Amy Klobuchar

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Delaware for all the work he has done and his focus on what is going to be right in front of us, and that is additional help to States both with their needs--their medical needs and other economic needs--but also their democracy needs coming out of this pandemic. When Hawaii was hit at Pearl Harbor, we did not expect Hawaii to defend itself. When this pandemic hits, it doesn't just hit one State. It hits our entire country. That is why we argue for Federal Government involvement. With us--last but not least--is the other lead on this bill, and that is Senator Ron Wyden, who has been a longtime advocate, based in the forward-thinking State from which he comes, the State of Oregon, on vote-by-mail.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Wyden for his longtime leadership on this issue. I want to thank all of my colleagues. I want to actually thank Mr. Blunt, who did object to our bill but is willing to work with us on the funding. As I said, to sum up, we would rather put ballots in the envelopes than voters in the hospital. It is that simple. Nomination of Major General Jon Jensen Mr. President, I appreciate the kindness of my colleague from the great State of Nebraska. I am going to briefly address one matter, and that is to express my support for the nomination of MG Jon Jensen of Minnesota to become the Director of the Army National Guard. Major General Jensen has served in the Army National Guard for more than three decades. He currently serves as an adjunct general of the Minnesota National Guard--a position he has held since November of 2017. As adjunct general, Major General Jensen oversees more than 13,000 soldiers and air men and women in Minnesota. His record of service and extensive experience in Minnesota and across the world makes him an excellent choice to lead the men and women of the Army National Guard across the country. We are grateful for Major General Jensen's leadership and service and proud to see a fellow Minnesotan nominated to become the Director of the Army National Guard. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting his confirmation. Major General Jensen has led the Minnesota National Guard in unprecedented times, including in the State's response to the coronavirus pandemic. In recent months, our Guard members, as they have in so many States, have provided planning and logistics support and transportation assistance, while also helping to conduct coronavirus tests. Under Major General Jensen's leadership, the Minnesota National Guard has been critical in our response to natural disasters, including flooding in our State that caused significant challenges for so many farmers in Minnesota during last year's harvest. In addition to his work in our State, the major general has been a national leader in working with the National Guard in other States to expand partnerships with the Federal Government. He began his military career in 1982 as an enlisted combat medic, and in August 1989, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He continued his training in Georgia, and his career eventually took him to assignments in Georgia, Kansas, and Iowa. But then he had major assignments in Italy and Bosnia, Herzegovina, Iraq, and in Kuwait. His outstanding service is demonstrated by the list of decorations and awards he has earned over his career, including the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medal, and Army Commendation Medal. In addition to serving as adjutant general, Major General Jensen has held numerous leadership positions within the Guard, including as commander of the 34th Infantry Division, director of Joint Staff, and assistant adjutant general. I had the honor of attending the change of command ceremony where he became adjutant general of our Guard. Now I hope to have the honor of seeing him confirmed to help lead the brave citizen soldiers of the Army National Guard nationwide. I have no doubt that our Nation will benefit from his leadership and from his decades of experience and his commitment to guardsmen and their families, including supporting families through multiple deployments, as well as in my State. I think we know that dual role of the National Guard has been tested so much in recent decades, including their work, basically, fighting on the frontline over the last decade and then their work here at home through many natural disasters, as well as the current pandemic. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank Chairman Blunt for his leadership on the Rules Committee and on the inauguration. We have a big group and are working together well on that. I look forward to our hearing. We, obviously, don't agree about this legislation, but I truly appreciate the olive branch and his willingness to talk about funding at this critical time for our States and our democracy. I look forward to doing that with my many colleagues in the next few weeks. Now I would like to turn this over to one of our great leaders, my colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss the threats facing our upcoming elections--threats from the coronavirus and threats posed by foreign adversaries--and to once again urge my Republican colleagues to immediately take up legislation to address these threats. As ranking member of the Rules Committee, I am proud to be speaking on the floor today with my Democratic colleagues--including Senators Blumenthal, Warner, Durbin, Coons, and Wyden--who will speak during the next hour on the need to protect our elections and make voting safe and easy throughout this pandemic and beyond. And that is safe and easy for Democrats, for Republicans, for Independents, for members of any party or anyone who wants to vote. This is not a partisan issue. Voting in our democracy is not a partisan issue. Everyone who wants to vote should be able to vote for whomever they want to vote for. Today there are primaries happening in Colorado and Utah--two of the five States that vote almost entirely by mail--as well as Oklahoma. As cases of coronavirus in this country rise, it is vital that all voters be able to cast their ballots from home, to cast their ballots by mail--a system that Colorado and Utah know to be safe and secure. We have heard Senator Romney speak out strongly in defense of vote-by-mail and how it works in Utah. We have heard elected officials in Colorado, both Democrats and Republicans--these two States that have primaries today--say that their system works, that their democracies work. This week we are also working to pass the National Defense Authorization Act. Colleagues, let me be clear. If we are concerned about defending our country, then we must protect our democracy, and if our elections are not safe, then our democracy is not secure. Election security is national security. We shouldn't spend more on military bands--I love military bands, but we shouldn't spend more on military bands than we do on securing our elections on a Federal level--especially now, when we have foreign adversaries that the intelligence officials in the Trump administration have long said were emboldened by the last election--as in Russia--and will try to do this again. We should not be spending more on military bands than securing our election on a Federal level when, in fact, we have a situation where a pandemic has made it unsafe for people to vote, especially seniors and people with preexisting conditions, especially our veterans. The Government Accountability Office conducted a study and found that between 2012 and 2016, the U.S. military spent $1.5 billion on military bands. Since our elections were attacked by Russia in 2016, Congress has given $805 million to modernize our election systems and protect them from future attacks. That is about 6 percent of the cost of a new aircraft carrier. That was given to the States after the biggest attack on our elections in modern history. We now