Floor Statements

Mr. President, for decades powerful interests have been working to take over our courts and tilt the scales of justice in favor of billionaires and giant corporations. President Trump has been all in, nominating extreme and partisan judges to the Federal judiciary at lightning speed.

Trump's judges can easily fill a ``Who's Who'' of radical, rightwing, pro-corporate lawyers, but today I

want to focus on the nomination of one of the worst of the worst: Thomas Farr, Trump's nominee to serve on the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

Thomas Farr has made his name as the go-to lawyer for the rich and powerful. When the rental car company Avis and its franchisee were sued for discriminating against African-American customers, Farr defended the franchisee. When Pfizer was sued for sex discrimination and creating a hostile work environment, Farr was there once again representing the company.

Today, just a few weeks after millions of Americans went to the polls to exercise the basic right at the core of our democracy, I want to focus on one of the most pressing reasons my colleagues should vote against the Farr nomination. His nomination will only deepen a plague of voter suppression aimed at stripping Americans--particularly people of color and marginalized groups--from exercising their lawful right to vote.

Voter suppression is front and center on Farr's resume, including his work for Jesse Helms, the former U.S. Senator and shameless bigot. Farr worked as Helms' campaign lawyer while Helms led some of the most blatantly racist political campaigns in modern history. For example, to decrease Black turnout, Helms' Senate campaign mailed postcards to 125,000 voters in predominantly Black precincts, falsely claiming they could be found ineligible to vote based on specific criteria involving their location and length of residence and warning that they could face criminal penalties if they voted.

That is just the beginning. In recent years, Farr represented the North Carolina Legislature in a case challenging a discriminatory voting bill that, according to one Federal appeals court, targeted African Americans with ``almost surgical precision.'' The legislature conducted research into voting practices that helped increase turnout among African-American voters and then wrote a bill that essentially eliminated each of those practices. Farr was there to defend the legislature when faith groups, civil rights groups, and the Obama administration's Justice Department challenged the discriminatory law. The law was ultimately found unconstitutional by the Federal appeals court and was not reinstated by the Supreme Court. Later, when North Carolina redrew its district lines in ways that discriminated against African Americans, Farr was there once again to defend the legislature.

Thomas Farr's nomination is particularly troubling given the blizzard of efforts in recent years aimed at stopping Americans from casting their votes. State after State has passed restrictive voter ID laws, purged voting rolls, limited opportunities to register, and erected other barriers to the democratic process.

We saw voter suppression rear its head during this year's midterm elections, perhaps most vividly in the State of Georgia. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams ran a grassroots campaign that sought to lift up Georgians from all backgrounds and to lead a record turnout vote among African Americans, LGBTQ individuals, and young people, but her opponent, Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp, not only refused to recuse himself from overseeing the same election that he happened to be running in, but he openly used the power of his office to suppress voters, especially in communities of color.

In North Dakota, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a voter ID law that required prospective voters to present an ID with an address, but not just any ID with an address, one that contained a residential street address. Now, this law disproportionately disadvantaged voters in Native American communities, which sometimes use post office addresses or other kinds of residential addresses, rather than residential street addresses.

What we saw in Georgia and North Dakota was egregious, but it was by no means new. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, since 2010, 24 States, most of which are under Republican control, have implemented measures to make it harder for American citizens to vote.

The Republican Party and President Trump are leading this effort with a bull's-eye on Americans who may not be inclined to vote for them. After the 2016 election, Trump falsely claimed that millions of people voted illegally, and months after taking office, he established a sham voter fraud commission. Trump's Justice Department has been in lockstep, reversing its position in a case challenging Texas' discriminatory voter ID laws, requesting that States turn over voter roll information in an apparent move to purge voter rolls, and filing a brief in an Ohio case arguing that it should be easier for States to purge voters from voter rolls.

Republicans know that every time they try to lock voters out of the Democratic process, they are going to get challenged in court, but they have a plan for that. They have been working at breakneck speed to stack Federal courts with a cadre of conservative Federal judges whose records show that they have no intention of protecting democracy. Why? Because the fight for our democracy is a fight over who government works for. Does it work for the rich and powerful or does it work for all of us?

Putting Thomas Farr on the bench is a way for politicians to wall off access to the democratic process so they can keep on working for billionaires and giant corporations. The Eastern District of North Carolina, the district in which Farr has been nominated to serve, is 27 percent African American. Yet the Federal court has not had an African- American judge--not one, not ever.

President Obama attempted to change that by nominating two impressive African-American women to serve as judges in that district, individuals dedicated to ensuring that every American had an equal opportunity to democracy, but Republican Senators refused to allow their nominations to move forward. Now Republicans want to hand that seat to a man who has made it his job to make it harder for North Carolinians to exercise the right to vote.

The literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses of the Jim Crow era may be of a bygone era, but today, Americans--and particularly Americans of color--face new, steep barriers to the ballot box. Farr has made it his job to ensure that those barriers remain in place.

If we truly believe that our court should defend equal justice under law, then every Member of this Chamber must vote no on Thomas Farr.

Mr. President, last week, millions of people were glued to their screens as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Dr. Ford's account of the most traumatic event of her life was harrowing. The pain of retelling this story was evident, and she did it for no personal gain whatsoever. In fact, her life has been turned upside down as a result of her decision to come forward. The courage she showed is remarkable. Dr. Ford's testimony was credible and compelling. I believe Dr. Ford.

Judge Kavanaugh's testimony was very different. He spent more than 40 minutes ranting, raving, and pedaling fact-free partisan conspiracy theories, and then he proceeded to insult Senators, to scream at the people who had the nerve to question him. He evaded some questions and gave obviously false answers to others. It was a performance that would have been right at home on talk radio or in a Republican primary campaign or at a Donald Trump rally, but it was delivered by a judge who is asking the Senate to confirm him to a lifetime appointment to a completely nonpolitical position as the swing vote on the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is the job of the Senate to decide whether or not to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. Senators must vote yes or vote no on elevating him to a lifetime appointment on the Federal bench. It is not a criminal trial. Nobody is entitled to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. If he is not confirmed, Brett Kavanaugh would still be serving as a Federal judge on the second highest court in the United States, and the President, I am sure, will nominate another candidate for this job.

For these reasons, I believe that Dr. Ford's credible allegations and Judge Kavanaugh's partisan, venomous rants are sufficient reasons to vote no on his nomination.

Now, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle saw the same hearing. They watched Dr. Ford sit through hours of testimony. They heard her when she clearly and unequivocally said she was 100 percent sure that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, and they watched Judge Kavanaugh demonstrate to the world that he lacks the temperament and the truthfulness to sit on the Nation's highest Court.

For those Senators who don't care that Judge Kavanaugh thinks the multiple sexual assault allegations he

faces must be ``revenge on behalf of the Clintons,'' who simply aren't sure whether those credible allegations are a sufficient reason to vote no, and who would like to see more evidence, the sensible course of action has always been obvious--a serious, nonpartisan FBI investigation to uncover the truth as best we can to make sure we are as informed as we can be before we have to vote. But that is not what has happened.

First, instead of taking Dr. Ford seriously, Mitch McConnell scheduled a committee vote on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination the next day. He suspended the Senate vote only when it became clear that Republicans wouldn't have the votes they needed if they tried to ram the nomination through the Senate right at that moment.

Then the President offered the smallest fig leaf of an FBI investigation. Now, I have just come from the secure room where the summaries of FBI interviews and other FBI-generated documents were made available.

Senators have been muzzled. So I will now say three things that committee staff has explained are permissible to say without violating committee rules--statements that I have also independently verified as accurate.

One, this was not a full and fair investigation. It was sharply limited in scope and did not explore the relevant confirming facts.

Two, the available documents do not exonerate Mr. Kavanaugh.

Three, the available documents contradict statements Mr. Kavanaugh made under oath.

I would like to back up these three points with explicit statements from the FBI documents--explicit statements that should be available for the American people to see, but the Republicans have locked the documents behind closed doors with no plans to inform the American public of any new information about the Kavanaugh nomination.

The Kavanaugh nomination was a sham, and that is the President's fault because the President is the one who limited the scope of this investigation, who refused to allow it to continue for more than a few days, and who refused to ensure that the FBI completed a thorough investigation, including interviews with all relevant witnesses. The statements the President made about the scope of the investigation were false. If that wasn't bad enough, the President has viciously attacked Dr. Ford for bravely coming forward to tell her story. How could any Senator accept this sham?

It is clear the fix is in. Republicans want to confirm Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and they will ignore, suppress, or shout down any inconvenient facts that might give the American people pause about this nomination. Republicans are playing politics with the Supreme Court, and they are willing to step on anyone, including the victim of a vicious sexual assault in order to advance their agenda.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the highest Court in our country is the results of a decades-long assault of our Judiciary, launched by billionaires and giant corporations who want to control every branch of government. For years, those wealthy and well-connected people have invested massive sums of money into shaping our courts to fit their liking. Working in partnership with their Republican buddies in Congress, they have executed a two-part campaign to capture our courts.

