despite activists and organizations that have dedicated themselves to studying and addressing the racial terror in our history, we have failed to correct for many of those past sins.

We know that the passage of this bill will not undo the damage, the terror, and the violence that have been done and the lives that were brutally taken in our past. We do know that the passage of this bill, even though it cannot reverse the irrevocable harm caused by lynching used as terrorist oppression, is a recognition of that dark past. We know that when wrongs are ignored they fester underneath the skin of the body politic, and we know that justice delayed is justice denied. Today, this is a moment of potential justice in this body, a reckoning to the victims of lynching that for too long have been denied.

I want to go back to a point in history in this body. The very first bill introduced by Congress to address the terror of lynching was by a man on the other side of the Capitol, Congressman George Henry White, in 1900. The year after it was introduced, in 1901, was the last year he would serve in Congress. That is because Congressman White was the very last Black Congressman of the group who had been elected to Congress during Reconstruction.

Congressman White's departure in 1901 would be the last time an African-American Black southerner would serve in Congress for over 70 years. Congressman White must have had an understanding of what was to come with the long dearth of time and the lack of diversity. He knew the terror of

Jim Crow laws and voter disenfranchisement that would stop the election of African-Americans.

In his last speech in this body on January 29, 1901, 1 year after he introduced the bill to criminalize lynching, he delivered a farewell address he called ``The Negro's Temporary Farewell to the American Congress.''

In that address to Congress over one century ago, he made the same request that Senator Harris and I are making right now--for the United States to officially criminalize lynching.

Congressman White said:

Mr. Chairman, permit me to digress for a few moments for

the purpose of calling the attention of the House to a bill

which I regard as important, introduced by me in the early

part of the first session of this Congress.

[It was intended] to give the United States control and

entire jurisdiction over all cases of lynching and death by

mob violence.

During the last session of this Congress I took occasion to

address myself in detail to this particular measure, but with

all my efforts, the bill still sweetly sleeps in the room of

the committee to which it was referred. The necessity of

legislation along this line is daily being demonstrated. The

arena of the lyncher no longer is confined to Southern

climes, but is stretching its hydra head over all parts of

the Union.

Referring to the terror of lynching, Congressman White knew that ``the evil peculiar to America, yes, to the United States, must be met, somehow, some day . . . ''

Well, now in this moment in America, we have a chance to make some day today. We have the opportunity to recognize the wrongs of our history, to honor the memories of those brutally killed, and to leave a legacy that future generations can look back on, knowing that after 200 attempts over the course of 100 years of trying, on this day in American history this body will do the right thing.

So I would recognize my colleague from California for the historic calling up of this piece of legislation.

Madam President, my friend, the Senator from Oregon, just came over. This is a very meaningful moment for this body.

There was a speech by a man that I revere. His picture hangs in my office. His name is Martin Luther King. For many people who endured the pain and agony of our past, with lynchings that went on up to the 1970s in this country, and for those people who yearned for justice they would never experience, for those people who know the pain, agony, and hurt in their family's history and the trauma that is still felt by many people today, who remember lynching in this country that was so pervasive--Dr. King once spoke to those people who were hurting and seeking justice, and he asked at the end of his speech:

How long? Not long, because ``the truth crushed to the

earth will rise again.''

He asked:

How long? Not long, because ``no lie can live forever.''

He asked:

How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe

is long, but it bends toward justice.

This has been a long arc, a painful history and shameful history in this body--that at the height of lynchings across this country affecting thousands of people, this body did not act to make it a Federal crime. At least now, the U.S. Senate has acted--100 Senators, no objections.

I just want to give gratitude to this body for what we have just done. Thank you.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to give a lot of gratitude to my colleague, Senator Coons of Delaware. He is not only with us today on this call for a vote on a bill that was voted out of this Judiciary Committee in a bipartisan manner, but he is also a cosponsor of this legislation and somebody I have been proud to work with.

I want to thank my colleague Jeff Flake for putting himself so far out there in pushing for this legislation. It is a consistent pattern with Jeff Flake. If you know him, you might know that he and I might disagree on a lot of policy, but he is one of the people I have looked up to in the U.S. Senate as someone who understands the role of Congress, the article I branch of government--that the powers of Congress articulated by the Constitution should be seen as sacrosanct, and that the erosion of these powers or the surrendering of these powers to the executive undermines the very ideals of our Constitution that our government should be one of checks and balances on power.