know they tried to get into every single State. They tried to hack. In Illinois, they got as close as the voter information. What must we do? Now we face the immediate threat of COVID-19 as well as the threat we have known has been out there for years. I fought hard with Senator Coons and others to help secure $400 million, and I appreciate the work of my colleague Senator Blunt, the chairman of the Rules Committee, in helping us to secure that funding, as well as Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy. We know that is not everything we need. Election officials are using the money from the $805 million in election security funding that I already mentioned--which is supposed to be used to replace old election equipment and produce a paper record, but now we know that election officials in States that are already strapped for cash and facing enormous debts are having to buy protective masks, cleaning supplies, and are trying to figure out how they are going to keep polling locations open and safe versus postage and envelopes. Last week I was glad to appear here with my friend Senator Blunt. He has said that he is open to working with us on funding as well as making some corrections from the last bit of money that was sent out. He is also going to be holding a hearing in our committee on elections, which I truly appreciate during this time of pandemic. As I said, elections are a matter of national security, and during a global pandemic, they are a matter of public health and safety. Contrary to what the President has been saying, I would rather put ballots in an envelope than put voters in the hospital. Yet our President keeps questioning the security of vote-by-mail. Yet we have Republican Senators like Senator Romney who said security in their States works quite well. Our job now is to realize that 25 percent of the people have been voting by mail in the last few Federal elections, and we want to greatly increase that number. We know that not everyone will vote by mail. We know part of the solution is having poll workers who are not as susceptible to the virus, who are in safe conditions. We know part of the solution is keeping the polls open as long as possible, early in States, like my State, which keeps the polls open weeks before an election so then voters don't congregate as much. We also know a big part of the solution is making voting by mail available to everyone. We have seen what has happened when people can't vote safely. No one will forget the images of those voters in line in Milwaukee, in garbage bags and homemade masks, just waiting to exercise their right to vote. No one will forget the numbers--that dozens and dozens of them contracted the coronavirus and that, in fact, poll workers got sick from that day. No one will forget the image recently in Georgia of people waiting and waiting--of a woman who had marched with Dr. King, now in her eighties, getting there at 6 a.m., waiting, and then actually staying because she wanted to make sure her friends would be able to vote. We have seen the President's tweets about voting by mail. These tweets are a direct hit on our democracy. They degrade the integrity of our voting system, and people shouldn't fall for it. We know that these States that have been holding elections that are mostly by mail--Utah, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, and Washington--have done a good job. Some of those States are blue States, some are purple States, and some are red States. Again, just like the virus, it doesn't know if it is hitting someone who is a Democrat or Republican. Vote-by-mail--it works regardless of what someone's political affiliation is. So it has really concerned me, what the President has been saying. As the New York Times editorial board noted, States that use vote-by-mail essentially have zero fraud. Oregon, the pioneer in this area, has sent out more than 100 million ballots since 2000 and has documented only about a dozen cases of proven fraud. Rounded to the seventh decimal point, that is 0.0000001 percent of all votes cast. To top it off, while those voters were standing in line in garbage bags and homemade masks in Wisconsin in the rain, the President was voting in the luxury of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with his own mail-in ballot that he obtained from Palm Beach, FL. That is what he did. Everyone should have that same right. So what do we do in the midst of this pandemic? We need to make sure that no voter has to choose between their health and exercising their right to vote. That is why I am urging my colleagues to support legislation with Senator Wyden that is now cosponsored by 36 other Senators, the National Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act, to help election officials meet this pandemic head-on. What does it do? Well, it has the funding. I am so pleased that my colleague Senator Blunt has said he is willing to work with us and work with me on that funding as we work to negotiate COVID-related provisions, I hope, in the next few weeks. Our legislation does more. It starts with guaranteeing every American the option to vote by mail. Sixteen States require voters to provide an excuse if they want to cast a ballot by mail. I will note that during a pandemic, 13 of these States are allowing all voters to cast a ballot by mail without needing to provide an excuse. They have done it because Governors have waived things, because legislatures have done their job. But it still remains with three States--three States still have those provisions in place. Why, during the midst of a national pandemic that isn't hitting just one State--it is not about just Vermont or Wisconsin or Hawaii; it is about every single State--why would we not at least have a floor requirement that people be able to vote without an excuse? Why would some States still require a notary? Yes, that is in place. Six States have a provision that you either have to have a notary or two witnesses in order to get a mail-in ballot. Yes, some of these States have waived that. That is a good thing. But why wouldn't we just simply, since they all have not waived it, put in place some simple requirements that everyone knows will guarantee them their right to be able to obtain a ballot? The bottom line is that it should be easy to vote and not hard to vote. We are not alone in this fight. Our legislation has been endorsed by more than a dozen organizations, including the group founded by former First Lady Michelle Obama, When We All Vote; the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; the Lawyers' Committee on Civil Rights; Voto Latino; the National Urban League; and Common Cause. I think the key here, though, as we head into--I know my friend is going to object to the legislation as is, but I think the key, as we move ahead the next few weeks, is for everyone to step back and talk to your secretaries of state and talk to your Governors. You are going to find that both Democratic and Republican Governors are saying: Look, we are already strapped for cash. We had no idea the pandemic was coming our way. We didn't plan ahead in our budgets last year. We need some help in our State to be able to mail in all the ballots so people will be able to vote. At the very least, I hope that is what comes out of this. Last, I will tell you, the American people are ahead of this body right now. Three polls released in the last couple of months show that an overwhelming majority of voters--over 80 percent--favor measures to make voting safe and easy in November by expanding early and mail-in voting. Seventy-four percent of voters want their Senators to support legislation to implement voting reform, including a majority of Republican voters in those States. That is across party lines. That is why I hope my colleagues will join us, and we can get this done. So, Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Rules Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 4033, the National Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act of 2020, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Illinois. Next, we will hear from Senator Warner, who is the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee and a leader in taking on election interference from Russia and other foreign adversaries.