Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Texas. I listened carefully to his words about gun safety, and I agree with so much of what he said. He talked about bringing his bill to the floor. I think his bill is a good bill. His bill tries to provide more information into the NICS system. We definitely need to do that. He also said he was open to amendments on the floor. I am as well. I think there are other aspects of gun safety that we may even find common ground on as well. But I might remind him that the decision about the business on the floor of the Senate is in the hands of his side of the aisle.

It is your decision to decide, through your majority leader, what we consider on the floor of the Senate. An effort to do this by unanimous consent is certainly understandable in light of the events of the last few weeks, but if Senator McConnell were to announce that as soon as we finish this banking bill, we are going to move to the Fix NICS bill and have it open to amendment, I think he would find support from both sides of the aisle to do that. I hope he will, because things are changing in America, as they should. Gun violence and the terrible tragedies that occurred in Texas and in Florida and in so many States have really raised consciousness of this issue.

I am a grandfather and proud to be. I have two 6-year-old twins who are first graders in Brooklyn, NY. They are the cutest kids in the world, and I am very objective about that.

About 2 weeks ago, my little granddaughter came home from the first grade and said to her mom: Mom, they told us at school that if there is a shooter outside the school, stay away from the windows, and if a shooter comes in the classroom, get on the floor.

First grade. Is there any sane person in America who thinks that should be a normal talk in the first grade classroom? Is there any person, constitutional scholar or not, who believes the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was designed to allow this to happen? I can't imagine.

Ninety-seven percent of the American people believe in universal, comprehensive background checks to keep guns out of the hands of those who would misuse them, including convicted felons and mentally unstable people--97 percent. The overwhelming majority of gun owners feel exactly the same way. So why in God's Name have we not taken that up since the tragedy in Florida and the tragedy in Texas? There is no explanation for it other than fear--fear of the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby. That is the only explanation.

I salute the legislators in the State of Florida who this last week defied the NRA and defied the gun lobby and passed their own measure for gun safety. I don't agree with parts of it. Giving cafeteria workers in schools the right to carry arms around the school--I don't think that is a wise thing at all. I understand that there is opposition to that from teachers' organizations and even Republican leaders in Florida. But they did stand up when it came to questions about how old you have to be to buy a firearm, a long gun, and other questions that I think are just common sense.

So I would say to my friend from Texas, the majority whip, what you said is something I can support. Bring your bill to the floor, open to amendment. Let us have our day in the Senate where we actually act as legislators, where people will come to the

Galleries and not see an empty Chamber but instead will find Members of the Senate, 100 strong, Democrats and Republicans, at their desks, debating measures that make a difference in the life of America. That is why we are sent here.

I had a friend of mine years ago when I served in the House--he was a Congressman from Muskogee, OK. His name was Mike Synar. He was a dear, close friend of mine. Mike lost his primary in Oklahoma because he was fearless. He used to come to the floor when we had votes, and he would see Members of his own caucus kind of wincing, afraid to vote for something they knew was right for fear of the political consequences. He used to get right in their faces. Mike would say: If you don't want to fight fires, don't be a firefighter. If you don't want to stand here and debate controversial issues and vote on them, don't run for Congress.

Mike was right. He was right then, and he is right now.

Let's bring gun safety to the floor of the Senate. Let's open it to amendments. Let's have a fulsome, bipartisan debate. We understand that nothing is going to pass without bipartisan support. We should do everything in our power to exercise the power and the right we are given as U.S. Senators to fix the problems facing American families. This is a problem. It is a problem when a first grader in Brooklyn, NY, has to be warned that if somebody walks into the classroom with a gun, she is supposed to get down on the floor.

Mr. President, last week, I met in my office with four students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, as well as one recent graduate. They are among the many students and graduates from Parkland, FL, who have been speaking out across the country, asking for commonsense gun safety reforms. They are having a real impact. They are changing the debate over guns in America.

Last week several of the Nation's largest gun retailers, including Dick's Sporting Goods and Walmart announced that they had listened to the Parkland students, and heard them. Dick's Sporting Goods announced it will no longer sell assault rifles or high capacity magazines at any of its stores. Their CEO also announced that the company would stop selling firearms to anyone under age 21. Walmart which had already stopped selling assault rifles, made the same decision to stop selling guns to people under 21, as did Kroger and L.L. Bean.

Making 21 the minimum age for buying any firearm is an idea that makes sense. It is already the law that a person must be 21 to buy a handgun. Why should the law be different for an assault rifle? In fact, President Trump initially came out in support of the idea of making 21 the age limit for all gun purchases, but then the NRA's lobbyists went to work on the President with a private lunch and an Oval Office visit.

We will see who the President and Republicans ultimately end up listening to on commonsense proposals like these: the Parkland students or the gun sales lobby.

It is incredible to see students and businesses across the country taking a leadership role, in addressing gun violence. They have decided it is time to act, and they are acting. We have seen the Stoneman Douglas students convince companies to make meaningful changes when it comes to gun sales practices, and they have convinced many more companies to end their relationships with the NRA. That is a major development.

Unfortunately, the gun sales lobby has not been a constructive voice in this debate over the epidemic of gun violence. Their rhetoric has been increasingly paranoid and hysterical. It is clear that their priority is to preserve their ability to make gun sales. That is the gun lobby's agenda, but it doesn't need to be our agenda.

I want to commend the students and businesses that are showing such leadership in working to make our communities safer. Now the question is, Will the Republicans who control Congress show any leadership as well?

If we let the gun sales lobby control this debate, we will never take the steps we need to keep our schools and neighborhoods safe from gun violence. Remember, the NRA doesn't like any proposal that might hurt gun sales. They don't want to close loopholes in our laws, instead, they would rather roll back gun laws already on the books. That is not the agenda America needs.

I stand with the 97 percent of Americans who support universal background checks for gun sales. I want to close the loopholes in our laws that make it easy for dangerous people to get their hands on guns.

I also stand with the significant majorities of Americans who want to take military-style assault Weapons, high-capacity magazines, and bump stocks off of our streets. These are weapons of war, and they have no place in our neighborhoods.

We cannot become numb to the shootings that happen in our communities, our churches, our movie theaters, our concerts, and our schools. All of us, especially lawmakers, have to step up and take actions that will reduce the epidemic of gun violence and save lives.

I hope my Republican colleagues will finally step up and help get this done.

Mr. President, I wish to speak about the ongoing horrific violence in the nation of Syria, which seems to have hit yet new lows in terms of barbarity and Russian enabling. The senseless violence--in service of nothing more than enabling Syrian strongman Bashir al-Assad to maintain ironfisted rule over a country he has personally driven to ruin--demands the world's attention.

Quite simply, President Trump, who lambasted President Obama's approach to Syria, has sat by as the regime continues to use chemical weapons, relentlessly bomb civilians, ignore the unanimous U.N. Security Council ceasefire, and allows Iran to build its radical foothold in Syria. One missile strike is not a long term policy. President Trump's silence as Russian President Putin not only continues to meddle in our democracy but also empowers and enables the Syrian butcher is simply inexplicable and diminishes American leadership.

Let me start with the horror that has unfolded in Eastern Ghouta in the last few weeks. This area has actually been under siege by Syrian Government forces since 2013, but last week, Assad's henchmen stepped up their attacks. For over 2 weeks, Syrian forces supported by Russian warplanes have relentlessly bombarded Eastern Ghouta in a campaign that has killed over 1,000 people, wounded almost 5,000, and left 400,000 civilians trapped without food or medicine.

