Mazie Hirono

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Very briefly, I simply want to ask my Republican colleagues whether they believe that healthcare should be accessible and affordable for all. Apparently, they do not, because they have offered absolutely nothing to make sure healthcare is accessible and affordable for all. In fact, in their continuing efforts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act and, in fact, eliminate the Affordable Care Act, they would rather have a healthcare system where millions of Americans are without healthcare at all. I yield the floor.

Ms. HIRONO

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I am glad to join Senator Stabenow, who was on the floor just now, to respond to the shameful lies and gross exaggerations that have been claimed by some on the other side of the aisle. Earlier this week, we voted on legislation that some of my colleagues claimed was needed to outlaw infanticide--the killing of babies. How absurd. It is, and has always been, illegal to kill any human, including infants. So what was in that legislation we voted on earlier this week? To honestly discuss the bill, we need to have a factually and medically accurate conversation about abortion. A healthy fetus becomes potentially able to live outside the womb at about 24 weeks of pregnancy. Very few abortions occur after that--less than 1 percent--and generally are performed either because the fetus has a fatal condition or the pregnant woman's life or health is at severe risk. These are heartbreaking situations involving very wanted pregnancies--hardly the time for the heavy hand of government to reach into our wombs. Under this bill, doctors will be required to resuscitate infants born with fatal conditions, even if the parents did not want these measures that could prolong their infant's suffering and instead wanted to spend the limited time they had with their baby comforting their child and holding them close. How dare anyone pretend to know what care is best for these families instead of trusting them and their doctors to decide. How dare Congress interject itself into a decision we have no business deciding for others. Yet this is exactly what this bill would have done. I encourage my colleagues to read stories from women who have been speaking up about their experiences with abortion later in pregnancy. These stories are usually found on the internet as well as in the national press, as more women feel under attack and are coming forward to tell their stories. Perhaps, in hearing from these women, my colleagues will realize what these women need is compassion, not condemnation. Stories like that of Dana Weinstein, who bravely told her story to CNN. Years ago, Dana and her husband learned at 31 weeks that their daughter's brain had a severe defect. Doctors told the couple their daughter would not be able to suck or swallow and would most likely suffer from uncontrollable seizures upon birth. They heard what a resuscitation order would entail. They listened to what an existence, short-lived or otherwise, would look like. They were briefed on hospice care. After the diagnosis, the kicks in Dana's belly, which had given her so much joy, became unbearable. She feared her daughter was seizing and may be suffering. Ultimately, Dana and her husband decided to get an abortion. For this baby they loved, it felt like--in their words--``a more peaceful path for her passing.'' These are the stories. Compassion and understanding are what is needed in these instances, but instead of compassion, what my colleagues have offered this week is inflammatory political rhetoric and shaming and intimidating women and their providers who care for them in an attempt to score partisan points. President Trump--never missing an opportunity to score partisan points--weighed in on Twitter claiming that Senate Democrats ``don't mind executing babies after birth.'' Today former Governor Scott Walker said to a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference that ``people are taking already-born babies from the hospital and aborting them there''--a comment that doesn't even make sense. Republican National Committee chair, Ronna McDaniel, chimed in at the same conference, calling the choice that women like Dana make murder. These charges are false, incendiary, and this sort of language is intended to incite the Republican Party's base. It emboldens violence against abortion providers--violence which nearly doubled from 33 reported death threats or threats of harm in 2016 to 62 in 2017, according to the National Abortion Federation. The hard truth is, the Republican Party hurts women. One of the ways they are doing this is by working as hard as they can to set up barriers or to eliminate entirely safe and legal abortions wherever they can. They demonize women who face the heartbreaking situation of needing an abortion later in pregnancy, oftentimes for medical reasons. They want to cut off crucial healthcare dollars to providers who even discuss abortion with patients. This is a gag rule that this administration is seeking to impose. They create loopholes to allow businesses to exclude coverage for contraception for workers, and to make sure that these and all of their other efforts stick, they pack the Federal courts with a line of aggressively anti-choice judges to uphold Federal Agency actions and State laws restricting abortion access. Doing the bidding of these rightwing ideologue supporters like the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, Donald Trump has sent us judicial nominee after nominee with records of attacking a woman's right to choose as laid out in the Supreme Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade and restated in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. These nominees come before the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which I serve, and parrot the line provided for them by the Trump administration. When asked if they will respect precedent and uphold Roe v. Wade, they say they will ``follow the law.'' Then, when they get confirmed, they are in a position, with their lifetime appointments, to do exactly the opposite. The prime and most dangerous example of this kind of bait and switch is Brett Kavanaugh--a notoriously rightwing political lawyer appointed by George W. Bush to the second highest court in the United States--the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Kavanaugh was not even on Donald Trump's original so-called short list of possible Supreme Court nominees--not the list released before the 2016 election and not the first list released thereafter. No, Kavanaugh only found a place on that list after he wrote a harsh dissent in a case involving a young refugee's right to an abortion. A minor, then 17 years old, was being kept in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services because she had entered the United States without documentation. Where she was held in Texas, in order to access abortion services, a minor must have parental consent or receive permission from the judge. This is called a judicial bypass--to proceed without that parental consent. In this case, called Garza v. Hargan, the young woman did go through the process of going to court and receiving a judicial bypass. She had people willing and able to transport her and to pay for the health services she needed, but the radical Trump appointee in charge, well known for his anti-abortion views, decided it would be in her best interest to find adult sponsors for her first, presumably to help her make a decision, but the Texas court had already decided she could make her own decision, and she did. She challenged the Trump appointee and his Agency, and ultimately a majority of the DC Circuit agreed with her that she had the legal right to an abortion and the Federal Government could not delay any further. Brett Kavanaugh, sitting on that circuit, disagreed and wrote a dissent, which must have captured the attention of those in charge of Donald Trump's Supreme Court short list because not long after his name appeared on that list. What did he write to earn his place on the list and eventually a nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court? He wrote a dissenting opinion that falsely characterized the Garza case as one about parental consent, which we know was not so because a judicial bypass was already in place. He wrote the dissent using the code words of the extreme anti-choice and anti-women wing of the Republican Party. He accused the majority on that court of creating ``a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.'' He was wrong. There was no new right being created. He falsely claimed that by permitting the abortion ``[t]he majority's decision represents a radical extension of the Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence.'' He was wrong again. The majority decision was correct under Roe v. Wade. He wrote it was not an undue burden for this young woman to be prevented from getting an abortion until a sponsor family could be found for her. This was not even a legal argument, but he based his dissent on it. That is the dissent that moved Brett Kavanaugh to the head of the line on the short list for a nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he sits. So when he came to the Judiciary Committee for a hearing, some Senators--myself included--were rightly skeptical that he would respect precedent if confirmed. At his hearing, Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein asked Judge Kavanaugh about Roe v. Wade and its status as settled precedent. He testified that Roe was ``settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis.'' He further went on: ``Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirms Roe and did so by considering the stare decisis factors. So Casey now becomes a precedent on precedent.'' It sure sounds like someone who will apply the precedents of Roe and Casey and others who rely on them, doesn't it? That is not so. The very first opportunity he got, Brett Kavanaugh, as Supreme Court Justice, voted against following precedent. Not 4 months after his confirmation, Justice Kavanaugh voted in the minority in a Supreme Court case called June Medical Services v. Gee to allow a restrictive, anti-abortion law in Louisiana to take effect. This law would have so restricted access to abortion that only one provider would have been left in the entire State of Louisiana of 4.7 million people. Even Chief Justice Roberts voted with the majority to block the law. That is because it was clear from recent precedent in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt that such restrictions don't meet constitutional standards. Justice Kavanaugh's cavalier attitude to the burden that he would put on a woman's ability to exercise their constitutional right is no surprise. His callous disregard for the way unwanted pregnancies can change the lives of women and children is not unexpected, and his willingness to hew to the party line of his supporters and ignore the assurances he gave the Senate is simply par for the course with Trump judicial nominees. This is what they do. It is an abuse of power, and women across the country are paying for it. Why do my colleagues across the aisle use this Chamber, time and again, to bring forward political shams that shame and retraumatize women who face profoundly heartbreaking situations? The will of over half of this country is 67 percent of Americans support Roe v. Wade and access to safe and legal abortion. Sixty-seven percent of Americans support a woman's right to choose. How is it that Republicans continue to bring forward bill after bill and amendment after amendment that goes against a constitutionally protected right of women--of women? This is why I say Republicans hurt women. I am proud of the vote I cast in opposition to the sham bill we voted on this week. My vote was rooted in fact and understanding about what an abortion in later pregnancy actually means. It was rooted in the understanding that when faced with these difficult situations, these decisions are best left to a woman and her doctor. These decisions should not rest with the U.S. Senate. My vote was cast with a clear understanding that if unchecked or unchallenged, this administration and this Senate will continue to assault a woman's right to choose and chip away at it bit by bit, where it will end up being a nullity, and that is what they want. I will continue to stand in opposition to attacks that seek to limit the personal freedom of women across the country and what would be more of a personal freedom for a woman than to exercise control over her own body? I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. HIRONO