Part 1: Stop fair-minded, mainstream judges from getting confirmed to serve on the Federal courts.

Part 2: Flood Federal courts with narrow-minded, pro-corporate individuals who will tilt the courts in favor of the rich and powerful and against women, workers, people of color, low-income Americans, LGBTQ individuals, people with disabilities, Native Americans, students, and everyone who doesn't have money or power right here in Washington.

With Trump in the White House and Congress controlled by Republicans, the wealthy and well-connected have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to control our courts for the next generation.

During his Presidential campaign, President Trump made it clear that rightwing, pro-corporate groups would not only have a voice in selecting Supreme Court Justices, they would get to handpick their favorites. So those groups handed him a list of their top picks for the Supreme Court, and President Trump has picked judges exclusively from that list.

His most recent selection is Judge Brett Kavanaugh. There are a lot of reasons to oppose Judge Kavanaugh's nomination. I want to discuss three of them: His record, the broken and biased confirmation process, and the allegations of sexual assault.

Let's start with Judge Kavanaugh's record. Judge Kavanaugh has spent 12 years on the DC Circuit Court. His rulings demonstrate why radical, rightwing groups and their friends in the Senate are so eager to give him a seat on the Supreme Court. Pick an issue--almost any issue--and there is ample reason to be alarmed.

One is a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions. When the Trump administration sought to block a young immigrant woman's right to access abortion care, Judge Kavanaugh sided with the government, claiming that allowing the woman, who had done everything necessary to obtain access to an abortion, should be further delayed in obtaining that care--a delay that would likely have prevented her from obtaining an abortion.

When religious organizations challenged the contraceptive care requirement of the Affordable Care Act, Judge Kavanaugh again opposed access to reproductive care, arguing that requiring religious nonprofits to submit a simple form allowing them to opt out of providing comprehensive contraceptive coverage but ensuring that the employees had access to that care was unconstitutional.

On consumer protection, Judge Kavanaugh ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that stands up for Americans cheated by corporate criminals, is unconstitutional.

On environmental safety, he has ruled to overturn the rules that help keep dangerous toxins out of the air we breathe and the water we drink.

On voting rights, he upheld South Carolina's discriminatory voter ID laws.

On gun safety, he dissented from an opinion upholding an assault weapons ban and a gun registration requirement. In speeches on gun safety, he admitted that most lower court judges disagree with his extreme position on the Second Amendment.

On money in politics, he wrote an opinion that would permit foreign individuals to spend unlimited sums of money on issue ads in the U.S. elections.

Oh, and when it comes to Presidential power and the rule of law, Judge Kavanaugh believes that sitting Presidents shouldn't be subjected to personal, civil, or criminal investigations while they are in office. That is very convenient for the current occupant of the Oval Office.

That is just the part of Judge Kavanaugh's record that we know about, and that raises the second reason Judge Kavanaugh should not be confirmed to the Supreme Court: the secretive process that Republicans have used to advance his nomination. From the moment President Trump announced Judge Kavanaugh's nomination, Republicans have worked overtime to get him on the Supreme Court without giving Senators--or the American people--a meaningful opportunity to examine his full record.

Senate Republicans have played an elaborate game of ``hide the ball'' at every step of this process. Judge Kavanaugh spent many years in government, but the Republicans have refused even to request hundreds of thousands of documents from his time in service. They have designated other documents as ``committee confidential'' to hide them from the public. To top it off, just days before Judge Kavanaugh was scheduled to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a Bush White House attorney announced that over 100,000 documents from Judge Kavanaugh's time in the White House Counsel's Office would be withheld on the basis of constitutional privilege.

A few years ago, President Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Like Judge Kavanaugh, she had served in public office. Unlike the Kavanaugh confirmation process, the Kagan process included the release of nearly every document related to her time in service. In fact, no one has found an example of so much of a nominee's record in government being hidden from the Senate and hidden from

the public as in Judge Kavanaugh's case.

The rushed and secretive process that has characterized Judge Kavanaugh's nomination raises this question: What is he hiding? Why doesn't he insist that his record be made public? Why doesn't he want a full investigation of the sexual assault claims made against him? Why won't Republicans insist on transparency and a meaningful investigation?

Evidently, neither Judge Kavanaugh nor the Senate Republicans care about the facts.

Judge Kavanaugh has been accused of sexually assaulting multiple women. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez shared their stories of sexual assault at the hands of Judge Kavanaugh and risked their safety and the safety of their families to do so.

Instead of making sure that these allegations are thoroughly investigated so the Senators and the public can make judgments based on facts, Republicans launched a campaign to attack and discredit these courageous women. Donald Trump openly mocked Dr. Ford at a political rally, and the Republicans have made clear that their one and only goal is to get Judge Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. In fact, just last week, Mitch McConnell told a group of conservatives: ``Don't get rattled by all of this. We're going to plow right through it.''

Plow right through it? Really?

Americans are tired of the powerful plowing right through everyone else to get what they want. There is a reason that so many women and men have come out in droves to support Dr. Ford and Ms. Ramirez. It is because people are tired of being ignored and silenced.

Judge Kavanaugh and his Republican sponsors don't want to talk about the facts in this case. But let's talk about a few other facts. Over 80 percent of women and 40 percent of men have experienced sexual harassment or assault; 7 out of 10 sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim knows.

The vast majority of sexual assaults--about two out of three--are never reported to the police. Why? Because survivors fear retaliation or they believe that the police will not or can't do anything to help or they think it is a personal matter or they confide in someone other than the police or they believe it is not serious enough to report or they don't want to get the perpetrator in trouble.

Last week, as Dr. Ford testified before Congress, the National Sexual Assault Hotline saw a 147-percent increase in calls from people seeking help. We have a problem of sexual harassment and sexual violence in America. The problem isn't that too many victims are coming forward with fabricated stories to destroy someone's life; it is that too many survivors are afraid to come forward at all.

They believe they will not be heard or taken seriously or they think more about the impact on the perpetrator than their own safety and well-being or they think that people with power--the ones who can actually do something--will instead ``plow right through'' them.

We never hear the stories of millions of sexual assault survivors. But some make the very difficult and very personal decision to come forward and tell their stories. They, like all survivors, are courageous, and they deserve to be heard and treated with respect--not dismissed, not attacked, not threatened.

The record, the process, the allegations--whichever way you slice this--should lead to only one result: Members of this Chamber should vote no on Judge Kavanaugh. Our country deserves better.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to a true American hero, my friend and my colleague, John McCain.

To know John was to know a man who was fiercely devoted to his family, his constituents, and his country. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and loved ones during this difficult time.

As a nation, we all share in the sense of emptiness his passing has left behind, but we also share a profound sense of gratitude for the life John lived and the legacy of service and unwavering commitment he has left us to cherish.

Many Americans felt a personal connection to John McCain. Our men and women in uniform always knew he was on their side. He was one of them. John understood better than anyone what it meant to send people into combat. So much of his work in the Senate was devoted to making sure our troops got the training, the equipment, and the pay they need.

Last year, I had the honor of traveling with John on one of his final trips to the Middle East. I had the chance to see how deeply revered he was by everyone in uniform. They all knew the story. They know how John McCain, the war hero, spent nearly 6 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam; how, when offered an abrupt release less than a year after his Navy jet was shot out of the air, John McCain refused to be released while his brothers were still in captivity; how he was isolated, tortured, and beaten so badly that he carried the physical consequences of his loyalty to our country with him for the rest of his life; how he could have avoided it all but endured out of love and loyalty to his fellow servicemembers. They knew the story, and every single servicemember we saw treated John like a celebrity rock star, and that is because he was.

John was a deeply principled man. I had the honor of working with John closely in the fight to reinstall Glass-Steagall, and, boy, was it a fight. Throughout the entire battle, John would tease me about pulling my weight in ``getting this thing done.'' ``Show some fight, girl.'' ``Don't tell me you're afraid.'' ``Get in there--throw some punches.'' That was John's approach to life: If you are going to be in a fight, you had better give it your all.

Don't get me wrong, John and I disagreed on many things, and sometimes quite forcefully, but even when we disagreed, I always respected that his heart was focused on doing what he believed was right for the American people.

I remember expressing to John my views on the most effective strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan; that there are simply some problems that cannot be solved through military action alone. We can't simply fight our way to peace. We need to bring our troops home. Respectfully, John would disagree and then proceed to energetically walk me through why he believed in the benefits of staying longer.

Democrat or Republican, foreign leader or President of the United States, John McCain would go toe to toe with anyone to fight for what he thought was right. He applied these principles to his service to our country, in his commitment to the people of Arizona, and his abiding love and defense of the American people. At a time when character and integrity are under siege, the entire Nation mourns the loss of a public servant who lived his life with courage and conviction.

