Floor Statements

Madam President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Kato Crews to the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.

Born in Pueblo, CO, Judge Crews received his B.A. from the University of Northern Colorado and his J.D. from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. After working for the National Labor Relations Board in Denver, Judge Crews entered private practice in Colorado. During his career as a civil litigator, he tried 18 cases to verdict, including 6 jury trials.

In 2018, the district judges of the District of Colorado unanimously voted to appoint Judge Crews as a magistrate judge. In his 5 years on the Federal bench, he has handled a wide variety of both civil and criminal matters. He has presided over six trials and issued more than 1,700 recommendations and orders. Judge Crews has also been deeply involved in his community, serving as a mentor to young lawyers and helping establish a program to assist pro se litigants in the District of Colorado.

The American Bar Association unanimously rated Judge Crews as ``well qualified'' to serve on the District of Colorado. He enjoys the support of the Colorado legal community and both of his home State Senators, Mr. Bennet and Mr. Hickenlooper.

Judge Crews' deep ties to the Centennial State, his significant litigation background, and his courtroom experience as both an advocate and magistrate judge ensure that he will continue to be an asset to the district court.

I strongly support his nomination, and I urge my colleagues to join me.

I announce that the Senator from Washington (Ms. Cantwell) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Washington (Ms. Cantwell) is necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I listened to my friend, the Senator from Kentucky, and his remarks really brought to mind a division in the United States that most of us are aware of when it comes to the issue of climate change.

You either believe that human activity is having an impact on the weather of the world or you don't. You either believe that it is not in the best interest of our country or the world for us to continue to heat this planet to levels unheard of in history. You either believe that the extreme weather situations which we are witnessing on a regular basis are just a run of bad luck or, sadly, maybe the product of a design in energy that makes a difference. You either believe that fossil fuel creates emissions which make it tougher to live in this country and this world or you don't. You either believe that our generation has a responsibility to do something different to try to preserve the planet that we live on for our kids and grandkids or we don't. You either believe that low gasoline prices are really the absolute pinnacle of success politically, or you believe that the use of fossil fuels needs to be somehow changed if we are going to save this planet.

It is just a clear difference of thinking. When a prospective candidate for Presidency of the United States for reelection talks about ``drill, baby, drill'' and has no concern, obviously, for the impact of those words on energy and the future, you really know that there is a difference coming in this election for voters to make a choice.

I want to err on the side of making this a safer planet for my kids and grandkids. My wife and I have tried to make decisions--large and small--in our lifestyle that reflect this feeling. We drive a hybrid car and get 33 miles a gallon--I wish we got more. Maybe the next car we buy will reach that. We put solar panels on our home in Springfield, IL. We were the first in the area to do it. I hope others will follow.

Those things and many others can make a little difference. And if we all do them together, they can make a big difference. And I think it is our moral responsibility to do that.

We can argue on the margins about the science of what I have just said, and that, of course, is time well spent. We should discuss science in honest terms.

But we all know something is going on in this world that we live in, and it is not good. Heating up this planet is going to make life a lot more difficult and create challenges we never even dreamed of.

So when I hear the Senator from Kentucky talking about bring down those gas prices, ``drill, baby, drill'' from a candidate on his side running for President, I think to myself: I would rather err on the side of being a little more cautious and careful in my lifestyle and the lifestyle of my family in the hopes that the little granddaughter of mine will have a planet she can live on when she reaches that stage in life.

Mr. President, on a completely different topic, we know what Vladimir Putin is up to in Ukraine. His cruelty and cynicism were on full display when he decided that he would invade Ukraine and bring it back into the Soviet army.

He launched a horrific strike on the Ukraine capital of Kyiv--news reports that he is desperately using and procuring now North Korean missiles to continue to launch those attacks on Ukraine.

Then he tried to silence anyone in Russia who might dissent from his strategy, anyone in Russia who actually had the audacity to suggest there should be democracy and freedom in that country. He sent one of his harshest critics to prison, and he moves him around within Russia from time to time. The man's name is Alexey Navalny. He is now in Siberia in prison and is going to stay in that prison indefinite. Why? Vladimir Putin cannot countenance the thought that that man would be out of prison and speak freely in Russia about his feelings about Putin and his agenda, and so he puts him in prison and silences him.

Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Judge John Kazen to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Born in Lincoln, NE, Judge Kazen received his B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and his J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center. After completing law school, Judge Kazen began his legal career at Kemp, Smith, Duncan & Hammond, P.C., where he focused on personal injury defense litigation. He then opened his own firm, Kazen, Meurer & Perez LLP, where he advised businesses and organizational clients on personnel matters and business transactions. In 2018, Judge Kazen was appointed to be a magistrate judge for the same district to which he is nominated. In his time on the bench, he has issued more than 7,500 reports and recommendations, orders, and opinions. The American Bar Association rated Judge Kazen ``well qualified'' to serve on the district court, and he has the support of Senators Cornyn and Cruz.

Judge Kazen's deep ties to the southern Texas legal community, combined with his courtroom experience as both a litigator and a judge, make him an excellent candidate to serve on the federal bench.

I thank my colleagues for supporting his nomination.

I announce that the Senator from Washington (Ms. Cantwell) and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the cloture motions with respect to the Rodriguez, Goffman, Crews, and Mehalchick nominations ripen at 4 p.m. and that the Senate now resume consideration of the Rodriguez nomination.

Mr. President, I am honored to join my colleague, Senator Duckworth, to talk about Ed Smith. It is rare that Senators come to the floor and pay tribute to someone who passes away. It doesn't happen every day. And when we have two Senators from the same State here at the same time doing it, it speaks to the quality of the person that we are talking about.

Mr. President, you have been to Chicago, but you may not have toured the whole State of Illinois. It is a different State down south. About 400 miles south of Chicago is a place called Alexander County, and the county seat is Cairo, IL.

Now, most students of geography would say: That is ``Cairo.'' Not to people of southern Illinois; it is ``Cairo'' or ``Cairo.''

It has had quite a history. It is at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, so it was really a hotbed of economic activity for a century. It was a large, bustling town and with a lot of river traffic that made it a very successful town.

Over time, the economy started to slump. Interstate highways took over for rivers, and Cairo was not quite where it should be.

I graduated law school here in Washington in 1969 and went to work for the Lieutenant Governor of our State, Paul Simon. Brandnew lawyer, anxious to be successful and do the right thing, I said to Lieutenant Governor Simon: What do you want me to do? He said: Go to Cairo.

Well, that was quite an assignment in those days because Cairo was in big trouble. It was in trouble because, as the economy started to slump, a lot of the racial tensions in that community started to emerge, and there were terrible instances of violence and a lot of division in the community.

Rallies and parades led to gunshots and arson and evacuation of the white population from that town. Cairo was not another Illinois city; Cairo was the South. It was said by Paul Simon himself that Southern Illinois is a land of grits and gospel music. And it is true.

It is also the land where racial tensions had reached a fevered pitch by the late 1960s. The State's attorney for Alexander County was a man named Peyton Berbling. He could have come right out of the cast of ``To Kill a Mocking Bird,'' a rumpled white suit. And he was head of what was known as the White Hats Organization. That was a thin imitation of the Ku Klux Klan.

He had his boys ``checking out the county'' every day to make sure that someone who was a stranger, a foreigner, didn't linger in his county. It was a terribly racially divided community. And as I said, it led to violence and economic slump.

Fifteen years later, I was in a situation--well, it was more than 15 years later--I was in a situation where a young State Senator from Chicago was coming down to Cairo for the first time. I was bringing him down. And as we traveled in the car the 380 miles, I told him the story of Cairo and the economic problems and the racial problems it had. As an African American, he said later he didn't know what to expect when he got to Cairo.

Well, our destination was the Laborers' International Union headquarters in Cairo, IL, and the president Ed Smith.

So Barack came to that scene, a barbecue in the parking lot, and got out of the car and was shocked to see a Black and White crowd. Men and women, members of the union, friends of the union, African American and White, sitting together, eating a sandwich, and waiting for this candidate from Chicago. He walked around to a hero's welcome from so many people who were supporting his candidacy, including a lot of African-American people who were proud of Barack Obama.