I have seen him step forward and lead in the manner he is showing today. I have seen him step forward when it came to war powers and talking about the authorization of the use of military force and speak forcefully in a bipartisan manner with another of my colleagues, Tim Kaine, in saying: Hey, we have to have a system of checks and balances or the very foundations of this Republic begin to be undermined.

If you know his character, you know he is on the Senate floor because of his deep belief in this Nation, not just today but for the tomorrows to come, and that we must maintain healthy checks and balances on Executive power and within our system of government.

I am grateful for him to come in his final hours as a U.S. Senator still pushing this idea that there should be checks and balances, pushing this idea that there is a bipartisan space to try to preserve the ideals of this Republic, pushing this idea that no one--not a U.S. Senator, not a Congressperson, not even a President--is above the laws of this land because in the United States of America, we believe in the rule of law.

More than this, we talk about the Framers, but every generation of people who are in these seats in many ways are stewards of this Republic. What I respect about my colleague from Arizona is that he takes that seriously. Something from past Members in history who have understood that is that you need to not only make decisions for today but you need to plan for tomorrow. It is an axiom that I know all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle believe: It is better to be prepared for a crisis and not have one than have a crisis and not be prepared.

I am one to believe that we are coming perilously close to the precipice of our Nation having a constitutional crisis. There is an investigation going on that is not a political attack. It is not a witch hunt--whatever may be seen. We already have seen this investigation through a consensus of our intelligence community that is investigating an attack on our Nation. It is something that people from both parties have spoken about--the importance of having an independent investigation. It is something that an appointee of the President, Jeff Sessions, has said we need to make sure the investigation is independent and beyond reproach.

That investigation has already yielded many indictments. It has yielded guilty pleas, and that investigation should be able to continue. There are some people who say: Hey, there is no threat to that investigation, but I am a big believer that if someone shows you who they are or tells you who they are, believe them.

We have a President right now who is attacking this investigation-- the very legitimacy of this investigation--and he is acting like someone who believes this investigation shouldn't be going on at all. I believe that it may not happen, and we may not end up with a constitutional crisis, but if one comes, we should be prepared.

How are we to be prepared? Not by some partisan radical idea, but by a very sobered measured step that is embodied in the legislation that we are calling for right now--to have a modest check and balance on a President's power to end an investigation and dismiss the special counsel. That is what this is all about. It is a modest step of judicial review that could prevent not just a crisis that might happen next month or next year but 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 50 years from now. It is in line with what this body has done in the past of providing a check and balance on Executive power.

We have called yet again, for the third time, for a vote, and a third time we have not been granted a vote on the Senate floor or granted unanimous consent.

I am grateful to be standing with my colleagues for the third time. My hope is that in the fashion we have seen on this floor of recent, that we can work together to ensure we have a check and balance on Presidential power, to ensure the ideal of this Nation of equal justice for all, and to ensure that we can have a country where no one is above the law.

I yield the floor.

Would the Senator yield?

I wish to express my gratitude on the floor. I have been here in the Senate for almost exactly 5 years, and Senator Durbin and Senator Grassley have been nothing short of heroic, in my eyes, in consistently working the entire 5 years to get us to this point where we are, to use a football metaphor, on the 1-yard line in getting this over. Obviously, Senator Mike Lee and Senator Whitehouse have also been in that category.

You did an incredibly good job of laying out that we have amendments that go counter to the victims groups and to their interests and to their well-being, their often emotional well-being, being retraumatized, forced to be back out there.

But I want to ask you a question about that last amendment Cotton is making about that so-called exclusion list, people who won't be eligible for particular programs before they are released. In other words, there are programs they can enroll in while they are in prison that would ultimately shave a little bit of time off their sentences. These programs, though--I would like you to maybe go into them because they are evidence-based programs that actually lower recidivism rates, and they save taxpayer money. The idea behind this--maybe you could explain it--is to make sure that when people are released, they don't come back. In other words, if they don't get into these programs, it is more likely that those very people he has tried to exclude might come back. Can you explain why these programs are important and why they make sense?

Mr. President, I want to thank the Presiding Officer and acknowledge my friend, whom I deeply admire, sitting in the chair. It is great to give this short speech in front of him. It is good to see the Presiding Officer, my friend.