John ran the Armed Services Committee with an iron fist but also with respect for the importance of bipartisanship and a basic sense of fairness that no one could ever ignore. If you came to the table ready, prepared to work, John made sure you were heard. There were so many occasions where John would jump in while I was questioning a witness because John was listening and would hear how the questions were being dodged and disregarded. His admonishment to the witness was like a whip: If you can't come up with better answers, what are you here for?

I count it as a blessing to have had the honor to serve with Senator John McCain in the U.S. Senate. If there ever was a true American patriot, John McCain was that patriot. I will miss his strength, I will miss his maverick spirit, but most of all I will miss his kindness.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Stephen McCall, a fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of today's session.

Mr. President, today I wish to pay tribute to a true American hero, my friend and colleague Senator John McCain.

To know John was to know a man who was fiercely devoted to his family, his constituents, and his country. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and loved ones during this difficult time.

As a nation, we all share in the sense of emptiness his passing has left behind, but we also share a profound sense of gratitude for the life John lived and the legacy of service and unwavering commitment he has left us to cherish.

Many Americans felt a personal connection to John McCain. Our men and women in uniform always knew he was on their side; he was one of them. John understood better than anyone what it meant to send people into combat. So much of his work in the Senate was devoted to making sure our troops got the training, equipment, and pay that they deserved.

Last year, I had the honor of traveling with John on one of his final trips to the Middle East. I had the chance to see how deeply revered he was by everyone in uniform. They all knew the story--how John McCain, the war hero, spent nearly 6 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam; how, when offered abrupt release less than a year after his Navy jet was shot out of the air, John McCain refused to be released while his brothers were still in captivity; how he was isolated, tortured, and beaten so badly that he carried the physical consequences of his loyalty to our country with him for the rest of his life; how he could have avoided it all but endured out of love and loyalty to his fellow servicemembers.

Yeah, they knew the story and every single servicemember we saw treated John like a celebrity rockstar, and that is because he was.

John was a deeply principled man. I had the honor of working with John closely in the fight to reinstate Glass Steagall, and boy, was it a fight. Throughout the entire battle, John would always tease me about pulling my weight in ``getting this thing done,'' as he would say. ``Show some fight, girl,'' ``Don't tell me you're afraid. Get in there--throw some punches.'' That was John's approach in life: If you're going to be in a fight, you had better give it your all.

Don't get me wrong: John and I disagreed on many things and sometimes quite forcefully, but even when we disagreed, I always respected that his heart was focused on doing what he thought was best for the American people. I remember expressing to John my views on the most effective strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, that there are simply some problems that cannot be solved through military action alone, we can't simply fight our way to peace and we need to bring our troops home. Respectfully, John would disagree and proceed to energetically walk me through why he believed in the benefits of staying longer.

Democrat or Republican, foreign leader or President of the United States, John McCain would go toe-to-toe with anyone to fight for what he thought was right. He applied these principles to his service to our country, in his commitment to the people of Arizona, and his abiding love and defense of the American people. At a time when character and integrity are under siege, the entire Nation mourns the loss of a public servant who lived his life with courage and conviction.

John ran the Armed Services Committee with an iron fist, but also with a respect for the importance of bipartisanship and a basic sense of fairness no one could ever ignore. If you came to the table, ready, prepared to work, John made sure you were heard. There were so many occasions where John would jump in while I was questioning a witness because he was listening and hear how my questions were being dodged and disregarded. His admonishment to the witness was like a whip: ``If you can't come up with better answers what are you here for?''

I count it a blessing to have had the honor to serve with Senator John McCain in the U.S. Senate. If there ever was a true American patriot, John McCain was that patriot. I will miss his strength, I will miss his maverick spirit, but most of all, I will miss his kindness.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Whitehouse for his unwavering commitment to elevating the urgent need for all of us to take action on climate change.

Since 2012, Senator Whitehouse has given over 200 speeches on climate change--faithfully, passionately, intellectually--and has warned us of what is to come if we don't get our act together. So I thank Senator Whitehouse. I am proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with him in the fight to save this Earth. This is on all of us.

The facts are in. The science is irrefutable. Climate change is real. It is real, and it is happening every single day all around us. It is not made up. It is not a Chinese hoax. It is the most existential threat our world has ever known, and we are not doing enough to stop it. That is why I wanted to be here tonight to stand with my friend and my colleague Senator Whitehouse to ring the alarm. It is time for us to wake up.

As I think about the consequences of inaction, I can't help but reflect on the financial crisis that nearly destroyed our global economy 10 years ago. Millions of hard-working people lost their jobs, millions lost their homes, and millions lost their savings. The financial crisis nearly tore apart the global economy for a whole variety of reasons, but the failure to act on credible, verifiable data is what nearly destroyed our economy.

It didn't have to happen. We could have prevented it. Yet here we are again, ignoring clear and blatant warnings of another financial disaster in the making. The evidence is mounting every single day with fires blazing out of control, extreme storms and hurricanes, rising sea levels, and warming oceans. Our planet is in danger, which means our economy is in danger.

Recent data show that a major climate-related disaster could trigger a global financial crisis, the likes of which our economy has never seen. Now, I don't say that to predict some kind of doomsday disaster. This is a real and present threat to our global economy, and here is why: The driving cause of climate change is emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases from humans in their burning of fossil fuels. We are causing this every day.

Scientists estimate that humans can only burn so much more carbon before causing a global temperature rise of 2 degrees. A 2-degree rise in temperatures would be devastating--rising sea levels, droughts, famine. Yet, as of today, the worldwide oil and gas industry has carbon reserves that already far exceed the amount of carbon we can burn to stay under the 2-degree temperature rise.

So what does that actually mean?

All of these carbon resources will become less and less valuable as the environmental costs of burning carbon become more and more severe. That will devastate the global coal, oil, and gas industries. One estimate is that 82 percent of all coal reserves, 49 percent of global gas reserves, and 33 percent of global oil reserves could go unused. Some experts predict that we will cause the value of fossil fuel companies to be cut in half, with the U.S. potentially losing its entire oil and gas industry. That could make the 2008 financial crisis look like a walk in the park. That is what is at stake for our global system.

What about here at home?

Listen to this: Rising sea levels and spreading flood plains appear likely to destroy billions of dollars in property and to displace millions of people. ``The economic losses and social disruption may happen gradually, but they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.''

Who wrote that? Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored company that is responsible for buying millions of mortgages every year. That is not

some partisan view; that is a cold-eyed assessment of the likely damage that climate change will cause to our economy and to our citizens.

Another recent study, conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists, found that over the next 30 years, 311,000 homes will be in danger of being flooded every 2 weeks--311,000. That means more than half a million Americans could have their homes inundated with water multiple times every single month. Think about the financial toll the constant flooding will take on these families and the homes. Well, after being bombarded with saltwater over and over again, a coastal property meltdown would be inevitable.

Yet here is what gives me comfort and why I am inspired to work with Senator Whitehouse and why I am inspired by his work and why I had to be here tonight. We can prevent this crisis, but only if we act. It is going to take public-private partnerships, CEOs, and Members of Congress to work together to prepare for the worst. That means companies need to begin including the risk of climate change in their investment and risk management practices.

Climate change can be an economic opportunity if we act boldly and decisively, which is something I know Senator Whitehouse will address shortly. If we fail to act, it will be a financial catastrophe as well as an environmental catastrophe, and it will put the 2008 financial crisis to shame. We know it is coming; we need the political will to do something about it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, every day I meet all sorts of people-- small business owners, working moms, students, seniors, and servicemembers--and they are concerned about all sorts of things: the growing cost of healthcare, the cost of child care, the cost of college, the cost of student loan debt, stagnant wages, fixing our broken criminal justice system, gun violence in schools--you name it.

But in the thousands of conversations I have had, I haven't met a single person who has said they are concerned that Washington doesn't work well enough for big businesses. If you ask any of them, they will tell you that, when it comes to the wealthy and the powerful, Washington works just like a dream, but for everyone else, Washington just isn't working.

That is not a coincidence. Powerful interests have been working for years to capture every single branch of government to tilt the scales in their favor and against everyone else.

Our courts are no exception in this. Powerful interests have worked for years, pouring incredible amounts of money into capturing our courts. It has been a real one-two punch.

The first punch has been working with Republicans to stop fair- minded, impartial judges from sitting on the Federal bench, slowing down or stopping those nominations, holding open a Supreme Court seat, and keeping fair people off the bench whenever possible.

Then came the second punch. Whenever they get the chance, it is stacking our courts with judges dedicated to a vision of the law where the wealthy and well-connected get to call the shots--people who are willing to leave behind women, workers, people of color, LGBTQ individuals, students, families, and everyone else who doesn't have money or power.

Donald Trump's decision to nominate Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is just the latest example of this. Minutes after Donald Trump announced Kavanaugh's nomination, the White House blasted out a document. To whom? To business lobbyists around Washington touting Judge Kavanaugh's rulings in favor of corporate interests and against the interests of everyone else. They are not even hiding it anymore.