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor as we start further consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act and ask my colleagues to pay close attention to what is included in this legislation. No one is going to be surprised that the National Defense Authorization Act might include something that had not gotten the bright light of day shown on it, but I am here to say to my colleagues, what is in this act is really egregious, and we need to correct it before we continue to move forward. This legislation--mostly done behind closed doors--is not unusual for the Senate Armed Services Committee, but when you think about the billions of dollars that we are spending, we need to make sure this policy out here on the Senate floor is not just another rubberstamp. We are here to look at particular provisions that I think are troubling, particularly because it wrestles away civilian control of our nuclear arsenal and gives it to the military--provisions that, in the future, would allow the Defense Department to raid dollars used by the Department of Energy for cleanup of nuclear waste, R&D for our National Laboratories, or maybe other infrastructure investment. I am aware that the Presiding Officer knows how much the quadrennial review called for in investment in energy infrastructure. So I find it troubling today to see that we are at a provision that would wrestle away control of our nuclear arsenal and give it to the military. These provisions are dangerous because, one, they would strip from the Secretary of Energy the power over his own budget by requiring that he agree to a sub-Cabinet member group of the Nuclear Weapons Council to approve the National Nuclear Security Administration's budget. That is right. That is why the current Energy Secretary and past Energy Secretaries oppose this language. They oppose it because it basically tells the Energy Secretary what the majority or a big chunk of his budget will be, and it would allow DOD, then, to prioritize things within the Energy budget as they saw fit for making nuclear weapons instead of focusing on our Federal priorities of nuclear waste cleanup, R&D that we want to see in our National Labs, or other issues that we want to see an investment in that Energy is already doing. I just can't even believe that this shift in control away from the Secretary of Energy into this sub-Cabinet so that the nuclear weapons complex would be moving away from civilians to the military is actually in this legislation. I do not believe the Nuclear Weapons Council understands the Department of Energy's priorities. How could they? Do they sit in on any of the meetings for the National Labs or the waste cleanup? I do believe the DOD and the Nuclear Weapons Council know there is a long history of raiding the nuclear waste cleanup budget, and other administrations have tried this. These same individuals tried this in 2018, only to be shot down by our colleagues in the House of Representatives. The NNSA, or the National Nuclear Security Agency, was created in 2000 to be part of the Department of Energy, to manage both the nuclear weapons complex and the nonproliferation activities. Congress made them a part of the Department of Energy, not a part of the Department of Defense. We did that because we wanted to maintain a longstanding civilian control over the country's nuclear weapons. Giving the DOD now control over the Nuclear Weapons Council and their complete power over this budget gives control of our nuclear weapons to the military. I can't believe that we are here with all the things we have to deal with--a COVID-19 crisis, an economic crisis, justice reform--and now we have to worry about people, in the dark of night, changing control of our Energy budget and turning it over to the DOD and giving them control of our nuclear arsenal, to say nothing of the concerns I have for what they will do to shortchange the Hanford cleanup budget, which is a challenge to the Nation. It is an obligation that needs to be met every year, and I guarantee you there are always people looking at the nuclear waste cleanup budget and thinking they can either do it on the cheap, cut some of the funds early, or just skip the obligation. It is a national obligation, and this bill undercuts it. Yet not only does it undercut it, it would be giving the Department of Defense greater say over building new nuclear weapons. That is literally like obliterating some of the people here who have a say in the budget process because, basically, it is getting rid of the checks and balances that we have and, instead, putting this incredible process in place. So it is no surprise that my colleagues, the ranking member and the chair of the Energy Committee, sent a letter in opposition to the Armed Services Committee about this last week. I am pretty sure they have been ignored. They were ignored before this and are continuing to be ignored. The letter says: Most immediately, Section 3111 would empower sub-cabinet level officials, primarily from DOD, to make potentially sweeping decisions about DOE's budget. We believe this goes against good governance and is contrary to the Department of Energy's Organization Act of 1977. It is clear that my colleagues on the Energy Committee don't support this. I don't know what the fake act of the NDAA bill is that somehow you consulted with members of the Energy Committee, because I guarantee you didn't consult with them. And now every member of the Energy Committee has to worry about whether their priorities are going to be set by some sub-Cabinet person over at DOD or whether they will be questioning an Energy Secretary who will be able to give them an answer instead of saying: Senator, I don't know; I have to go check with the Department of Defense. This is unacceptable. I know my colleague, Senator Manchin, has worked on this and is trying to get a change to this legislation. I hope that we are successful in either just pulling it out right now, admitting it is the wrong approach and has not been discussed with the committee of jurisdiction, or at least having our colleagues have a vote on this. It is unbelievable that we would be changing this big of national policy stuck into the NDAA bill without the bright light of day shone on it. These provisions would allow the Nuclear Weapons Council--as I said, made up of a sub-Cabinet officials, primarily from DOD--to require significant modifications to the DOE budget. Likely, as I said, where else are they going to get the money but at the expense of other critical DOE projects? I have already told you why that is so important to me. But let's read from their report language. Basically, they are saying in their report language: The Secretary would be required to transmit a proposed budget request of the NNSA to the nuclear council, and submit it to the Office of Budget Management. That isn't like saying: Consider this. This isn't like saying: Let's discuss this. This isn't like an issue of saying: Here are some things we want you to better consider. This is a total jam by the DOD, neutering the Department of Energy on almost half of its budget, to basically say: We know better what to do. I hope my colleagues will speak loudly and clearly about this. This is a bipartisan issue. This is about the people we should have listened to in the first place. I know some of my colleagues are going to say: Wait, wait, wait. No, this is just a bureaucratic budget change. It is an interagency thing. It is just accounting. It doesn't really mean anything. No, this is a very big change. That is why I oppose