The siege had already led to chronic food and medicine shortages, devastating the population of Eastern Ghouta and leaving scores severely malnourished. The bombings have forced people to take shelter in their basements rather than risk death. Too frightened to venture outside to face the onslaught of mortar shells, barrel bombs, cluster bombs, and bunker-busting munitions, the civilian residents of Eastern Ghouta are being compelled to spend days without food or fresh air, suffocating in the heavily polluted air.

Despite the U.N. ceasefire, the number of dead climbs every day--from bombings, from ground assaults, and from hunger. Only yesterday, Assad's forces killed over 90 civilians and wounded over 300.

The number of casualties has overwhelmed rescuers and hospitals. Catastrophically, the Assad regime has chosen to re-employ one of its most heinous tactics and has bombed at least 28 hospitals and clinics. Doctors Without Borders said 15 of the 20 hospitals it supports have been destroyed or damaged, reducing access to emergency services just when they were most needed.

Doctors have run out of resources to treat patients. Doctors are being forced to make the most difficult choices and sometimes, tragically, leave critically wounded patients to die. A doctor in Eastern Ghouta said, ``We have a horrible situation here. We're being targeted with all kinds of weapons nonstop. We lack everything, water, food, medical supplies, shelter. This is a disaster. Everyone is waiting to die.''

I spoke to a deeply respected friend from Chicago the other day who knows this crisis all too well, Dr. Mohammed Sahloul, who leads the heroic Syrian American Medical Association. He and his brave colleagues regularly travel to Syria to help provide medical treatment to victims of the war. He told me horrific accounts of the latest bombing and disappointment at the world's seeming inaction amid such heinous cruelty.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called Eastern Ghouta a ``hell on Earth.'' United Nation's human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al- Hussein called the onslaught in Eastern Ghouta a ``monstrous campaign of annihilation.'' He added, ``When you are prepared to kill your own people so easily, lying is easy too. Claims by the government of Syria that it is taking every measure to protect its civilian population are frankly ridiculous.''

Most troublingly, Assad's ruthless regime continues using chemical weapons to attack its own civilians despite Syria agreeing to eliminate its chemical weapons in 2013. We are in 2018 now and have seen the repeated use of chemicals to attack innocent people on the streets of Syria.

Among his various and numerous atrocities, Bashar al-Assad has made routine the use of internationally banned chemical weapons. He has deployed them against his own people nearly 200 times over 7 years. He has used them against very young children and the elderly, people who are clearly not fighters on the battlefield. He has targeted civilians repeatedly with sarin gas, a weapon notably developed by another abominable regime: the Nazis.

In 2013, Russia worked with a global coalition, including the United States, to ostensibly destroy Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons, but the world watched in horror as Assad barbarically unleashed sarin gas on civilians in the town of Khan Shaykhun again in April 2017. Maybe you, too, saw the very disturbing reporting a week ago on ``60 Minutes.''

While the United States responded to that incident, Russia has allowed Assad to conduct many other chemical attacks. In fact, in Eastern Ghouta, Assad has continued to attack civilians--among them at least 21 children--with chemical weapons. Just yesterday, doctors there said that at least 29 patients were showing effects consistent with exposure to chlorine munitions.

Instead of trying to stop this savage behavior, Russia stands by its client-state. Russia continues to obfuscate and deny these horrific attacks, despite much evidence substantiating the use of chemical weapons.

In fact, Russia has seemingly condoned Assad's cruel use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians. The United Nations was investigating Assad's chemical attacks until late last year when Russia repeatedly blocked continuing the investigation. The U.N. investigation seemed to be getting too close to the truth for Russia's comfort, so it used its vote to prevent the facts from being laid bare.

Unfortunately, Russia's negative influence doesn't end there. For 3 days, Russia blocked a ceasefire from taking hold in Eastern Ghouta. For 3 days, Russia delayed much-needed food, medicine, and emergency aid to reach the distressed civilian population. For 3 days, the entirety of the U.N. Security Council, save Russia, agreed an immediate ceasefire was necessary.

Even though the Security Council finally agreed to a 30-day ceasefire in Syria, Assad flouted international order as his warplanes continued to carry out airstrikes targeting civilians in Eastern Ghouta. He also launched a massive ground assault against Eastern Ghouta.

Hundreds of people have been killed since the ceasefire was supposed to have begun. The Assad regime has prevented humanitarian relief from reaching those who are hurt or sick, and no civilians have been able to leave because of the constant bombardment.

The man who runs the regional command in charge of U.S. troops in Syria, General Joseph Votel, has said that Russia plays ``the role of both arsonist and fireman--fueling tensions and then trying to resolve them in their favor.'' Instead of reasoning with its vassal-

state and enforcing the ceasefire, Russia egregiously has prevented the ceasefire from taking hold.

Once again, Russia is abetting Assad's defiance and destruction for its own perverse purposes. At the very least, it is abdicating its role as a permanent member of the Security Council.

What can be done about this devastating situation? Regrettably, there are no easy answers.

But a President who previously argued that ``heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the last administration's weakness and irresolution'' has to demonstrate some resolve. I call on President Trump to put genuine pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to rein in Assad and end Russian obfuscation in the U.N. Security Council as the carnage and number of likely war crimes mount.

Any discussion with Putin must also address deeply troubling--and seemingly ignored--reports that Russian mercenaries controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin attacked U.S. Special Operations Forces in Syria, with approval of the highest levels of the Kremlin. Prigozhin is the same Russian oligarch who was recently indicted on charges of running a troll farm targeting American voters.

Donald Trump has also called on ``all civilized nations'' to help end the ``slaughter and bloodshed in Syria.'' I have to imagine that the United States is included in his exhortation. Unhappily, he has also recommended a 30-percent cut in our already minuscule foreign assistance and diplomacy budget. The United States must do more to meet the humanitarian needs of Syrians suffering the ravages of a dreadful war.

Incredibly, at a time when a long-term diplomatic and political solution will be needed in Syria, this administration has marginalized our top diplomatic expertise at the Department of State. This is wildly self-defeating.

We have taken a back seat to Russia and Iran in Syria long enough. We can see every day the devastating results: more violence and the further fracturing of a country and a region that have suffered at the hands of tyrants too long.

Despite the important achievement made by our military in destroying ISIS in Syria, Syria will remain a monumental security, humanitarian, and governance challenge for the United States and its allies, including Israel, for years to come. Russia and Iran are vying for the spoils of the civil war, with civilians paying the highest price. We don't want to leave U.S. forces in Syria indefinitely, but doing nothing to bring a lasting peace to Syria is the worst option.

As such, President Trump, I call on your administration to come up with a real Syria strategy to bring an end to a war--and the senseless suffering--that has gone on for too long.

Mr. President, on September 5 of last year, President Trump's Attorney General made an announcement. It was an announcement that affected the lives of about 800,000 people living in America. The announcement was that the President was going to abolish the DACA Program.

DACA was a program created by President Obama by Executive order. Under that Executive order, if you were brought to the United States as an infant, a toddler, a child, if you grew up in this country, were educated in this country, and had no criminal record of any consequence, President Obama said that you have a chance to apply to stay in this country on a temporary, renewable basis--2 years at a time--and that you won't be deported and you can take a job.