Think about that. The first move by the White House is not a memo to the American people talking about the nominee's independence or talking about his commitment to justice for everyone but a memo to business lobbyists highlighting Judge Kavanaugh's loyalty to big business. That is a key part of Donald Trump's public case for Judge Kavanaugh--the promise that Judge Kavanaugh will tilt the playing field even further in favor of corporations and against working people.

Take a look at cases the White House included in its sales pitch to corporate lobbyists. In one recent case, Judge Kavanaugh ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was unconstitutional, calling independent agencies like the consumer bureau ``a significant threat to individual liberty.'' Really? That is the consumer agency that a bipartisan group of 60 Senators and 237 Representatives created after the most devastating financial crisis in generations. It is the agency that is a tough watchdog for American families, the agency that in just 7 years has returned $12 billion directly to people who were cheated by big banks, credit card companies, and student loan servicers. But I guess all Judge Kavanaugh saw was a threat to the individual liberty of companies that were looking to cheat people.

Judge Kavanaugh's ruling was so out of the mainstream that the rest of his colleagues on the court promptly reversed his decision by an overwhelming vote. But if Judge Kavanaugh becomes Justice Kavanaugh, he could provide the decisive vote on the Supreme Court to strike down the CFPB and leave consumers at the mercy of predatory lenders again.

That wasn't the only time that Judge Kavanaugh ruled against consumers and in favor of the giant corporations that squashed them. Last year, he issued an opinion that would have set aside a lower court ruling and allowed a merger of two giant health insurance companies to move forward, despite evidence that the merger could hurt consumers in 14 States. Luckily, once again, Judge Kavanaugh's colleagues disagreed, and they criticized him for applying the law as he wished it were, not as it currently is. Again, Judge Kavanaugh found a way to rule in favor of corporate interests, no matter what the law said.

Judge Kavanaugh has also ruled time and again to reverse rules designed to address climate change and to protect the air we breathe. In three separate cases, the Trump administration highlighted for corporate lobbyists that Judge Kavanaugh argued that the Environmental Protection Agency had acted illegally in taking action to protect the environment and to protect public health. In each case, the EPA had spent years carefully considering the input of scientists, experts, and the industry, but in each case, Judge Kavanaugh found that wasn't enough. He put maximizing polluter profits ahead of protecting working families and the well-being of our planet.

The Trump White House and the Republican Congress have gone to bat for corporate interests time and again. They have showered them with $1.5 trillion in tax giveaways, rolling back the rules on some of the country's biggest banks, and reversing rules to protect workers and consumers from corporate abuse.

But there may not be a single body in Washington that has delivered more victories for giant companies in the last 2 years--and more losses for everyone else--than the Supreme Court of the United States. In case after case, by 5-to-4 decisions, this Court has limited the rights of working people and expanded the ability of giant corporations to do pretty much whatever they please. It is no wonder that working families are working longer and harder, only to get squeezed between flat wages and rising costs.

Judge Kavanaugh would tip the balance of the Court even further in favor of those corporations and special interests. For the next 30 or 40 years, he would be a reliable vote in favor of whatever giant companies and their armies of lobbyists decide that they

want, whatever special favors they can't secure in Congress and can get only through the courts. The world's largest companies already throw their money around this place with reckless abandon and try to buy the outcomes they want. They don't need any more help on the Supreme Court. It is time for Washington to start working for the people again, and that starts with defeating Judge Kavanaugh's nomination.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I want to start by thanking Senator Brown for organizing time for our speeches today and, of course, for his tireless fight on behalf of working people in this country.

I rise today to join Senator Brown and my other colleagues in standing with Federal workers in Massachusetts and all around the country--Federal

workers who are under attack from all sides by the Trump administration.

There are nearly 30,000 Federal workers in Massachusetts alone, and almost a quarter of them are veterans--thousands of men and women who have put themselves in harm's way to protect us and then come home and continue serving their communities in the Federal workforce. These Americans work at agencies like the Social Security Administration, to help older Americans receive the benefits they have earned, and they work at the VA, where they help us fulfill the promises that we have made to our veterans. They help to keep our communities safe, and they help them recover after a disaster hits. They fight deadly diseases and work day in and day out to improve the health of our fellow citizens. Those are just a few examples.

But ever since taking office, President Trump has attacked these public servants, attacked their paychecks, attacked their working conditions, and attacked their retirement security in just about every way he could think of--freezing their pay and proposing draconian cuts to their wages and their hard-earned retirement benefits.

His latest assault, in the form of three Executive orders, undermines collective bargaining rights that have protected Federal workers' voices in their workplaces since the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 passed this Senate 87 to 1. These orders disrupt the bargaining processes that Federal workers have used for decades, and they interfere with the ability of unions to represent their members. For example, one of President Trump's Executive orders severely cuts down on the time that unions can spend helping their workers navigate the process for filing a workplace sexual harassment claim or getting whistleblower protections in order to report fraud and corruption in the government.

President Trump's attacks on these public servants and their rights undermine important government services and the rights of all American workers, and they are part of a clear pattern. Despite his campaign rhetoric from 2 years ago, the President's track record on standing up for workers has been absolutely miserable. From the day he nominated Andrew Puzder, an executive who delighted in mocking and belittling his own low-wage workers, to run the Labor Department, this administration has delivered one gut punch after another to American workers.

But that was only the beginning. In the Trump administration, workers in all sectors and all industries and in all parts of the country are under repeated attack. President Trump has signed laws, ended commonsense protections, and nominated anti-union and anti-worker judges--all of which undermine the rights of American workers in more ways than I can possibly count.

He has rolled back rules designed to make sure that Federal contractors don't cheat their workers out of hard-earned wages. He has delayed safety standards that keep workers from being exposed to lethal carcinogenic materials, and he has made it easier for employers to hide injuries and deaths that their workers suffer on the job.

He has opened the door for shady financial advisers to cheat hard- working Americans out of billions of dollars in retirement savings.

He has put anti-worker corporate attorneys on the National Labor Relations Board, which has now mowed its way through a giant wish list of areas where giant companies were begging to be left off the hook for violating workers' rights.

For the Supreme Court, he nominated Neil Gorsuch, a union-busting judge who was the deciding vote in the 5-to-4 Janus case, which was also an attack on public servants, nurses, teachers, firefighters, and police--the culmination of a years-long campaign by rightwing billionaires to damage unions.

The list goes on. After a year and a half of corporate tax cuts and rolling back commonsense protections for workplace safety, collective bargaining, retirement security, and more, we know that President Trump's promises to fight for American workers aren't really worth much of anything.

Like all of the attacks on working families that we have seen from this administration, President Trump's rolling back the rights of Federal workers will lower wages, worsen conditions, hurt retirement security, and squeeze middle-class families all around the country even tighter than before. But that is not all. By attacking the Federal workforce, President Trump is making it harder for them to do their jobs. That means he is undermining services that our seniors, our veterans, and Americans from all backgrounds rely on every single day.

In Massachusetts and here in Washington, Federal workers are saying: Enough is enough. So they are joining together, standing up, speaking out, and they are refusing to back down. Like so many Americans, I am grateful for their service to our country and to our communities, and I am proud to stand and fight shoulder to shoulder with these dedicated public servants, with their families, and with their communities all around the country. I am proud to stand with them. Powerful interests have been trying to break the backs of working people and their unions for decades, but we are here to say: We are not going away. We are going to fight, and we are going to win.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, this week, we hit a milestone, but not the kind of milestone you celebrate. Nearly 1 year ago, the Commission appointed by President Trump to examine the opioid crisis recommended that the President declare a national public health emergency to help combat the epidemic.

The Commission, led by former Republican Governor Chris Christie, said:

The first and most urgent recommendation of this Commission

is direct and completely within your control. Declare a

national emergency.

Yet the President dragged his feet. While he twiddled his thumbs, thousands of Americans continued to die from drug overdoses--over 115 people a day. Finally, in October of 2017, the President formally declared what we already knew--that the crisis was a public health emergency worthy of Federal action.

The first declaration the President issued lasted for 90 days, but during those 90 days, nothing changed. The President didn't take action. Americans continued to suffer, and more people died day, after day, after day. On January 24, 2018, the first emergency declaration expired. So the President had his HHS Secretary sign a second one. Then, before another 90 days ran out, on April 24, the administration signed a third one.

Yesterday, another 90 days later, on July 24, 2018, we began the fourth consecutive period of public health emergency due to the opioid crisis--9 months since the original declaration, 9 months during which more than 30,000 people have likely overdosed and died, all while the President and his administration have given us a lot of talk but no action.

Our communities are on the frontline of this epidemic, and they are working hard to fight back, but they can't do it alone. They need funding, support, and new tools. I have worked with my Democratic colleagues to make sure that communities have what they need in this fight.

Time and again, we have pressured congressional leadership for additional funding to help States and local communities address this epidemic, and the pressure has worked. I have secured millions of dollars, not just for opioid addiction and prevention and treatment but for increased mental health services, including the biggest increase in funding for the community mental health services block grant in history.