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

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, in many ways, Andrew Wheeler is a perfect example of a Cabinet appointment in the Trump era--conflicted, unethical, and hostile to the mission of the Agency he was nominated to lead. He shouldn't have been confirmed to this position as Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, and he certainly shouldn't be confirmed to lead the Agency on a permanent basis. Prior to his service at EPA, Mr. Wheeler spent 8 years lobbying for many of the special interests that he is targeted or charged with regulating. For example, in his work for Murray Energy, whose president, Robert Murray, was among the largest donors to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, Mr. Wheeler worked to kill a rule that would have prevented coal companies from dumping mining waste into American streams and waterways. As a lobbyist for Murray Energy, Mr. Wheeler also fought tooth and nail against President Obama's Clean Power Plan, a forward-looking initiative that would have substantially reduced carbon emissions from power generation. Mr. Wheeler's client, Robert Murray, was present front and center as former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt signed an Executive order to begin the process of dismantling the Clean Power Plan. I don't think that was a coincidence. After Mr. Wheeler's confirmation as the EPA's Deputy Administrator, he assured Bloomberg News in June 2018: ``If I lobbied on something, I don't think it's appropriate for me to participate [in policymaking].'' Of course, he was lobbying on a lot of things for years. In fact, Mr. Wheeler participated in meetings with three former clients with interests before the EPA. Holding these meetings with former clients is a clear conflict of interest and ethical lapse. Andrew Wheeler fits right in with Donald Trump's version of ``draining the swamp,'' which is more like ``come on in, the water's fine.'' We have already had one EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, resign in disgrace over ethical lapses and potentially illegal behavior in office. We don't need another. Mr. Wheeler's work at the EPA is also consistent with the hostility of Trump Cabinet officials to the core mission of the Department or the Agency that they are appointed to lead. The EPA is the primary Agency charged with safeguarding the environment and protecting public health from dangerous and toxic chemicals. At its core, the EPA is tasked with making sure we have safe air to breathe and clean water to drink. Yet, during his time as Deputy Administrator, Mr. Wheeler has championed a deregulatory agenda that fundamentally undermines the EPA's core mission. Under Mr. Wheeler's leadership, the EPA has proposed undermining the legal authority of the mercury and air toxics standard to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic air emissions from coal and oil burning powerplants. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, mercury exposure can damage the nervous, digestive, and immune systems and is a serious threat to child development. The EPA's current efforts to reverse these emission standards, in place since 2012, come after utilities across the country had already invested resources in reducing mercury emissions by 90 percent. Under Mr. Wheeler's leadership, the Trump administration has also proposed a dramatic weakening of fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars. Their proposed rule would increase air pollution from vehicles and would result in Hawaii families ending up paying thousands more dollars for gasoline to fill less efficient cars. Through his opposition to the Clean Power Plan and his efforts to repeal it at the EPA, Mr. Wheeler serves as a primary architect of the Trump administration's assault on climate science and their refusal to act decisively against climate change. This assault can also be seen in a new proposed rule from the EPA that would exclude rigorous, peer- reviewed scientific studies under the guise of promoting scientific transparency. At first glance, the rule sounds like something everyone should support, but like so many initiatives proposed by this administration, the rule's true intent is much more sinister. Insisting that policymaking rely only on studies that make all of their data public would exclude studies that rely on confidential medical information that by law cannot be made public. Limiting the factual basis on which the EPA can make decisions in this manner would have a catastrophic impact on public health. If this rule had been in effect in 1993, the ``Six Cities'' study by the Harvard School of Public Health would never have transformed the way we regulate air pollution in this country. The study showed that Americans living in cities with more air pollution have shorter lifespans than Americans living in cities with less air pollution. Using confidential medical information, the study conclusively demonstrated that fine particulate matter that is smaller than 2.5 microns is exceptionally deadly to human beings. These findings, which have been backed up in subsequent studies, provide the basis for cost- benefit analyses done by EPA for future rules regulating air pollution. Undermining this kind of evidence-based policymaking would give industry the green light to pollute with fewer consequences. This proposed rule is consistent with an administration-wide effort to promote ignorance in the face of the real threat climate change poses to national security, public health, and public safety. Climate change is an issue where ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is dangerous. The President's own top security officials agree. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, for example, issued a new worldwide threat that concluded that ``climate hazards'' like extreme weather, wildfires, droughts, and acidifying oceans are, ``threatening infrastructure, health and water and food security.'' In 2017, then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that ``climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating.'' He went on to say that ``climate change is a challenge that requires a broader whole-of- government government response.'' Instead of accepting the conclusions of his top national security officials, Donald Trump is following the recommendation of William Happer, a notorious climate denier and now a Senior Director on the NSC, to establish a new Presidential Committee on Climate Security. Dr. Happer is particularly notorious for his assertion that ``the demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler. Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so are the Jews. Anyone who makes this kind of outrageous analogy should not be entrusted to lead anything on climate security, in my view. No one should doubt that the President and Dr. Happer have a preordained outcome in mind. They want to legitimize ignorance and denial of climate change and abandon tens of millions of Americans to the disastrous impacts of climate change in the coming decades. I repeat, with climate change, ignorance is not bliss. It is dangerous. It is dangerous for a State like Hawaii that would be the hardest hit by the impact of climate change. With extreme weather, ocean acidification, coral bleaching, and rising seas, climate change poses an existential threat to our State. It is one of the reasons Hawaii has implemented some of the most ambitious and aggressive policies to combat climate change in the country. Hawaii was the first State to separately ratify the Paris climate agreement and has set an ambitious goal of becoming carbon neutral and generating 100 percent of our power from renewable sources by 2045. Hawaii's ambitious effort to confront climate change and the success we have already seen in moving toward our goals demonstrate that we can embrace similarly ambitious policies at the national level. It is one of the reasons I have signed on as a cosponsor of the Green New Deal--an aspirational effort to transform our economy to combat climate change. In the weeks since the plan was introduced, we have endured all kinds of mocking outrage from people who would rather stick their heads in the sand as science and fact deniers. They paint the Green New Deal as something scary and dangerous for the country. What is really scary and dangerous are people like them who deny that climate change is real and refuse to do anything about it in their steadfast support and alliance with the fossil fuel industry. History will not be kind to them. Rejecting the nomination of Andrew Wheeler to serve as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, we can take one step forward in the fight against dangerous ignorance. I yield the floor.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to express my support for the Child Care for Working Families Act, which I was proud to introduce earlier this afternoon with Senators Murray, Casey, and 30 of our Senate colleagues. We know that investments in early childhood programs are foundational for future academic and social success. Yet child care remains unaffordable for too many working families in the United States. For parents worried about how to pay for basic living expenses like housing, food, education, and transportation, increasing child care costs can place a heavy burden on family budgets. As a young immigrant from Japan who was raised by a single, working mother, I understand the difficult decisions families have to make every day to survive. I have experienced these challenges firsthand. Yet, all these years later, for many Hawaii families, child care costs exceed all other expenses besides housing. On average, Hawaii parents can expect to pay $8,280 per year, or $690 per month, in child care expenses. These costs are 25 percent higher than they were just a decade ago, but wages have hardly kept pace. As a result, Hawaii families will dedicate around 11 percent of their family budget to child care--exceeding the government's standard for affordable care. Unfortunately, even for families that can afford child care, finding that needed care may be difficult. This is because our early childhood educators and child care workers are overworked and underpaid. In addition, there is a severe need for more facilities to accommodate the families that need them. The need is great, and that is why the Child Care for Working Families Act is so important. This legislation will make sure working families have access to high-quality, affordable early childhood programs. Specifically, the bill expands the existing Child Care and Development Block Grant program to guarantee that working and middle class families have access to affordable child care--ensuring that these families do not have to pay more than 7 percent of their income toward care, regardless of how many children they have. The bill also expands Head Start to promote universal preschool for young children. Additionally, the bill also addresses the need to support our early childhood workers by making sure teachers, care givers, and other workers responsible for our children are fairly-compensated and fully- supported with training and professional development opportunities. These are the core provisions of the bill, which represents an essential investment in the stability and prosperity of working families in Hawaii and across our Nation. Every family deserves access to high-quality, affordable early childhood programs, and we will continue fighting to make child care more affordable for all children. I thank my colleagues for their continued support in this effort, and urge support for this important legislation.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to express my support for the Child Care for Working Families Act, which I was proud to introduce earlier this afternoon with Senators Murray, Casey, and 30 of our Senate colleagues. We know that investments in early childhood programs are foundational for future academic and social success. Yet child care remains unaffordable for too many working families in the United States. For parents worried about how to pay for basic living expenses like housing, food, education, and transportation, increasing child care costs can place a heavy burden on family budgets. As a young immigrant from Japan who was raised by a single, working mother, I understand the difficult decisions families have to make every day to survive. I have experienced these challenges firsthand. Yet, all these years later, for many Hawaii families, child care costs exceed all other expenses besides housing. On average, Hawaii parents can expect to pay $8,280 per year, or $690 per month, in child care expenses. These costs are 25 percent higher than they were just a decade ago, but wages have hardly kept pace. As a result, Hawaii families will dedicate around 11 percent of their family budget to child care--exceeding the government's standard for affordable care. Unfortunately, even for families that can afford child care, finding that needed care may be difficult. This is because our early childhood educators and child care workers are overworked and underpaid. In addition, there is a severe need for more facilities to accommodate the families that need them. The need is great, and that is why the Child Care for Working Families Act is so important. This legislation will make sure working families have access to high-quality, affordable early childhood programs. Specifically, the bill expands the existing Child Care and Development Block Grant program to guarantee that working and middle class families have access to affordable child care--ensuring that these families do not have to pay more than 7 percent of their income toward care, regardless of how many children they have. The bill also expands Head Start to promote universal preschool for young children. Additionally, the bill also addresses the need to support our early childhood workers by making sure teachers, care givers, and other workers responsible for our children are fairly-compensated and fully- supported with training and professional development opportunities. These are the core provisions of the bill, which represents an essential investment in the stability and prosperity of working families in Hawaii and across our Nation. Every family deserves access to high-quality, affordable early childhood programs, and we will continue fighting to make child care more affordable for all children. I thank my colleagues for their continued support in this effort, and urge support for this important legislation.