Eight hundred thousand young people came forward under President Obama's Executive order, under this DACA order. What have they done with their lives? Many of them went to school and had to work at the same time because, being undocumented, they didn't qualify for any Federal student assistance. A lot of them took jobs all across the country--about 20,000 of them as teachers in schools, and 900 of them volunteered for the U.S. military, taking the same oath as everyone else, saying that they are willing to risk their lives for America.

The success stories of these DACA recipients are boundless. I have told a number on the floor in the course of discussing this issue over the years.

Today, I will tell another one. I am so proud of what they have done. They are amazing young people. Can you imagine growing up in America with all the challenges of youth and all the demands from your parents and peers and superiors but also knowing something that you can't say publicly: that at any moment, you could be deported from this country because you don't have the necessary legal status? That is the story of these DACA young people, the Dreamers.

President Trump, if you will remember, talked about immigration a lot in his last campaign. Some of the things he said were very harsh. He talked about building this big, beautiful wall, from sea to shining sea, across the Mexican border, and, of course, told us the Mexicans would pay for it. Then he referred to those in Mexico who came to the United States as Mexican rapists and criminals. It was pretty harsh language. But interestingly, toward the end of the campaign and after he was elected, he started saying conciliatory, good things about these DACA Dreamers. He told me personally, when I first met him on the day he was inaugurated: We will take care of those kids, Senator.

Well, on September 5 of last year, he announced that the program protecting those young people would expire as of Monday of this week, 2 days ago. As of that date, he said, if Congress hasn't replaced the DACA Program with something new, something legal, something statutory, there would be no protection for these DACA recipients as their protected status expired. For 800,000 in limbo, uncertainty is their future.

Well, the President challenged Congress, and a number of us took him up on the challenge. Six of us--three Democrats and three Republicans-- Senators sat down for months. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was part of that group, a Republican; Jeff Flake of Arizona was part of that group, a Republican; and Cory Gardner of Colorado, a Republican. On our side, Michael Bennet of Colorado, a Democrat; Bob Menendez of New Jersey, a Democrat. We worked out a bipartisan agreement among us that not one of us would have written. It was a compromise in trying to meet the President's challenge of replacing DACA with something that could be the law of the land and work.

I reflect on that effort and believe it was a good one. It was certainly in good faith, and it was bipartisan. When we presented it to President Trump on January 11 at 12 noon--I remember the time very specifically--he rejected it. He not only rejected that bipartisan solution to the crisis he had created, he rejected five other bipartisan proposals to try to resolve the crisis he had created in eliminating the DACA Program.

So here we are, just 2 days after his March 5 deadline, and where do we stand? Well, the situation has been complicated by three Federal courts that have been asked to review President Trump's decision abolishing DACA. Two of those courts have issued injunctions and said to the Trump administration: Stop what you are doing. You have to prove to us that you have the legal authority to end this program the way you ended it.

There is an injunction stopping the Trump administration from doing what the President said he would do. The President's administration didn't think much of those courts and decided to file an extraordinary appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is across the street, to knock down this injunction and to go forward with closing down DACA. Last week, the Supreme Court rejected the Solicitor General's petition.

So here we stand. The President has abolished the DACA Program. The protection for 800,000 young people from being deported, the protection that allowed them to work, is officially--President Trump's point of view--abolished. It has not been replaced, the deadline has been reached, and it is being argued in court.

So how much protection does that buy for the 800,000? We don't know. We know it is a court-based protection, an injunction that could last for weeks or months or even longer, but that uncertainty is what is hanging over this whole debate.

So this morning I called the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, and I asked her: Explain to me what your Department is doing because of these court injunctions and President Trump's decision to abolish this program.

She gave me a partial explanation. In fairness to her, she promised to get back to me and even promised to come up here to Capitol Hill next week and try to explain in more detail how the Department of Homeland Security is handling this.

For example, if you were protected by DACA--a young person--and if the President's abolition of DACA did not allow you to renew your DACA application when it expired, what is your status? Can you be deported?

Secretary Nielsen told me point blank: No, we will not deport those who have pending DACA applications.

I then asked the next question: Do you have the authority to allow these same people to continue legally working, as they did under DACA?

She didn't know the answer, and in fairness to her, she said she would look into it and get back to me. I look forward to that happening.

It is a sad situation that this Congress can't pass a law to deal with this kind of emergency. Ask the American people what they think about Dreamers, what they think about young people who were brought to the United States as children, infants, and babies, and who are asking for a chance to be legal in America, to become citizens. Ask Americans what they think. Overwhelmingly, they say: Of course. Why would you punish these children who grew up in this country? They didn't break a law or commit a crime. They didn't make a decision; it was a decision made by others. They should have a chance.

Overwhelmingly, the American people say that, 85 percent or more, including more than 60 percent of people who say they voted for President Trump. Can you find an issue with that kind of public support? For those who follow the news, there is another one called universal background checks for guns, which has an even higher level of support. But going back to the DACA issue, 85 percent of the American people believe Congress should pass a law to give these young people a chance--not punish them, not deport them. Give them a chance. Give them a chance to earn their way to legal status. Despite that, this Senate has failed to pass a measure to do that.

Two weeks ago, we made it to the floor. We had four different versions of the bill. I won't go into detail other than to tell you that the most popular version of the bill got 54 votes. You would think that in a Chamber of 100 Senators, that would be enough, but not under our rules--you need 60 votes.

The President had a plan, incidentally. President Trump brought his immigration plan to the floor of the Senate the same week we debated this. Now, understand, there are 51 Republican Senators and 49 Democrats in this Chamber. On the day of the vote, one Senator, Senator McCain, was missing, so 50 to 49. How many votes did President Trump get for his immigration policy presented on the floor of the Republican-controlled Senate? Thirty-nine. Sixty Senators voted against it, including a substantial number of Republicans. So the President's approach to this has been rejected by even his own party.

What has the House of Representatives, the other Chamber, done about this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Sadly, that is a commentary on many major issues facing our country. The Congress has not even taken up a serious debate, let alone found a solution, and here we sit. It is easy for us to sit here in the Senate Chamber, confident of our own citizenship status, but for 800,000, the uncertainty makes a wreck of their lives. I have met many of them. I have talked to them. They are outstanding people. They have succeeded when others failed. They have been determined and resilient when others gave up. They are running out of time.

President Trump created this crisis for DACA on September 5. He has been unable to agree to any of six different bipartisan measures to solve it--not one--and today the fate and future of these young people rest in the hands of the courts.

It is easy to speak of these young people in gross numbers--800,000, 1.8 million--but over the years, I have decided it is better to get to know them

personally. As they have had the courage to come forward and identify themselves, I have come to the floor to tell their stories. This is the 110th time I am bringing a story to the floor.

This man is Alejandro Fuentes. Alejandro was brought to the United States at the age of 4 from Chile and grew up in San Diego. He was an extraordinary high school student--honor roll, AP scholar with distinction, and a member of the National Honor Society. He was involved in a lot of activities--high school cross-country and lacrosse, a member of the choir--and volunteered as a worship leader at his church.

He was accepted at Whitman College in the State of Washington, and when he was there, he was a member of the campus Christian fellowship group. He volunteered with the local Humane Society and was the philanthropy chair of his fraternity. He was a student government representative and a mentor to other students.

