Floor Statements

Mr. President, our Nation just concluded National Correctional Officers and Employees Week. Because the Senate was not in session last week, I want to take this opportunity to recognize these heroes and everything they do to protect our people and uphold the rule of law.

Every day, correctional officers go in to work to guard and operate our Federal prisons, State prisons, and local jails. They not only administer justice on behalf of innocent victims, but they also defend the guilty from unjust adversity.

They combat the drug trade so that addicts can recover. They fight back against vicious prison gangs so that inmates can have a chance to find redemption instead of recidivism. They confront the most violent offenders so that persons with short minimum-security prison sentences don't turn out to have what is a death sentence.

Without safety, security, and structure, our prisons and our jails would devolve into anarchy, into chaos, and crime. Correctional officers combat these forces of disorder so that these facilities can instead be centers of self-improvement and, indeed, correction. As a result, many inmates are able to pursue education, learn marketable skills, and find solace in God.

The profession of a correctional officer is both noble and very dangerous. Fewer than 450,000 correctional officers protect and police approximately 1.5 million inmates in a normal year, around the clock, every minute of every day.

Riots, jailbreak attempts, and targeted anti-police violence are common and result in particularly high-risk situations for correctional officers. In a 9-year period measured by the National Institutes of Health, correctional officers suffered over 125,000 work-related injuries and 113 tragically lost their lives.

Correctional officers willingly endure this danger, suffer these injuries, and sometimes give their lives so that our families, neighborhoods, and communities can be safe. The least we can do is to recognize their sacrifice and express our gratitude.

This year, our correctional officers did even more than usual. For the past 14 months, they have worked tirelessly to keep our inmates healthy in the middle of this global pandemic. They shifted normal confinement arrangements, and they maintained order among the population under enhanced stress due to coronavirus protocols.

Correctional officers have done an amazing job and saved so many lives during this crisis. Sadly, some even paid the ultimate price for their work. They should be proud of their work, and we ought to be proud of them. So from the floor of the U.S. Senate, I certainly can say I am proud of our correctional officers.

But our Nation should go beyond gratitude. We ought to give correctional officers the funding, the wages, the equipment, the facilities, and the support that they need.

To start, Congress can finally crack down on contraband cell phones. Inmates use them to maintain their criminal enterprises from behind bars and to terrorize those who put them there. They also use them to victimize other inmates and to prey upon random victims outside prison walls. In other words, prisoners use these cell phones to undermine the life's work of correctional officers.

Contraband cell phones are even used as tools of retribution against the officers themselves. In 2010, a gang member imprisoned in South Carolina used a contraband cell phone to order the murder of Captain Robert Johnson. Captain Johnson was then mercilessly shot six times in the chest and stomach in his own house. Remarkably, he survived the attack, and he is now a leading advocate for taking action against contraband cell phones.

Regrettably, the use of contraband cell phones shows no sign of slowing. On the contrary, they are becoming ubiquitous weapons inside of our prisons. While available technologies can be helpful, it is also increasingly clear they are not capable of solving the problem alone. So that is why I will soon be reintroducing my Cell Phone Jamming Reform Act. This bill would empower State prisons to install jamming technology and turn contraband cell phones into nothing but useless paper weights. This easy and commonsense step will honor the hard work of correctional officers to clean up our streets and to keep our Nation safe.

The men and women of this country--law-abiding citizens and those who serve their time alike--owe a debt to our Nation's correctional officers. So I, once again, want to thank them for their courageous and diligent service. And I hope they took time last week to celebrate National Correctional Officers and Employees Week because they certainly deserved it.

Madam President, sadly, the United States is in the midst of the deadliest drug epidemic in our Nation's history, caused by some of the deadliest drugs ever created.

It appears that more than 80,000 Americans died from drug overdose last year. By far, the biggest killers were lab-made opioids, such as fentanyl, which are cheap to produce and easy to mix with other street drugs such as heroin. These lethal cocktails have devastated countless communities and families across our Nation. Too many parents have come home to a dead child who mistakenly took a prescription pill or a so- called party drug laced with this deadly fentanyl.

Illicit fentanyl, the kind created in underground Chinese drug labs or smuggled across our porous southern border by Mexican cartels, is made only to addict and kill. For those dark, terrible purposes, fentanyl is unsurpassed in the tragic history of addiction. It is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl, an amount equivalent to a few grains of salt, is enough to kill a grown man.

Just last December, police arrested a man in Arkansas carrying 7 pounds of fentanyl. Depending on the purity of that fentanyl, that would have been enough to deliver a fatal dose to up to 1.5 million Americans. That is far from the biggest fentanyl bust that police have ever made.

That means that every time our Border Patrol stops a drug mule coming across our southern border, every time the Coast Guard intercepts a drug runners' vessel in our waters, and every time a SWAT team raids a drug dealer's stash house, they could be averting what is, in effect, a mass casualty attack on our country.

Unfortunately, these Mexican drug cartels and Chinese superlabs are diabolically creative in waging this new kind of opium war against the United States. When American law enforcement started cracking down on fentanyl a few years ago, the cartels started producing so-called analogs or look-alike drugs that are chemically distinct from fentanyl, yet have no legitimate medical uses but will kill you just as quickly. Some of these analogs are even more powerful than fentanyl--up to 150 times more potent of a drug that I would remind you, once again, is, itself, 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. Because these drugs are chemically distinct from fentanyl, prosecuting and shutting down their creators is often prohibitively expensive, requiring law enforcement to hire expert witnesses to testify the analog is, in fact, a deadly drug.

In 2018, the Drug Enforcement Administration took the necessary and prudent step listing the entire class of fentanyl analogs as schedule I prohibited substances. This decision closed a deadly loophole that drug dealers were using to escape punishment from poisoning our citizens, while still allowing legitimate researchers to apply for and obtain approval to research these analogs for potential medical or scientific breakthroughs.

The evidence suggests that this law enforcement action has been getting results. Since the classwide scheduling went into effect in early 2018, law enforcement encounters with uncontrolled fentanyl analogs plummeted by almost 90 percent.

