Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 203.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., Tuesday, May 11; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; further, that upon conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the nomination of Andrea Palm, to be Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services; that at 11:30 a.m., all postcloture time on the Palm nomination be considered expired; that the Senate recess following the cloture vote on the Marten nomination until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meetings; that, if cloture is invoked on the Marten nomination, all postcloture debate time be considered expired at 2:30 p.m.; and, finally, that if any of the nominations are confirmed, that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.

For the information of Senators, there will be two rollcall votes at 11:30 a.m. and at least one rollcall vote at 2:30 p.m. Additional rollcall votes are expected during Tuesday's session.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all remaining debate time be expired.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I want to also just thank my colleague from Vermont for that lovely tribute to Judge Hall.

I can see that he meant a lot to you and was a great public servant. So thank you, Senator Leahy.

Madam President, in a year of so much heartbreak and grief and death, it almost escaped notice that we had gone in this country a year without a mass shooting in a public place.

But now we face the grim reminder of our American reality. In the space of a week, two separate mass shootings stole the lives of 18 people. And just weeks ago, we suffered a mass shooting in a health clinic in my home State of Minnesota.

So here we are again, thrust into a familiar cycle of collective grief and frustration and anger. Our hearts break for the families and loved ones of those whose lives were stolen. Our voices cry out for change to end the scourge of gun violence. And our anger grows as our voices are ignored and we are told by Republican leaders that there is nothing that we can do to protect American lives from gun violence.

Colleagues, it is our job to protect American lives.

Today, I want to share with you the voice of Veronique de la Rosa. Her son Noah, just 6 years old, was murdered in his classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary, and she delivered this eulogy for her son at his 2012 funeral.

I am going to read it in its entirety so that it can be included in the Record, the Congressional Record, and can serve as a reminder of the human toll that our gun culture has taken.

Veronique said:

The sky is crying, and the flags are at half-mast. It is a

sad, sad day. But it is also your day, Noah, my little man. I

will miss your forceful and purposeful little steps stomping

through our house. I will miss your perpetual smile, the

twinkle in your dark blue eyes, framed by eyelashes that

would be the envy of any lady in this room.

Most of all, I will miss your visions of your future. You

wanted to be a doctor, a soldier, a taco factory manager. It

was your favorite food, and no doubt you wanted to ensure

that the world kept producing tacos.

You were a little boy whose life force had all the

gravitational pull of a celestial body. You were light and

love, mischief and pranks. You adored your family with every

fiber of your 6-year-old being. We are all of us elevated in

our humanity by having known you. A little maverick, who

didn't always want to do his schoolwork or clean up his toys,

when practicing his ninja moves or Super Mario on the Wii

seemed far more important.

Noah, you will not pass this way again. I can only believe

that you were planted on Earth to bloom in heaven. Take

flight, my boy. Soar. You now have the wings that you always

wanted. Go to that peaceful valley that we will all one day

come to know. I will join you someday. Not today. I still

have lots of mommy love to give to Danielle, Michael, Sophia

and Arielle.

Until then, your melody will linger in our hearts forever.

Momma loves you, little man.

Veronique should not have had to eulogize Noah, her 6-year-old son--1 of 20 children killed at Sandy Hook.

So I ask my Republican colleagues to think of her when you suggest that families exaggerate their anguish for political gain.

Just yesterday, one of my Republican colleagues dismissed this grief as ``theater.'' No. This is life and death.

So I am angry. I am angry because I know that we have the power to stop this violence, and yet our Republican colleagues stand in the way. They refuse to work with us. They continue to put the demands of the NRA above the demands of the people we are elected to serve--that we stop this horrific gun violence, that we protect the people we are elected to serve.

Madam President, we need universal background checks. We need to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. We need to end this cycle, and we need all of us in Congress to find the strength and the humanity to take action.

I yield the floor

Madam President, I rise today in strong support of the historic nomination of Deb Haaland to serve as Secretary of the Interior. When Representative Haaland appeared before the Senate for her confirmation hearing, she opened by saying: ``My story is unique.''