After graduation, he was accepted into Teach For America. We know that program, don't we? That is where some of our best and brightest college graduates say: I will give you 2 years of my life and work in a school that needs me as a teacher. Send me to a tough area to work. Thousands have done it. Alejandro--not a citizen of the United States-- said: I will do it. I will do it for my country.

Today, he is a sixth grade math teacher at a middle school in Denver, CO. He volunteers as a mentor after school for students who need help with math.

What is going to happen to this man? What is going to happen to him if Congress fails to replace DACA? What is going to happen if he is deported? And it could happen. There are 20,000 just like him, teachers across America who are DACA-protected and have no protection now, no protection in the law. Their only protection is a court order, which could be changed in a moment.

If he leaves, of course, the students will pay a price, and certainly America will pay a price. Will we be better off as a nation? Of course not. This young man grew up in America. He was brought here at the age of 4, went to his classrooms in San Diego and pledged allegiance to the flag every day. This is his country. It is the only country he has ever known. Why would we want to throw him out of this country after he has gone through all of these things in life and achieved an amazing record of success? To me, it would be a horrible waste.

There is a larger issue at stake here than just DACA. The issue is immigration in America. Are we a nation of immigrants? I think so. But 2 weeks ago, at the immigration Federal agency, they decided to strike those words from their mission statement, that America was a nation of immigrants. They can strike all the words they want, but they can't strike the facts. The facts tell us that with the exception of Native Americans, who preceded us, we are all immigrants--some voluntary, some forced, but we are all immigrants in this country. We come from every corner of the Earth. We are as diverse as any nation could be. That is our history, that is our strength, and that is our legacy. That diversity makes us an extraordinary nation in the world.

Those people who came here from far-reaching shores came here for a lot of reasons. My grandmother was one of them. She brought my mom. My mom was an immigrant to this country. I don't know all the reasons that my grandmother came here, but I know there was one reason she came. She had three little kids, and she carried a bag and had with her a Catholic prayer book from the country of Lithuania. It was written in Lithuanian. The Russians were in control of Lithuania at the time, and they had prohibited prayer books written in Lithuanian. My grandmother, whom I never knew, was one tough lady. She was willing to pick up this prayer book--this contraband in Lithuania--and bring it to the United States of America. I don't know if she ever took a constitutional law course, but she knew there was freedom in this country. Nobody was going to stop her from praying from her prayer book when she got to the United States. I am sure economics had more to do with her coming, but that was part of the reason my family made it to this country. It is something I have never forgotten, and I have told the story many times.

All these people who have come to this country--every single one of us brings a story, a family story. Now we are being told it is a mistake--it is a mistake to continue legal immigration to America.

The President's proposal on immigration would cut legal immigration to this country almost in half. Currently, our Nation of 320, 330 million people brings in approximately 1.1 million legal immigrants a year--1 million legal immigrants; 320 million Americans. It is not an overwhelming number in comparison. On average more than sixty percent of the 1.1 million people are members of families of those already here.

Do you just ask to come in, and we let you come to America if you have a family member here? Of course not. You wait and you wait. For example, in the Philippines, you may wait 20 years for a member of the family to be reunited with someone who is already an American citizen-- 20 years waiting in line. The President's proposal--the one that has come to the floor of the Senate that got 39 votes--said we ought to cut the number of legal immigrants almost in half, tell those people to wait longer or stay where they are.

In most cultures, in the American culture, the family unit is our strength--flag, family, God. How many times have we heard those speeches from politicians? Yet these families who are trying to be reunited and to be strong are being told: You are not wanted. That is a mistake. The last time we did that was in 1924 on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We decided--the Senate then--there were certain people we didn't need in America. Asians were excluded. People from Africa and Eastern Europe and other regions were severely restricted. That could have included my mother's family. They restricted Italians. We had enough Italians--that is what Congress said. They restricted Jewish people.

That shameful chapter in American immigration history prevailed for over 40 years, until we passed a new immigration law. Now this administration wants to take us back to that debate. This administration wants to change the face of immigration in America. The President has been explicit about that in terms of what he would like to see America look like in the future--not as diverse, excluding people from certain places. I think that is a mistake.

If there is one thing that has made us strong, it is the fact that this diversity, when it comes together under that flag, can conquer everyone and everything on Earth. Why would we walk away from that legacy? Why would we walk away from Alejandro? Why would we walk away from 800,000 protected by DACA? Why? Is that the legacy we want to leave, that we have excluded these talented, high-achieving, energetic, fearless young people? Alejandro's story is certainly not unique. There are 20,000 teachers like him who are DACA recipients and DACA- protected.

Teach For America, the program that pays these young college graduates a limited amount of money to go to challenging schools--190 of them were protected by DACA. They are officially not citizens of the United States, but they are willing to teach kids in the toughest schools in America. They teach in 11 different States.

There is a question now about what happens next, and I don't know. Right now, the President created this crisis, and only the President can solve this crisis. There are Republican Members of the House and Senate who will not vote for anything unless it has the Trump stamp of approval on it, and I don't know what that can be. Six different times we have gone to him, and six times he has rejected bipartisan approaches. We need the President to help us work toward a solution. It is up to the Republican leaders in Congress--they control the House and the Senate--to take yes for an answer and accept one of these bipartisan approaches, to save these young people, and to resolve this crisis that faces us.

Congress needs to do its job. We should make the Dream Act the law of the land, or we will be responsible for hundreds of thousands of talented

young immigrants leaving our workforce and put them at risk of immediate deportation. It would be a chapter in American immigration history even sadder than 1924.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Connecticut as well as our colleague from Rhode Island for calling us together on the Senate floor today to discuss a timely and important topic.

We know that Vladimir Putin and Russia attacked America's democracy in 2016, and it is clear Vladimir Putin will try again. CIA Director Pompeo recently said he had ``every expectation'' that Russia would try to influence our 2018 election. We have been warned.

We can expect Russia to continue to use the tactics they have used before and to come up with new ones. We can expect them to hack and leak sensitive information. We can expect these Russians to use social media and propaganda to spread false information. We see it almost every week. We can expect them to try to hack into State election systems and more.

I was home over the weekend in Springfield, IL--of course, the State capital--and ran into a fellow who works for the State Board of Elections. We talked for a few minutes about the experience we had in our State in the last election cycle when the Russians hacked into the computer network of the Illinois State Board of Elections. We were the only State, of those that were hacked, to come forward and identify the culprit. It was Russia. We also came forward and notified hundreds of thousands of our voters that their identity--at least in terms of the State election agency is concerned--had been compromised by the Russians. We were open about it.

I asked the individual what was being done for the next election cycle. He said we have patched the problem that gave the Russians entry into the system in 2016, and we spent over $100,000 as a State to put in new security, new cyber protections. We are taking it seriously in Illinois because we know what the Russians tried to do to us. We don't believe they changed a vote or changed a ballot, but we are not sure they will not try in the future.

That is the reality of what we face in Illinois, and that is the reality of what America faces.

Just last week, NSA and U.S. Cyber Command head ADM Mike Rogers bluntly acknowledged what most of us already know; that President Trump is doing nothing--nothing--to protect Illinois or any other State against Russia's ongoing and future attacks on our election process. In fact, President Trump reportedly refuses to even talk about the issue.