Not that many years later, when Barack was running for President, he pointed to that experience and said: I began to believe the politics of hope could overcome the politics of division.

Who brought that crowd to that parking lot? Who invited us to come down to that barbecue? Who wanted to show us the success of this union? Who wanted to demonstrate the dignity of work way beyond quitting time on Friday afternoon? Ed Smith.

Ed Smith was devoted to the workers in that community in that State. It was his life, and it was his father's life before him. They were legends in the labor movement--not just in Illinois but around the Nation. So when I saw what Ed had done in Cairo and realized how much progress he had made because of the power of his own values and the power of his own being, our friendship was cemented forever.

He passed away last week. I don't have to tell you that those of us in politics meet hundreds if not thousands of people. It is rare to find someone who is consistently smiling--Ed Smith; consistently kind-- Ed Smith; consistently fighting for working people--without exception, Ed Smith. Time and again, that defined his time on Earth.

Like Senator Duckworth said, he really did keep a tally of what he had done for people, and it was a lot of work to do because he helped everyone in every direction. He became eventually not only successful in the Illinois labor movement but was recognized nationally.

He came out here to Washington to be the CEO of Ullico, which is the life insurance company for the laborers union. Ed decided to do something different. He noticed that a lot of predecessors had taken the deposits from the pensions of laborers around the country and invested them in Wall Street projects. Ed said: We are going to do it differently. We are going to invest in good ideas and good projects that create union jobs for my workers.

When it was all over, he had $5 billion in his working fund, investing so that people could go to work and have quality of life.

He was a wonderful man, and I am going to miss him a lot because I counted on him so much. But I know he has created a really idealistic vision of what you can do if you have a mission in life and live faithfully to it. He did that, and he also showed over and over again that he cared about everybody. No one was too small or insignificant. For him, the labor movement was not just a movement; it was a way of life, and he proved it over and over.

So, Betty, his wife, and his great family, thanks for sharing Ed with us. He really made a difference in our lives, as Senator Duckworth and I have said today, and he made a difference in Illinois in the lives of countless thousands of families.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I announce that the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Cantwell), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman), and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Lujan) are necessarily absent.

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

Madam President, you know as well as I do what is happening in our home State of Illinois when it comes to the migrants that are being bussed from Texas, primarily, into our State--the impact it has had in the State and in the city of Chicago, in particular. These migrants are arriving in the city without any consultation or warning and are being dumped in places near the city, totally unprepared to face the cruelty of the winter that we are facing in Chicago.

I am amazed at the number of people who have shown extraordinary caring and have stepped forward to try to help. I thank Catholic Charities, Salvation Army--there are so many groups. There is a New Life Center, Matthew DeMateo--extraordinary, just a miracle worker. He manages to find a way to put a roof over the heads of those migrants that come to our city and give them a fighting chance to have a decent life. So many more just like him prepare to step up and provide shelter, provide basic clothing, food, accessibility to schools, and more.

I really want to commend the mayor as well. Brandon Johnson has taken an approach toward this which I think is humane and consistent with the traditions of America. He shows a caring heart time and again, and I respect him so much for it.

Recently, the city of Chicago tried to put some order into this disorderly process, identifying times and places where the buses could stop so that people could be received properly, cared for, and go about their lives as best they could.

But, unfortunately, there has only been one example of cooperation by the State of Texas. There are plenty of examples the other way--people who are sent to airports in Rockford where they are dumped out of airplanes on the tarmac with no place to turn; people who are put in suburban towns and rural areas, which even if they wanted to help, would be so limited to what they could do.

We understand the politics of the situation better than most. We do politics for a living. But there are a lot of people who are helpless and victims of this situation who need to be taken into consideration.

The city of Chicago gave the Texas Governor a safe, convenient, accessible option to drop the migrants off at a warm shelter for orderly processing, but only one bus from Texas has attempted to register with the city. The Texas Governor has chosen cruelty and chaos over orderly and humane processing.

I don't understand the politics of that moment. These people are as vulnerable as any people on earth. They are doing the best they can for themselves, and they are in a situation where they need a helping hand in many instances.