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I would like to first thank Senator Murray for her steadfast leadership in the fight to protect women's healthcare and for arranging this time for us to speak this afternoon. The legislation we are debating today is just the latest salvo in the far-right wing assault on a woman's constitutionally protected right to an abortion. With all due respect to my colleague from Nebraska who introduced this legislation, this bill is a solution in search of a problem. Contrary to what the proponents of this bill argue, it is and has always been a crime to harm or kill newborn babies. People guilty of this crime can already be charged and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Let's be clear. The Senate isn't debating this legislation today because there is an epidemic of infanticide in this country. There is not one. There isn't one. I can hardly say it because it is really not happening; therefore, this bill is a solution in search of a problem. Instead, we are indulging the majority's use of a false premise to inflame the public, shame women, and intimidate healthcare providers. When you strip away the ultraconservative rhetoric, you are left with a very simple argument from supporters of this legislation--that the moral judgment of rightwing politicians in Washington, DC, should supersede a medical professional's judgment and a woman's decision. Conservative politicians should not be telling doctors how they should care for their patients. Instead, women, in consultation with their families and doctors, are in the best position to determine their best course of care. In talking to healthcare providers in Hawaii, I have heard how this legislation and other bills like it in States across the country could force them to provide care that is unnecessary or even harmful to patients. The Hawaii Section of the College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists made this point persuasively in testimony recently submitted to our State legislature's house committee on health earlier this month. In opposing similar so-called born-alive abortion legislation heard in Hawaii's State Legislature--which didn't make it out of committee, by the way--the group of doctors wrote: We are physicians who provide compassionate, evidence-based care. By criminalizing healthcare providers, this law may actually reduce the number of healthcare providers (not just the surgeons, but anesthesiologists, nurses, midwives, office staff) willing to provide this care. But again, that is the actual intent of this bill. Reducing access to safe abortion care would threaten the health of women in Hawaii. We are the physicians who care for patients when they find out their very wanted, very loved baby has severe fetal anomalies. Families sometimes choose to end the pregnancy and provide their baby with palliative care rather than subject their baby to any suffering or futile efforts at resuscitation. These families face very difficult decisions about what their values are and what is best for their family; decisions that none of us has a right to make for them or judge them for. What they need in these moments is compassion and medically accurate information from healthcare providers free of judgment or politics. I couldn't agree more, and that is why I urge my colleagues to oppose this legislation. In just a few minutes, I expect the Senate will defeat this bill because it will fail to win the required 60 votes. Nevertheless, the threat to women's reproductive rights is intensifying in States and courtrooms all across the country. Over the past few years, States have enacted hundreds--hundreds--of laws that harm women's health and violate their constitutional right to an abortion. Mississippi enacted a prohibition on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Ohio have passed laws banning dilation and evacuation--D&E--an abortion procedure used usually during the second trimester. Indiana enacted a bevy of new abortion restrictions, including a law requiring every woman seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound--talk about invasive--and mandated she wait 18 hours after the ultrasound to have an abortion. Louisiana passed legislation requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. This law would result in only one abortion provider in a State of 4.7 million people. Advocates have recognized the harm these laws would have on women and have filed suits to block their implementation. Several lower courts have ruled these restrictions unconstitutional, and the cases are moving steadily through the courts of appeals en route to the Supreme Court. The Fifth Circuit, for example, will hear an appeal of a lower court's decision to block Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban, as well as an appeal from Texas to allow its ban on D&E procedures to go into effect. The Seventh Circuit upheld a lower court ruling striking down parts of Indiana's mandatory ultrasound and waiting period law. The Indiana attorney general has requested the Supreme Court to review this case. The Supreme Court temporarily stopped Louisiana's so-called admitting privileges law from taking effect on a 5-to-4 vote. This is the law I talked about before. This law would result in one abortion provider in a State of 4.7 million people. The Fifth Circuit will now hear an appeal on the merits of the law, which is virtually identical to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down in 2016--that was only a few short years ago--in the landmark Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt decision. The stakes in these court battles and the more than 20 other abortion-related cases making their way through the Federal court are incredibly high. Any one of them would provide the opening for the U.S. Supreme Court to finally fulfill the rightwing goal of overturning Roe v. Wade. It is with this central goal in mind that Donald Trump, Majority Leader McConnell, and complicit Republicans of Congress have been working to pack our Federal courts with ideologically driven judges groomed and handpicked by ultraconservative organizations like the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. Donald Trump has already confirmed 85 judges, including 30 to circuit courts and 2 to the U.S. Supreme Court. These judges comprise one-tenth of the Federal judiciary, with many more to come. In fact, a few weeks ago, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 42-- 42--judicial nominees out of committee in one markup. Those 42 comprise an additional 5 percent of the Federal judiciary. Less than 2 weeks ago, Justice Kavanaugh issued a strong dissent in the earlier mentioned Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision to block Louisiana's anti-choice law from taking effect. Using tortured reasoning, Justice Kavanaugh essentially argued that the Supreme Court should disregard its own precedent from only 2 years ago--that is the Whole Women's case I referred to--to allow the Louisiana law to take effect. His dissent signaled his strong antipathy to a woman's right to choose, just as his dissent in Garza v. Hargan did when he was on the DC Circuit. His dissent as a Justice this time demonstrated the emptiness of his promises to uphold Supreme Court precedent during his confirmation hearing. Justice Kavanaugh's promises then to follow precedent is like that of other Federalist Society-picked Trump nominees now packing our courts, offering little reassurance that nominees in fact will set aside their strongly held ideological views to be objective and fair as judges. Another case likely to make its way through Federal courts in the months and years ahead is a challenge to the Trump administration's new gag rule. This rule prohibits doctors and other clinicians participating in title X family planning programs from referring patients for, or even speaking about, abortions, even if their patients request such information. Nearly 20,000 Hawaii residents receive reproductive healthcare through title X. That is roughly the population of the city of Kapolei on Oahu. This attack on title X-funded agencies like Planned Parenthood is an end-run around Congress after Republicans have tried and failed dozens of times to end funding for Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood provides healthcare for millions--millions--of low-income women, men, and young people under title X. Why then do Republicans persist in trying to cut funding for Planned Parenthood? The constitutional rights of millions of women across the country are under serious and sustained attack, but even in these not normal times, I do see some hope. As State after State passes laws to limit access for a woman's right to choose, communities like Hawaii's are coming together to protect such access. Last week, I joined activists and staff from Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands as they opened their new medical center and administrative hub in downtown Honolulu. I was particularly energized to see how many young people, women and men, were there and engaged in the fight to protect our right to choice. I have learned over the years that battles we fought so hard to win never stay won. It is up to all of us to stay engaged and keep fighting for our constitutionally protected rights. I yield the floor.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, once again, I would like to respond to the Senator from Texas as he continues to hold the position that the Democrats on this side of the aisle simply oppose all of the President's nominees because they happen to be this lying President's nominees. That is not the case at all. Donald Trump has consistently thought to nominate people to his Cabinet who he believes will do his bidding and protect his interests. Once confirmed, if these Cabinet Secretaries displease him, out they go--Jeff Sessions, Jim Mattis, Rex Tillerson. The President believes William Barr will be an Attorney General who will protect him. Why does the President believe that? Because William Barr auditioned for this position. How? Mr. Barr wrote a highly unusual and factually unsupported, unsolicited 19-page memo to the Sessions Justice Department, arguing that Special Counsel Robert Mueller should not be permitted to interrogate the President about obstruction of justice. Nobody asked him to weigh in. He admits he didn't have any facts or inside information, and, in fact, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein chose not to discuss the matter with him, but Mr. Barr felt compelled not only to put his views in writing and send them to the Department of Justice, but he also made sure the President's lawyers knew his views. His memo sent a clear message to this President that he would protect Donald Trump from the Mueller probe. Once Donald Trump did nominate him for Attorney General, after having earlier offered him a job as his personal attorney--virtually the same job in Donald Trump's mind--Mr. Barr came to the Judiciary Committee and continued to signal his willingness to shield Trump from scrutiny. First, he refused to commit to follow the advice of career ethics officials on the question of recusal from the Trump investigations. He didn't want to make the same mistake Jeff Sessions did and open himself up to Presidential humiliation, no matter what the ethics experts recommended. Second, he refused to commit to make public Special Counsel Mueller's report. In both instances, he said he wanted to keep his options open, leave himself room to make his own decisions, and trust his ultimate judgment. While these answers were reassuring to the President, they certainly were not to those of us who want an Attorney General independent of a President who does not believe the rule of law applies to him. When asked at his hearing, Mr. Barr should have affirmatively committed to allowing all active investigations to continue until the prosecutors say they are done. That includes the special counsel's investigation, as well as the probes being conducted by, again, at least three U.S. attorney's offices. Instead, he gave his usual equivocal response. Of course, these are all active investigations having to do with Mr. Trump and his activities. Barr's position on these investigations is consistent with his views on the unitary Executive. He has long endorsed a view that the President is an all-powerful Executive, restrained by very little, least of all by Congress. This is a very dangerous view for the Attorney General to have, especially at a time when we have a President who attacks and undermines the rule of law. Mr. Barr's views on the Trump investigations and the unitary Executive aren't the only reason he should not be confirmed as Attorney General. His agreement with this administration's immigration policy also, in my view, disqualifies him. There was no daylight between Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions on immigration. Mr. Barr has given every indication that he will follow the lead of Jeff Sessions and of Matthew Whitaker in aggressively implementing, basically, Stephen Miller's extreme immigration policies. As George H.W. Bush's Attorney General, Barr played a key role in the Justice Department's policy in the early 1990s of detaining HIV- positive Haitian refugees at Guantanamo Bay. These refugees were held in prison-like living conditions and denied medical treatment until a Federal court ruled that their indefinite detention was illegal. More recently, in November 2018, Mr. Barr cowrote an op-ed with the title ``We Salute Jeff Sessions,'' full of praise for Sessions' tenure at DOJ, including on immigration. Mr. Barr praised Sessions for ``attack[ing] the rampant illegality that riddled our immigration system, breaking the record for prosecution of illegal-entry cases,'' and increasing prosecution of ``immigrants who reentered the country illegally'' by 38 percent. These statements are deeply concerning because as Attorney General, Mr. Sessions implemented policies that are abhorrent and in direct opposition to American values. Sessions instituted the zero-tolerance policy--a stain on our Nation that resulted in thousands of children being separated from their families, many of whom may never be reunited. This country, under Jeff Sessions, made instant orphans out of thousands of children. That is hardly a value that I think any of us can support. At his hearing, Mr. Barr also embraced key aspects of the Trump- Miller immigration agenda, including endorsing Donald Trump's vanity wall; attacking cities that refused to undermine their own anti-crime efforts by cooperating with the Federal Government's draconian policies; agreeing with the Trump administration's atrocious treatment of legal asylum seekers; joining President Trump in criticizing judges for blocking the President's Muslim travel ban; and astoundingly, refusing to say whether birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution, telling me, when I asked him this, that he hadn't ``looked at that legally.'' What is there to look at? The Fourteenth Amendment plainly states that all persons ``born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.'' Nullifying birthright citizenship would violate the Constitution and impact millions, but it is certainly something the President wants done. Mr. Barr's record and position on some of DOJ's other important responsibilities, such as enforcing civil rights laws, defending laws enacted by Congress, and protecting established constitutional rights, are unacceptable to me in the Nation's top law enforcement officer. Some examples include: Mr. Barr's refusal to admit that voter fraud is incredibly rare and his focusing on so-called voter fraud problems rather than voter suppression problems. States are very busy continuing to pass laws that should be attacked as a silly veiled effort at voter suppression, but that is not where Mr. Barr is; his stand that LGBTQ people are not protected from employment discrimination under Federal civil rights laws, contrary to what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and two Federal courts have held; his personal involvement in two challenges to major premises of the Affordable Care Act; his record of belief that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, including his statement that this landmark Supreme Court case guaranteeing a woman's right to choose, as he put it, was a ``secularist'' effort to ``eliminate laws that reflect traditional norms.'' At a time when the newest Trump-appointed Justices on the Supreme Court have demonstrated a hostility toward a woman's constitutional right to an abortion, such an anti-choice Attorney General is a danger to women. In some of his academic writings, William Barr expressed his dismay at the moral decay of American society, but when I asked him at his hearing, he testified that he didn't have any problems with a President who lies every single day and has undermined so many of America's most important institutions such as the FBI, the Justice Department, and the intelligence community. An Attorney General is a member of the President's Cabinet and is entitled to enforce the administration's policies, but in this instance, the policies this President pursues are often pushed beyond the constitutional breaking point and just as often are plain cruel; i.e., the separation of children from their parents at the border, making them instant orphans. The Attorney General's independence is critical in normal times, but it is absolutely essential in these times that are anything but normal that his independence cannot be questioned. Sadly, I cannot say that. I cannot support William Barr's nomination. I urge my colleagues to vote against his confirmation. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, as a fellow member of the Judiciary Committee, along with my colleague from Texas who just spoke, it is not our job as members of this committee to cast aspersions on the motives of those of us who ask probing questions of judicial nominees for lifetime positions. Many of these nominees have very strongly held and long-held views on a number of issues that may come before them as judges, and the probing questions we ask go to whether they can separate their ideological and personal views when they are confronted with issues they have taken public positions on and whether they can be fair and objective and follow the rule of law. Those are the kinds of probing questions we ask. I hope that when my friend from Texas mentioned that some of us seem to--that many of us on this side of the aisle will not vote for any nominee from this President, I certainly hope he wasn't referring to me because I have, in fact, voted for a number of those nominees.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, S. Res. 19 is unnecessary because no religious test is being applied to nominees for Federal office. If my colleague, the junior Senator from Nebraska, wants to embrace the alt- right's position by offering this resolution, that is his business. Rather than passing a resolution to address a problem that doesn't exist, we should focus on something real, like ending this totally unnecessary, unjustified shutdown that is harming millions of Americans. I ask unanimous consent for, statements supporting the separation of church and state from Catholics for Choice, People for the American Way, and several Hawaii residents.