Admiral Rogers told the Armed Services Committee that Vladimir Putin has paid ``little price'' for his previous and ongoing attacks and, therefore, hasn't been stopped. Incredibly, the admiral said President Trump has not granted him any new authorities to strike at Russian cyber operations.

Can anyone here imagine what President Ronald Reagan would have said at the stunning abdication of responsibility in addressing this Russian threat to America?

In the face of this fundamental threat of Russian attack on our democracy, we should have spent the last year coming together, on a bipartisan basis, establishing a sound national defense when it comes to the exercise of our democracy. We should be working--Republicans and Democrats together--to hold anyone accountable who participated in this Russian effort. We should be strengthening our laws against foreign election interference--a responsibility of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has never even taken up that issue--and we should punish and deter Russia and other nations from ever attacking our Democratic process again.

Instead, we have seen the Trump administration consistently refuse to hold the Russians accountable for their election interference or impose meaningful sanctions. President Trump has even gone out of his way to invite top Russian officials to the Oval Office and to call Russia's election interference a ``hoax.'' Despite the fact that all of our intelligence agencies say he is wrong, President Trump calls Russia election interference a hoax.

So what are Republicans in Congress doing about this? With a few exceptions like Senator John McCain, they have mostly tried to change the subject. In fact, instead of trying to get a full accounting of what Russia did to us, Republicans have focused far more on scrutinizing and criticizing anyone who suggests that the Russians interfered.

We need to take a step back and remember what this is all about; specifically, that a foreign adversary of the United States interfered in America's election. They continue to use weaponized cyber campaigns against us and our allies, and most in the majority party of Congress and the President seem not to care at all.

How have we let it get to this point? Have we forgotten our obligation to our Constitution and to this country? For those who watched the devastating two-part episode of the PBS documentary ``Frontline'' last year entitled ``Putin's Revenge,'' there was a deeply telling moment.

Months before the 2016 election, our Nation's top intelligence officials came and told key congressional leaders about Russia's efforts. These intelligence officials were deeply concerned about what Russia was trying to do to the 2016 election. President Obama had wanted a bipartisan message condemning Putin for his efforts so as to avoid any hint of partisanship as we approached the election and so we could put a common face on this common view of unity on this effort.

What was the response of the Republican Party leadership after hearing this bombshell revelation by our intelligence agencies, this threat from Vladimir Putin, which actually goes to the heart of our democracy--the election process? The response of the Republican leader was: No thanks. We don't want to get involved. And they didn't.

Is there anybody in the Senate--anybody who took the oath to protect the Nation against enemies, foreign and domestic--who thinks that any of us, regardless of political party, should get help from a foreign adversary to be elected?

Yet here we are, with aggressive efforts to discredit investigations into this threat, with a White House that ignores Russian sanctions, with the majority party blocking legislation that offers aid to States that request it to secure our election systems, with the failure of this Congress or this White House to do anything to protect against the next such threat, and all the while, Russia continues to conduct disinformation campaigns right under our noses.

On February 14, the tragedy in Parkland, FL, invited comments of those who wanted more gun safety and those who opposed it. When we traced the source of many of the comments, we found out they were Russians--Russians preaching to the United States on both sides of the issue, trying to rile us up at this moment of great human tragedy. That is now commonplace.

We need to wake up. Russian cyber campaigns were pushing for the release of the discredited Nunes memo from the House of Representatives. They have tried to undermine the FBI's credibility. They are at work every single day trying to undermine our democracy. Russian cyber campaigns have attacked even Republican Senators who have been critical of President Trump.

So I say to my Republican friends that not one of us is immune from these threats, and it is long overdue that we put Nation before party in this extremely important matter. The next time it might be China or North Korea taking different sides or pushing a different agenda when it comes to the American political process, but, of course, it doesn't matter whom a foreign adversary is trying to help. An attack on any American political party or Democratic institution by any Nation is an attack on all of us--at least it should be.

This can't be tolerated. We don't want to make America great by letting foreign powers undermine it.

So I ask my Republican friends; in fact, I invite them: Join us to get to the bottom of this. Let's pass legislation together that helps request these States secure their election systems. Let's pass legislation together that forces the administrations--this one and future administrations--to protect our national infrastructure against these cyber threats. Let's work together on a bipartisan basis to ensure that Russia and others are genuinely deterred from such actions. Let's use sanctions when necessary, and other measures, and let's work together to denounce the Russian disinformation campaign regardless of who it might help on any given day.

We have a lot of work to do, and we are only months away from this November election. In just 6 months or so, there will be early voting in this election. Are the Russians going to get to vote? Maybe not directly, but indirectly? Will they be able to invade America's political machinery, election machinery? Will they make a difference in this next election campaign? Shame on us if we can't answer those questions, and shame on us if we do nothing to stop them.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, today is the day--March 5--the deadline imposed by President Trump on those who are being protected and allowed to stay in the United States under the DACA Program.

It was last September 5 when President Trump's Attorney General held a press conference and said: That is it. The protection that is currently given to 780,000 young people in America to allow them to stay in this country and pursue their dreams will end on March 5 of 2018--today--780,000 who were brought to the United States as infants, toddlers, children, and teenagers, who have lived their lives in this country, who have gone to school, who have never had a serious run-in with the law, who have gone through criminal background checks, come up with $500 filing fees, and who were given permission under an Executive order by President Obama to legally stay in this country for 2 years at a time. During that period, they would not be deported, and they would be allowed to work.

Who are these young people? They are known as the Dreamers, although President Trump hates that term. They are known as the Dreamers because they represent young people who went to school in America, stood up in their classroom every day and pledged allegiance to that flag. This is the only country they have ever known. This was to be the country of their future, but at some point in their lives, a member of their family sat down and said: We have to have a serious conversation. You see, we never filed the papers when we brought you to this country as an infant, and right now you are undocumented in the United States of America.

What that means is that any minute, there could be a knock on the door and you and perhaps your entire family would be asked to leave. I introduced a bill called the DREAM Act 17 years ago. Senator Hatch was my cosponsor when I introduced it. The purpose of the DREAM Act was to say to these young people: We will give you a chance. Though you are illegal in the eyes of the law in the United States--undocumented--we will give you a chance to earn your way to legal status, give you a chance someday to be a citizen of the United States. It will not be easy. There is no helping hand for you. If you want to go to college, there will be no Federal assistance for you. You are going to have to make it on your own. You will have to work and work harder than perhaps the person sitting next to you at their desk in high school. See if you can do it. If you can, we will give you your chance.

That is what the DREAM Act said. It passed with a majority vote in the Senate many times, but it never quite made it to 60 votes, which it needs to become the law of the land.

President Obama, when he was a Senator in this Chamber, was my colleague from Illinois. He cosponsored the DREAM Act with me. So the time came when he was elected President, and I wrote him a letter. Dick Lugar, Republican of Indiana, joined me in that letter. He supported the DREAM Act when he served in the Senate. We wrote to President Obama and said: Can you do anything to give these young people a chance, to spare them from deportation? He worked on it for 1 year. Then President Obama came up with something called DACA, a program by Executive order that gave these young people their chance--780,000 of them went through the background check, paid their filing fee, and proved they were eligible.

They were spared for 2 years at a time and allowed to stay in this country. During the course of the campaign, President Trump said many strong words about immigration. We remember them well--it is hard to forget--the words about the wall, words about Mexican rapists, on and on, but he seemed to have a soft spot in his heart for these kids. Many times he would say: We have to give them a chance. They are different.