I have passed bipartisan legislation to reduce the number of unused opioids that sit in medicine cabinets. Since that legislation has become law, I have continued to work across the aisle, with Senator Capito, to make sure it has actually been implemented, and we are still working on that today.

I have also introduced legislation to send $100 billion in extra resources to fight this epidemic--right to the communities and Tribes that need the help the most.

I am in this fight because communities in Massachusetts and all across this country deserve it. Yet President Trump is not in this fight. The President has made a lot of promises about the opioid crisis, but time and again, this President has broken his promises. Take the first time he declared the crisis an emergency. The President held a big event and talked a big game. Then he produced no tangible plan and no new commitment of Federal money beyond meager funds that were left over from responding to other public health emergencies and disasters.

Declaring the crisis a national emergency was the top recommendation of the President's opioid commission, but it was not the only recommendation. The Commission's final report included 56 recommendations that it asked the administration and Congress to implement as soon as possible. Nearly all of those recommendations required the administration's involvement and leadership.

So what has come of those 56 recommendations?

Who knows. At best, maybe a few have been implemented. The majority seems to have just been ignored.

Even members of the Commission itself have called out this administration's shameful lack of action. Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy stated that the Commission's work has been turned into a ``charade'' and a ``sham.''

Why is the Trump administration refusing to take this crisis seriously? Why?

To start, it doesn't help that the administration has put people in charge of addressing this emergency who lack the relevant experience in public health or addiction. Apparently, Kellyanne Conway is running the show, but she is also, apparently, running multiple other shows at the same time. Not only is the opioid crisis not Ms. Conway's full-time responsibility, but she has also reportedly pushed aside drug policy experts and made comments about addiction that are not evidence-based. James Carroll, President Trump's nominee to run the Office of National Drug Control Policy, or ONDCP, also appears to have no experience in public or behavioral health policy.

Let's not forget that the ONDCP is the agency that President Trump has, essentially, proposed to eliminate by cutting 95 percent of its funding. This is also the agency with such a high staff turnover that, earlier this year, a 24-year-old with no public health experience was promoted to Deputy Chief of Staff while the position of Chief of Staff remained unfilled. This is also the agency that has not released its required annual drug strategy for the last 2 years running.

That is a lot, but as if that is not enough, the Trump administration has taken repeated steps to undermine the very programs that are critical to fighting the opioid crisis.

The President has tried to slash the healthcare coverage for millions of Americans who have preexisting conditions--conditions like addiction issues. He has tried to cut hundreds of millions of dollars out of Medicaid, which provides coverage for two out of every five non-elderly adults who have opioid addictions. He has proposed slashing funding for health workforce programs, for the Prevention and Public Health Fund, and for mental health programs--all critical in addressing the epidemic.

Time after time, I have asked the administration to explain the work it is supposedly doing on this crisis. I have asked John Kelly for clarification about Kellyanne Conway's role--no response. I have asked Ms. Conway directly about her role--no response. I have asked the administration about its progress on implementing the opioid commission's recommendations--no response. To me, it looks like a whole bunch of nothing--just empty words and broken promises.

While the President plugs his ears and closes his eyes, Americans are dying. There were 42,000 people who died of drug overdoses in this country in 2016. From July 2016 to September 2017, across the country, emergency room visits for opioid overdoses, on average, jumped 30 percent, but only 1 in 10 individuals in need of specialty addiction treatment is actually able to access it.

There is no shortage of steps we could take right now in tackling this crisis. We have confronted large-scale public health crises before, and we have made a difference.

Back in the 1980s, the death toll from a poorly understood and stigmatized disease grew larger and larger. For years, the Federal Government refused to act as Americans died. That disease was HIV/AIDS. Yet activists and their loved ones demanded action, and in 1990 the Federal Government finally made a meaningful investment by passing the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act. The AIDS epidemic isn't over, but HIV is no longer a death sentence. Thanks to the Ryan White CARE Act, all who need treatment and support can get it regardless of their ability to pay.

With Representative Elijah Cummings, I have introduced legislation that is modeled on the very successful Ryan White CARE Act, and we will apply it to fighting the opioid epidemic. The Comprehensive Addiction Resources Emergency Act would invest $100 billion over the next 10 years to ensure that every single person who deals with addiction can get the help they need, period.

If President Trump wanted to prioritize this problem and make a difference in the opioid epidemic, he could do it. He has the power. He could implement his own Commission's recommendations. He could send meaningful budget requests to Congress. He could appoint qualified, hard-working people to tackle the problem. Yet he will not do any of those things as he is all talk, no action. While he keeps extending meaningless emergency declarations, Americans are dying.

People with addictions--and their families--deserve more. Our communities demand more. It is time to stop nibbling around the edges and to get to work on this problem.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Merkley for bringing us here this evening to give us this chance to talk about a Supreme Court nominee and to have us all here to talk about a whole range of issues, because this Supreme Court nominee will affect the lives of every single human being. So I thank Senator Merkley for doing this.

Since day one, the Trump administration has been plagued with chaos, corruption, and broken promises. Candidate Trump promised to drain the swamp in Washington, but this administration is teeming with shady, corrupt political appointees using their government service to line their own pockets and to do the bidding of their benefactors.

Candidate Trump promised to take care of everyone--to make sure that every American was, in his words, ``beautifully covered.'' Instead, he is trying to rip up the Affordable Care Act, permit insurance companies to discriminate against tens of millions of people with preexisting conditions, and knock millions more off healthcare coverage.

Candidate Trump promised to raise taxes on the rich. Remember that one? Yes. Instead, he handed out an eye-popping $1.5 trillion tax giveaway to giant corporations and the superrich.

For hard-working American families, the Trump Presidency has turned into a nightmare. Trump hasn't broken his promises to everyone--no, not by any stretch. For millionaires, billionaires, and giant corporations, Trump has kept his promises all the way. Nowhere has that been more obvious than with our courts.

``Equal Justice Under Law''--those are the words inscribed over the top of the Supreme Court. That is what the American judicial system is supposed to be all about--a fair, neutral forum governed by the rule of law; a place where everyone can be heard; a place where individual rights are respected; a place where nobody is above the law. Those are high aspirations, but these ideas never sat well with the wealthy and well-connected. They are used to getting special deals, and a judicial system that protects everyone, no matter their wealth or status in this country, is a challenge to their unchecked power.

For years, they have engaged in a concerted campaign to turn our courts into one more rigged game, a place that carefully protects the rich and powerful and kicks dirt in everyone else's face. Billionaires and giant corporations have been working on this plan for decades.

Today, the rich and powerful do their best to drown our elections in money and tilt our government in their favor. Every day, they use their money to buy favors in DC. Every day, they deploy armies of lawyers and lobbyists to bend the laws passed by Congress to their will. Every day, they push this government to do just a little more for the rich and powerful and a little less for everyone else.

They are doing the same in our courts too. Since Donald Trump was elected, we have seen judge after judge come through the Senate, some barely qualified, some with deeply offensive records. But nearly all these judges have one key quality: a demonstrated willingness to put a thumb on the scales for those at the top at everyone else's expense.

This week, we will vote on two more Trump-nominated appeals court judges. If they are confirmed, they will continue to tilt the courts away from equal justice under law.

Nowhere is this effort more obvious or more damaging than with the President's Supreme Court selections. During the Presidential campaign, Donald Trump asked one group to draw up a list of acceptable candidates to serve on the Supreme Court--one group, one very influential group, one extremist group--the Federalist Society, a radical, rightwing group deeply committed to overturning Roe v. Wade. Trump promised publicly that if he was elected President, he would select Supreme Court nominees exclusively from the Federalist Society's list.

The idea of a Republican President outsourcing the selection of judges has never been so nakedly public. For decades, the Federalist Society has been one of the leading rightwing, billionaire-funded groups working to capture our courts. Their agenda? To impose their extremist agenda on the entire country, undermining critical rights like women's rights, workers' rights, voting rights, and environmental protections.

The courts are at the heart of the Federalist Society's plan, so the group has been laser-focused on filling the Federal bench with people who are precommitted to serving the interests

of the rich and powerful instead of dispensing equal justice under law.

By allowing them to handpick the Justices who sit on the Supreme Court, Trump gave the Federalist Society an unprecedented opportunity to impose their extremist agenda on the entire country. What is at the top of their list? Overturn Roe v. Wade. A top conservative explained that Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society's longtime executive vice president, was the man to get the job done. ``No one has been more dedicated to the enterprise of building a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe than the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo.'' Criminalize abortion, punish women--that is the Federalist Society's plan.

Donald Trump has been happy to dance to their tune. During the 2016 campaign, he said: Yes, women should be punished if they try to get an abortion. And if he could appoint two or three Justices, Roe would be automatically overturned.

Since taking office, President Trump has made it abundantly clear that he plans to fulfill his promise to select candidates exclusively from the Federalist Society's list. Just days after his inauguration, Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch--one of the candidates on the Federalist Society's list--to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Judge Gorsuch had a long record of twisting the law in ways that favored the interests of large corporations over women, over workers, over consumers, and over just about everyone who wasn't wealthy and well- connected. Republicans were so dedicated to getting Gorsuch on the Court that they actually changed the Senate rules to get him through the Senate nomination.