I want to say good afternoon to everyone, and this is a moment in which I want to give a sense of gratitude.

I want to thank my colleagues for their incredible work and leadership and, especially, recognize the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Chuck Grassley. I want to thank Senator Dick Durbin, who has been a hero of mine on the issue of criminal justice reform, as well as Mike Lee, who has been a champion, all of their staffs, everyone who is involved in the tireless work and effort that has been going on in what is the pending bill on the floor before us now, the FIRST STEP Act.

I also want to recognize the incredible people--many of them advocates, many of them citizens, many of them activists. So many of the groups have been pushing, challenging, demanding that we have criminal justice reform in this country. A lot of these groups have been organized and working for years and years--years before I came to the Senate--to try to bring forward criminal justice reform. They brought insight, wisdom, and they helped to shape this legislation. Their advocacy has made this a better bill.

It is because of the work and the diversity of voices that have been involved in this process that we stand poised today to pass this bill, to begin to deliver some reforms to our savagely broken criminal justice system.

I am proud of this coalition. I am proud that the coalition has people all across the political spectrum. I am proud that the coalition has people from diverse backgrounds. This is how change has been made in this country for generations.

I want to return to the fact that we are poised to pass this bill because of the deeply, savagely broken criminal justice system that we have.

Since 1980 alone, our Federal prison population has exploded by 800 percent. There has been an 800-percent increase in our prison population. This is because of failed policies by this body that created harsh sentencing, harsh mandatory minimum penalties--three strikes and you are out. These are the bills that caused this exploding population of prisoners to become the largest in terms of percentage on the planet Earth.

America is now the preeminent incarceration Nation. We are the incarcerating capital of the planet Earth. Even though we only have 5 percent of the world's population, one in four of the incarcerated people on the planet are in the United States of America. One in three of all incarcerated women on the planet Earth are here in the United States of America.

Today, close to one-third of all adults in the United States have a criminal record. We have criminalized the United States population. About one-third of Americans have a criminal record.

After decades of failed Federal policies and after decades of going in the wrong direction, we now have an opportunity to reverse course in a significant way.

Our criminal justice system, as it stands right now, is an affront to whom we say we are as a nation. We profess--we swear an oath to the flag that we are a nation of ``liberty and justice for all,'' but our criminal justice system violates those values.

I believe you can tell a lot about a nation--not by its buildings, not by its structures or its wealth, but you can tell a lot about the true character of a nation by looking at its prisons and seeing whom they incarcerate. You can go to countries with authoritarian regimes and see how they imprison their political opposition. You can go to some countries and see they actually incarcerate members of the media. We don't do that in the United States.

In this country, if you go into our prisons and our jails, you see, overwhelmingly, that we incarcerate those who are marginalized in our society, those who are vulnerable in our society. Overwhelmingly, in the United States, our prisons and jails are full of those Americans who are already hurting and struggling and often need more help than a system that hurts them. Our prisons and jails have become warehouses for people who are struggling with trauma, struggling with disease, struggling with illness. Right now, our prisons and jails are filled overwhelmingly with people with mental illness, overwhelmingly with Americans struggling with addiction, overwhelmingly with Americans who are survivors of sexual assault, and also overwhelmingly, it is full of Americans who are low-income, poor folks and people who are disproportionately people of color.

This is a system in our country that feeds upon certain communities and not others. The War on Drugs--which has fueled so much of the explosion of our prison population--has really been a war on certain people and certain communities and not on others. I am the only Senator who lives in a majority Black and Brown community. It is low income, but I can tell you right now, my community does not mistake wealth with worth. I live in an inner-city community, and when I go home at the end of most weeks, I draw strength from my community. I see evidence of the incredible growth that has occurred. These are good people in a city. They pull together, work together, and can accomplish more things than other people who are disrespecting, disregarding, and just plain dissing them don't think is possible. I am proud of my community.

Despite all the work that has been done in the city of Newark, I still live in a community that is both overcriminalized and underprotected because of Federal policies--because of policies in this body that mistake severity of a punishment with the actual security of a people. We know there is no deeper proclivity to commit crime among people of color, but there is a much deeper bias in the way our drug laws have been and are being applied, which disproportionately target people of color and low-income communities.