Ms. HIRONO

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

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, this shutdown is not a negotiation situation. This is a hostage situation. For the past 3 weeks, Donald Trump has held 800,000 Federal workers, tens of thousands of Federal contractors, and thousands of small businesses hostage to extort money for his vanity wall under the pretext of an emergency at our southern border. Today, hundreds of thousands of hard-working civil servants felt the pain of missing a paycheck because this amoral, hostage-taking President is continuing to throw a temper tantrum. Most of us live in the real world, where paychecks are needed to keep a roof over our heads and food on our table. Growing up, my mother was the sole breadwinner for three of us kids. It would have been unthinkable, disastrous, for our family to miss even one paycheck from her low-wage job. When the President says that he can relate to the hundreds of thousands of families going without a paycheck, who does he think he is kidding? Most people don't have daddies, as he did, to bail them out time and again by the millions. Enough said about a President who does not feel your or anybody else's pain--we can't look to him for leadership, moral or otherwise. One person who can enable the Congress to end the shutdown is Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. All he has to do is to bring up the bills that the House sent us last week--the same bills that passed the Senate and last Congress to keep government open. No one needs to remind Senator McConnell that the Senate is part of a separate and coequal branch of government. The Senate can and should act without the President's consent--consent he is currently withholding unless he gets his vanity wall. Instead of standing up to Donald Trump, Senator McConnell is missing in action, and through his silence and inaction, Senator McConnell has endorsed another of Donald Trump's lies--that there is a crisis at the border so severe that it justifies taking 800,000 people hostage as leverage for a $5.6 billion downpayment--only a downpayment--for his vanity wall. Let me be clear. The only crisis is the one Donald Trump manufactured, and the only wall that is real is the one that is closing in on him. The weekend before Donald Trump shut down the government, I joined several of my colleagues on a visit to Texas, where I saw the real crisis at the border--the humanitarian catastrophe created by Donald Trump's disastrous immigration policy. At detention facilities in Dilley and Karnes--facilities that a top official from Immigration and Customs Enforcement Patrol, ICE, callously and dismissively described as ``summer camps''--I saw families locked away, some for months at a time, without proper access to legal, medical, or mental healthcare. Many of these families have access to legal services only out of the generosity, ingenuity, and hard work of volunteers and overstretched nonprofits. I also visited the massive detention camp for unaccompanied children at Tornillo. Tornillo started as a temporary camp for several hundred kids in June of 2018 after the Trump administration systematically separated kids from their parents under its zero tolerance policy. Tornillo has now ballooned to currently holding some 2,700 unaccompanied children, and I note that there are now an estimated 15,000 unaccompanied children in facilities throughout our country. Since June, the administration has already spent more than $144 million on the makeshift Tornillo detention camp, where food, water, and other basic items have to be trucked in regularly. I was disturbed to find that thousands of kids are being held in these soft-sided tents in the middle of the desert, shut off from the outside world and the local community. In fact, when concerned members of the local community came by to drop off gifts and items to show these kids that there were people who cared, the detention camp turned the community people away. When I said ``Why would you do that?'' it was explained to me that there were not enough items brought to give to every child--a pretty sad reason, in my view. Most troubling was that there was no good reason for the prolonged detention of children at this facility. We were told that between 800 and 1,300 kids at Tornillo already have sponsors, such as parents or relatives, lined up to take them into homes. But the children continue to be detained because of the administration's policy of requiring all potential sponsors and all adults in the potential sponsor households to submit fingerprints, which would then be information shared with ICE, thus subjecting everyone to potential deportation. The chilling effect of this policy is obvious in the skyrocketing length of detention of these children as fingerprints are obtained and processed. Now the negative consequences of this policy have become apparent even to this administration, which instituted the policy to begin with, so the administration is now easing up on the fingerprinting of everyone in the household, but the damage has already been done. In 2016, the average length of stay for unaccompanied children in these facilities was 35 days. Today, the average has been reported to be at least 59 days and even up to 74 days. These are kids who need to recover from the trauma of coming to this country, not to be retraumatized with prolonged detention. The detention of unaccompanied children and families for longer and longer periods is the real humanitarian crisis facing our country at the southern border, and this crisis will not be fixed by Trump's vanity wall. As if holding 800,000 workers and their families hostage is not horrible enough, Donald Trump is now thinking of taking billions of dollars away from disaster victims to find a way to pay for his wall. This is callousness compounded. Sometimes I find myself totally at a loss for words as the President keeps coming up with all of these ways to basically get himself out of a corner that he has gotten himself into. I call on Senator McConnell to use the power he has to bring the House-passed bills to the floor--the bills that we in the Senate passed by voice vote last Congress to end this shutdown. Unnecessary pain grows by the day--800,000 workers go without pay; food safety is being compromised; our national parks go unopened or unprotected; air travel can turn into a nightmare as more and more of the TSA agents stay home. The list goes on as we wait for the President to come to his senses. We should live so long. Meanwhile, our country is waiting for Senator McConnell and our Republican colleagues to come to their senses. So, Leader McConnell, everyone knows you have the power to act. Bring these bills to the Senate floor. We can end this shutdown now. The Senate--if Senator McConnell will bring the bills to the floor-- will pass these bills because we already did so. End the unnecessary pain. We don't have the luxury of waiting around for the President to truly feel anybody's pain because he is incapable of feeling anybody's pain but his own. We can end this shutdown now. We can take action on the floor of the Senate. We can do the responsible thing in response to the pain that I know we are hearing from all of our constituents all across the country. What are we waiting for? End this shutdown now. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. HIRONO