Haaland is a 35th-generation New Mexican, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo, and will be the first-ever Native American to serve as a Cabinet Secretary.

National Congress of the American Indians President Fawn Sharp noted that it is fitting that as we celebrate Women's History Month, Deb Haaland is poised to make it. Her nomination is a historic choice and a moment of deep meaning to Tribal nations and indigenous people across the country who have seen over and over again the Federal Government fail to keep its promises to Native people, promises made in law and treaty.

It is clear to me that we need Representative Haaland's strong voice of stewardship for our public resources, cultural resources, and public lands, for action on the climate crisis, and for making sure that the Federal Government lives up to its treaty and trust responsibilities for Tribal nations and their citizens.

Representative Haaland's background and her life experiences make her perfect for this job. As Haaland said during her confirmation hearings, ``If an Indigenous woman from humble beginnings can be confirmed as Secretary of the Interior, our country holds promise for everyone.''

The Interior Department includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which manages the Federal Government's relationship with American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities. Indigenous leaders across the country have expressed broad, bipartisan support for Representative Haaland's nomination because they know that she will bring a personal commitment to lifting up Native voices and addressing deep inequities and longstanding funding challenges on Tribal lands.

The Department is also responsible for public lands, energy resources, and wildlife conservation, and so it requires a leader who understands the cultural and economic value of these resources and the importance of conserving them. Representative Haaland grew up with a deep affinity for public lands, for responsible land use, and for hunting and fishing. In fact, her family on her father's side is from Minnesota, where she tells me she learned a lot about the joys of walleye fishing.

In the House, Representative Haaland served as the chair of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, and she has earned the support of hundreds of groups working on climate change, conservation, and public lands management.

Representative Haaland has been a champion for the tragic crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women.

Here we have a strong, capable, competent leader ready to serve our country as the first Native woman to lead the Interior Department. Colleagues, I can't help asking here during Women's History Month, why is it that almost 2 months after President Biden's inauguration, Representative Haaland is one of the last three core Cabinet members to be confirmed in the Senate?

Why is it that she has faced such ferocious opposition from some Republicans?

Colleagues, over the last 3 months, Representative Haaland has been called ``extreme'' and ``radical.''

One Republican Senator I serve with on the Indian Affairs Committee labeled Haaland a ``hardline ideologue with radical views''--this from a person who spent months promoting the false and widely debunked conspiracy theories about voter fraud in our election. Another Republican Senator called Representative Haaland a ``socialist, left- of-Lenin whack job''--though, later, he said he merely meant to call her an ``extremist.''

In the House, a Member of my own Minnesota congressional delegation orchestrated a hit campaign on Representative Haaland by attacking her position on natural resources management and boundary waters. Strangely, this same Member happily supported Secretary Vilsack's confirmation even though he holds exactly the same positions.

As our former colleagues Tom Udall and Mark Udall said in an op-ed in USA Today, it is hard to imagine that either of them, had they been nominated to lead Interior, would have faced the same attacks for radical ideas.

I just find it difficult to take these Republican attacks at face value. My colleagues should know that Representative Haaland was named the most bipartisan House freshman in the last Congress. If that is what a hardline ideologue looks like, maybe we should all aspire to be the role model that Deb Haaland provides.

Colleagues, I think we need to be honest with ourselves about what is going on here. Once again, a woman--

and a woman of color--is being held to a different standard, and we need to name it. We have to come to grips with the reality that, time after time, strong women, especially women of color, are attacked when White men with the same views are welcome to walk right through that door, unopposed.

At their worst, these efforts--these attempts--to portray Representative Haaland as extreme and unqualified show how much work we still have to do to reckon with our country's history of disparaging, disrespecting, and erasing Native people and how this tragic history has been reflected in the biases on exhibit during Representative Haaland's confirmation. This is clear when we see how few Republicans could even acknowledge the historic nature of Representative Haaland's nomination, choosing, instead, to focus on hostile questions about her tweets and whether she understands the law.