subtitle B of the budget of the National Nuclear Security Administration and why my colleagues should work in a very aggressive way to stop this legislation with this language in it. They should take this language out now or work with our colleagues to basically protect the Department of Energy and the Department of Energy's budget and stop turning over to DOD something that the U.S. Congress never had an intent to turning over from civilian control of our nuclear weapons to the Department of Defense I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I come to the floor today to urge the Senate to address the threat the coronavirus poses to our elections and to take immediate action to pass my legislation to ensure voters do not have to choose between their right to vote and their own health. Today is Election Day in Kentucky and in New York and in Virginia. There are runoff elections in North Carolina and in Mississippi, as well. As we speak, voters in the States are experiencing what it is to vote in the middle of a global pandemic. If the past few months are any indication, for many, casting a ballot today will not be safe, and it will not be easy. The coronavirus has caused unprecedented disruptions in the daily lives of Americans. In order to protect voters and poll workers, this pandemic has forced us to make changes to how we vote. Sixteen States postponed their Presidential primaries or have transitioned their primaries to almost entirely voting by mail. We have seen Democratic and Republican Governors across the country issue waivers allowing all voters to cast their ballots by mail during the pandemic. This includes States like New Hampshire, with a Republican Governor, and States like Ohio, where they have a Republican Governor who is focused on vote by mail, and States like Maryland, where the Governor has been devoted to vote by mail, and States like Missouri. While it is important that individual States are taking action to protect voters during this pandemic, we must remember that, in the end, this is a national pandemic. It is not just a pandemic in Vermont or in Utah; it is national. It is the responsibility of this Nation, of this Nation's government, and of this Congress to ensure that States have the funds they need to make our elections more resilient and to make sure voters don't have to risk their health to cast their ballots. When we have a national threat or international conflict, we do not expect an individual State to be able to respond. In World War II, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, we didn't say: Oh, Hawaii, you go deal with that yourself. We, in this Congress, have acknowledged that this pandemic has national consequences in how we responded with the CARES Act and how the House has responded with the Heroes Act, which I hope we will consider very soon in this Congress, and just the fact that, when it comes to voting, this Congress, with bipartisan support--this Senate voted to give over $400 million originally to the States. There were some issues with how that money was given out that we are trying to fix, but, nevertheless, it was a downpayment on the fact that even in the beginning of the pandemic, based on what we had seen in Wisconsin, we anticipated that there were going to be problems for voting and that there was going to be a massive change in how our elections were held. You have States like New York State where only 5 percent of people have voted by mail in the past few Federal elections and States like my own State of Minnesota where, despite having the highest voter turnout in the country, only 25 percent of people on average voted by mail. Now you are seeing switch overs where 50 percent, 60 percent of the people in every single State in the Nation are asking to vote from home or, in the alternative, they are asking for safe voting places by keeping voting places open longer for early voting, by training poll workers so we do not depend on our senior citizens to be staffing the polling locations when they are the most vulnerable to the coronavirus. This is common sense. This is why you see Republican Governors and Republican secretaries of state joining Democratic Governors and Democratic secretaries of state all across the Nation to ask for help from Washington. Today, in Kentucky, New York, and Virginia, election officials are putting more than $36 million of Federal funding to good use--funding to recruit and train new poll workers, to provide those workers with protective equipment and sanitizing supplies; funding to pay for postage for mail-in ballots, purchase additional equipment, and cover the costs of moving poll locations to accommodate more people. I am proud of having fought to secure that funding. I appreciate Senator Blunt, my colleague, who I know is going to be here shortly and is the chair of the Rules Committee, for assisting in making sure that funding was designated, as well as Senator Shelby, Senator Leahy, Senator Coons, and so many others who have worked on this important issue. It is a good first step, but let us remember these are still the primaries in a few States. If you talk to election officials across the country, they will tell you that it wasn't enough and that they desperately need more resources for the general election when so many more people vote. Support from the Federal Government is vital because we have seen States struggle when it comes to administering elections during the pandemic. We also know it is not as if they have a reservoir of funding right now to deal with, which is one of the reasons we want to pass the Heroes Act. Many of our State and local governments are struggling right now. That is why it is so important to designate funding as we move forward--and I hope we will soon discuss the Heroes Act--to be able to help pay for elections. Support from the Federal Government is vital because we have seen States struggle when it comes to administering elections. With fewer than 6 months left before the general election, Congress must act now to ensure that States have the resources and funding that they need. A lot of times you hear: Well, it is only 6 months, so why would we do funding now? Look at the fact that we were able to at least assure the States that the money was going to be out there for them a few months ago for the primaries, and they were able either to spend their own money because they knew that money was coming or to spend designated money. That is how this works. We are no longer in a normal situation. We are in a situation where States are having to rearrange how they do elections all over the country to make it safe and to allow people to vote from home. We have seen the chaos and disenfranchisement that will happen if we don't act soon. The Wisconsin primary will forever be etched in the memory of our Nation. Voters stood for hours in the cold and rain, wearing garbage bags and homemade masks, just to be able to exercise their right to vote. In Milwaukee, there were just five polling locations open instead of the usual 180. Almost 600,000 people live in Milwaukee, including one-third of that State's African-American population. The closure of so many polling places made it even harder for people without easy access to transportation to get to a polling location, and it caused unnecessary crowding, with lines to vote wrapping around blocks. As a result, voters were disenfranchised, and some even contracted the coronavirus. According to local health officials, nearly 70 people in Wisconsin who either voted in person or served as poll workers contracted the virus as a result of that election. Earlier this month in Georgia, thousands of people went to the polls and were also met with long lines and confusion. Reports from Atlanta indicate voters faced malfunctioning machines, and some voters never received the mail-in ballots they requested. Instead of being able to safely vote from home, many were forced to show