From his powerful perch on the Supreme Court, Judge Gorsuch has continued to make it harder for Americans to find justice. In just 1 year on the Court, he has voted to gut the ability of public sector unions to negotiate for higher wages, better benefits, and improved working conditions for teachers, nurses, firefighters, police officers, and other public servants; he has voted to undermine workers' ability to hold their employers accountable for breaking the law; and he has voted to uphold President Trump's immoral Muslim ban.

The same powerful people who handpicked Justice Gorsuch know they will have another ally in Brett Kavanaugh. Frankly, it is not hard to see why. Like Justice Gorsuch, Judge Kavanaugh's record shows that he will continue to tilt the scales of justice in favor of the rich and powerful and against everyone else. Don't take my word for it; take a look at his record.

Judge Kavanaugh voted to limit the ability of women to make their own healthcare decisions. He opposed a ruling protecting women's access to birth control under the Affordable Care Act. He voted to make it harder for agencies to protect public health, safety, and economic security. He ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--the agency that has returned $12 billion directly to people who were cheated by corporate lawbreakers--is unconstitutional. He suggested that Federal judges might substitute their own personal policy judgments for those of expert Federal agencies that have been directed by Congress to enforce the law.

Judge Kavanaugh had a lot of competition to get selected to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. After all, the Federalist Society had pulled together a whole list of people prescreened to overturn Roe v. Wade and help out the powerful corporate interests that are really calling the tune in Washington. Why pick Judge Kavanaugh? Why him instead of someone else on the list?

There is something special that makes Judge Kavanaugh a lot more attractive to President Trump. Judge Kavanaugh believes that, while in office, a sitting President should be above the law. He has argued that sitting Presidents should not face personal civil suits or criminal investigations or prosecutions while in office.

After the spectacle broadcast live on television around the world of President Trump attacking American intelligence agencies and American law enforcement officers while sucking up to Vladimir Putin, we should all question Judge Kavanaugh's willingness to protect the President no matter what. After Trump's deeply embarrassing performance, Republicans who actually want to stand up for the United States of America and stand up to Trump instead of hiding behind carefully worded tweets could refuse to rubberstamp Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Republicans who believe that no one is above the law could vote no on Judge Kavanaugh.

There is a lot more that makes this nominee particularly attractive to President Trump. Judge Kavanaugh has demonstrated incredible hostility toward efforts to rein in public corruption and to break the stranglehold of money on our political system.

Substituting your personal views for the will of Congress is not the job of a judge, and it is certainly not conservative. Stripping rights away from women, voters, workers, and immigrants, while expanding the rights of corporations and rich people isn't fair, neutral, or equal.

Judge Kavanaugh didn't make this stuff up on his own, no. Judge Kavanaugh is part of a movement to twist the Constitution in ways that are deeply hostile to the rights of everyone but those at the top. He has been a part of that movement for the majority of his professional life, both before and after he became a judge, and now he has a record of 12 years of judicial decisions that demonstrate his loyalty to that radical ideology.

All of this makes Brett Kavanaugh a dream candidate for the rightwing, extremist Federalist Society; a dream candidate for rightwing, extremist Republicans; a dream candidate for the rightwing groups and billionaires who want to buy off our political system; a dream candidate for a sitting President whose campaign is under an active, ongoing FBI investigation that eventually could land in the U.S. Supreme Court; a dream candidate for all of them and a nightmare for everyone else.

President Trump has made his choice. Here is the thing: President Trump is not a King. The Constitution demands that the Senate have a say in who gets to serve on the Supreme Court, and that means every single Senator has a vote. Think about what is at stake. One Justice, one vote could determine whether women can make their own healthcare decisions. One Justice, one vote could determine whether workers can join unions to negotiate for better pay, better working conditions, and better benefits. One Justice, one vote could determine whether millions of people with preexisting conditions can still get health insurance. One Justice, one vote could make decisions on voting rights, civil rights, immigration, criminal justice, consumer protection, and environmental protection. One Justice, one vote could decide whether everyone or just those at the top can find justice in America.

The Justices who sit on the highest Court in the country should not be prescreened by extremist groups whose agenda is to tilt the scales of justice against Americans who are most vulnerable. They should not work to hand our courts over to corporate giants and wealthy individuals. The Justices who sit on our highest Court should be unequivocally committed to one principle: equal justice under law.

Judge Kavanaugh's record shows that he is not the right candidate to spend a lifetime making decisions that will touch the lives of every American. Every American who believes that our courts should not be another puppet of the rich and powerful should speak out, and every Senator who believes in equal justice under law should say no to Judge Kavanaugh.

Mr. President, I yield the floor to my colleague from Oregon.

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

Mr. President, I rise to speak in favor of the Reed- Warren amendment.

For months, I have been voicing concerns about the Trump administration's dangerous plans to develop new, more usable low-yield nuclear weapons. Specifically, this Defense bill authorizes the Pentagon to begin developing a new low-yield warhead, which the Trump administration wants to put on our Nation's submarine-launched ballistic missiles. I think this decision is strategically unwise for many reasons.

I am concerned about discrimination and the risk of rapid escalation into a nuclear conflict. As many experts have publicly suggested, Russia may not be able to distinguish between an incoming Trident missile that poses an existential threat to their nation and a low- yield nuclear missile that is intended to serve as more of a warning. That may be a risk this administration is willing to take, but it is not one I can support.

I am also not convinced that additional low-yield nuclear weapons are necessary for deterrence. Let's be clear. Together with our allies, the United States brings overwhelming nonnuclear coercive power to the table, but beyond that, the United States already possesses a significant low-yield nuclear arsenal. In fact, we are in the process of spending billions of dollars to upgrade our delivery systems in order to ensure that our flexible deterrent is capable of reaching anyplace, anytime.

I am troubled by the message that developing new nuclear weapons variants sends to the world about America's commitment to nonproliferation. Our credibility to negotiate with other countries, like North Korea, to demand that it reduce its nuclear arsenal, depends, in part, on the fact that we have long been committed to reducing our own. We must not do anything to jeopardize that progress.

That is not what this amendment is all about. In fact, I offered an amendment in committee to fence the funding for low-yield SLBM until we can better understand the impact of this new weapon on our Navy and on our obligations as a steward of nonproliferation around the world, but my amendment was not successful.

I understand that some of our military leaders, and some Members of my own party, genuinely believe this new low-yield weapon is necessary. I know my colleagues approach this seriously, and I know people with good intentions can disagree, but that is exactly the purpose of this Reed-Warren amendment. The point is, we should be having this debate right here in Congress. That is where the debate belongs.

The impact of the underlying provision currently in the Defense bill is that the Pentagon will not need to come to Congress to ask for permission to develop a new low-yield nuclear weapon in the future. Instead, they can merely notify that they intend to do so and then proceed on their own. If this Defense bill passes in its current form, Congress will have lost our best opportunity to have a say in how they will develop it, what it will cost, or how and where it will be deployed.

The argument in favor of the existing provision is that low-yield nuclear weapons should be treated ``just like any other weapon,'' but I would say this to my colleagues: That is not the case. As Secretary Mattis has said, there is no such thing as a ``tactical'' nuclear weapon and ``any nuclear weapon used any time is a strategic game- changer.'' The truth is, nuclear weapons are not like other weapons, and we should not treat them that way. We should all be able to agree that nuclear weapons are in their own class, and they deserve special scrutiny by Congress.

In fact, we have faced this very question before. Fifteen years ago, there was a similar effort to take Congress out of the debate and out of any question about the use of nuclear weapons. In that case, Senators John Warner and Jack Reed offered a bipartisan compromise proposal that said the executive branch could only go forward in the development of new nuclear weapons with explicit authorization from Congress. That proposal passed unanimously, 96 to 0, including votes from 10 of our Republican colleagues who still sit in the Senate today.

The provision in the underlying Defense bill would gut that bipartisan agreement, an agreement that has held for more than 15 years. It was offered at the eleventh hour, behind closed doors, and on a party-line vote.

In contrast, the amendment offered by Senator Reed today is consistent with that compromise, and a vote for the Reed-Warren amendment is a vote to sustain that bipartisan consensus.

Regardless of what you think about the development and use of low- yield nuclear weapons, as a Member of the Senate, you should vote to have a voice in that process. That is what the American people sent us here to do, and that is what we owe them.

I would like to thank Senator Reed for his decades of bipartisan leadership

in this area, and I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the Reed- Warren amendment.

I yield back my time.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Yes, I do.

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

Mr. President, I rise to honor the life and legacy of an American treasure, Bobby Kennedy.

Robert Kennedy lived his life with courage and conviction, never afraid to challenge a divided nation to face its moral failings. Bobby challenged us all to take a step back from the stale, cheap politics of the moment and to do better by each other. His service to this Nation will never be forgotten.