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

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, this shutdown is not a negotiation situation. This is a hostage situation. The President of the United States has taken 800,000 Federal workers, tens of thousands of Federal contractors, and thousands of small businesses hostage to extort money for his vanity wall. We have all heard from our constituents about the pain the shutdown is causing. This Friday many government employees will miss their first paycheck as a result of the shutdown. Most of us live in a world where we need paychecks, and it is obvious that our constituents shouldn't have to ``make adjustments,'' as the President frames it, for the President's shutdown. Our 800,000 Federal workers aren't the only people in our country feeling the impact of the shutdown. The situation is inflicting unnecessary pain on our government contracting community and small businesses that rely on the day-to-day operations of the Federal Government, not to mention the millions of Americans who request government services. Let me just tell one story. Michelle Baker is a Federal contractor in Waikiki who helps the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and other agencies to write reports in a way that is accessible to the public. Michelle told Honolulu Civil Beat that she and her husband have resorted to taking out a payday loan with an exceptionally high interest rate to pay for their food this week. Let me be clear. There are two people who can end the pain of the shutdown right now--Donald Trump and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. The President has demonstrated repeatedly that his word is not good. He is an amoral hostage taker, and you cannot and should not negotiate with a hostage taker. Senator McConnell, on the other hand, has not held back in exercising his power when he saw fit to do so. Senator McConnell had no problem using his power to unilaterally deny Judge Merrick Garland to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Senator McConnell had no problem using his power to lower the number of Senators it would take to confirm nominees to the Supreme Court, starting with Neil Gorsuch. Senator McConnell had no problem using his power to force the Senate to come within one vote of denying healthcare to millions of Americans by bringing forth a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Senator McConnell had no problem using his power to ram through a huge tax cut for the wealthiest Americans and corporations at the expense of middle-class families. Senator McConnell has the power to end the shutdown by bringing up the legislation that the House has sent us--the same legislation that passed the Senate last Congress--to get the full government open and running again. We should all be asking: Why won't Senator McConnell use his power to help 800,000 Federal workers and tens of thousands of government contractors get their paychecks? No one needs to remind Senator McConnell that Congress is a separate branch of government. The Senate can act without the hostage taker President's consent or assent. Since the amoral President has hunkered down with his hostage strategy, I call on Senator McConnell to use his power to do his job as Senate majority leader. More Members of his own caucus are coming forward every day and calling on him to act, regardless of whether the President threatens or promises a veto. It is time for Senator McConnell to stand up to Donald Trump and for the Senate to do our job and end this shutdown. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I thank my friend, the Senator from Florida, for speaking out on the critical importance of the Affordable Care Act for millions of people in our country and for calling upon this administration to support healthcare for all instead of what they are doing to the healthcare of millions of people in our country. Turning to another matter, nearly 12 years ago, on December 7, 2006, President George W. Bush nominated Thomas Farr to be a U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Today, 12 years and three nominations later, his name is again before us for confirmation to the very same vacancy, which has remained unfilled all this time. When Mr. Farr was nominated for this vacancy in 2006 and 2007, his nomination did not receive a vote in the Judiciary Committee. It was known at that time that Mr. Farr had spent his professional life engaged in restricting minority voting rights and defending companies alleged to have discriminated against African Americans, women, and others. In the 1980s and in 1990, Mr. Farr represented Senator Jesse Helms, notorious for his opposition to civil rights, voting rights, women's rights, workers' rights, and LGBTQ rights--in other words, individual rights. Mr. Farr also helped corporations fight off their employees' discrimination claims. In 2003, Mr. Farr defended Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina against claims by a female employee who alleged that the company had compelled her to resign because of her sex and age. To win this case, Mr. Farr convinced the North Carolina Supreme Court to strike down the county's antidiscrimination law. Given this history of restricting minority voting rights and defending companies in discrimination claims, Mr. Farr's nomination did not proceed at that time, and rightly so. In the 12 years since his first nomination, Mr. Farr has become notorious for his defense of the North Carolina legislature's attempts to disenfranchise African-American voters. His current nomination is opposed by nearly every civil rights group in North Carolina and nationally, and the Congressional Black Caucus, or the CBC, has fought Mr. Farr's nomination. In a 2017 letter to the Judiciary Committee, the CBC wrote: ``It is no exaggeration to say that had the White House deliberately sought to identify an attorney in North Carolina with a more hostile record on African-American voting rights and workers' rights than Thomas Farr, it could hardly have done so.'' This district court vacancy was not filled by President Obama in his two terms, but not for lack of trying. President Obama nominated two different African-American women for this vacancy, one an assistant U.S. Attorney and another a State court judge. Neither nomination moved forward because the Republican home State Senators withheld their blue slips. Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy and, later, Chairman Grassley both, at that time, abided by the blue-slip process during that period, as I said, and no hearings were ever held for these two Obama nominees. At the same time, both of my colleagues from North Carolina persisted in their desire to confirm Mr. Farr to the Federal bench. Of course, now, the return of a blue slip is no longer a barrier to pushing nominees through the Judiciary Committee. So, on the recommendation of my Senate colleagues from North Carolina, Donald Trump nominated Mr. Farr yet again to the seat that had been kept open in the Eastern District of North Carolina. In fact, when Mr. Farr's nomination was returned at the end of a session of Congress last year, the White House decided to renominate him this year. The history regarding this judicial vacancy and Mr. Farr is key to understanding why I and so many of my colleagues will vote no. We will be accused of obstruction and wanting to deprive the people of North Carolina of a judge in the Eastern District. We will hear how this is the longest open vacancy on the entire Federal bench, but, in fact, this vacancy has remained open so long because of Republicans' refusal to confirm qualified minority women and their insistence on filling this vacancy with a man whose career is filled with examples of his using the law to advance a racist, obstructionist, plainly un-American agenda. Had the Republicans not blocked the nominations of qualified minority women in 2013 and 2016, this district, which is about 27 percent African American, would have had its first African-American judge. By contrast Mr. Farr has spent decades opposing the rights of African Americans, women, and workers. Let me highlight a few examples. When Mr. Farr was working as legal counsel for the 1990 campaign for Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the Justice Department filed a Federal lawsuit against the campaign for trying to intimidate thousands of African Americans from voting. How did they do this? The Helms campaign staff sent postcards suggesting that the voters were ineligible to vote and warning that they could be prosecuted if they voted. Although Mr. Farr denied any involvement in these racist voter intimidation efforts, the Justice Department attorney who investigated the matter confirmed that Mr. Farr ``was certainly involved in the scheme as it was being developed.'' That is not the only time Mr. Farr has opposed the rights of African- American voters. When the North Carolina legislature decided to restrict or dilute the votes of African Americans over the past 10 years, Mr. Farr fiercely defended these efforts as a private attorney. In 2013, for example, he defended the North Carolina legislature's voter suppression efforts that a court found were enacted with racially discriminatory intent--racially discriminatory intent. In other words, the North Carolina legislature was totally upfront about what they were up to. After the Supreme Court effectively struck down the part of the Voting Rights Act that required North Carolina to preclear any changes to their voting laws, the North Carolina State legislature passed a law that eliminated or cut back on voter mechanisms that African Americans disproportionately used. This is the law that Mr. Farr defended. The Fourth Circuit in that case determined that these voting changes ``target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision.'' In other words, blatantly discriminatory intent was found by the Fourth Circuit. Between his efforts to support suppression of voters, Mr. Farr has helped companies avoid accountability for discrimination against African Americans, women, and minority groups. In 2003, Mr. Farr argued that female employees at Pfizer were not protected under Federal civil rights law from condescending, sexist, and sexual comments from their manager because they were not ``severe'' or ``pervasive'' enough. He even tried to undermine the plaintiff's claim by arguing that she failed to point out that her manager ``harassed her because of her gender on a daily or weekly basis.'' That was the standard he applied: You have to have been harassed on a daily or weekly basis. Mr. Farr ultimately convinced the court to dismiss the employee's claim as untimely. A person who has devoted decades of his legal career to furthering oppression and injustices against minorities and women has no business being confirmed to a lifetime position as a judge, where his ideological agenda will certainly be reflected in his decision. I will not vote for Mr. Farr's nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do likewise.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Ariel Caspillo, a legislative fellow in my office, be permitted floor access for the remainder of the 115th Congress.