up in person on election day. I was particularly struck by the words of Anita Heard, an 80-year-old woman from Atlanta who actually marched with Dr. King. She was the first person in line at her polling location at 6 a.m. waiting to vote this year. Anita called the long lines and waits unfair and ridiculous. She is right. In Fulton County, one voter, who is a mom, sat on a lawn chair holding her infant son in one hand and umbrella in another. She waited more than 3 hours to vote. She wasn't leaving because it was important to her and her son that one day she would be able to tell him she waited to vote for him. In America, people should not have to wonder if voting machines will be operational or if they are going to be able to receive their ballot on time to make it count. Jose Andres--the remarkable chef who helps feed people in areas struck by natural disasters--announced a plan to provide food, water, and resources to help people standing for hours in line on election day. He is doing his part to address this issue, as are so many people across this country, including, as I mentioned, Democratic and Republican secretaries of state and Governors. I appreciate that Senator Blunt, the chairman of the Rules Committee, is here. As I said, he worked to help us get that initial funding. Experts have warned that today in Kentucky we may see a repeat of the chaos that we have seen in early primaries. Reports indicate fewer than 200 polling places are open in the entire State, down from the 3,700 in a typical election year. We are glad that Kentucky has voted by mail and a number of people have voted from home. I think we also know, just based on what we have seen in these other States--this is just based on facts, not on partisanship--that 200 polling locations in a State of that size will not be enough in the primary and certainly will not be enough in a general election. In order to protect the right to vote, we have to learn from States that are taking steps to make voting safe and easy. Primary turnout this year has broken records in many States, especially when it comes to voting by mail. States like Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, New Mexico, Idaho, West Virginia, and North Dakota have all held successful elections this year by relying heavily on voting by mail. Again, that is in a primary where some of these States have fewer voters--not all of them--because they are smaller population States, and many of them are not dealing with a general election. In West Virginia, mail-in ballots increased from just 25,000 in 2018 to over 200,000 this year. In Pennsylvania, the number of mail-in ballots cast increased from 80,000 in 2018 to over 1.5 million this year. Voters and election officials across the country in Red States and Blue States are turning to casting a ballot from home. In addition to the five States that already hold their elections mostly by mail, which are Utah, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, and Washington--and I note that those States are not all Blue States, including, particularly, Utah, and Colorado, which is known as a Purple State--three States, including California, Nevada, New Jersey, and also the District of Columbia have decided to send all voters absentee ballots for elections this year. There are 13 States that have decided to send all voters absentee ballot applications. These decisions weren't made, as I note, on a partisan basis. Both Republican and Democratic officials in States have decided to implement these policies to protect their voters. I will also note that none of the five States that held their elections primarily by mail this year have had major voter fraud scandals since transitioning to vote by mail. As the New York Times editorial board announced, States who use vote by mail encountered essentially zero fraud. Oregon, the pioneer in this area, has sent out more than 100 million mail-in ballots since 2000 and has documented only about a dozen cases of proven fraud. Rounded to the seventh decimal point, that is 0.0000001 percent of all votes cast. We have all seen the President's tweets on this. We know these tweets are meant to hurt our democracy, and people shouldn't fall for it because I just gave you the facts: 0.000001 percent of all votes cast in the States that have been using this forever involved any fraud. We must set the record straight. I appreciate that Senator Romney recently noted that nearly everyone, in what he called his very Republican State of Utah, votes by mail, and, in his words, it works very, very well. Now is the time to reject efforts to undermine our political system and mostly undermining people's attempts to exercise their fundamental right to vote safely. What are you going to tell a veteran who has a preexisting condition, like the guy who wrote me who served in Vietnam and said what is he supposed to do now? We have to allow them to vote from home. In the midst of this pandemic, we need to make sure no voter has to choose between their health and exercising their right to vote. That is why I am urging my colleagues to support my legislation with Senator Ron Wyden, which is cosponsored by 35 other Senators, the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act, to help State election officials meet this pandemic head-on. Our legislation doesn't require us to reinvent how we vote. Instead, our bill would overcome the challenges posed by the coronavirus by expanding existing election practices like voting by mail and early voting. It starts with guaranteeing every American the option to vote by mail. Sixteen States require voters to provide an excuse if they want to cast a ballot by mail. But during the pandemic, 13 of these States are allowing all voters to cast a ballot by mail without needing to provide an excuse--Democratic and Republican Governors and secretaries of states. That is progress. I would say, while we still have three States that are still denying all voters the option to vote by mail--forcing them to choose between their health and their constitutional right and go through these hoops to do it--why not put a standard in place on the Federal level? That is what our bill does. Our legislation would also get help to the States. Again, my friend, Senator Blunt, is here, and I appreciate--while he hasn't put a dollar amount on it, his interest in looking at funding for this beyond this bill, I think, is very helpful. Our bill called for $3.6 billion, which is what is in the Heroes Act, of funding to safely administer elections. It would knock down barriers, this bill, to safely vote, like the requirement to have your ballot signed by a witness or a notary. These are requirements that disproportionately hurt minority voters--people without as much money. There is one story of a person sitting in a hospital room trying to get someone to notarize a primary ballot through a glass window-- someone who has coronavirus. Are we really going to require them to do that? Are we really going to do that? That is what you have to ask yourself, colleagues. The bottom line is, it shouldn't be this hard to vote. I am proud that this bill has been endorsed by more than a dozen organizations, including the group founded by former First Lady Michelle Obama, including Voto Latino, including the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, the National Urban League, Common Cause, the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights. As I noted, the CARES Act included funding. It didn't include the standards that I think are necessary but included the funding. That is just the beginning. That was a downpayment--negotiating in the middle of the night. I know that because I was talking to my colleagues back then. This is the real deal, to be able to help States in the general election. This money was included in the Heroes Act. Public health experts have warned over and over again of the possibility of a new wave of this virus