Last week, my colleagues in the Senate were working on a negotiated border compromise to deal with the policy and law on the border. I support that completely. I don't know what the final product will be, and I am hoping to support the bill. This process is long, long overdue.

I made immigration one of the issues of concern for my services. I am the

original author of the DREAM Act that was part of the Gang of 8 10 years ago that passed legislation--bipartisan legislation--on the floor of the U.S. Senate. I believe that it is important--it is inevitable-- that we deal with this in a humane and thoughtful way.

And let me say a word about what is going on at the border. I believe in the asylum process. If you are a student of history, you know that during World War II, the United States had a policy of turning away refugees.

There is the well-publicized and notorious example of the SS St. Louis, a ship which came from Europe and tried to find a port to disembark in Havana and in Florida and failed. The passengers were returned to Europe--some 700 of them--many of whom died in the Holocaust. They were Jewish people looking for a safe place in the world where they could live, and we turned them away in World War II. That is a fact.

But at the end of the war, we decided there would be a different approach in the future. We would have an orderly international process led by the United States when it came to refugees. And we established that and lived with it under Presidents of both political parties for decades.

The situation we face at the border today defies what I just described to you: the desperate people, in numbers we can handle, coming into the United States through an asylum process. What we are facing now is just not comparable at all. The thousands and thousands of people who are turning up at our borders each day are unsustainable.

There was a story in the New York Times this morning about the number of immigrants who are coming to our southern Mexican border from Africa--Africa. And they told a story about a group of people in Guinea, Africa, who found a way to travel from Guinea to Turkey, then to fly from Turkey to Colombia, then from Colombia to Honduras, and then to Nicaragua, where they were transported to the border.

This defies a stereotype in our mind about where the refugees are coming from in Central America. In this last year, more than 10,000 people from Uzbekistan showed up at our southern border in Mexico. How do you explain this?

Well, one explanation is pretty obvious. We have a refugee crisis in this world, the likes of which we have never seen and in numbers from all over the world--hundreds of thousands of people who are desperately looking. Today, there are over 100 million displaced people worldwide, including over 30 million refugees. It is the largest refugee crisis in history. That is the starting point of this conversation.

The second point is equally important. Many of these people have found their way to the United States through international groups, some of them for very sinister purposes, who are trying to make a lot of money on helpless people by promising them they could get into the United States and have a much better life. These people are being exploited in Africa, in Asia, and around the world, and we have to deal with this seriously. They are not the ordinary course of refugees coming to the United States. They are overwhelming numbers that have completely bankrupted our system in its response.

I hope this bipartisan group finds a way to deal with it and to resolve it in a humane fashion; and I am open to any suggestion. In the meantime, I want to commend the people in my State--the mayor and others, who are stepping up to do their very best to be humane and American in their response. Many of us can trace our own immigrant roots back one generation or two. I am certainly one of those. My mother was an immigrant to this country. I have met with these immigrants from all over the world and all over the United States, and I have talked to them. And, although I say to them the situation at our border is not sustainable, it has to change, and we can't deal with the massive numbers that come our way, I look at each one of them and I see in their eyes the eyes of my own family making that decision to come here, desperately trying to get to the United States. It is a natural human instinct.

But we need an orderly process. The bill that we passed, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, established such a process. We took the 11 million people undocumented in the Nation, and we said to them: Step forward, identify yourself, register yourself, pay your taxes, and go on working. Realize at a future time, many, many years from now, you may be eligible for legal status and even citizenship. That was part of the promise. And we need to establish such an approach today to find a way to deal with those who are here and those who want to stay here and are of no danger to the United States.

The fact is, we cannot absorb all the people in the world who want to come to the United States at this moment. It is just not practical. It is not humane even to think in those terms. But those who are here should be brought in and assimilated into this country. If they are here and are no danger to our country, they can be an important part of our future. We need them in so many different ways.

The Presiding Officer and I know about the agricultural community in our own State who have come to us desperate. These are conservative individuals politically who see the reality that our workforce is not adequate for our economy and the birthrate is not sufficient for us to sustain a new population of workers.