We have a system that for over a century, we as a nation have overcome slavery--decades of Jim Crow--but author Michelle Alexander calls our criminal justice system ``The New Jim Crow'' because of its disproportionate impact on people of color. We now have a criminal justice system where there are more African-American men under criminal supervision than there were enslaved in 1850. This is a punishing reality that I have seen with my own eyes, where people in certain privileged communities don't face the kind of scrutiny, the kind of arrests that you do in other communities in our country.

The truth about human beings is that all of us make mistakes. That is an inevitable part of life, but the way our country's drug laws are designed and applied, a kid in a more privileged community or on a college campus gets a chance to stumble--to learn a lesson. There is a wide margin for error, but a kid living in a community that is low income or a community that is Black and Brown, gets trapped by a system that disproportionately impacts their lives more than it does others.

Bryan Stevenson said we live in a nation ``that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent.''

In the USA, we see Americans getting trapped in a system where the data is clear. There is no difference between Blacks and Whites for using drugs or selling drugs in the USA. There is no difference, but if you are Black, you are almost four times more likely to get arrested for selling drugs and almost three times more likely to be arrested for possession of drugs. This is one of the things that has led to such a dramatic racial disparity in incarceration in the USA. People right now in our country are sitting in prisons for doing things that two of the last three Presidents admitted doing, but they encounter a different type of justice system. The scales of justice in America are not balanced. This is a system that hurts people, and it hurts people who are often already struggling, often already hurt.

What we do to people in this country with a nonviolent drug offense is like getting a life sentence for the rest of your life. Even after you have come out of a prison sentence or even if you received no time served at all, once you are convicted of a nonviolent drug offense-- again, like people in this body and in the White House have done before, potentially in this body; I am making no accusations--but once you have been convicted of a crime, for the rest of your life, if you are one of those folks who has been convicted of a nonviolent drug offense, you have to check a box that says you are going to have difficulty being hired, you are going to have difficulty getting housing. You can't get many business licenses. You can't get food stamps. You can't get a loan from the bank. The American Bar Association points to 40,000 collateral consequences that come with a criminal conviction in this country--40,000 collateral consequences that follow you for life for a criminal conviction.

We are debating a funding bill that is dominating the news, but we are already throwing an exorbitant amount of taxpayer dollars into the black hole of mass incarceration. That is not making us safer, and it is not making us stronger. In fact, it is making us a more vulnerable community.

We have been using more government resources--not to offer more support for law enforcement, not to offer more opportunities for Americans to get mental health care, not to help more folks get access to drug treatment, not to rehabilitate people, but we have been spending more and more money actually hurting more Americans by putting them into a system that actually harms them more often than helps them with their addiction, with their mental health issue, with their trauma. We are using our resources to compound hurt and harm that people have already endured to incarcerate more Americans than ever before in our history, which ultimately makes our neighborhoods and communities one that is like mine: less safe, not more.

Despite the fact that our infrastructure in this country is crumbling--that our trains and roads and bridges are in desperate need of repair--we have been investing in a different type of infrastructure. Between 1990 and 2005, a new prison in this country has been opened every 10 days. We spend billions of dollars for the construction of prisons and jails to warehouse human potential: folks who often need help, need counseling, need mental health care, need rehabilitation. We have been taking the far more expensive way and warehousing human beings in our prisons and jails instead of helping them.

We call this system a justice system. It is not meant to be a system of retribution; it is meant to be a justice system. It is not meant to be a system of punishment only; it is meant to be a justice system. We are Americans. We have ideals of restoration and rehabilitation. Ultimately, in the United States of America, we all believe this is a nation where redemption is possible.

One of our former Senate colleagues who stood in this same well got into a lot of trouble in his youth. He was convicted of multiple crimes--crimes like arson and assault. He attacked a police officer. He actually became one of the most serious outspoken advocates for restoring this broken system. It was Senator Alan Simpson. This is what he once wrote. He said:

I was lucky that the bullets I stole from a hardware store

as a teenager and fired from

my .22-caliber rifle never struck anyone. I was fortunate

that the fires I set never hurt anyone. I heard my wake-up

call and listened--and I went on to have many opportunities

to serve my country and my community.

When a young person is sent ``up the river,'' we need to

remember that all rivers can change course.