Now, sadly, these attacks that Representative Haaland has been subjected to are not unique. We have seen this dance play out time and again with Biden-Harris nominees, especially with women of color. Excellent nominees, like Secretary Vilsack and Secretary Buttigieg, faced relatively tame confirmation processes. The vast majority of questions were about policy goals and their experience. No Senator referred to these nominees as ``extremists'' or ``radicals.''

Yet how did the women of color fare?

In the Banking Committee, my Republican colleagues grilled Secretary Fudge, our new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development--and a Black woman--about her intemperate comments on race. This was less than 3 weeks after our former President incited an insurrection of White supremacists, among others, and faced essentially no consequence from his own party. Neera Tanden was forced to withdraw her nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget after some declared that her Twitter account was too divisive.

Well, if we had only known that mean tweets could disqualify you from public office, we could have saved ourselves 4 years of division and chaos and two impeachment trials after a torrent of inflammatory and hateful rhetoric from the former Twitter account of our former President, which most of my Republican colleagues said they tried to ignore or just hadn't read. Strong opinions from strong women of color are deemed unacceptable and cause for disqualification. I am just not buying it.

In my first floor speech in this Chamber, I said that, when you really listen to women, you begin to understand all the ways in which women are made less and are denied opportunities to contribute to their communities and to their country.

So I urge my colleagues: Don't let this be one of those times. Let's not silence these women and deny them opportunities to lead because we are uncomfortable with their power.

During Representative Haaland's confirmation process, I started to get text messages from women friends, especially from Native women, who were horrified by the yelling and the condescending questions that were directed her way. We were proud of how she responded--with grace and with dignity--and we all knew how it felt.

I would bet that every woman in this Chamber knows what it feels like when this happens. A man talks down to you. He uses his power to explain something that you already know and signals in a hundred different ways that you don't belong in the room where it happens. Well, for a long time, women have found ways to respond to these affronts with grace as did Representative Haaland, Marcia Fudge, Vanita Gupta, and Neera Tanden.

When I was a young woman, my mother was a very strong woman herself. She used to advise me to just ignore these folks and go about my business. Even today, as I worked on this floor speech, I wondered: Am I going to offend anybody? Am I going to sound too shrill? I bet there is not a man in this room who has ever worried about sounding too shrill.

So, colleagues, tonight, we will vote on Representative Deb Haaland's confirmation to Secretary of the Interior, and we will all have a chance to restore dedicated, capable, passionate leadership to this important Department.

The choice to confirm Representative Haaland is, indeed, historic, but it is not an abstract opportunity. As Secretary, Representative Haaland will play a consequential role in combating climate change. She will also honor Tribal sovereignty and strengthen the government's relationship between the United States and Tribal nations. Maybe, just maybe, her leadership will help us see the strength of Native women and of all women and to not be threatened by that. Our country will be the better for it. I urge my colleagues to support the confirmation of Deb Haaland for Secretary of the Interior

I yield the floor.

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

As if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 83, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, the facts and the evidence were overwhelming: Former President Donald Trump lied for months to his supporters, summoned them to Washington, and incited a violent insurrection against our government and our democracy. I voted to convict because no reasonable person can listen to all the evidence presented and believe otherwise.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it recess until 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, March 2; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Raimondo nomination; that, at 2:15 p.m., the cloture time be considered expired and the Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; finally, that Senator Cruz be recognized at 12:15 p.m. for up to 30 minutes, and following his remarks, the Senate recess until 2:15 p.m. for the weekly conference meetings.

For the information of Senators, there will be two rollcall votes at 2:15 p.m. The first vote will be on confirmation of the Raimondo nomination to be Secretary of Commerce, followed by a cloture vote on the Rouse nomination to be Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it recess under the previous order.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 6, S. Res. 70.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 422, which was introduced earlier today.

I further ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 74, submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.