Ms. HIRONO

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

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States. Based on an in-depth examination of his legal career, academic writings, and judicial record, I conclude that he has a long pattern of misstating facts and misapplying the law in order to further his partisan political agenda. His partisan, ideologically driven agenda is particularly troubling in cases involving women's intimate personal decisions. Roe v. Wade and its progeny represent an acknowledgment in American law and life that women ought to have control over whether and when to bear children, but it is more than that. As Justice O'Connor explained in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, ``It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.'' The Supreme Court's jurisprudence on reproductive rights is based on case law going back decades that has assured Americans the right to educate their children as they see fit; to marry anyone, no matter their race; and to decide whether to use contraception inside or outside of marriage. It is part of a jurisprudence of privacy and autonomy that became a bedrock of American society that we have all relied on to create families, choose professions, and raise children. But Brett Kavanaugh, through his political choices and affiliations, as well as his legal and judicial writing, has told us loud and clear that he does not respect a woman's right to make her own intimate, personal decisions and will do whatever he can, once confirmed, if confirmed, to narrow and overturn Roe v. Wade. A recent speech Kavanaugh delivered gives us further insight into his own legal views on the topic. In 2017, at the American Enterprise Institute, Kavanaugh gave a speech in tribute to the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist. In his remarks, Kavanaugh praised Rehnquist's dissent--dissent--in Roe v. Wade where the late Chief Justice found no constitutional right to abortion because the right was not ``rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people.'' Thank goodness the rest of the Supreme Court did not follow Chief Justice Rehnquist. To learn about Brett Kavanaugh's own legal views on reproductive rights, we need only look at his dissent in last year's DC Circuit case Garza v. Hargan. Here, a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant sought release from government custody to obtain an abortion. Kavanaugh's first fundamental misstatement in this case was mischaracterizing it as a ``parental consent'' case. It was not. The young woman had already received a proper judicial bypass from a Texas judge and therefore did not need parental consent. For a judge applying for a promotion to the Supreme Court to completely misstate the issue in the case was astounding to me. In my view, a first-year law student would not have deemed the Garza case to be a parental consent case, but that is what he said. Then, when applying the legal test under Roe and Casey to determine whether the young woman's rights were being subject to an ``undue burden,'' Judge Kavanaugh would have ruled against her. He thought nothing of keeping a 17-year-old as a prisoner of the government Office of Refugee Resettlement instead of releasing her to get an abortion that was entirely within her rights to seek. Compare that to the ease with which Judge Kavanaugh found that religious employers, in the case of Priests for Life v. Department of Health and Human Services, were burdened by filling out a two-page form. The employers there were seeking to avoid paying for any employee's health insurance that covered contraception, saying it burdened their free exercise of religion. The majority of the DC Circuit held that asking the employers to fill out a brief form to let the government know of their objection was not a substantial burden, but Judge Kavanaugh disagreed and would have ruled to deny the female employees their proper health coverage, siding with the Priests for Life. Judge Kavanaugh's colleague on the DC Circuit went out of her way to write a concurring opinion to directly rebut Judge Kavanaugh's dissent and correct his misstatements of the case. To Judge Kavanaugh, holding a woman in government custody unnecessarily and against her will does not represent an undue burden on the exercise of her constitutional right to an abortion, but when it comes to a religious employer opting out of providing contraceptive coverage to an employee, a two-page form is too great a burden. The pattern of Judge Kavanaugh's views on the right to abortion is clear. Anyone who feels assured he will uphold Roe v. Wade is living in a fantasy world. Laws that narrow women's reproductive rights in States like Texas, Iowa, and Louisiana are currently making their way to the Supreme Court, and all evidence shows that Judge Kavanaugh will side with them. Advocates for women's reproductive rights are against Judge Kavanaugh's ascent to the Supreme Court with good reason. Another aspect of his judicial record that argues against confirmation is Judge Kavanaugh's pattern of dissents. Dissents are revealing. It is where judges go out of their way to voice their disagreement with the majority on the court to show what their views are. Judge Kavanaugh has the highest dissent rate among active DC Circuit judges at 5.1 dissents per year. One study I introduced at his hearing showed that he consistently sided against workers and immigrants and only once favored consumers in his dissents. Another study showed he consistently sided against protecting the air we breathe and the water we drink. So environmental and consumer rights groups are against Judge Kavanaugh's ascent to the Supreme Court with good reason. Yet another study analyzed his dissents and found that Judge Kavanaugh tended to dissent more often along partisan lines than his colleagues and his ``divisiveness . . . ramped up during political campaigns'' before Presidential elections. This is more than mere coincidence. It also found that he had the highest rate of what the study called ``partisan dissents''--where the other judges in the majority were appointed by the opposing party; in other words, by Democratic Presidents. Again, this is not the sort of fairminded consideration of the facts and the law necessary for a Supreme Court Justice. His partisanship was clearly on display for all to see at his Thursday hearing. For me, as a Senator from Hawaii, Judge Kavanaugh's pattern of misstating the facts and misapplying the law is evident in his work on the case of Rice v. Cayetano and the rights of Native peoples. President Trump has demonstrate through signing statements, budget proposals, and proposed regulations that he views programs for our indigenous communities as unconstitutional racial classifications, and he found a like-minded Supreme Court nominee in Brett Kavanaugh. Brett Kavanaugh has a long history of misstating facts and misapplying the law in order to curtail the rights of indigenous peoples--Native Hawaiians, Alaska Natives, and American Indians. As an attorney in private practice in 1999, Brett Kavanaugh coauthored a friend-of-the-court brief in support Harold ``Freddy'' Rice's challenge to the voting structure of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs--a State office established in Hawaii to work for the betterment of Native Hawaiians. Mr. Rice sued then-Governor of Hawaii Benjamin Cayetano, and the case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Kavanaugh coauthored his amicus brief with other highly conservative legal advocates, including Robert Bork--a harsh critic of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it was proposed. Judge Kavanaugh separately, in addition to working on this amicus brief, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled ``Are Hawaiians Indians?'' that made false and offensive arguments. In his op-ed and amicus brief, Judge Kavanaugh relied on incorrect facts and misstatements, ignoring obvious truths that contradict his position. He relied on these incorrect facts in order to reach his political conclusion that Native Hawaiians and arguably other indigenous communities who do not fit his limited view of Tribal structure are not afforded any special protections by the Constitution. He called OHA's voting structure into question under the 14th Amendment, calling it a ``naked racial spoils system.'' In describing the Native Hawaiian community, he went out of his way to ignore their history, cobble together blatant falsehoods, and call into question their status as an indigenous people. His op-ed argues that Native Hawaiians are not entitled to constitutional protections given to indigenous Americans because, as he put it, ``They don't have their own government. They don't have their own system of laws. They don't have their own elected leaders. They don't live on reservations or on territorial enclaves. They don't even live together in Hawaii.'' Judge Kavanaugh is saying that Native groups in the United States derive their rights from having been herded onto reservations and cheated out of their land and that they surrender their rights when they move outside of these artificial boundaries. It is not only factually wrong but deeply offensive. Kavanaugh argues that an indigenous community must have its own government, system of laws, its own elected leaders, and live together on a reservation to be considered indigenous. By that, he means that only federally recognized Tribes in the lower 48 States are afforded any protections. After Judge Kavanaugh made his troubling and misleading arguments in the amicus brief and op-ed, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Rice v. Cayetano. They ruled that Hawaii's voting structure for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs violated the 15th Amendment's voting rights guarantees. The Supreme Court, in Rice, relied only on the 15th Amendment. It did not address the 14th Amendment argument Judge Kavanaugh made in his amicus brief, which claimed that the Office of Hawaiian Affairs' voting structure was an unconstitutional ``racial voting set-aside.'' But Judge Kavanaugh and his conservative allies continued to misstate and misconstrue the holding in Rice for their own political purposes. In the Bush White House, Judge Kavanaugh continued to misapply the law in Rice to argue that Native Hawaiians could not be the beneficiaries of targeted programs, when clearly the case stands for a much narrower proposition having nothing to do with government benefits. In fact, the Supreme Court declined to address Judge Kavanaugh's question of whether the Office of Hawaiian Affairs' voting structure could be an unconstitutional, race-based classification under the 14th Amendment. In one email, when he was in the Bush White House, Kavanaugh wrote: ``I think the testimony needs to make clear that any program targeting Native Hawaiians as a group is subject to strict scrutiny and of questionable validity under the Constitution.'' In another, he wrote: ``White House Counsel objects and raises questions about the constitutionality of this bill, including but not limited to the portions that refer to Native Hawaiians. See Rice v. Cayetano.'' At his hearing in front of the Judiciary Committee, when I asked him about his misapplication of the law, Judge Kavanaugh again misstated the holding of Rice and refused to correct his misstatement when I asked him to clarify. He testified before the Judiciary Committee that Rice ``was a straightforward violation of the 14th and 15th amendments of the U.S. Constitution.'' He was wrong, but when I pressed him on this point and asked him to show me where the majority decision in Rice cited the 14th amendment, he refused to answer. Why? Because he was clearly wrong. It is deeply troubling to have a Supreme Court nominee for a lifetime position who doesn't adhere to facts or correctly present the law. Judge Kavanaugh's answers on this topic fit his pattern of evading and skirting the truth. His reliance on these stereotypes and bigoted tropes about Native Hawaiians, as well as his misapplication of the law, represent a clear and present danger to Native people all over this country, including in Hawaii. Notably, in his writings against Native Hawaiians, Judge Kavanaugh completely avoided any reference to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, ANSCA. Under ANSCA, Alaska Natives organized themselves not as a tribe in Judge Kavanaugh's understanding of the word but as village and regional corporations with shares that individual Alaska Natives hold. This is a novel and unique system for facilitating the U.S. trust responsibilities and arguably not at all in keeping with what Judge Kavanaugh believes deserves constitutional protection. That is why Native communities across the country, including the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, Alaska Federation of Natives, and the National Congress of American Indians have come together to express deep concern over Judge Kavanaugh's nomination. In the context of his views on Native peoples, I no longer find it curious that Judge Kavanaugh devoted so much time back then to writing an amicus brief and an op-ed on a case that involved Native Hawaiians. I will have more to say tomorrow about other aspects of this nomination--in particular, what Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's account of her attack by Brett Kavanaugh reveals about the nominee, the Senate, and the American culture. For now, I yield the floor.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jeffrey Hantson, a law fellow, and Kai Bostock, a law clerk in my office, be permitted floor access for the remainder of debate on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I have to say I am sick of this. I am sick of everyone who wants to rewrite the history of what happened in the Senate with the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the United States. It isn't even over yet, and they want people to believe that what we have witnessed over the past weeks was what they call a ``political hit job perpetrated by Democrats with a grudge.'' That is the story the nominee himself tried to sell in his testimony on Thursday. He accused Democrats of lying in wait. He twisted Ranking Member Feinstein's respect for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's wish for privacy. He falsely claimed Democrats had her accusation ``ready,'' that Dr. Ford's accusation ``was held in secret for weeks,'' because the Democrats, as Judge Kavanaugh put it, ``couldn't take me out on the merits.'' What a paranoid fantasy. Brett Kavanaugh's entire performance was an hour's long rant. I am quoting him. He said: This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election. Fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. Revenge on behalf of the Clintons, and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups. Unbelievable, in my view. He claimed to have written this screed on his own without showing it to any of his handlers. I find that hard to believe, given that he was reported to have spent 10-hour days at the White House preparing for this hearing. We heard Dr. Ford's raw and sincere account of that night as a drunk teenaged Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge attacked her. The nominee called it a ``grotesque and coordinated character assassination.'' But this isn't a conspiracy, Judge Kavanaugh. It is real. Look at what Dr. Ford's coming forward has triggered. People believe her for many reasons. Her recall of events is consistent with the way survivors of trauma remember things. Her demeanor was forthright and open. She had everything to lose and nothing to gain by coming forward, and despite what many are saying, there is quite a bit of collaboration of her story. She knew Brett Kavanaugh. She socialized with his circle of friends. She had told people in her life what happened to her long before Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court. His calendar attests to him having attended at least one gathering consistent with her recollection. But another reason so many people believe Dr. Ford is that her account is so familiar. It has echoes in so many of our own stories, our own experiences. So many women have survived some version of what happened to her, along a spectrum of experiences that range from creepy looks or catcalls to rape and other violent attacks. So many women have kept their stories to themselves for fear of not being believed, for fear of retaliation or humiliation, or shunning. In a column written by Monica Hesse in the Washington Post, entitled ``Dear dads: Your daughters told me about their assaults. This is why they never told you,'' Ms. Hesse writes about all the reasons why survivors don't even tell people closest to them about what happened to them. She writes: For all the stereotypes that linger about women being too fragile or emotional, these past weeks have revealed what many women already knew: A lot of effort goes into protecting men we love from bad things that happen to us.'' She writes to fathers who are only now finding out about the daily indignities women endure and explains why they were never told and why their loved ones were now writing to Hesse herself. I am going to quote extensively from this article: To the father of the young woman who was assaulted by the student athlete she was hired to tutor: She never told you because she didn't want to break your heart. But she told me, in a long email, because the memory of it was breaking her own heart and she'd spent five years replaying it. To the father of the junior high student who was pinned down and undressed at a gathering 30 years ago: She didn't tell you because she didn't want to see you cry. But she told me that she still remembers every detail. To the father of the teenager who was raped at a party: You don't know about this, because she was certain that if you knew, you would kill her attacker and go to prison, and it would be her fault. To the father of the son who was assaulted by an older man: I wish I could tell you more about what happened to him, but he wouldn't tell me, and he definitely won't tell you, because manliness is important to you, he says. To all the fathers of all the silent victims: Your children are quietly carrying these stories, not because they can't handle the emotions but because they are worried that you can't. They are worried that your emotions will have too many consequences. Or they fear you won't think of them the same way. Or that you'll be distraught because you didn't protect them. These words and stories are powerful, and Ms. Hesse is right. So many survivors want to protect their loved ones, but Ms. Hesse is also right that they shouldn't keep their stories in. She urges them, saying: So, to the rest of you: If you could tell your father in a way that feels safe, and in a way that would bring you comfort, tell your father. Tell your brothers. Let them be uncomfortable; let them share some of your pain. Don't let them be ignorant. And once women are able to share their experiences, what should we do with them? I agree with the author Rebecca Traister, who captured so much of what I have been thinking lately in a piece called ``Fury Is a Political Weapon, and Women Need to Wield It.'' This is in the New York Times. I want to read some of it to you. Ms. Tracer wrote: Outside the room where Christine Blasey Ford forward was testifying on Thursday morning, women were incandescent with rage and sorrow and horror. They were getting angry in a new way, a public way, an unapologetic way--a way that is typically reserved for men, and that would again serve men well, when afternoon came. Brett Kavanaugh bellowed; he snarled; he pouted and wept furiously at the injustice of having his ascendance to power interrupted by accusations of sexual assault. He challenged his questioners, turned their queries back on them. What happened inside the room was an exceptionally clear distillation of who has historically been allowed to be angry on their own behalf, and who has not. And outside the room was a hint of how it might be changing. Most of the time, female anger is discouraged, repressed, ignored, swallowed. Or transformed into something more palatable and less recognizable as fury--something like tears. When women are truly lived, they often weep. Maybe we cry when we're furious in part because we feel a kind of grief at all the things we want to say or yell that we know we can't. Maybe we're just sad about the very same things that we're angry about. I wept as soon as Dr. Blasey began to speak. On social media, I saw hundreds of messages from women who reported the same experience, of finding themselves awash in tears, simply in response to this woman's voice, raised in polite dissent. The power of the moment, the anxiety that it would be futile, the grief that we would even have to put her--and ourselves--through this spectacle, was intense. Tears are permitted as an outlet for wrath in part because they are fundamentally misunderstood. One of my sharpest memories from an early job in a male- dominated office, where I once found myself weeping with inexpressible rage, was my being grabbed by the scruff of my neck by an older woman--a chilly manager of whom I'd always been slightly terrified--who dragged me into a stairwell. ``Never let them see you crying,'' she told me. ``They don't know you're furious. They think you're sad and will be pleased because they got to you.'' This political moment has provoked a period in which more and more women have been in no mood to dress their fury up as anything other than raw and burning rage. Many women are yelling, shouting, using Sharpies to etch sharply worded slogans onto protest signs, making furious phone calls to representatives. Many of the women shouting now are women who have not previously yelled publicly before, many of them, white middle-class women newly awakened to political fury and protest. Part of the process of becoming mad must be recognizing that they are not the first to be furious, and that there is much to learn from the stories and histories of the lived women--many of them not white or middle class--who have never had reason not to be mad. If you are angry today, or if you have been angry for awhile, and you're wondering whether you're allowed to be as angry as you feel, let me say: Yes. Yes, you are allowed. You are, in fact, compelled. If you've been feeling a new rage at the flaws of this country, and if your anger is making you want to change your life in order to change the world, then I have something incredibly important to say: Don't forget how this feels. That is Rebecca Traister's article. Traister ends her article by endorsing anger and telling women not to let go of it. She says: What you're angry about now--injustice--will still exist, even if you yourself are not experiencing it, or are tempted to stop thinking about how you experience it, and how you contribute to it. Others are still experiencing it, still mad; some of them are mad at you. Don't forget them; don't write off their anger. Stay mad for them, alongside them, let them lead you in anger. That is what I am left with, Mr. President. Anger. Fury. Disgust. At a process that could not see the truth of what Dr. Ford tried to tell us. The rewriters of truth are already at it. In column after column, on cable news shows across the country, and even here on the Senate floor, they are casting Judge Kavanaugh as the victim. I was asked a few days ago whether the four Democratic women on the Judiciary Committee had a special responsibility to address the question of sexual assault. I reject the premise of that question. It is not just up to the women in this country to stand up. Men have to join us. They have to hold themselves and other men accountable. They have to push back against the fear that those with power feel when they are challenged. We saw some of the ways that this kind of fear operates just this week among some of my Senate colleagues. When approached by survivors of sexual assault who waited to talk to them about the Kavanaugh nomination, they said things like ``Grow up,'' insinuating that the women sharing their painful, traumatic accounts were there to enjoy themselves. Enjoy themselves? We saw the President of the United States sink to a level I didn't think possible. The mocker-in-chief mocked Dr. Ford, a survivor of sexual assault. He mocked her for not remembering some peripheral things about the attack. But the thing she said she was 100 percent sure of was that it was Brett Kavanaugh who attacked her. In case some of my colleagues don't get it, sexual assault survivors often don't remember how many steps, how many rooms, the kinds of things the President mocked Dr. Ford about. But they remember the attack itself with 100 percent accuracy. They remember how it felt, the fear, the laughter of the attackers. The kinds of insults that have been hurled at Dr. Ford and others in her situation are cruel and unnecessary. I am left with anger and determination, just like millions of people across the country. I will take Rebecca Traister's advice and commend it to the women of America and the men who understand their stories. I will stay mad and let that anger propel us to change. Going forward, I will continue to listen to women who have shared their stories. I will tell them that I hear them, I see them, and I want all of us to be the change that needs to happen in our country. Before I yield the floor, I want to read a statement from Debbie Ramirez dated October 6, 2018. She says: Thirty-five years ago, the other students in the room chose to laugh and look the other way as sexual violence was perpetrated on me by Brett Kavanaugh. As I watch many of the Senators speak and vote on the floor of the Senate I feel like I'm right back at Yale where half the room is laughing and looking the other way. Only this time, instead of drunk college kids, it is U.S. Senators who are deliberately ignoring his behavior. This is how victims are isolated and silenced. But I do have corroborating witnesses speaking for me, although they were not allowed to speak to the FBI, and I feel extremely grateful for them and for the overwhelming amount of support that I have received and continue to receive during this extremely difficult and painful time. There may be people with power who are looking the other way, but there are millions more who are standing together, speaking up about personal experiences of sexual violence and taking action to support survivors. This is truly a collective moment of survivors and allies standing together. Thank you for hearing me, seeing me and believing me. I am grateful for each and every one of you. We will not be silenced. We stand in truth and light, Debbie Ramirez. I yield the floor.