Today, 50 years after he was brutally assassinated, we pause to acknowledge the brilliance and beauty that rested in his vision of America--a vision that led him to seek the highest office in this land, a vision of love, wisdom, compassion, and justice. Bobby believed we all have a shared responsibility to leave this world just a little bit better off than when we came.

``Few will have the greatness to bend history itself,'' he once said, ``but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.''

History may not repeat, but it often rhymes. Conditions are different now, but a lot of the anxiety and tension that swept through this country in 1968, at the height of Bobby's political career, echoes the anxiety of today, especially the economic anxiety felt by millions of Americans who are working harder than ever but feel opportunity slipping away from themselves and their children.

Too often our political and business leaders refuse to see this. Instead, they hide behind macroeconomic statistics, using them as a shield to dismiss the concerns of the American people as faulty, wrongheaded, or even nonexistent. Robert Kennedy understood that America's national economy is not the same as the economic well-being of its people. In a 1968 speech at the University of Kansas, he spoke eloquently about the differences between them, and here is what he said:

[Our] Gross National Product counts air pollution and

cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways

of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the

jails for the people who break them. It counts the

destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder

in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear

warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots

in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife,

and the television programs which glorify violence in order

to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the

health of our children, the quality of their education or the

joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our

poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of

our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our

wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our

devotion to our country.

It measures everything, in short, except that which makes

life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America

except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Consider three statistics: corporate profits, the stock market, and unemployment. Today, corporate profits are up--corporate profits that count gun sales from manufacturers whose weapons are used to massacre children in our schools and our streets, corporate profits that count revenues from drug companies when they quadruple prices for the sick and the desperate, corporate profits that count revenues of banks like Wells Fargo as they rip off millions of American consumers.

The stock market is up as giant companies pocket trillions in taxpayer money stolen from middle-class families. The market is up as CEOs shut down plants and factories in the United States and move them overseas. The market is up as business leaders, flush with cash, turn their backs on workers while they plow millions and even billions into stock buybacks to goose investors' returns and CEOs' bonuses.

Unemployment is down, but wages have barely budged in a generation. Unemployment is down, but for millions of people, the exploding costs for housing, for healthcare, for childcare mean that it now takes two jobs to do what one job covered a generation ago. Unemployment is down, but the numbers fail to count the millions living in rural and urban American communities alike that have given up the search for a job.

Corporate profits, the stock market, unemployment--these statistics tell us everything about the American economy, but they tell us very little about the lived experiences of today's Americans. They do not speak to the citizen who fears police violence or the police officer who fears gang violence or the immigrant who cannot speak out about sexual assault at the hands of her boss or the toxic rhetoric flowing through our politics and seeking to turn neighbor against neighbor. They do not account for our devotion to our communities, to our churches, to our children. They tell us virtually nothing about our trials, our challenges, our hopes, or our principles.

Robert Kennedy understood this. He knew we cannot simply run our economy for those at the top and assume it will solve America's problems. In the intervening years since his speech, America ran that experiment anyway and watched it fail miserably.

It is time to try something different. It is time to challenge each of us to do better by each other, to see the dignity in one another, to put our values first. I believe together we can make that Robert Kennedy's legacy, and I am proud to fight for it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Donald Trump promised during his inaugural address to fight for ``the forgotten men and women of our country,'' but in Donald Trump's Washington, the Senate sits on its hands as the revolving door spins faster and faster. Brian Montgomery is just the latest in a line of bankers, lawyers, investors, and consultants who cashed in on their big-time public service and now want back in.

Mr. Montgomery has just been confirmed to be the Commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration, the FHA, which provides taxpayer-backed insurance that helps millions of Americans buy homes they might not otherwise be able to afford. Lenders make loans to these families because the FHA gives them some protection in case the families default. Like any insurance, there are strict rules about who qualifies. Unless it is managed well, the FHA could expose taxpayers to a risk of billions of dollars in losses.

Mr. Montgomery knows something about the FHA. He was the Commissioner from 2006 to 2009 while the housing market was flying high and when it all came crashing down. Since almost the day he left, he has been making buckets of money selling his knowledge to banks who broke the rules and are trying to escape the consequences.

Here is what I mean. One month after leaving the FHA, Mr. Montgomery founded and became vice chairman of a new company called Collingwood Group which, according to reports, was known in the housing finance industry as a specialist in helping firms navigate FHA-related penalties and lawsuits. Who better to navigate the rules of the FHA than the guy who used to be in charge of the FHA?

One of Collingwood's clients was Wells Fargo. They were in trouble for defrauding FHA, and in 2016 paid HUD a $1.2 billion fine. That is billion with a ``b.'' Wells Fargo admitted that from 2001 to 2008, it had lied to the FHA about whether certain loans were eligible for FHA insurance. Mr. Montgomery was in charge of the FHA from 2006 to 2008 and let that fraud happen. After he left, he went to the other team, giving Wells Fargo the inside scoop on how to beat the rap.

Collingwood also represented U.S. Bank. In 2014, U.S. Bank paid $200 million for defrauding FHA. In its settlement, U.S. Bank admitted that ``from 2006 through 2011, it repeatedly certified for FHA insurance mortgage loans that did not meet HUD underwriting requirements.'' The taxpayers paid Mr. Montgomery to manage the FHA for 3 of those years, and he didn't stop the fraud. When he left, U.S. Bank paid him to help them get away with it. I guess it pays to be an inside guy.

I have seen some amazing cases of people spinning through the revolving door, but this one might take the cake. First, Montgomery runs an agency that puts taxpayer money on the line. While there, he looks the other way as the banks submit piles of fraudulent mortgages. The government then loses millions and millions of taxpayer dollars. Then, Mr. Montgomery waltzes right out the door and 1 month later starts a company advising the same big banks on how to pay the government back as little as possible for frauds they committed on his watch.

Look, he may have the best of intentions, but we can never expect the American people to trust Washington if we approve nominees like Mr. Montgomery. It is bad enough that he put taxpayer money at risk by looking the other way as the banks committed fraud and then bad enough that he got rich working for those same banks. Now the Senate is letting him go back and do it all over again? No way. It is finally time to crack down on the revolving door.

Mr. President, 10 years ago, as the economy lurched toward a financial crisis, millions of American families braced for the impact. Over the next few years, almost 9 million families lost their jobs and millions more lost their homes and their savings. Giant banks--pillars of Wall Street for generations--crumbled, bringing communities across this country with it.

In the aftermath of the crisis, Congress passed commonsense rules to make sure Wall Street could never again crash the economy and leave American families with the wreckage, but Donald Trump thinks that Dodd- Frank is ``a disaster,'' and he has promised to do a ``big number'' on the safeguards it created. He hired an army of bankers and bank lawyers from Wall Street to do the deed, and now Jelena McWilliams is the latest piece in the puzzle.

Here is just one example. In the runup to the crisis, giant banks proved to be terrible judges of risk and ended up sucking down billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts just to survive. To fix this, Dodd- Frank directed the banking regulators to set strong capital standards that limited how much risk the big banks could load up on and required them to hold enough cushion to survive in case their bets went bad.

Policymakers and regulators from both sides of the aisle agree that these financial regulations made our economy safer. Former FDIC Chair Sheila

Bair and former Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig--both Republican appointees--recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that gutting capital rules ``would weaken system resiliency.'' Current FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg--a Democrat--said that strong capital requirements were ``among the most important post-crisis reforms'' and has opposed joint efforts by the Fed and the Treasury to undermine them.

Ms. McWilliams would drop that opposition. In fact, she is not even sure there was anything wrong with the capitalist standards before the crisis. That is not the only rule she would roll back. Donald Trump's Wall Street mercenaries have taken aim at a lot of critical post-crisis rules, and everything we know about Ms. McWilliams suggests she will support those efforts. Here is what is on the agenda.

First, there is the Volcker rule, which prohibits bank deposits from gambling with Grandma's checking money. Banks are looking to scrap this rule, even though they are raking in literally record profits, but the FDIC has to agree before there are any changes. As soon as Ms. McWilliams is confirmed, bingo. Sorry, Grandma.

Next is guidance that prevents banks from offering abusive, short- term loans similar to payday loan products. The OCC has told the banks it regulates to have at it. With Ms. McWilliams in charge, it is only a matter of time before the FDIC banks get in the game.

Third, there is also the Community Reinvestment Act, the CRA, which is designed to make sure a bank serves all credit-worthy customers in its community, regardless of the color of their skin. Lending discrimination is rampant in America, even though 98 percent of banks pass their CRA exams, but banks and the Trump appointees they send to Washington want to make the test for passing even easier. Under Ms. McWilliams, the FDIC evidently will not stand in the way.

I could go on and on, but here is the thing. It is not just that I disagree with Ms. McWilliams or think her actions will make consumers and our economy less safe; it is that Senate Republicans are stacking the deck to allow Ms. McWilliams to make these decisions without any discussion.