He went from an arsonist, a person who attacked police officers, and a person who was admittedly guilty of crimes to a Senator because we are a nation that believes in redemption. The fact is, when most people go to prison, 95 percent of those folks right now in State prisons will come back to our communities. The question is, Will they come out further harmed by the system or better able to start again, better able to avoid more criminality or will they be people who actually help to make us safer and stronger, to be elevated toward that ideal of full citizenship?

Those of us in this body who proclaim Christian faith know the story of the prodigal child, that child who did wrong, but yet when he came back, his father embraced him. That story is held in the Christian community as an ideal, but what do we do in America? Is it the story of the prodigal child? It is not because this is a system that right now inflicts harm on those incarcerated rather than trying to rehabilitate them.

This is a system that still subjects young people to what other countries and human rights activists in this Nation call torture: juvenile solitary confinement. This is a system that, in some places, still denies women access to basic sanitary products. This is a system that, in some places, still allows the shackling of pregnant women during birth.

This is a system that burdens families, hurting them economically and fracturing entire communities like the one I live in. It is a system that inflicts poverty by concentrating its attacks on low-income neighborhoods. In fact, according to a study from Villanova University, the poverty rate in all of America would be 20 percent lower if we had incarceration rates in line with our industrial peers. This system, as a whole, is a cancer on the soul of our country, and it is hurting every single American.

Today we have an opportunity to do something about addressing the ills of this system. That is why I am proud this is a bipartisan compromise bill with extraordinary leadership on both sides of the aisle, saying: Hey, there are things we need to begin to correct for this system. There are ways to make this system more fair. There are ways to make this system better reflect our collective values and ideals.

Because of this collection of work done over the last years, this bill includes critical sentencing reform that will reduce mandatory minimums and give judges discretion back--not legislators but judges who sit and see the totality of the facts.

Thanks to the work of Senator Durbin, the racially biased crack cocaine sentencing disparity has already been negotiated down from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1. It should be equal. It should be 1 to 1, but we made progress. The problem was the change wasn't retroactively applied. Because of that, there are people sitting in jail right now for selling an amount of drugs equal to the size of a candy bar who have watched people come in and leave jail for selling enough drugs to fill a suitcase. We never made this change retroactive. That is not justice. Making this fix in this bill alone will mean that thousands of Americans who have more than served their time will become eligible for release, and it addresses some of the racial disparities in our system because 90 percent of the people who will benefit from that are African Americans; 96 percent are Black and Latino.

The bill includes a provision that I have worked on for the past 4 years that will effectively end the use of juvenile solitary confinement among young people under Federal supervision.

This bill also takes an important step but still an incomplete step in reforming the way women are treated behind bars. This bill will ensure that incarcerated women will have access to free sanitary products, and it will ban the shackling of pregnant incarcerated women. Last year, I introduced a bill that includes this reform, among others, and I am happy to see it now as part of this legislation.

Can we do more? Yes. This legislation is the product of compromise. This legislation is just one step in the right direction. If we pass this legislation, it will be a step in the right direction and I hope will be the momentum for greater, urgently needed reforms that will be supported by conservatives in this country and progressives.

Let's make no mistake. This legislation, which is one small step, will affect thousands and thousands of lives. Those are not just some people. When you affect the lives of some Americans on issues of justice, you affect the lives of all Americans because we as a people cannot fall into that trap of separateness, the insidious idea that we think that there are some throwaway people whose dignity we can assault without assaulting our own.

Dr. King said, ``Justice is indivisible,'' and he was right. We cannot separate a system of oppression in our country and think that it won't affect us all as a whole. It could not be further from the truth. You cannot deny justice, deny dignity to any American without its affecting us all. You cannot cheapen justice for some without its cheapening the justice of us all.

As a man much greater than anyone in this body once said, ``Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'' We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality that is tied in a common garment. We cannot suffer the illusion of separation when we think this criminal justice system that is so punishing of some is not hurting this country as a whole. Our criminal justice system, as it stands right now, is a gaping, self-inflicted wound. This bill is a step--a step--towards healing.

It has been perhaps one of the greatest honors of my life--easily one of the greatest honors as a Senator--to have worked in a bipartisan coalition over the last 5 years to get to this point. I have had the opportunity to sit down with people in common cause--from Republicans on the far end of the conservative spectrum to individuals with whom and organizations that on most other issues, I often disagree. Yet we have found common ground because this system is an affront to our most fundamental common values on both sides of the aisle--the value of freedom, the value of liberty, the value of equality, the value of fairness, and the value of justice. We share those common values because we still live in a nation in which the ties that bind us are stronger than the lines that divide us.