in the fall. We have to be ready. States are having this happen anyway, and we should make sure that they have the funding to do it. I know we are going to be discussing the National Defense Authorization Act in the next few weeks, at some point. I think about that. Our defense is important, but, remember, this is about the defense of our democracy. The simple idea that this was a democracy; that it is not a dictatorship; that people should be able to go out there and exercise their right to vote no matter how they are going to vote, no matter what party they are going to vote for, and this is the moment--and because of this pandemic, we need to do it. The last thing I will mention, three polls released in the last couple of months show an overwhelming majority of voters--over 80 percent favor measures to make voting safe and easy. One of the polls conducted in six battleground States showed that 74 percent of voters wanted their Senators to support legislation in Congress to implement voting reforms, including a majority of Republican voters. Think about that. Voters across party lines want Congress to pass legislation that would guarantee the right to vote by mail and provide funding to States and make sure it is safe to vote. That is what this is about. Again, I thank my colleague, Senator Blunt, for all he has done and the fact that he was able to work with us when we did negotiate the CARES Act to make sure there was some funding included, as well as I mentioned Senator Shelby, Senator Coons, Senator Leahy, and others. Now is the time to prepare for what we have ahead; that is, making sure everyone can vote safely Madam President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Rules Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 4033, the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act of 2020, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I want to thank my colleague for his work and his friendship. We obviously don't agree on every aspect of this. I did enjoy hearing his desk story. I didn't know he had Harry Truman's desk. When I got to the Senate, I asked for the desk of Hubert Humphrey, the ``happy warrior,'' and about 8 months later, the desk arrived, and they had accidentally given me the desk of Gordon Humphrey, the former Senator from New Hampshire, and I had it for quite a while. In a new Senate, I one day opened up the desktop and saw that they had replaced it with the desk of Hubert Humphrey. So I would give these comments in the spirit of the ``happy warrior''; that is, while you and I disagree on setting these standards, at this moment I think we should; I think if not now, when? When it comes to things such as not having notaries for getting a ballot and things like that, I am heartened by the fact that, No. 1, we have a hearing, which has been asked for--I think it is really important, and I appreciate that--on this upcoming election. No. 2, you continue to be open to discussing with me and with the Appropriations Committee the funding as we go into November. I think that is really going to be important for all voters, whether in red, blue, or purple States. We know that so many people vote by mail, including the President of the United States with a ballot from Palm Beach, FL. We all want to have that ability and make sure people in our States have an ability to either vote by mail or vote safely at the polling places this fall. Thank you very much. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today and thank my colleague from Oregon and also thank him for his work on the voting bill. We just had a discussion with Senator Blunt about that, and while we didn't agree on the bill, there is a discussion that is ongoing--as we head into another COVID package, possibly, which we really believe we need to--on working on some funding issues for the States as we look at more and more balloting from home and how important that is. I want to thank Senator Wyden for his leadership for so long on that issue. I brought up his home State in a speech about an hour or so ago and the work that Oregon has done with ballot-by-home and, I think, ballots from home. I actually think I used the number of percentage of fraud as 0.0000001, or something like that, to show that what the President said is not true; that we have had, actually, in many States across the country--including Utah, a redder State--a big success with voting from home.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I join my colleagues today, in the middle of Pride Month, to celebrate the Supreme Court's landmark decision this week in Bostock v. Clayton County, protecting LGBTQ rights and protecting people from discrimination in the workplace, and to urge all of our colleagues to secure and extend those protections by passing the Equality Act. Something else big happened in the Supreme Court, and that was today, with the Supreme Court's decision on DACA, on Dreamers--allowing them to stay in this country and asking the administration to open up the application process for citizenship. That is relevant because it is about civil rights, but it is also relevant because the Supreme Court-- this conservative Court--has had to step in because this body has not been doing what it should have been: passing the Equality Act and passing comprehensive immigration reform. So let us remember that as we celebrate the decision in the Bostock case and as we move toward equality. I thank Senators Merkley, Baldwin, and Booker for their leadership on this important bill and for bringing us together today. Over the last few decades, we have made progress in the fight for equality. We have stood up for what is right, and we have worked hard to make this a country in which people can safely, proudly, and legally love whom they love. It was not long ago when a person could be prosecuted for being gay and when don't ask, don't tell was the law of the land--when I came to the U.S. Senate--and when States were permitted to deny LGBTQ couples the right to get married under the Defense of Marriage Act. This week, our country took an important step forward with the Supreme Court's decision that recognizes that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from firing employees because of sex, protects LGBTQ people in the workplace. We can celebrate today that justice was delivered for Aimee Stephens, who was fired when she informed her employer that she was transgender, and for Donald Zarda and Gerald Bostock, who were fired when their employers learned they were gay. But, of course, this is more than about three people. As Mr. Bostock said, ``This fight became about so much more than me.'' Their courage to stand up in the face of injustice will forever change this country for millions of LGBTQ people and their families, and it makes our country a more just nation. Although the Court's decision is a landmark victory, we still have miles to go because it is not right when the Commander in Chief tells brave transgender Americans who want to serve and protect our country in our military that they are not welcome; it is not right when this administration is trying to take away the hard-won rights of LGBTQ people in healthcare and education; and it is not right that you can drive across the United States on a cross-country trip and find that the laws and protections could be different at every rest stop. That is why I was proud to cosponsor, on the day it was introduced, the bipartisan Equality Act with my colleagues who are here today, and it is why I am calling on our colleagues across the aisle to pass this bill. This bill, which already passed the House by a vote of 236 to 173, will go a long way in protecting LGBTQ Americans from discrimination. The Equality Act would build on the Supreme Court's decision and make nondiscrimination protections consistent and explicit. It would amend laws like the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and Federal employment