Of course, our work to solve the opioid epidemic is far from finished. We still have much to do to dismantle the cartels and drug trafficking networks that spread fentanyl and analogs and mix it with other drugs. But the DEA's efforts to control fentanyl analogs were a step in the right direction.

Last year, the Senate voted unanimously to extend the DEA's emergency scheduling of fentanyl, but that extension is now set to expire. We have the opportunity--in fact, I would say we have the responsibility to permanently control these deadly fentanyl analogs so law enforcement has the legal backup it needs to take these dangerous drugs off the streets.

If Congress doesn't act, this emergency scheduling order is set to expire next week. The authority of our Border Patrol to seize these drugs as they cross the border will be dramatically reduced. Cartels will, once again, be able to exploit loopholes to evade prosecution, and Chinese superlabs will get right back to work inventing new and creative ways to repackage fentanyl and to kill even more Americans. We cannot let that happen.

I introduced a bill to solve this problem once and for all by merely eliminating the expiration date on the law that protects us against these fentanyl analogs. I am asking my colleagues to approve it just like we did last year--unanimously.

I would also like to urge my Democratic colleagues to disregard the liberal activist groups that are lobbying

against controlling these deadly fentanyl analogs because they hope to use it as a bargaining chip to reduce criminal penalties for the most serious drug traffickers. Think about that. More Americans died of a drug overdose last year than in any other year in our history. Yet these liberal activists are trying to help the drug traffickers who spread these very poisons. If they succeed, drug dealers will have an easier time killing Americans for profit, and prosecutors will have to waste valuable resources proving that each new form of fentanyl they encounter is, in fact, a deadly drug.

We cannot play politics with this bill, trading the lives of innocent Americans for more lenient treatment of cartels and superlabs. Protecting Americans from deadly fentanyl should not be treated as a bargaining piece or poker chip. I ask my colleagues to think of the victims and think of the urgency of this measure. I am offering this bill on behalf of tens of thousands of Americans who were with us just last year but are not today because of these deadly synthetic drugs. I am offering this on behalf of the countless Americans who can still be saved if we act.

I urge my colleagues to support this measure and, therefore, Madam President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to immediate consideration of S. 1410, introduced earlier today; further, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I thank my colleague from New Jersey for these remarks.

Time is not on our side. This emergency scheduling order expires next week. The Senate is not in session next week.

I know that we want to empower addicts, as the Senator from New Jersey said; that we want to help give them the treatment they need to get back on their feet. That is a goal I share.

We are talking, though, about drug dealers, drug traffickers, cartels, Chinese superlabs. If we do not pass an extension--in my bill, a permanent extension of this emergency scheduling order--it is the addicts who will be hurt because the drug dealers and these cartels and superlabs will simply begin to flood our streets, once again, with the synthetic fentanyl analogs, which I remind you, again, can be 150 times more potent than fentanyl itself, which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.

I hope my Democratic friends will reconsider in the short time we have this week, and we will be able to pass a permanent extension of this scheduling order.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, our Nation is in the midst of a historic crime wave that is affecting Americans of every background and walk of life. This surge in violence includes a shocking rise in hate crimes against our fellow citizens of Asian descent. Last year, the total number of hate crimes in America's largest cities dropped by 7 percent, but they surged by nearly 150 percent against Asian Americans.

Often, these hate crimes target the elderly and the frail--people who can't fight back against their vicious assailants.

Just last month, a 65-year-old Asian-American woman was knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked in broad daylight on the streets of New York City while her attacker shouted anti-Asian slurs. We later learned that her attacker was a convicted murderer who was out on parole, thanks to criminal

leniency policies. Instead of being in prison, locked up, where he belonged, he was brutalizing an innocent victim in broad daylight--yet more proof that being weak on crime doesn't reduce crime; it only invites more crime.

A civilized society can't ignore such attacks on our innocent citizens. We have to protect them. We have to protect every citizen and get tough on violent hate crimes.

Unfortunately, in response to this terrible rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, the Democrats initially introduced an extremely partisan bill intended to score political points. This flawed piece of legislation that the Senator from Hawaii originally sponsored contained provisions tailor-made to muzzle free speech.

For example, the bill would have directed the Department of Justice to tell Americans how they were supposed to talk about this virus. I voted against proceeding to this bill, in part because of this crazy, radical idea to impose a speech code on how Americans can talk about this virus. Some say: How could you vote against it? Very simple. I will never support a speech code imposed on the American people on how they can exercise their First Amendment rights to talk about this pandemic.

This whole idea is deeply concerning, especially because some in the media and some of our Democratic friends believe that even pointing out that the virus came from China is somehow inciting violence. That is as foolish as it is dangerous. Calling this virus--which, yes, came from Wuhan, China--the Wuhan virus is not racist, and it doesn't incite violence. You may recall, after all, that last year, journalists from such esteemed outlets as CNN, Reuters, the Washington Post, and the New York Times all used the terms ``Chinese virus,'' ``Chinese coronavirus,'' and ``Wuhan coronavirus.'' Were they inciting violence? Were they racist? No, of course not. They were following the centuries- old practice of referring to diseases by their geographic names.

It wasn't anti-Spanish to call the influenza outbreak of 1918 the ``Spanish flu'' even though it didn't even start in Spain. It was not anti-Egyptian to use the term ``West Nile virus.'' What about the variants of this virus from Brazil? from South Africa? from Great Britain? We use those terms. Is that somehow going to have to be banned from polite society's lexicon as well?

Second, I also want to point out that the Democrats' original bill, supposedly about the violence against Asian Americans, never actually used the term ``Asian American''--not once. Instead, it had some new, manufactured, mysterious term called ``COVID-19 hate crimes,'' which could have set a precedent for the even wider suppression of free speech against citizens who have no animus toward Asians and who haven't committed any crimes--citizens, for instance, who are concerned about the spread of the coronavirus due to the surge of illegal immigration at our border.