The five-member FDIC Board is supposed to be split between Republicans and Democrats, but the Senate is moving to confirm Ms. McWilliams before the White House has even nominated a Democratic Vice Chair for the agency. If Ms. McWilliams moves forward, the FDIC will be under complete Republican control for an indefinite amount of time. Democrats should oppose the McWilliams nomination on this basis alone.

Ms. McWilliams is the latest Trump appointee who thinks the biggest problem with our financial rules is that the government is just too darn hard on the banks. Most Americans don't feel that way. They want tougher rules on Wall Street, not weaker ones. We should listen to them because they are the ones who pay the price when things go wrong on Wall Street.

I urge my colleagues to vote no.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am here to express my strong opposition to President Trump's nomination of Gina Haspel to be the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. There are two reasons I oppose this nomination: Ms. Haspel's support for torture and her willingness to destroy evidence of the CIA's use of torture.

For years, apologists for the CIA's program have tried to redescribe this inhumane practice to make it seem less appalling to the American people. They have even renamed it. Torture has been rebranded as ``enhanced interrogation.''

There is no way to hide the basic facts. The techniques used by the CIA were torture: waterboarding so the person had the repeated sensation of drowning, confining people to small boxes for hours on end, depriving people of sleep for days, forcing people to hold painful stress positions.

The CIA did not invent these tactics. Listen to an American war hero describe what he endured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

I was being forced to stand up continuously--sometimes

they'd make you stand up or sit on a stool for a long period

of time. I'd stood up for a couple of days, with a respite

only because one of the guards--the only real human being

that I ever met over there--let me lie down for a couple of

hours while he was on watch in the middle of one night.

Speaking about his captors, this former American POW said:

They bounced me from pillar to post, kicking and laughing

and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on

me and I sat that night bound with ropes.

They beat me around a little bit. I was in such bad shape

that when they hit me it would knock me unconscious. They

kept saying, ``You will not receive any medical treatment

until you talk.''

I was getting about three or four spoonfuls of food twice a

day. Sometimes I'd go for a day or so without eating.

I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has

his breaking point. I had reached mine. . . . I had been

reduced to an animal during this period of beating and

torture.

These are the words of Senator John McCain--our distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from Arizona, a decorated Naval aviator who was beaten, broken, and tortured for 2 years after being captured in North Vietnam.

No matter how you dress it up, torture is torture, and it is wrong. It is inhumane, it is infective, and it is un-American.

That was the conclusion of the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program during the Bush administration. The committee drew a definitive conclusion: Torture did not work. In fact, not only does torture not work, it makes it more difficult for other agencies in our government to protect our national security.

Surely a person who is seeking to be the Director of the CIA in 2018 should agree with this assessment or be able to give a really good explanation of why not. Someone seeking to be the Director of the CIA should be able to state clearly that torture is wrong, but when repeatedly asked a yes-or-no question by my colleague Senator Kamala Harris: Were the CIA's actions immoral, Ms. Haspel danced around the answer. These are not the answers of a person who can be trusted to administer the powerful CIA.

That question of trust goes to my second objection: The Director of the CIA will make many decisions that will be held in secret and never reviewed by the American people. It is critical we trust her judgment and that we have complete confidence in her honesty and willingness to submit to congressional oversight. I do not have that confidence in Ms. Haspel, and here is why. As we now know from the public reports, between October and December of 2002, Ms. Haspel oversaw a CIA prison in Thailand. Under her leadership, at least one detainee was waterboarded and subjected to other torture methods. As far as we know, Ms. Haspel raised no objections.

According to news reports, in 2005, Ms. Haspel recommended that the CIA destroy 92 videotapes of interrogations of detainees. CIA officials remember, at the time, Ms. Haspel was one of ``the staunchest advocates inside the building for destroying the tapes''--``the staunchest advocates inside the building for destroying the tapes.'' She went so far as to draft the order for her boss, the Director of the National Clandestine Service, to sign, urging them to use ``an industrial strength shredder,'' just to make sure they were completely destroyed.

Ms. Haspel destroyed these tapes despite Federal court orders requiring the preservation of the CIA's records, despite the objections of Members of Congress, and against the order of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA Director, two White House Counsels, and senior Department of Justice officials. In a convenient coincidence for Ms. Haspel, the tapes she ordered destroyed reportedly documented the interrogation of detainees at the very same CIA prison in Thailand that Ms. Haspel previously supervised. Even more conveniently, some of the tapes reportedly documented the interrogation of the very detainee who was waterboarded under Ms. Haspel's leadership.

When Senator Angus King asked about her destruction of the tapes, Ms. Haspel could come up with no credible explanation. How can we trust her to be fully forthright with Congress in the future if she cannot acknowledge missteps of the past?

Ms. Haspel had numerous opportunities to question the directives she was given during this era. According to the

Senate Intelligence Committee report, other CIA officers regularly called into question the effectiveness and safety of the techniques being used but not Gina Haspel. It was happening right before her eyes, and she did nothing to stop it. While her colleagues questioned the legitimacy of the CIA's program, according to public reports, Ms. Haspel vigorously defended it. According to those same reports, the Trump White House reviewed CIA message logs that ``made it clear just how accepting she had been of since disavowed interrogation techniques.''

The fact is, so far as the record indicates, the only action Ms. Haspel has taken with regard to U.S. torture practices has been to do her best to cover it up.

Why relitigate the choices that were made during those dark days after 9/11? Because this matters, especially with a President like Donald Trump. As a candidate, Donald Trump said he would ``bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding'' because even ``if it doesn't work, they deserve it anyway.'' As President, Donald Trump pulled back from his plan to reinstate the use of secret CIA prisons overseas only after overwhelming bipartisan outrage.

The stakes are high. The use of torture is one of the darkest chapters in our Nation's modern history. We cannot give this President any reason to drag this country back. We cannot allow any room for that mistake to occur again.

Gina Haspel has spent 33 years at the CIA. She has a decorated career and has sacrificed for this country in many ways Americans will never know. I have no doubt her current and former colleagues who praise her as a patriot are sincere, but patriotism and judgment are not the same thing. Someone who puts protecting the Agency above following the law cannot be trusted.

When announcing his opposition to Gina Haspel's nomination, Senator McCain recently said that ``the methods we employ to keep our nation safe must be as right and just as the values we aspire to live up to and promote in the world.'' I agree with Senator McCain, and I urge my colleagues to reject her nomination.

National Police Week

Mr. President, I rise to honor the lives of six Massachusetts police officers who lost their lives in the line of duty. On April 12, our Commonwealth suffered a terrible loss when Sergeant Sean Gannon of the Yarmouth Police Department was killed while serving an arrest warrant. He was only 32 years old.

A native of New Bedford, MA, Sergeant Gannon graduated from Bishop Stang High School in North Dartmouth and then earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Westfield State University and a master's in emergency management from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

After college, Sergeant Gannon jumped headfirst into public service, first serving as a public safety officer and later becoming a police officer with the Yarmouth Police Department, where he served for 8 years. Sergeant Gannon loved working with police dogs, and he was the first full-time K-9 narcotics officer at the Yarmouth PD. His loyal patrol dog, Near- Oh, was seriously injured in the incident that claimed Sergeant Gannon's life, but he is expected to recover and return to the Gannon family.

Sergeant Gannon had a huge heart and spent his free time volunteering with Big Brothers, Big Sisters, traveling, enjoying the outdoors, and working with his hands.

Thousands of mourners, including law enforcement officials from across the country, gathered to pay their respects at Sergeant Gannon's wake--a testament to the high esteem with which his community held him and to the power of his sacrifice.

Yarmouth police chief Frank Frederickson calls Sergeant Gannon the ``Tom Brady of our department'' and posthumously promoted him to the rank of sergeant.

Last month, I spoke with Sergeant Gannon's wife, Dara, and his parents, Patrick and Denise, to offer my condolences, my thoughts, and my prayers, and I continue to hold them in my heart.

Next year, Sergeant Gannon's name will be added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, recognizing law enforcement officers who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their communities. We owe Sergeant Gannon and all of them a deep debt of gratitude. They died as heroes.

I would also like to recognize the five Massachusetts officers whose names were added to the memorial this year. Patrolman Seth A. Noyes, of the Boston Police Department, died on October 18, 1870, from injuries sustained in the line of duty. He was 41 years old. Sergeant John J. Shanahan, of the Revere Police Department, died on November 19, 1928, when he was hit by a truck while directing traffic around the scene of a car accident. He was 54 years old. Patrolman Jeremiah J. O'Connor, of the Lawrence Police Department, died on November 14, 1950, when he had a heart attack after pursuing a subject. He was 61 years old. Patrolman Frederick A. Bell, of the Newton Police Department, died on September 5, 1954, 4 months after he suffered severe injuries in a car crash. He was 39 years old. Sergeant Raymond P. Cimino, of the Chelsea Police Department, died on February 28, 1985, after suffering a heart attack. He was 44 years old.

We honor their service, we honor their sacrifice, and most importantly, we honor the lives they led and the legacies they leave behind.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.