The very first time I met President Donald Trump was minutes after he had been sworn in. It was at a luncheon here in the Capitol.

I went up to him and said: Congratulations. I want to thank you for the kind words you said about the Dreamers and those protected by DACA.

He said: Dick, don't worry about those kids. We are going to take care of those kids.

That is what President Trump said on January 20, 2017. I brought it up to him several times too. It is an issue that is important to me, but, more importantly, it is an issue that is critical to the future of these young people.

Then, what happened on September 5 of last year, just 9 months after the President was sworn in? His Attorney General held a press conference and said: That is the end of the protection for these young people. As of March 5, 2018, no protection.

Then he challenged Congress. He said: Pass a law. Do what you are supposed to do here in the House and Senate. Pass a law that will protect these young people.

A number of us took up the President's challenge. We had a bipartisan effort, six of us--three Democrats and three Republicans--and we worked through some really hard issues on immigration and on these young people. I want to salute my colleagues who were part of that: Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina; Jeff Flake, a Republican of Arizona; Cory Gardner, a Republican of Colorado; joined with myself and Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado; Bob Menendez, a Democrat of New Jersey, and we put together an approach that gave these young people protection and a fighting chance to prove they deserve to stay in America.

We felt pretty good about it. The President called a meeting in the White House on January 9--I remember these dates. I will always remember them--with about 25 Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate. He held an open press conference for an hour, which is unusual and rarely done in the White House.

We talked about DACA and we talked about Dreamers and we talked about

what was going to happen next, since the President had given us a deadline of today, March 5, to do something.

The President outlined what he wanted to see, and then he said in front of the television cameras: Send me the bill, and I will sign it. I will take the heat on this one. That was January 9. So a number of us, the six I mentioned earlier, came together immediately that same day and said: Let's finish this bill, and let's get it in his hands as quickly as possible.

By January 11, 2 days later, we were ready. We reached a compromise, and it truly was a compromise. Parts of it I didn't care for at all, but that is what we do around here if Democrats and Republicans are going to produce something that might become a law. We called the President. We met the President--Senator Graham and I and a number of others, and he totally rejected what we had done. In fact, the President went on to reject five other bipartisan proposals to try to solve this problem.

This is the same President who said on January 9 of this year, ``Send me a bill, and I will sign it,'' who turned down bipartisan option after bipartisan option. He just said no.

We had a vote on the floor of the Senate. It has been about 3 weeks ago now. It was a vote on four different proposals to deal with this challenge. Not one of those proposals received 60 votes.

The one I had hoped for, a bill with a version of the Dream Act, was put together by Senator Coons and Senator McCain and brought to the floor. I remember it had 52 votes. It needed 60 votes. It fell short. The bipartisan compromise led by Senator Rounds and Senator King with the President's opposition ended up with 54 votes--6 votes short of what it needed to pass. Then the President's own immigration proposal came up here on the floor of the Senate. Now, there are 49 Democrats and 51 Republicans in the Senate. The President's proposal came up and got 39 votes--60 votes in opposition. It was a rejection by his own party and the Democrats in the Senate.

So here we are on March 5. The deadline is here. No bill has passed the Senate. The House will not even consider the measure--will not take up any version of the measure. What is at stake? There are 780,000 young people protected by DACA, which officially, by President Trump's order, ends today.

They have one ray of hope, perhaps two. Two courts have said they are going to suspend this abolition of DACA until we hear the arguments of the President's authority in the Constitution. So there is a temporary--and I underline temporary--injunction in place while these cases are pending, but I can tell you as a Member of the Senate and as a lawyer, no one--no one--can predict how long that protection will last. Is it a matter of days or weeks or months, at best?

That is what these young people live with, this uncertainty.

This humanitarian crisis in this country--and I call it that--was created by President Trump on September 5. He has failed to agree to six different bipartisan proposals to solve the problem he created, and now these lives hang in the balance.

Well, who are they? Who are these young people?

I was with one of them earlier today. Her name is Ana Flores. Ana grew up in Aurora, IL, and went to the public schools there. She is a very bright young woman who was brought to the United States at the age of 5 from Mexico by her parents. She is undocumented in America and lives under the protection of DACA.

What did she do with her life?

She went to the Illinois Institute of Technology, one of the best in the Nation, and she won a civil engineering degree there. Clark Dietz is an engineering firm in Illinois that stepped up and said: We want that bright young woman on our staff as an engineer, and they hired her.

I met her for the first time today. She is a wonderful person. She struggled against the odds all of her life. She is protected by DACA, a program that officially, under President Trump's edict, ends today.

Will Illinois be a better State, Chicago be a better city, the United States be a better nation with this young lady and her engineering talents at work for us? Of course, there is no question about it. Why in the world would we ever want to deport someone who has gone through our educational system and excelled like this young lady?

She is not the only one, by any means. This is a photo of Elizabeth Vilchis. She is the 109th Dreamer whom I have spoken about on the floor of the U.S. Senate. She was brought to the United States at the age of 7. She grew up in Yonkers, NY. As a child, she heard about STEM subjects--science, technology, engineering, and math. She decided to make that her life's work. She excelled in math and science and decided she would be part of the future of this country and took on these important subjects. She said: ``From that point forward I made pursuing a career in STEM my responsibility, as an American.''

During high school, Elizabeth was a member of the Honor Society, the Key Club, the Architecture, Construction and Engineering Program. She was editor of the yearbook and also played on the volleyball team. She graduated high school with an Advanced Regents diploma.

She was then accepted into the Honors College at City University, New York City College.

Remember, these Dreamers--these undocumented students--don't qualify for Federal assistance to go to school as most kids do. They have to find another way to work and save their money or take private loans.

She received a Community Service Award from the School of Engineering 4 years in a row for her work organizing engineering education programs for low-income students. She received a Student Leader Award for her work with an engineering student association. She was named Volunteer of the Year 4 years in a row for managing the Manhattan robotics competition.

I have seen those robotics competitions. A lot of young people in high school do some amazing things in these competitions, and it launches a career and a life in the STEM subjects.

Elizabeth graduated with a double major in mechanical engineering and political science. She worked as an engineer for Samsung for 2 years. Then she founded a nonprofit organization focused on creating funding opportunities for early stage technology startups. Today, Elizabeth's nonprofit has over 700 members. To date, they have raised over $8 million to grow their companies.

She wrote me a letter and Elizabeth said:

To me DACA is my opportunity to give back to the United

States and my family the way I dreamed of since I was 10

years old. It's the ability to help solve the STEM talent

shortage after 15 years of preparing for it and being told it

was impossible. It's the power to say ``No'' to going back to

the shadows and ``Yes'' to serving as a role model for young

girls across the country who aspire to be engineers and

entrepreneurs.

People like Elizabeth are the reason why more than 400 business leaders signed a letter to Congress urging us to pass the bipartisan Dream Act.

The letter says:

Dreamers are vital to the future of our companies and our

economy. With them, we grow and create jobs. They are part of

why we will continue to have global competitive advantage.

It would be a personal tragedy for us to deport Elizabeth Vilchis, but the decision of President Trump to abolish the program that protects her, sadly, makes that a possibility. If this injunction by the court is lifted, at that moment, there could be a knock on her door--or perhaps on the door of the company that hires her or her engineering firm--and she could be told that her time is up. Under President Trump, she has to leave the United States of America.