According to the mainstream media, if you so much as ask a question about the unvaccinated and untested persons who are entering our country at the border every day, you are somehow bigoted or nativist or xenophobe. In the original version of the bill, the language ``COVID-19 hate crimes'' could have resulted in individuals opposed to illegal immigration being reported for merely expressing an opinion.

Yet I am happy to report that this process, which had a bitter, partisan beginning, will soon have a rather uplifting and unifying end. Thanks to the diligent work of one of the hardest working Senators in the U.S. Senate, the Senator from Maine, these offensive provisions of the Democrats' original bill have been removed. The Senator from Maine has helped turn what was a bitter, partisan piece of legislation into something that now Members of both parties can hopefully support. Thanks to her efforts, this legislation is specifically focused on the crisis at hand and will improve the reporting of anti-Asian hate crimes.

Soon, we will also vote on a series of amendments from some of my fellow Senators to improve this legislation even further. I look forward to voting for those amendments, for the substitute amendment, and for the bill, as amended.

Today, this Chamber will take a step forward in fighting the rise of anti-Asian violence. I hope that we continue to make progress so that every victim gets justice and that further attacks are deterred

Madam President, Colin Kahl is President Biden's nominee to be the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. This is the top strategic planning position at the Department of Defense--the No. 3 position at our Department of Defense. The role is critically important to the national security of our country and the safety of our allies around the world.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kahl is temperamentally and professionally unfit to hold this--or, for that matter, virtually any other--job at the Pentagon. He is impulsive, intemperate, offensive, and has consistently demonstrated terrible judgment.

For the past several years, Mr. Kahl has endeavored, for some inexplicable reason, to be something of a Twitter celebrity--not exactly aiming his sights high. In pursuit of this goal, he has personally attacked the character and reputation of virtually every Republican Senator, as well, I would say, with lots of Democratic Senators.

He has tweeted that Members of both parties who supported the withdrawal from the terrible Iran nuclear deal ``won't be satisfied until they get the war they pushed for decades.''

He wrote that 45 Senators who supported weapon sales to Saudi Arabia share ``ownership of the world's worst humanitarian crisis.'' This claim, in which he referred to the war in Yemen, of course, ignores the role of Iran's murderous, terrorist proxies, something, of course, that Colin Kahl repeatedly turns a blind eye to everywhere in the world-- Iran's evil malignancy.

On a separate occasion, Mr. Kahl said that every Republican who supported an end to combat operations in Syria ``debased themselves at the altar of Trump.'' He then added that the party of Lincoln is ``the party of ethnic cleansing.'' Let's let that sink in for a moment.

Joe Biden has nominated a man to be the No. 3 official at our Department of Defense who has accused one of the two main political parties in our country as being ``the party of ethnic cleansing.'' It is hard to imagine an uglier or more vicious accusation than that.

Perhaps Mr. Kahl could ask Bill Clinton and Susan Rice, on whose watch the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda happened.

When John Bolton was about to become the National Security Advisor, Mr. Kahl, quite reasonably, stated on social media: ``We are going to die.''

To my knowledge, we are not dead, and Mr. Kahl is very much alive, despite John Bolton being appointed as a staffer in the U.S. Government. He also claimed that the Republican Party had a ``death cult fealty'' to former President Trump. These statements and many more make it difficult to conceive of a circumstance in which this nominee could successfully forge a productive relationship with Members of the Republican Party in the Senate or the House or anywhere else, for that matter.

Mr. Kahl's ranting and raving on social media in 2017 may have even gone from offensive to criminal on several occasions. It appears that several of Mr. Kahl's tweets divulge or confirm classified and sensitive information. I recently joined 17 of my fellow Senators in requesting a full FBI investigation into this very serious and troubling matter. No vote should occur until that important inquiry takes place.

Now, the nominee's transgressions on social media are somewhat reminiscent of Neera Tanden's foolish statements on that social media platform. I think this Chamber set a reasonable standard when it rightfully rejected her nomination, and we ought to maintain that standard with this nominee.

In many ways, though, Mr. Kahl's behavior is worse than Ms. Tanden's because his poisonous partisanship, his narrow-sightedness, and his short temper will directly affect his job. He is up for a post that is less partisan and more cooperative in nature than was Ms. Tanden's. His position will require him to be under extreme stress, where he will need to listen to a full range of options, engage in careful deliberation, and regularly make life-and-death decisions. I have to say, his auditions as a social media celebrity over the last 5 years don't inspire confidence in his ability to do so.

When I asked him about this at his hearing, he said he may have gotten caught up in the passions of the moment or that these were stressful, trying times. Some of these social media statements, I would point out, came in the middle of the night when Mr. Kahl was presumably sitting on his couch at home watching his news feed. If he thinks that is a stressful or trying moment, what is he going to do when he is sitting in the Pentagon and Vladimir Putin is invading southern Ukraine?

Talking about foreign policy decisions, I would point out that Mr. Kahl has been like Joe Biden--wrong about nearly every important foreign policy decision over the last decade. In 2010, Mr. Kahl said that concerns about a rapid withdrawal from Iraq were ``exaggerated'' and it was ``very unlikely to trigger a dramatic uptick in violence.'' He missed that one by just a little bit because soon thereafter, 30,000 radical Islamic extremists conquered a quarter of Iraq, and ISIS carried out horrific terrorist attacks on multiple continents.

In 2012, he ridiculed then-Candidate Mitt Romney's, now-Senator Mitt Romney's assertion that Russia was a major geopolitical threat. Of course, 2 years later, Russia invaded Ukraine and conquered Crimea. It has since been an obsession of the Democratic Party, even though Joe Biden has once again reverted to the Democrats' traditional dovishness on Russia, something presumably Mr. Kahl would support.

In 2017, he predicted that recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, where the seat of Israel's Government is located, would result in a ``third Intifada.'' Instead, Israel has signed multiple historic peace deals.

In 2018, when President Trump warned Iran against pursuing nuclear weapons, Mr. Kahl wrote the ``war drums are already sounding.'' But no war happened.