Let's find a thoughtful way to deal with this, stop overwhelming the border, and have an orderly process. That can be done, but it has to be done on a bipartisan basis.

Some of the people involved in this process have said publicly they don't want to find a solution, that they have too good a political issue. I hope that they are wrong. I hope that we can find a solution on a bipartisan basis that serves our Nation and that serves the world.

We need an orderly process. It took 3 to 5 years over in Europe for them to come up with their own process. We need to find our own way of doing so. I am willing to work with them as chairman of the Judiciary Committee and with my background on immigration issues, if there is anything I can add to the process.

I hope that this week, we will receive a report from this bipartisan committee that moves us in a direction of an orderly process at our border while not being overwhelmed with numbers that are unsustainable.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, it has been 2 months since the horrific Hamas attack that killed 1,200 innocent Israelis and saw another 240 people taken hostage--some of them Americans, including Hersh Goldberg- Polin with family in my State of Illinois.

For anyone who watched 60 Minutes this past weekend, the ordeal shared by one of the released hostages was harrowing and almost unimaginable. These hostages have been subjected to brutal physical and psychological torture. Some 115 hostages are believed to still be held, and I have long called for a humanitarian pause by both sides that includes the release of all the hostages as quickly as possible.

I believe this remains the right path forward, and I hope our government will pursue this goal. But make no mistake, this Hamas attack was a reminder that there are still those who do not recognize Israel's right to exist. I do; and I understand their right to self- defense.

But what has happened since October 7 raises larger questions about how Israel should defend itself, how it should retaliate and address the long-term need for two neighboring people to learn to live in peace.

Early in this conflict, I urged Israel to learn from our mistakes in the United States after the deadly attacks on September 11, to not make the mistakes in the fog of their rage and pain that we made. I fear some of the important lessons we learned the hard way may not have been heeded by this Israeli Government.

While Israel has every right to defend itself, the humanitarian toll inflicted on the people of Gaza has been of historic magnitude and increasingly becomes counterproductive to Israel's long-term security.

We are nearing an estimated 20,000 deaths in Gaza. A significant majority of those are not Hamas fighters--they are innocent women and children.

Last week, the leaders of some of the world's top relief organizations wrote in the New York Times:

More children have been reported killed in this conflict

than in all major global conflicts combined last year.

Hospitals have had to try to treat civilians without the most basic medicines, using only Tylenol for pain management--even in amputations--and vinegar as a disinfectant of last resort.

There are growing fears that disease outbreaks will soon replace the war as the primary cause of death in Gaza. This is simply not an acceptable strategy.

Over the last few weeks, I have spoken to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry about reopening hospitals under third-party monitoring.

I have also raised the humanitarian toll directly with Israeli officials. Basic medical needs, beyond treating the wounded, are staggering and include curbing a potential infectious disease outbreak and caring for thousands of expectant mothers.

As such, I again call on Hamas and Israel to stand down from all military actions around Gaza's hospital and allow them to function and be resupplied under a credible, third-party monitor.

I also continue to remind our Israeli allies that any U.S. military assistance must be used in accordance with the laws of war; and, as such, I have joined Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland on an amendment to the proposed National Security Supplemental reinforcing this basic point.

The burden is higher in times of war for democracies, but adherence to such norms is what makes democracy distinct.

This horrible conflict has caused so much suffering and is a wake-up call to the need for a two-State solution that allows for a viable Palestinian State living in peace side by side with a secure Israel.

For years, I have warned that despite heroic efforts at such an agreement, spoilers on both sides have repeatedly undermined progress. So we have two challenges, one very immediate: End the suffering and release the remaining hostages immediately; and the second, finally commit to finding a two-State peace agreement.

This will take leadership from both Palestinians and Israelis. And let me be blunt: I do not see the current leadership of either having the vision or political will to take this desperately needed step.

But it is the only way forward. It is the only way that the region and international community will fully commit to helping rebuild Gaza and support a unified Palestinian leadership. It is the only way to end the threat of violence and bring a future of hope to both Israel and the Palestinian people.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I announce that the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla) and the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Schatz) are necessarily absent.