President Trump created this crisis. Instead of working toward a solution, he has rejected every bipartisan effort that has been sent his way to save the Dreamers.

What will happen next? Do we have to stand by and watch as these families are divided, as talented young people like Elizabeth and Ana are deported? Is that what we are all about? Is that what the President meant when he told me ``We'll take care of those kids''? That is what it has come down to.

It is a sad reality that all across America, hundreds of thousands of these young people now live in fear of deportation. They should be living, as Elizabeth said, outside the shadows and

as part of America and its future. What can we do about it? I am at a loss.

Unless and until this President accepts the responsibility to help us solve the problem he created, I am afraid we will never be able to rally the necessary Republican votes to make this a reality. It is up to President Trump.

In the part of the world that I come from in the Middle West, there is a saying that I am going to clean up a little bit, and it goes something like this: Any old mule can kick down a barn door, but it takes a carpenter to build one. This President has kicked down DACA, kicked it down to the dirt, and this is the day--the deadline that he set. The question is, Does he have the will or the heart to rebuild it?

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from North Dakota (Ms. Heitkamp) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) is necessarily absent.

Mr. President, like all great cities, Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, and one of its most storied neighborhoods is an enclave on the South Side. It is called Bronzeville. Bronzeville was born a century ago, during the first wave of the Great Migration, when tens of thousands of African Americans left the oppression of Jim Crow laws and lynching in the Deep South and headed north, to Chicago, in search of industrial jobs. By 1920, Bronzeville was home to so many African-American-owned businesses that it took on a prestigious new moniker: ``Black Metropolis.''

Among the famous African Americans who called Bronzeville home were Ida B. Wells, journalist, civil rights activist, and cofounder of the NAACP; Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman pilot; and Rube Foster, founder of the Negro National Baseball League, the league that gave America such greats as Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, and the legendary Satchel Paige.

Black History Month, which America celebrates each February, also has its roots in Bronzeville. It began as a modest proposal, but it seemed revolutionary at the time. In 1926, the distinguished historian and journalist Carter G. Woodson launched America's first Negro History Week.

Carter Woodson, the ``father of Black history,'' had earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Chicago in 1908. He had gone on to become only the second African American ever--after W.E.B. DuBois--to earn a doctorate from Harvard University. Years of studying history convinced Carter Woodson that the contributions of African Americans were, in his words, ``overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them.'' The result, he believed, was an incomplete and inaccurate account of history that perpetuated racial inequality and stunted the dreams of many African Americans. So Carter Woodson made it his life's mission to fill in the missing chapters in America's history books. He returned to Chicago often, almost always staying in Bronzeville at the Wabash YMCA, the first African-American Y in the United States.

In 1915 in Chicago, he and four other African-American historians founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, later renamed the ``Association for the Study of African American Life and History.'' In 1916, the association began publishing The Journal of Negro History, ``particularly targeted those responsible for the education of black children.''

Woodson chose the second week in February to mark Negro History Week--to commemorate the birthdays of the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the ``Great Emancipator'' Abraham Lincoln.

In the 1970s, Negro History Week became Black History Month.

As we near the end of this year's Black History Month, I want to tell you about an amazing woman from the Chicago area who is making history today by helping to free women and children from modern-day slavery. Her name is Marian Hatcher, and she follows in the footsteps of two earlier ``she-roes'' of American history: Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman.

Sojourner Truth was born in upstate New York in 1797, three decades before that State abolished slavery. She was separated from her family at 9, and she was bought and sold four times before escaping to freedom with her infant daughter in 1826.

She began her life as a free woman working first as an itinerant preacher. She later became an outspoken advocate for abolition, civil rights, and women's rights. When the Civil War broke out, Sojourner Truth urged young men to join the Union cause and organized supplies for Black troops. For her efforts, she was invited to meet President Lincoln in the White House in 1864.

After the war, Sojourner Truth moved to Washington, DC to work with the Freedmen's Bureau, helping freed slaves find jobs and build new lives. In the mid-1860s--90 years before the Montgomery bus boycott--a Washington streetcar conductor tried violently to block her from riding his car. Sojourner Truth insisted that he be arrested and tried.

Harriet Tubman was born in Maryland to enslaved parents around 1820-- the youngest of nine children. She escaped to freedom in the North in 1949 and became one of the most famous and fearless ``conductors'' on the Underground Railroad. She risked her life repeatedly to return to the South and lead hundreds of slaves, including her own parents, to freedom.

Harriet Tubman risked her life again during the Civil War to work as a Union Army cook and nurse--and later as an armed scout and spy. Many called her Moses for her fierce courage in leading others out of bondage.

Marian Hatcher is a sort of modern-day Moses. Like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, she knows the pain and despair that comes from being bought and sold like a commodity. For 2 years, she was trafficked for sex by a violent pimp. And like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, Marian Hatcher escaped her bondage, and she has dedicated her life to helping other trafficked persons regain their freedom and dignity.

Let me tell you about this incredible woman. Marian Hatcher grew up in a home with loving, supportive parents. She earned a finance degree from Loyola University. She was married and had five children. But Marian also had painful secrets, including a history of childhood sexual abuse, untreated depression, and a husband--a former Vice Lords gang member--who beat her.

Marian started smoking crack to ease her pain. When she could no longer stand the beatings from her husband, she left her family and survived for 2 years by working as a prostitute. Her pimp gave her crack so she wouldn't return to her family. On Mother's Day, he gave her extra crack because she grieved so deeply for the children she had left behind.

During those 2 years on the street, Marian was beaten and raped more times than she can count. She was in and out of jail repeatedly. As she says, ``I tried to smoke enough crack to bust my heart, but God would not let me die. He had another plan for me.''

That plan began to unfold in 2004, when Marian was arrested again-- this time for violating probation on a drug charge. She expected to be treated like a criminal. Instead, in the Cook County jail, Marian Hatcher found the compassion and care she needed to begin to heal from her trauma and rebuild her life.

The Cook County Women's Rehabilitative Alternative Probation, WRAP, Drug Court--one of the Nation's most successful drug courts--took a chance on Marian. A judge there sentenced Marian to a jail-based, therapeutic treatment designed specifically for women struggling with trauma and substance abuse. When Marian was released 18 months later, she began working as a volunteer with that same program. She was so good that the Cook County Sheriffs Office hired her to work full time at the jail. She has never left.

Fourteen years later, Marian Hatcher has been promoted five times. She is now coordinator of the Cook County Sheriff's Office pioneering efforts to combat human trafficking, and she is one of America's leading experts on how to help victims of sex trafficking to escape that life and heal from the trauma. On behalf of her boss, Cook County sheriff Tom Dart, she has recruited a network of more than 100 law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, as well as research and nonprofits groups, to work together to reduce the demand for sex trafficking and prostitution.

Like Sojourner Truth, she is also an ordained minister.

Her work has won acclaim and respect. Marian Hatcher received a Presidential Achievement Award from President Barack Obama. Oprah has told her story. She has spoken on human trafficking at the United Nations and participated in President Jimmy Carter's summit to end trafficking globally. And just before Christmas, the Governor of Illinois granted Marian Hatcher clemency for offenses in her old life-- official recognition of her tireless work to break the chains of bondage for others.