That same year, when President Trump withdrew from the terrible Iran nuclear deal, Mr. Kahl said: ``War will be all that is left.'' No war happened.

In 2020, when the United States finally delivered justice by killing Iran's terrorist mastermind Qasam Soleimani, Mr. Kahl said Mr. Trump had ``started a war with Iran in Iraq.'' Yet again, no war happened.

Mr. Kahl's inability to accurately assess these events almost defies probability. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

On issues of war and peace, Mr. Kahl is reliably unreliable and consistently wrong. This is not a fault that one of the chief strategic planners, the No. 3 official at the Pentagon, and one of the most powerful policy advisers in the government ought to have. No Pentagon nominee should be this partisan, this divisive, and this controversial.

Republicans have given every Defense Department and intelligence nominee a fair hearing, and most have passed this Chamber with healthy bipartisan majorities and in some cases unanimously. Mr. Kahl is different. Mr. Kahl is different because his toxic statements and reputation would inhibit the workings of the Department of Defense.

Every time, as Secretary Austin and senior Pentagon personnel testify before the Senate, Members of this body will wonder if the policies they are presented with are the product of hard-headed serious planning or the workings of a political hack.

A man of Mr. Kahl's judgment and temperament and his record of disastrous policy judgments is unfit to be the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and I will oppose his nomination, as every Senator should.

I yield the floor

Mr. President, Vanita Gupta is President Biden's nominee to be Associate Attorney General. She is unfit for that role. She is unfit because of her radical view that every single American and every single institution in the United States is inherently racist. She is unfit because she lacks the temperament to do the job, as evidenced by her relentless attacks on the integrity and character of judges and Senators alike, seemingly anytime she had a mere disagreement with them. She is certainly unfit based on her attempts to mislead the Senate in her Judiciary Committee hearing.

Ms. Gupta has been before the committee many times as a partisan advocate. There is nothing wrong with that, but her past appearances do give us a glimpse of what she believes when she isn't seeking our votes for confirmation.

Less than a year ago, June of last year, she came before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify on police reform. When she was asked ``Do you believe all Americans are racist?'' she replied under oath ``Yes, I do.'' Think about that. The person nominated by Joe Biden to oversee, among other things, the Federal Government's civil rights enforcement says that she believes every single American is racist.

This preposterous idea that anyone and everyone is inherently racist is at the core of the pernicious ideology pushed by the left called ``critical race theory.'' But this position was not an anomaly, a misstatement, or a new position for Mrs. Gupta. In 2005, she published an article in the Fordham Law Review on what she called ``Critical Race Lawyering.'' In that article, Ms. Gupta argued that ``the rule of law'' and ``equal justice for all'' and ``equal protection'' aren't the great bulwarks of our liberty, aren't the single achievements of our Republic and our constitutional form of government, but instead ``code words''-- that is what she called them--for some kind of twisted racism. Anyone who thinks that the rule of law or equal justice for all or

equal protection are simply ``code words'' for racism is unfit for any position in our government but especially a position of leadership in the Department of Justice.

The concerns with Ms. Gupta's nomination are not limited to extreme views on these topics. Ms. Gupta has made a career over the last few years on social media attacking the character and integrity of Federal judges, judicial nominees, and Members of the Senate. She accused four different jurists currently on the Supreme Court of being liars, extremists, ``dangerous,'' or ``opposed to civil and human rights.'' She must have had a macro; she just hit a shortcut button that said ``opposed to civil and human rights.''

By my count, she has leveled incendiary attacks on the integrity and character of around 50 currently sitting Federal judges. It could be more. I may have lost count when it got so high. I asked her about these attacks. While she said during her hearings that she ``regrets'' some of her rhetoric, she steadfastly refused to renounce these attacks on those judges.

Ms. Gupta has leveled similarly caustic comments against Members of this body, posting online that dozens of Members of the Senate are--you guessed it--``opposed to civil and human rights.'' She accused one of our colleagues of being ``a disgrace,'' another of being a ``hypocrite,'' and another of ``failing her constituents.'' At one point, she commented: ``How many of us are done with Susan Collins's concerns?''

I want to be clear. Disagreement with or even deep dislike for Members of the Senate is not disqualifying for any position in the Federal Government. People are entitled to have their opinions. They are entitled to have their political views. But honestly, the Associate Attorney General of the United States must be able to effectively represent the United States in court while also working with Congress on important issues. It might be hard to represent the United States in court when you have accused dozens of Federal judges of being ``opposed to human and civil rights'' or being a ``disgrace'' or a ``liar.'' Likewise, I wonder what Senator Collins thinks about Vanita Gupta being done with her concerns.

Perhaps most concerning, though, is that Ms. Gupta repeatedly misled the Judiciary Committee under oath. Every single Republican member of the Judiciary Committee joined a letter on March 23 outlining some of her most blatant misrepresentations that she made during her hearing, and we asked the chairman of the committee for a second hearing. That request was promptly refused.

Mr. President, I asked unanimous consent that the March 23 letter be printed in the Record

Finally, Mr. President, I have to observe something independent of Ms. Gupta herself. The discharge petition filed today requires that there has been a valid, tied vote in committee. That is the rule we all agreed to in the beginning of this Congress. Yet Ms. Gupta still has not received a valid vote in the committee. In fact, during the markup of her nomination, just minutes into my 15-minute remarks, the chairman of the committee cut off my remarks midsentence and called for a vote, in violation of committee rules. I guess somehow allowing members to finish their statements, which are guaranteed under the committees rules, had somehow become inconvenient for the scheduling preferences of our Democratic colleagues, or perhaps the committee's meeting had been mismanaged and they were worried about the 2-hour rule. It wasn't just me. My remarks were interrupted. At least one Republican Senator didn't have an opportunity to speak at all. The Democrats simply broke the rules and voted out Ms. Gupta's nomination-- not in accordance with Judiciary Committee rules.

There must be consequences when the Democrats break the rules. Here is what the consequences are going to be in this case. I will refuse consent or time agreements for the nomination of any U.S. attorney from any State represented by a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. What we need to have is a valid vote in committee in accordance with the committee rules, not ramming through this nomination today.