laws to ensure that all Americans, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, have equal access to housing, education, and federally funded programs. We should not wait any longer to extend these protections, for nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ Americans report experiencing discrimination in their personal lives. These problems are compounded by race and income, especially for trans women of color. Yet it has been over 1 year since this bill passed the House. In 2000, when I was the county attorney in our largest county in Minnesota, I was invited to the White House to introduce President Bill Clinton at an event to urge the passage of hate crimes legislation. We had had an African-American young man who had been shot by a guy who had said that he had wanted to go out and kill someone on Martin Luther King Day. That happened. We had had an employee who had gotten beaten with a board by the foreman at his workplace for his simply speaking Spanish. I had taken on a number of these crimes, so I had been invited by the President to urge Congress to pass the Matthew Shepard hate crimes legislation, which covered a wide range of hate crimes. During that event at the White House--my first time ever there--I got to meet the investigators in the Matthew Shepard case. They were these two burly cops from Wyoming, and they talked about the fact that until that investigation--I think Senator Baldwin is nodding her head and has probably met them as well--they really hadn't thought about what Matthew Shepard's life was like or the lives of other LGBTQ people. Then, as they started to investigate what had happened--and we all remember how he was left hanging on a fence post, and the first people who saw him thought he was a scarecrow--these investigators, these police officers, got to know the family and the case. They got to know his mom, and they got to know his friends. During the course of their investigation, as they began to understand what life was like for Matthew Shepard, their own lives were changed. I think this is happening right now around this country after the murder of George Floyd in my State, and I know it has been happening when it comes to our LGBTQ community. That is why, on that day way back, we were in the White House to introduce that bill. Nearly 10 years after that event at the White House, during my first year as a U.S. Senator, I got to be one of the deciding votes to finally pass that hate crimes bill. So I say to my colleagues who are fighting for justice, who are fighting for justice in policing, who are fighting for justice in our LGBTQ community, who are fighting for justice for our immigrants, the change will happen, but we can't wait 10 years for this change to happen. The people of this country are demanding that it happen now. We need to come together and finally pass the Equality Act and do all of these other good things that are right here, that are right on our desks. We should do them immediately--not next year--and not wait. Now I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I come to the floor today because it is time to end systemic racism with systemic change. So I am calling on my colleagues to work with us to immediately bring the Justice in Policing Act to the floor. I thank Senator Booker, who is here with us today, and Senator Harris for their work on this bill, as well as the House Members who are leading in the other Chamber. We must pass this bill, and we should do it immediately with bipartisan support. George Floyd should be alive today, but he isn't. He was murdered in my State. He was murdered in my city. He was murdered on videotape so the whole world could see it. The whole world saw as his life evaporated before our eyes. Our Nation has been left in pain, grieving, marching, and demanding justice. His murder has galvanized a nationwide movement for justice, both for George Floyd and for the Black community and communities of color across America that have experienced injustice for far too long-- not just injustice at the hands of the police, but also economic injustice, educational injustice. And, if anything, these last few months of this pandemic have shed a big magnifying glass and put it on top of what has been happening for way too long. As we grieve this loss, we have work to do in our own States, and that is justice in this particular case, including accountability for the officers involved. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whom I have known for many, many years--I am very sure that he will have full faith and has forever in his conviction for justice, and he is pursuing this case against the officers. But as lawmakers, we must also make systemic change. We cannot answer our Nation's calls for justice with silence. That would make us complicit. We cannot answer with what the President called domination. That would make us monsters. We must answer with action. That is what makes us lawmakers. Since I have come to the Senate 13 years ago, I have watched as change has come inch by inch. I see Senator Durbin with us today, who led the effort on changing the disparity on crack cocaine. I was a new member of the Judiciary Committee when he led that work. I see Senator Booker here. Both of them, as well as a number of us, worked on the FIRST STEP Act. That was really important to reduce sentencing for nonviolent offenders. But, again, it is inch by inch. We must move by miles. There is systemic racism at every level of our justice system, and it has taken far too long to right these wrongs. And it is on us in Congress, especially on those of us who have worked in this system--mayors, prosecutors, attorneys general. Those of us who have seen what is happening have a special obligation to make this change. We took an oath as Senators. We didn't wave a Bible in the air for a photo op. We placed our hand on that Bible and swore to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That enemy we face right now is racism; it is injustice. This is not a time for half measures and equivocation. It is a time for real change and swift action, including holding police officers accountable for misconduct and violence, changing police practices, and making our justice system more transparent. There are a lot of good police officers out there--a lot of good police officers--but they are brought down, just as our entire community is, when you have someone like Derek Chauvin commit the murder that he did. When they watch the videotape, they feel like we feel. And that is why this bill is so important--the Justice in Policing Act. This comprehensive legislation changes Federal law so that officers can be held accountable for misconduct and increases that transparency and improves police training. First, on accountability, the Justice in Policing Act will hold officers accountable for misconduct and violence by changing the Federal use-of-force standard from reasonable to necessary so that force is only used when necessary to prevent death or serious injury, and it requires States to adopt similar stands if they want to receive certain Federal funding. Changing the standard is not just some little legalese word that makes a change. It will save lives. When these changes have been adopted at the local level, there has been a significant drop in the use of force. These words can be the difference between whether a prosecutor can prove a case against a police officer or not. People ask what has happened around the country with some of these cases--some of these blatant things that people recently have seen on videotape. In my State, Philando Castile, who was in a neighboring jurisdiction to Minneapolis--look at what these standards are. Lawmakers have control over these standards. Even when a case like that was prosecuted with excellent prosecutors, who did their all, they were not able to get a guilty verdict. Look at the standards. In addition to improving the