I have introduced a bill to expand the availability of trauma- informed care for survivors of gun violence and other forms of trauma and toxic stress. Marian Hatcher's remarkable redemption is proof that such care can help to heal shattered lives and help break the cycle of recidivism that too often results from untreated childhood trauma.

Like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, Marian Hatcher struggles with chronic, painful health conditions as the result of the beatings and abuse she endured. She also lives with multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia, and she is a cancer survivor. There are days when every step she takes hurts. But she never stops working to end the modern-day slavery that is sex trafficking. I respect her greatly and am proud to tell her story during this Black History month.

Mr. President, a few years ago, an author named Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book titled ``The Tipping Point.'' He spelled out that in the course of history, when something occurs that changes people's thinking and actions, it is a precipitous moment where what has been done for so long stops, is reevaluated, and a different course is followed. The clear question we have in America today is whether we have reached a tipping point when it comes to gun violence.

It has only been 13 days since the tragedy in Parkland, FL. Look at what has happened since. Of course there is outrage, sadness, and mourning for the families who lost these wonderful students, teachers, and administrators, but beyond that, these high school students--17, 18 years old, some even younger--have become a national voice, a powerful voice on the issue of gun safety in schools.

I often wondered when this moment might occur or whether it would occur. There has been such a long litany and string of mass shootings and massacres. It is sad to say that there was a numbness setting in. When terrible things occurred in places like Las Vegas, Texas, and other States, you wondered, is that the event? Will the killing of those innocent children in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut be the tipping point? Will America finally say ``enough''? It appears that on this day, 13 days after the tragedy in Florida, we are near or at a tipping point when it comes to gun safety.

Some of it is very personal. Two weeks ago, after this occurred, my 6-year-old granddaughter said to her mother that she had been warned in her first grade classroom that if a shooter should turn up at school firing a gun, first, she should stay away from the windows, and second, she should lie down on the floor. I can't tell you what a profound impact that had on me as a grandfather to think that my little first grader, this beautiful little girl, was worried about the moment when somebody would walk in her classroom and wantonly try to kill the students and teachers who are there.

I cannot believe that any sane person believes that the Second Amendment to the Constitution--the right to bear arms--envisioned that possibility. I am sure it didn't. I am sure our Founding Fathers--and we can debate for the rest of the day what their words actually meant-- never envisioned that an American citizen's right to bear arms could somehow translate into violence against so many innocent people, as it has over and over again.

Last week, I was in Chicago. I was joined at a press conference by gun safety advocates at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center on the South Side. We stood together, victims of gun violence and I, at a press conference. With me were advocates from Hadiya's Promise and the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, who have been working together for years to combat the scourge gun violence in Illinois. I also stood with Patrick Korellis, who was wounded on February 14 10 years ago at a mass school shooting at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL.

A new voice came to join us, a graduate from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, named Francyn Brown. She graduated from Stoneman Douglas in 2009. She is currently a law student at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. She is one of dozens of Stoneman Douglas graduates in the Chicago area--which include, incidentally, the first baseman for the Chicago Cubs, Anthony Rizzo--and hundreds, if not thousands, nationwide who joined together in the aftermath of the February 14 mass shooting that killed 14 Stoneman Douglas students and 3 staff. These young men and women have come together to speak up and urge their lawmakers to do something about the Nation's epidemic of gun violence. The message is starting to resonate.

When Francyn Brown was speaking last Wednesday, students at schools across the Chicagoland area were walking out of class in solidarity with Stoneman Douglas students. They are all calling for commonsense gun reform. These students don't have time or patience for political games in Washington or Springfield. They have seen their friends, kids just like themselves, get shot in their classrooms and neighborhoods. They have had enough.

Francyn Brown said:

It's not supposed to matter what side of the aisle a

politician sits. We are supposed to all protect the future of

our children.

I couldn't agree more.

These students and young people across the country are changing the debate about gun violence. They are making it clear how absurd it is for lawmakers in this Chamber, across the rotunda, or in State capitals to do nothing when Americans get shot every day in their homes, their neighborhoods, their churches, nightclubs, concerts, and schools. They are fed up with politicians in Washington who ignore the overwhelming majority of Americans who want commonsense gun safety and listen instead to paranoid, bullying gun sales lobbyists.

Remember, the National Rifle Association and its allies oppose virtually anything that hurts gun sales. They fight against proposals that might reduce gun sales, and they try to roll back laws on the books that limit them. That is their agenda. But it is not America's agenda. Corporate America is starting to walk away from the NRA. It is no longer a source of pride that they are doing business with the National Rifle Association--just the opposite. We are seeing company after company end relationships with the NRA because of its increasingly unhinged and hysterical rhetoric on the issue of gun safety. Corporate America--some of the biggest corporations in our Nation--realize that the NRA no longer speaks for responsible gun owners. When will Congress realize this?

We know we need to act to keep our children safe. There is no single reform that can stop every shooting, but we know there are gaps in our gun laws that make it easy for criminals, abusers, troubled children, and mentally unstable people to get guns, even military assault weapons with bump stocks and high-capacity magazines.

We need to close these gaps, and that requires the Republicans who control Congress to stand up to the NRA and do something that the NRA might not like. For starters, my Republican colleagues could take up legislation that the leader of their party, President Trump, proposed last Thursday. Here is one of the President's infamous tweets:

I will be strongly pushing Comprehensive Background Checks

with an emphasis on Mental Health. Raise age to 21 and end

sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do

something on this issue--I hope!

And I hope as well.

There are proposals that Americans broadly support. Let's do something. Of course, the NRA is opposed to most of these. We expected that. These proposals might have some negative impact on gun sales, but is the gun sales lobby now in charge of writing bills for the Senate and the House? Deferring to the NRA is the reason we have reached this moment in history.

Remember, the Senate has held one gun vote since President Trump came to office, and it was a vote to prevent mental health records from the Social Security Administration from going into the FBI's gun background check system. That is the only vote since the Trump administration took office. It is the only thing we have done here--roll back a law on the books on mental health and background checks. That was a giveaway to the gun lobby, which claims to support enforcing the laws on the books but actually tries to roll

back those laws if it means helping to lift their sales.

Let's show the students at Stoneman Douglas and across the country that we hear them. I hope we show that reducing gun violence is a priority.

I call on my Republican colleagues to join the Democrats in a bipartisan effort to treat the issue of gun safety with the sense of urgency that the American people believe is necessary. If Republicans gave a fraction of the effort to gun safety that they have to other issues, we could get this done--and done quickly. There are plenty of reforms we could pass that are completely consistent with the Second Amendment and would save lives. Even President Trump, for the time being, has said that he supports them.

So let's get started. Not on a giveaway to the gun lobby--let's work on closing loopholes. Let's have universal background checks. Over 90 percent of the American people believe we should keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons and mentally unstable people. I also believe that those who are subject to protective orders for domestic violence should be disqualified from buying a gun. I would say that those who are on the terrorist watch list, whom we do not allow to fly on airplanes because of fear that they could do harm to others, shouldn't be allowed to buy guns in the United States. I want to add a provision that straw purchasers--the girlfriends with no criminal record who buy the weapons to give to the boyfriends with a long criminal record-- ought to have the book thrown at them. Let's get to work.

I want to thank the victims and advocates who have worked for many years to help reduce the epidemic of gun violence. I want them to know we stand with them, and I hope we can all stand with them on a bipartisan basis.

I yield the floor.