Today we are faced not only with the choice of whether Ms. Gupta is fit to be the Associate Attorney General, we are also faced with the question of whether to legitimize yet again the partisan bulldozing of the Senate's rules if those rules are even marginally inconvenient, even in committee session. Going down this path is not going to improve the Senate.

I will be voting no, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, the Senate is considering the nomination of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Without question, the Senate should reject this nomination.

In the midst of this pandemic, America deserves a Health Secretary who is solely--solely focused on getting shots in arms, getting kids back to school, and getting parents back to work. But that is not Mr. Becerra.

Over his long career in politics, his primary passion has been ramming through a radical, far-left agenda and using the power of his office to persecute his political enemies.

Mr. Becerra would be in charge of administering the Nation's health programs, but he has virtually no experience or expertise in healthcare. His only experience responding to the pandemic, as far as I can tell, has been his enforcement of California's excessive and traumatizing lockdowns over the last year.

Mr. Becerra has been California's top cop, overseeing the most draconian and unconstitutional series of lockdowns anywhere in our country. He has shuttered churches while liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries remain open. He has destroyed small, family-owned businesses while enriching massive corporations.

In the false name of public health, he has rigorously enforced unscientific and unproductive measures that have ruined the lives of Californians. Today, California's unemployment rate stands at 9 percent--45 percent higher than the national average, nearly two times higher than our unemployment rate in Arkansas. That is the result of bad policy. And jobless Californians have Xavier Becerra and Gavin Newsom to thank for their struggles.

If Mr. Becerra's record as attorney general is any indication, every American should be alarmed by how this nominee would fight the pandemic--not with science, compassion, or common sense but with crushing political force. Few Americans believe that California's lockdown commissar deserves a promotion. Unfortunately, the Senate may just give him one.

Mr. Becerra is also a vocal advocate for the socialist takeover of healthcare

known euphemistically as Medicare for All. He supports destroying union healthcare plans, crushing Medicare Advantage, and ultimately taking away your health insurance on the job, which covers, I would add, 158 million Americans. This disastrous boondoggle would cost $34 trillion and would inevitably result in the rationing of care, hurting senior citizens most of all. Medicare for All would, in reality, result in Medicare for None.

Last year, President Biden acknowledged that Medicare for All would yield massive tax hikes for middle-class families. Yet Joe Biden selected a supporter of this disastrous Medicare for All plan to be his top Cabinet official on healthcare.

And, of course, Mr. Becerra wouldn't be a Biden administration nominee if he didn't also support open borders. But he has gone further on open borders than even most of the other Biden administration officials, saying out loud what so many Democrats silently believe. He has openly argued for the decriminalization of illegal immigration. He has even stated with a straight face that illegal immigration does absolutely no harm at all, directly or indirectly, to American citizens. If Mr. Becerra really believes that, he is hopelessly naive and needs to get out a little more.

He can start by talking to the millions of Americans who are out of work or whose wages have stagnated thanks to competition from illegal aliens. He could also visit the graves of thousands of Americans killed by Mexican drugs and terrorized by gangs like MS-13. If confirmed, Mr. Becerra would oversee our Nation's response to the drug crisis and the maintenance of many migrant detention facilities. His radical open borders advocacy would make matters worse on both fronts. It would also fuel the ever-growing surge of unvetted, untested, and unvaccinated illegal aliens into our Nation, spreading the coronavirus in our communities just as it looks like we are about to turn the corner on this pandemic.

Finally, Mr. Becerra holds opinions on abortion that are unacceptable, unjust, and far outside the mainstream. As a Member of Congress, he voted in favor of partial-birth abortion--a disturbing and deadly procedure performed in the very last stages of pregnancy. As California's attorney general, he tried to destroy anyone who opposed his extreme position on this issue. He brought 15 felony charges against pro-life, undercover journalists who exposed Planned Parenthood's illegal and disgusting sale of baby body parts--a move that even the liberal Los Angeles Times called ``disturbingly aggressive.'' He defended an unconstitutional law that would have forced pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to advertise for abortions, the very thing it is their mission to oppose--something that the U.S. Supreme Court called a ``serious threat'' to freedom of speech.

He even sued to force an order of nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, to purchase healthcare coverage that violated their sincerely held religious beliefs. And when he was asked about all of this in the Senate, like any bully, he tried to cover it up, denying that he sued the Little Sisters at all. If he will sue the Little Sisters, then what will he do to you and your family?

A few of my colleagues have indicated that they will vote for Mr. Becerra, despite disagreeing with these radical views. Perhaps they think those are just his personal beliefs, that he won't practice what he preaches. Perhaps they think he won't undermine pro-life protections like the Hyde Amendment and use his office to persecute Catholic nuns. I would ask those colleagues to look at Mr. Becerra's record, not the words he utters to get their vote, and then to reconsider their support because any honest assessment will show that Xavier Becerra is a partisan cultural warrior who has consistently abused his office to punish his enemies and to enact far-left policies in Congress and in California.

If the Senate confirms his nomination, they will be empowering Mr. Becerra to bring California's lockdowns, lawsuits, and liberal policies to all of our 50 States, and that would be a disaster for our country.

I will close with a simple request for President Biden, who campaigned on unity and ending a terrible pandemic: Merely do what you said you would do. Send us a nominee who will unify the country and bring consensus, not one who will scrape by on the slimmest of majorities. Send us a nominee who is actually a healthcare expert, and the Senate will gladly consider them. Xavier Becerra is not that nominee, and the Senate should reject his nomination resoundingly.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on Judge Merrick Garland's nomination to be Attorney General of the United States. I will oppose this nomination. I was open-minded at first about Judge Garland's nomination. He has long had a reputation as a fair- minded judge. But since being nominated, my confidence in Judge Garland has been undermined--first, by his evasive, haughty refusal to answer some of the most basic questions we would expect from an Attorney General, the kind of evasion he would never allow in his own courtroom, so why should we allow it in the U.S. Senate? And, second, when he did answer questions, he sounded more like a liberal ideologue who had embraced the radical agenda of the Democratic Party's far-left base.