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, yesterday, we heard our colleague from Maine express the hope that his ``nomination is where the process has finally hit rock bottom.'' On this, I agree. I hope we never again reach a place where women are as disrespected, ignored, and disregarded, as they have been throughout this confirmation process. My colleague also observed that ``[w]e live in a time of such great disunity'' that ``people bear[ ] extreme ill will toward those who disagree with them.'' While that may be true for some, I think many of us who have strongly spoken out about our concerns about Judge Kavanaugh's nominations do not bear any ill will against those who disagree with us. In fact, being able to strongly disagree with others and voice our opinions without being told to ``grow up'' or called a ``loud mouth'' reflects a respect for the American values of democracy and respecting women. It is in that spirit, I would like to clarify several misunderstandings raised by my colleague. As my colleague from Maine noted, she cares about protecting women's reproductive rights. Given this concern, I feel compelled to clarify her description of Judge Kavanaugh's record on reproductive rights. She referenced, without naming, Judge Kavanaugh's dissenting opinion in favor of a religious organization, Priests for Life. In that case, he argued that religious employers could deny their women employees access to healthcare coverage of contraception because filling out a 2-page form was too burdensome for them. Despite this conclusion, my colleague described Judge Kavanaugh's decision as ``seeking to ensure the availability of contraceptive services for women while minimizing the involvement of employers with religious objections.'' It is hard to see how blocking access to contraceptives for women by finding a 2-page form too burdensome is truly seeking to ensure access to contraceptives. She claimed that his critics ``frequently overlook'' the fact that he wrote that ``Supreme Court precedent `strongly suggested' that there was a `compelling interest' in facilitating access to birth control.'' But that ignores the fact that regardless of this rhetoric, Judge Kavanaugh has consistently demonstrated hostility to women's reproductive rights, including in the very case that she referenced, Priests for Life v. Department of Health and Human Services. Moreover, if he is confirmed to the Supreme Court, Judge Kavanaugh can make clear to the entire country that facilitating access to contraceptives is not a compelling interest. I am also very concerned that my colleague failed to mention the key case addressing Judge Kavanaugh's views on women's reproductive rights, Garza v. Hargan. In that case, a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant sought release from HHS custody to obtain an abortion. In his dissent, Judge Kavanaugh mischaracterized the case as one of ``parental consent'' case to reach his desired outcome, denying this young women access to her constitutional right to an abortion. Parental consent was not at issue at all in that case. The young woman had already received a proper judicial bypass from a Texas judge. That case is troubling not only because it shows Judge Kavanaugh's complete disregard for a woman's right to make her own decisions about the most intimate aspects of her life, but also because it reveals his willingness to misrepresent the law and facts to reach his partisan, desired outcome. Although some of my colleagues have tried to hang their hat on Judge Kavanaugh's generic statements about his respect for precedent, even his own colleagues have criticized him for ignoring precedent, when expedient. In one case, United States v. Anthem, his colleagues in the majority sharply criticized his dissent, stating that their ``dissenting colleague applies the law as he wishes it were, not as it currently is.'' My colleague from Maine also noted Judge Kavanaugh's ``rave reviews . . . as a judge, including for his judicial temperament.'' She pointed to the fact that the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, ABA, ``concluded that `his integrity, judicial temperament, and professional confidence met the highest standard.' '' But I would be remiss if I didn't further note that the ABA informed the Judiciary Committee yesterday morning that it was reopening its evaluation of Judge Kavanaugh because of ``[n]ew information of a material nature regarding temperament during the September 27th hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.'' This new information includes Judge Kavanaugh's angry, partisan screed on September 27, when he accused Senators of ``orchestrat[ing] a political hit'' as ``revenge on behalf of the Clintons'' and ominously said, ``what goes around comes around.'' These statements, which were not mentioned by my colleague, directly contradict Judge Kavanaugh's statements of nonpartisanship that my colleague quoted in her remarks. But the most important clarification that I feel compelled to make is my colleague's discussion of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's testimony. My colleague stated that she ``found [Dr. Ford's] testimony to be sincere, painful, and compelling.'' She also said that she ``believe[s] [Dr. Ford] is a survivor of a sexual assault and that this trauma has upended her life.'' But these statements of support were followed in the caveat, ``Nevertheless.'' ``Nevertheless,'' it was said, ``the four witnesses [Dr. Ford] named could not corroborate any of the events of the evening gathering where she said the assault occurred.'' My colleague raised questions about the fact that no one came forward from this small gathering in the summer of 1982 to say that they were at the party or that they gave Dr. Ford a ride home that night. Point by point, these statements sought to poke holes in Dr. Ford's testimony based on little details. In the midst of the questions raised about these little details in Dr. Ford's testimony, the bottom line message was clear: Dr. Ford was not to be believed. She was mixed up, mistaken. By contrast, Judge Kavanaugh was to be believed because he ``forcefully denied the allegations under penalty of perjury.'' But there was no mention of the fact that Dr. Ford also testified until penalty of perjury and said she was ``100 percent'' certain it was Brett Kavanaugh who sexually assaulted her in the summer of 1982. In contrast to the claim that there was a ``lack of corroborating evidence,'' there was significant corroborating evidence, as my colleagues have already entered into the Record. To highlight just a few, Dr. Ford's account was corroborated by Dr. Ford's therapist, results of a polygraph examination, and other witnesses who were told about Dr. Ford's account of her sexual assault, even before Judge Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court. In contrast to my colleague's description of this process as a dysfunctional ``frenzy'' of special interest groups spreading ``outright falsehoods,'' I believe what we have heard over the past few weeks is democracy in action. Across America, women and men have been sharing their painful experiences of sexual assault and why it matters that someone who commits sexual assault should not be rewarded with a seat on the highest court in the land. They are saying character, credibility, candor, and temperament matter. Those are the American values we will be rejecting today, if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Ms. HIRONO

Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, tomorrow we will cast a very important vote on whether to end debate on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Should he be confirmed to this position of awesome responsibility, Judge Kavanaugh would be just one of nine people with the power to change the American Government and the American way of life for at least a generation. He would be hearing and deciding cases that touch all facets of our lives, including the healthcare we receive when the Texas case involving the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate makes its way to the Supreme Court. This particular case is very important because if Texas wins, that means the ACA's protections for those with preexisting conditions--one out of four people in this country--would be done away with. The Supreme Court will also probably get a lot of immigration cases and many cases about DACA, sanctuary sites, temporary protective status, and family separation that are pending in the lower courts, and also abortion, as courts weigh the burden imposed on a woman's right to choose by laws limiting abortion in States like Texas, Iowa, and Louisiana. It doesn't really matter? Of course it matters whether Roe v. Wade is overturned, but even if Roe v. Wade is not overturned, with Judge Kavanaugh's record, all of these limiting laws by States that I just talked about will probably be supported by him, and at some point, the right to an abortion that we have under Roe v. Wade will be pretty much a nullity. The Supreme Court will also be faced with cases that will address the right of workers to bargain collectively with their employers, as litigation comes up to the High Court in the wake of the Janus decision, and many other important topics, including voting rights, gerrymandering, the census, race-conscious college admissions, and environmental laws. The Supreme Court's decisions touch every aspect of American life. With so much at stake, the Senate has an obligation to closely scrutinize every nominee to the Supreme Court. We need to know that they have the qualifications for the job. Do they have the proper education? Do they have the necessary breadth of experience? Will they treat everyone in the Court--including Court employees, law clerks, and lawyers--with an even temperament? Can they keep their cool under pressure and make reasoned decisions when the stakes are high? Can they listen to the facts and apply the law without fear or favor, or will they let the experiences they bring with them override objective judgment? Will they insert their personal preferences where they don't belong? We need to know if they can rule fairly. Will they give every litigant who comes before the Court a fair hearing? Will they acknowledge and put aside their biases, inherent and otherwise? These last two considerations are especially important because the Trump administration outsourced the vetting of Supreme Court nominees to the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. These ultra-rightwing groups have spent decades supporting people like Brett Kavanaugh and their ideological, outcome-driven jurisprudence. After months of scrutinizing Judge Kavanaugh's record and evaluating his performance before the Judiciary Committee in two hearings, it is clear that the answer to most of these questions is no. His judicial record is deeply ideological and outcome-driven, he remains a fierce political partisan operative, and he holds troubling legal views on Native Hawaiians, Native Americans, and Alaska Natives. These patterns were clear based on the weeks I spent reviewing Judge Kavanaugh's writings, his judicial decisions, and the small fraction of his records made available from his time as a key White House aide to President George W. Bush. I became even more certain of my decision to oppose his nomination after his first hearing in the Judiciary Committee and after reading the mostly dismissive non-answers he gave to our followup written questions. There are plenty of substantive reasons to oppose Brett Kavanaugh's nomination, and I will continue speaking out about many of these reasons in the coming days, but over the past 2\1/2\ weeks, we have learned new information that underscored my concern that Brett Kavanaugh lacks the character, candor, credibility, and temperament to serve on the Supreme Court. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh about Dr. Ford's account of an attack on her by the nominee and a friend when they were all teenagers. Dr. Ford conducted herself with grace and courage, recounting the terrifying experience that has had a lasting effect on her life. In his testimony, Judge Kavanaugh dropped the polite veneer he presented at his first hearing, during which he complimented all the Senators he had met with and told the committee that ``[t]he Supreme Court must never be viewed as a partisan institution.'' That was then, but last Thursday, he launched into a partisan political screed that contradicted everything he has ever professed to believe about the way judges should behave. He said: ``This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.'' I have to say, sitting there listening to him be so totally partisan was bizarre. What he said was bizarre. He was angry, he was belligerent, he was partisan, he went on the attack, and he argued with Senators. He forgot who was there to ask the questions and who was there to answer them. These are not qualities to look for in a Supreme Court Justice. More than 1,700 law professors across the country agree, including Dean Avi Soifer and 6 other professors from the University of Hawaii and 21 professors from Georgetown University Law Center, both my alma maters. I want to quote what a law professor said: We have differing views about the other qualifications of Judge Kavanaugh. But we are united, as professors of law and scholars of judicial institutions, in believing that Judge Kavanaugh did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court of our land. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of this letter from the law professors be printed in the Record.

Ms. HIRONO. Judge Kavanaugh also tried to convince us that while he ``liked beer,'' he was basically a choir boy--interested in nothing more than sports, school, and service projects. This carefully painted image has been directly contradicted by Judge Kavanaugh's own words in his yearbook and by many of his high school and college classmates over the past weeks. These inconsistencies and contradictions were part of the reason I joined many of my colleagues in calling for a full FBI investigation of allegations against Judge Kavanaugh. I wanted the FBI to examine inconsistencies and contradictions between his testimony and that of others who knew him in high school, college, and beyond. Last Friday, Senators Flake and Coons brokered an agreement to hold off on a floor vote for at least a week while a supplemental background investigation could be completed to look into these allegations. But I was disappointed that as the days went by, it became more and more clear that the White House rigged the investigation. The President claimed to want the FBI to do a comprehensive investigation, but that did not happen. Our ranking member, Senator Feinstein, wrote to White House Counsel Don McGahn and FBI Director Christopher Wray the day after the investigation began to request a copy of the written directive sent by the White House to the FBI. She got no response. The following day, many other members of the committee also wrote to Mr. McGahn and Director Wray about the supplemental investigation. In addition to repeating the ranking member's request for an explanation of the scope of the investigation, we also asked that it be comprehensive. We wanted all serious allegations against the nominee to be investigated. Of course, we would expect, in a comprehensive investigation, that all appropriate witnesses would be questioned. We asked that the FBI ``perform all logical steps related to these allegations, including interviewing other individuals who might have relevant information and gathering evidence related to the truthfulness of statements made in relation to these allegations.'' We got no response. Just yesterday, I joined a letter with many of my committee colleagues asking Chairman Grassley to prevent public mischaracterization or selective leaks of the results of the FBI's previous work. We urged him to ``call for a full Senate briefing by the FBI . . . so that all Senators hear the same information and have the same opportunity to question the FBI before any floor vote on the Kavanaugh nomination.'' These are requests having to do with the most recent FBI investigation. We asked for a meeting between the chairman and the minority members ``to establish bipartisan ground rules for public discussion of the information provided by the FBI'' and this most recent, totally truncated and inadequate investigation--those last were my words--but both requests were rejected. I had hoped the FBI would exhaust all possible avenues of investigation relevant to whether Judge Kavanaugh had a pattern of drinking that resulted in aggression and belligerence toward women. I had hoped they would follow leads given to them by Dr. Ford and Ms. Ramirez. I had hoped they would be permitted by the White House to do the job we know they can do--the job former Director James Comey said they could do. Instead, as we now know, they were only allowed to do the bare minimum. As we know from news reports, there are dozens of people with relevant information, some of whom say they have corroborating evidence, who need to be interviewed, but they were not. It is simply impossible, after seeing the results of the FBI's supplemental work--and I hesitate to call it an investigation--that anybody could think it was in any way, shape, or form the comprehensive investigation the President promised. This so-called investigation is a sham. It is a fig leaf for the Republicans to hide behind. It is a talking point for their continued and predictable criticism of Democrats. They will say: See? You wanted an FBI investigation, and you got one. But now it isn't good enough for you. Who are they kidding? This is a sham investigation. This so-called investigation wasn't good enough for me, and it shouldn't be good enough to satisfy the American people. Judge Kavanaugh has a burden-- not a burden of proof like in a court but the burden to show us he has not just the credentials for the job but the temperament and the character necessary for this lifetime appointment. I have said many times that Democrats didn't need to manufacture reasons to oppose Judge Kavanaugh's elevation to the Supreme Court. Based on his record, his opinions and his dissents, his academic writings and speeches, I had concluded before these new reports came forward that he would not be fair and objective on the Supreme Court. His views on reproductive rights, Native rights, legal protections for workers, consumers, and the environment are all of deep concern to me, not to mention his expansive views on Executive power, including protecting a sitting President from criminal or civil proceedings. Now that we have heard Dr. Ford's account and seen Judge Kavanaugh's angry and combative reaction, it is evident that he should not serve on and should not be confirmed to the Supreme Court for a lifetime, decades of making decisions that will impact our lives on all of these areas on which he has a very troubling record. We can do better, and the American people deserve better. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. HIRONO

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