This bill is a recognition of the fact that we are bound together as a people by the most precious ideals and humanity--the ideals that were put forth by our Founders, which have been aspired to in every generation and have been worked on in every generation to make us a more perfect Union.

We know that our Nation's history--the bills and debates we have seen in this very body--is scarred by many wretched injustices--slavery and the denial of universal suffrage, Jim Crow and segregation. Like people--individuals who have done wrong in the past--our Nation has demonstrated the capacity to change. We as a nation have demonstrated the capacity to improve. Like people, we have demonstrated as a nation the capacity to redeem ourselves. None of us should ever be judged by the least of what we have done but, instead, by our ability and our capacity to find redemption.

Every generation has worked to make our ideals more true and real, which makes the dream more accessible to us all. We have stood for each other and have worked with each other. We have sacrificed with each other despite our differences in race and differences in color and differences in religion and creed. Every single great gain in this country has been made by multiethnic, multiracial, broad-based coalitions because we recognize the ideal that is above the President's desk, written in stone here, which is the ideal of E pluribus unum-- ``out of many, one.'' We know that it is not just a slogan, that those aren't just words; it is a calling to the people of this country.

I want to see more than the bill we have today. I know we can do more than just this bill we have today, but this is a first step. It is a necessary step. For the sake of thousands of Americans whose lives will be directly

affected, this is a step in the right direction. I hope that we all come together and make this first step our momentum on the journey. We have work to do in this country, and I am proud to have been a part of what can be an historic step in the right direction. May our work continue.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I wish to add myself as a cosponsor of S. 720, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, and urge my colleagues to support this important legislation in its modified form. I have long and staunchly opposed the BDS movement and associated efforts to unfairly isolate Israel in international forums. This legislation will prevent international entities from imposing their will on U.S. businesses with regards to their decisions, consistent with U.S. law, to conduct commerce with our close ally Israel and its citizens.

After carefully examining the proposed changes to the legislation, I support the amended version of this bill put forward by my colleagues, Senator Cardin and Senator Portman. This revised version of the legislation makes meaningful revisions to the original language to clarify and improve First Amendment protections. Initial concerns that this bill unintentionally infringed on individuals' First Amendment rights have now been addressed by these changes, agreed upon earlier this year, and I feel confident that these modifications safeguard Americans' constitutional right to free speech.

Madam President, thank you very much.

I want to thank my colleagues from Arizona and Delaware for being here today and for their leadership. I join them in asking the Senate to pass the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act by unanimous consent.

The Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act is a bipartisan bill. Again, I repeat, this is about the legislative branch asserting a commonsense check and balance on Presidential overreach. It is not divided along party lines; it is a bipartisan bill.

This bill is about ideals that we all are aligned with--independence, integrity, and the ability of the special counsel and future special counsels to do their job effectively, without interference from a President. This is a proactive bill aimed at ensuring that now and in the future, we have appropriate checks and balances in place to prevent a constitutional crisis.

The bill is becoming more urgent. We know that there was an attack on our democracy. We know that there were and are foreign agents who attempted and are attempting to manipulate and undermine our democratic institutions. We need to understand what happened and how to prevent it from happening again and to hold those people accountable for their actions.

The preservation of the special counsel investigation is indeed a matter of national security, but we know that the special counsel is in danger. We know he is in danger because even just yesterday, the President was again maligning and mischaracterizing the special counsel investigation. We know there is danger because just a few weeks ago, the President fired Attorney General Sessions and named Matthew Whitaker as the Acting Attorney General to oversee the Mueller investigation. We know that Acting Attorney General Whitaker has a history of criticizing and debasing the very investigation he is now responsible for overseeing. In 2017, he wrote an op-ed calling this investigation into our national security a ``witch hunt.''

This investigation must be allowed to continue without interference. This investigation must continue for our national security. We are all stewards of our democracy. It has been sustained by this ideal: that no one, not even the President of the United States, is above the law. We must act quickly to protect and secure this fundamental democratic ideal. This is a sobered, measured, bipartisan bill that will achieve those ends.

I now yield to my colleague from Arizona.