If confirmed, I am afraid that he will enable extremists in the Department of Justice to undermine our police, our Constitution, and our rule of law. This weak-on-crime nominee will fan the flames of our Nation's drug crisis, border crisis, and violent crime crisis. And he has made clear that on the greatest challenges facing the Department, he will cede the reins to the radical, far-left culture warriors that President Biden has nominated to be some of his top deputies. Our Nation simply cannot afford Judge Garland as our Attorney General.

In the last 12 months on record, over 83,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, more than any year in history. Drug overdoses killed more Americans in a single year than the Vietnam war and the War on Terror combined. Yet Judge Garland plans to reduce prison sentences for drug dealers, traffickers, and gang members.

Judge Garland appears to believe that these merchants of misery engage in a victimless trade, but virtually every family and community in our Nation bears the scars that prove otherwise. Whether it is the disabled child, addicted parent, suffering sibling, recovering neighbor, or deceased friend, the victims of drug crime are everywhere we look. Drug traffickers are hardly engaged in a nonviolent offense. Their practice is intimidation; their product is poison; and their customer service is the barrel of a gun. With Judge Garland as Attorney General, these criminals will go free. Their business will boom, and the violence and death in our streets will continue.

It is not just fentanyl and heroin driving this crisis anymore. In the wake of weakening our drug trafficking laws under ill-advised laws like the First Step Act, drug overdose deaths are linked to other drugs as well, like cocaine, which is sharply increasing. Cocaine is now outpacing heroin as a leading cause of drug overdoses, and meth is outpacing both. Judge Garland will release these criminals back onto the streets in the middle of the worst drug epidemic in our Nation's history. These pain profiteers don't deserve leniency and should be kept far away from the communities they have victimized. Many should, frankly, count themselves lucky that they are not charged with murder.

And while Judge Garland endorses President Biden's call for racial equity--not equality, but equity--Judge Garland's agenda will hurt vulnerable minority communities most of all. Drug overdose deaths disproportionately affect minority communities, as does violent crime. Judge Garland's confirmation, like the confirmation of some of his top deputies, would be a gift to the cartels, street gangs, and drug trafficking networks that perpetuate violence and the destruction we see in our streets. And even those who want the government to go easier on drug dealers and drug traffickers should be concerned about Judge Garland's stated plan to dismantle mandatory minimum sentences for drug traffickers. In addition to deterrence, one important justification for creating sentence ranges was to reduce racial disparities in how minority drug traffickers were sentenced.

But Judge Garland doesn't stop there. He also supports President Biden's extreme open borders amnesty agenda. At Judge Garland's confirmation hearing, he was asked if entering the country illegally should be a crime. You would think that would be a very simple question. But Judge Garland responded that he hadn't ``thought about'' it--hadn't ``thought about'' it. It stretches the bounds of belief that a Federal judge who has been on the bench for almost a quarter century hadn't thought about that question--or that any American with common sense who believes in our borders and believes in our sovereignty hadn't thought whether it should be a crime to cross our border illegally. But, to give him the benefit of the doubt, I asked, in a written question after the hearing--had nearly a week to think about it; it seems like it is a pretty easy research question: Should illegally entering our country be a crime? And he said, conveniently, even then, that he hadn't thought about it. Judge Garland also refused to say whether illegal alien gang members or illegal aliens who have assaulted U.S. citizens should be deported if a judge orders it.

Judge Garland's silence shows that he will, at best, meekly abide by the

administration's irrational immigration agenda. He will help transform zero tolerance into total tolerance of crime, and his inaction will only further advance the administration's recruit-and-release policies at our border, where we don't just allow illegal aliens into our country after catching them at the border; we go back and find them in Mexico and invite them to return to the border and then release them into the country.

This will attract an ever-growing surge of illegal migration and will result in more drugs and criminal aliens entering our country, as we see with the Biden border crisis growing worse every day.

Of course, the vast majority of meth, heroin, and cocaine--and a large quantity of fentanyl--is smuggled across the southern border each year. As our border facilities and personnel are overwhelmed by the Biden border surge, our security will falter and even more drugs will pour into our Nation.

Hardened criminals will accompany the flood of drugs from the Rio Grande. Thousands of confirmed and suspected gang members cross the southern border into our country, and even more will exploit the open border policies that Judge Garland will have a hand in creating. This will fuel skyrocketing violence in our Nation.

Last year, we experienced the largest single increase in murder in American history--the largest single increase in murders in our country's history. Preliminary data from the FBI indicates that there was a 20-percent increase--20-percent increase--in murder nationwide. In big cities, it was even worse. Murders rose in Atlanta by 60 percent; in Chicago, by 50 percent; in New York City, by 45 percent; and in Washington, DC, by 40 percent. There were also, I would add, over 500 violent riots last year that injured over 2,000 law enforcement officers.

Our police need our support more than ever before, but they wouldn't get it from a Garland Department of Justice. Personnel is policy, and Judge Garland has allowed two leftwing radicals to be selected as his chief lieutenants in the Department of Justice. Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke both support defunding, disarming, and defaming our police. They stand with the perpetrators of crime, not with the victims of it. There is little doubt that Judge Garland would empower these leftwing radicals embedded inside the Department.

In response to written questions from the Judiciary Committee, Judge Garland also responded with some variation of ``I don't know''; ``I haven't studied the issue''; ``I am not familiar''; ``I haven't thought about it''; ``I am not aware of,'' or refused to comment altogether over 250 times. Again, this is a sitting Federal judge of almost a quarter century with a vast retinue of the country's best lawyers at his disposal for a week to answer written questions, and over 250 times he couldn't answer the question. That was more than one-third of the colleagues--or more than one-third of the questions that I and my colleagues asked him.

Judge Garland may not have thought about these questions or thought about how to run the Justice Department, but I bet Ms. Gupta and Ms. Clarke have, and they will gladly fill this void of purpose with their radical ideology. The Garland Justice Department will make America less safe.

At the same time, Judge Garland would work to weaken our Second Amendment. At his hearing, he repeatedly refused to explain how he would deal with the Second Amendment. While he acknowledged accurately that it would be tough to overturn the Supreme Court's ruling in Washington, DC, v. Heller, which affirmed Americans' constitutional right to keep and bear arms, he said that he ``can't promise''--he ``can't promise''--that he won't try to overturn it. He also said he just doesn't know whether President Biden has the authority to ban certain semiautomatic rifles, some of the most popular sporting firearms today. He doesn't know if President Biden has the authority to ban them by Executive order. He has also said he is just not familiar with whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives-- which would report to him if he is confirmed, I would remind everyone-- would have the authority to indefinitely delay approving gun sales to Americans who have not had any flags show up in their background checks. Once again, Judge Garland demonstrated through his evasion that he would bow to the radical left to the detriment of normal law-abiding American citizens.

I urge every Senator who believes in the Second Amendment and the rule of law and who cares about stopping crime in our streets to reject Judge Merrick Garland's nomination for Attorney General.

Now is not the time for weakness, evasion, and obfuscation from our Nation's foremost law enforcement officer. We need strength, resolve, and certainty. Our Nation needs and deserves a better nominee for Attorney General. I will oppose his nomination.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, most Americans know that there are two sexes, male and female, and that sex is rooted in science. Most Americans also know that we ought to treat all people, including those who feel conflicted about their gender, with respect and dignity, without sacrificing the truth in the process.

These beliefs are now under attack from some of the most powerful corporations in the history of the world. Just a few weeks ago, while House Democrats were passing their far-left Equality Act, the leftwing media was busy canceling Dr. Seuss, Amazon quietly erased a book from its online store without notice, without warning, without explanation. That book is ``When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment by Ryan Anderson.''

Amazon claims it banned this book for violating its brandnew policy on ``hate speech.'' Of course, that excuse is arbitrary and patently false. You can go to Amazon right now--right now you can go to Amazon on your phone or on your computer and buy copies of actually hateful books. You can get Hitler's ``Mein Kampf'' shipped to your door with free Amazon Prime delivery. You can get the ``Unabomber Manifesto,'' written by a serial killer who murdered 3 people and maimed 23 others. You can even get ``How to Blow up a Pipeline.'' I assume the title speaks for itself. All those books are available for purchase on Amazon right now, one click away. But Amazon wants you to believe that a conservative book is somehow beyond the pale, unacceptably hateful, literally worse than Hitler, as they like to say.

My office asked Amazon to send us the exact passages from ``When Harry Became Sally'' that it deemed so hateful that it couldn't even sell the book on its website. Shocking surprise, I know, they never got back to us. That is because the book doesn't say anything hateful. To the contrary, the book makes very clear that we should treat people who feel conflicted about their gender with the same respect and compassion that are due to all people. To quote the author, ``We should have abundant compassion and charity and patience with people who feel this form of alienation. But we also need to insist on telling the truth . . . ''

That is not hate. That is far from it. The author's real offense, his only offense, was telling the truth. He said calmly and compassionately that boys are boys and girls are girls. And the richest man in the world banned his book from his company's platform.

But, of course, you don't have to agree with the commonsense historic understanding of gender in order to acknowledge how dangerous it is for one of the biggest corporations in the history of the world to start banning books because while Amazon's censorship may start with conservative views, it could easily mutate to censor other views that offend Jeff Bezos and his bottom line. Perhaps Amazon will come after union organizers next since they are trying to bust up a union election in Alabama or maybe environmental activists or maybe trustbusters, since so many people are talking about potential antitrust violations in the world of Big Tech.

And even if Amazon goes only this far and no further, the damage of free

speech has already been done. Books like ``When Harry Became Sally'' won't get published anymore. Writers who hold unfashionable opinions that just a few days ago were considered basic mainstream views of a large majority of Americans, may decide to self-censor, stay silent.

The virtual book burning may spread to other companies. Maybe Amazon will put a book burning app on its Kindle so readers can drag books from its catalog into the virtual bonfire.

Political correctness will only grow more oppressive if its enforcers, like Amazon, don't face some consequences for their actions. Amazon, for instance, makes billions of dollars each year hosting websites and storing data for the government. Almost all of Amazon's profit is made in these enterprise services, not in its consumer-facing retail business. Those are our tax dollars flowing to a company that uses its power to censor the beliefs of a large majority of Americans. Perhaps it is time for lawmakers to reconsider whether these contracts are in the best interest of our country.

I also note Amazon is the country's largest bookseller, selling three out of every four e-books in America. It is time for lawmakers to evaluate whether Amazon's practices are consistent with our antitrust laws or whether antitrust laws need to be updated to address this type of behavior from a monopolistic firm. We better hurry, though, because maybe they will ban all books on antitrust and monopoly behavior before we have a chance to study the question.

I will close by quoting from the book that Amazon banned, which predicted the very events we are witnessing here today:

If trans activists succeed in their political agenda, our

nation's children will be indoctrinated in a harmful

ideology, and some will live by its own lies about their own

bodies, at great harm to themselves physically,

psychologically, and socially. Lives will be ruined, but

pointing out the damage will be forbidden. Dissent from the

transgender worldview will be punished in schools,

workplaces, and medical clinics. Trying to live in accordance

with the truth will be made harder.

This is not a fight over hate or bigotry, respect or compassion. It is a battle over truth itself, the truth of who we are as human beings and the fundamental freedom to speak that truth or any other truth without fear.

Throughout our history, Americans have never surrendered to an oppressive tyranny of opinion, whether a majority or, in this case, a small but highly influential minority, and we won't be cowed in silence today. We will fight for what is true. We will fight for the freedom to say it. No matter what the cultural forces arrayed against us do, we will never back down.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I have a motion to commit at the desk, and I ask that it be reported.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 minutes of debate, equally divided.

Mr. President, my motion to commit is to send this bill back to the Finance Committee to adopt the commonsense rule that should have been in there from the beginning that we are not going to give bailout money to sanctuary States and sanctuary cities.

Now, to whom are the States and cities giving sanctuary? Criminal illegal aliens. Where is the sanctuary for their victims? Why should cities and States that refuse to cooperate with Federal law enforcement receive Federal bailouts? They should not.

I reserve my time.

Mr. President.

The immigration system is broken because the Democratic Party will not enforce our borders. You see that with the Biden border crisis right now. We can fix one small part of it by stopping Federal bailout dollars from going to cities and States that refuse to cooperate with Federal law enforcement.

Vote on Motion to Commit

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Madam President, today, the Senate will vote on Linda Thomas-Greenfield's nomination to be Ambassador to the United Nations. I will oppose her nomination.

The United Nations is a troubled institution. Too often, the U.N. is, at its best, a feckless debating society, but at worst--and that is more common, sadly--an apologist for tyranny, corruption, and hypocrisy.

Our Ambassador must give voice to our interests, priorities, and the conscience of the United States and regularly confront our enemies on the world stage. This position requires foresight, judgment, and courage, the courage to speak truth in a den of liars.

Unfortunately, Ms. Thomas-Greenfield hasn't demonstrated these qualities when it comes to the world's most notorious liar: Communist China.

Little more than a year ago, Ms. Thomas-Greenfield delivered a speech at a China-funded Confucius Institute at Savannah State University. In her remarks, she could have condemned China's economic regression, denounced China for flooding our streets with deadly drugs like fentanyl, objected to their ethnic cleansing of Uighurs and Tibetans, called for Beijing to uphold its international commitments to Hong Kong's autonomy, or criticized their predatory lending practices in Africa.

Instead, she praised China. She excused their behavior in Africa and said there is much the United States can learn from China. It is beyond me how anyone, especially a seasoned diplomat, could utter such a grotesque line. America has nothing to learn from a genocidal, Communist tyranny.

She excused China's debt-trap diplomacy and said she could ``see no reason'' why China couldn't help spread values that included ``good governance, gender equity, and the rule of law.'' Gender equity? Would that include China's barbaric one-child policy, which led to the elimination of millions of unborn girls over decades of sex-selection abortion or China's policy of systematic rape of religious and ethnic minority women in Xinjiang Province? Gender equity, indeed.

She showed a similar lack of tact and understanding on the subject of trade with China. She asserted that the United States and China should simply ``come to an understanding'' without uttering a sentence, not a word, not even a syllable of criticism of China's unrestricted and illegal economic aggression against our workers and our companies.

She also asserted that ``we are not in a [new] Cold War'' with China. This statement, along with the rest of her speech, shows a strategic blindness that is disqualifying for a senior foreign policy post.

Ms. Thomas-Greenfield has expressed regret for her speech, and some people say a single speech shouldn't define an entire career, but this isn't some ancient speech dug up from a long-lost era by political opponents. She gave it just 16 months ago. The whole world knew--and certainly a career diplomat would have known--about China's long, dark, lamentable catalog of crimes against America, international order and stability, and its own people.

And these remarks were not isolated mistakes or a slip of the tongue. This nominee has spent years minimizing the threat of China's actions in Africa and has spoken repeatedly in favor--in favor of China's Belt and Road Initiative, which is a transparent ploy to spread Communist Chinese influence into other countries.

And the Biden administration's attempts to excuse this speech have done her no favors. After her speech came to light, President Biden's transition team stated that Ms. Thomas-Greenfield was ``repulsed'' by what she saw at the Confucius Institute. Really? Repulsed? If that were true, why didn't she speak out then? Why did she keep the money from the speech?

Either President Biden's team is misleading the public or this nominee failed to speak up when it mattered most on another occasion. Neither possibility reflects favorably on the administration or the nominee.

To be honest, I doubt that Ms. Thomas-Greenfield or the administration are particularly ``repulsed'' by Confucius Institutes. That is why, after all, in his first week in office, President Biden withdrew a rule that would force universities to disclose their secret agreements with Confucius Institutes.

This was an unnecessary, undeserved, and unwise gift to China, as well as a payoff to higher education, a client and a patron of the Democratic Party. Many colleges have become addicted to Chinese Communist money, and the Biden administration isn't about to shut off that gravy train. After all, Joe Biden's son Hunter takes Chinese money, so how could he object to liberal universities taking Chinese money?

I will conclude by saying that in the last month, we have witnessed a gradual erosion of America's resolve in confronting China. This nomination is just another signal of weakness to Beijing. Supporters of Ms. Thomas-Greenfield's nomination can pretend that this dove has talons, but any fairminded observer, and especially those in Beijing, know that is not true. I will oppose the nomination

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment, No. 66, and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, last year, in certain fringe quarters of the Democratic Party, it seemed popular to call for packing the Supreme Court--for expanding the number of Justices on the Court--because you don't like their political rulings. Now, obviously, all Republicans opposed such a radical idea. Yet many Democratic politicians, to include Joe Biden and to include a few Senators in this Chamber tonight, contorted themselves to avoid taking a position on this issue. They twisted themselves into pretzels on the campaign trail to simply say that we ought not pack the Supreme Court because we don't like their rulings.

I offer a simple amendment, an amendment that is backed by famous liberals like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that we should not pack the Supreme Court.

Now, I understand the Democrats are going to raise a point of order, saying this is not germane--yet more contortions to avoid taking a simple stance on this issue. So I would invite my Democratic colleagues who have said they don't want to pack the Court to simply waive this point of order, and let's have an up-or-down vote on one of the most fundamental tenets of the rule of law--that you do not pack the Court because you don't like the way they rule.

I yield back my time, and I encourage your support.

Mr. President, in accordance with section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and the waiver provisions of all applicable budget resolutions, I move to waive all applicable sections of that act and applicable budget resolutions for purposes of amendment No. 66.

Vote on Motion to Waive

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at the end of my remarks the Senator from Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe, be recognized.