way that individual officers are held accountable for misconduct, the bill holds police departments accountable, because we know that there are systematic changes that are needed at police departments. I have called on the Department of Justice, along with 26 of my colleagues, to conduct a full-scale investigation into the patterns and practices of the Minneapolis Police Department. We have waited weeks for a response. Under the Obama administration, 25 of these pattern and practice investigations were brought. Under the Trump Justice Department, just one unit of one department in Springfield, MA, was examined. Now, just as I headed to the floor here, we got a letter from the Justice Department, but they did not commit to this investigation. They said they were going to continue to look at the evidence Meanwhile, the Governor of Minnesota and the State human rights department has had to fill in. They are conducting their own investigation, and I have faith that they will do the right thing. But, again, this should be coming from the Justice Department. We know that Minnesota is not the only State whose recent events have shown us misconduct from the police and that have experienced a pattern and practice that need to be examined. But, again, we wait that investigation from the Department of Justice. After what we saw on the video, is it not warranted in this case to have such an investigation? I would ask the Justice Department under Donald Trump and under William Barr: What facts would warrant an investigation if not these? In addition to improving the tools to hold police accountable, we also need to ensure that there is transparency so we can once again build trust with our communities. What does this mean? Well, it means that we have officers that actually get in trouble in one department and then they go to another department and no one even knows what happens. It means that the public does not have access to information about serious issues of misconduct that are held tightly within city departments and city archives in some place, when in fact it is a matter of life and death for the people of this country. And, of course, we need wholesale changes to the way policing happens. I worked with Senators Smith and Gillibrand to include provisions in the bill to require States to ban the use of choke holds in policing to receive certain Federal funding and to ban them overall. This would be an important change that actually would help with prosecutions across the country, if this practice was actually banned. George Floyd's murder, at the hands of police officers, was horrific and inhumane and, sadly, as we know, not the first or last time a Black man was taken too soon by those in uniform. We must stop this cycle of violence to get something done. We have an opportunity to make real change here, and if Leader McConnell refuses to bring this bill to the floor, he and his colleagues who support him are on the wrong side of history. In the words of George Floyd's family, whom I had the honor to speak with, ``We will demand and ultimately force lasting change by shining a light on this and by winning justice.'' I will conclude with this. A few years ago, like so many of my colleagues, I went to Selma, AL, with Representative John Lewis. I stood there on the bridge where he had his head beaten in. I was in awe of his persistence, his resilience, and his faith that this country could always do better. That weekend, after 48 years, the White police chief of Montgomery handed his police badge to Congressman Lewis, and he publicly apologized on behalf of police for not protecting Congressman Lewis and the Freedom Marchers 48 years before. I don't want it to take another 48 years for my city to heal. I don't want it to take another 48 years for my State to heal or for this country to heal or for our Nation to fix a justice system that has been broken since it was built. I want justice now. The voices you hear from across the country--they want justice now. It is time we delivered, and not just in platitudes. It is time we acted, and not just talk about acting. This is our moment. This is history. So let's make history. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, today I rise to honor and pay tribute to my friend, neighbor, and mentor Tom Johnson, who passed away on June 8, 2020, after a 6-year fight with cancer. Tom served as the Hennepin County attorney for 12 years, and after I took over as county attorney years later, I would often turn to him for advice. Tom was always willing to help and to offer his wisdom, humor, and always patient kindness. It is only fitting that Tom was working up until his final days as to how to improve the lives of others by proposing ideas on criminal justice reform. In fact, just 1 week before he died, Tom attended a virtual board meeting of the Minnesota Justice Research Center, which he founded and which was dedicated to pursuing fair treatment for those in the criminal justice system. Tom was a groundbreaking leader on criminal justice reform for decades and a fierce advocate for ending the racial disparities that have plagued our judicial system. Last Christmas, Tom wrote his own obituary, in which he said that nothing had given him more satisfaction than ``calling attention to the unacceptable racial disparities in the justice system and their cost to society.'' His voice and wisdom on these issues will be deeply missed in this moment as we try to end systemic racism in our country with systemic change. Put simply, Tom always did good, from his critical work on domestic abuse, to his focus on race and justice, to his principled stand against the death penalty. He simply loved public service. Tom was elected to the Minneapolis City Council at just 28 years old, and he once wrote that he used to wander around city hall thinking ``If the public only knew how little I know.'' But despite, or perhaps, because of his humility, Tom got things done. Tom fought for truth-in-housing inspections and campaign finance disclosures and for a prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation. He founded CornerHouse, an advocacy center for child victims of sexual abuse. Tom was a tireless advocate and champion for all Minnesotans, but none gave him more joy than his beloved family, including his wife Victoria and his children Jill, Ben, Hunter, and Kayla. He was so proud of all they had achieved--and rightfully so. When reflecting on his legacy to the Star Tribune in 2015, Tom suggested that many of today's problems could be solved if people just worked harder at getting to know people from different races and cultures. As he told the paper, things like ``socializing after work. Asking how things are going and really listening to the answer. Helping a young person make the connections that lead to a first job,'' were the keys. We would all be wise to honor Tom's legacy by heeding that advice.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to finish my remarks before the vote.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to honor a life lost, share in the grief of a family and a Nation in pain, and call for this body to take action to reform a system that has been broken for too long. George Floyd should be alive today, but he isn't. He was murdered by police in my State--a death both horrifying and inhumane but not unique. We literally saw his life evaporate before our eyes. The whole country saw it. The whole world saw it. We know that our African-American community in Minneapolis and across America has seen this horror before and has experienced injustice for far too long. They have had enough. They are angry and in pain, and they are calling out for justice. Senators, we cannot answer with silence. That would make us complicit. We cannot answer with what the President called dominance. That would make us monsters. We cannot answer with using churches as props and Bibles as props and inflaming violence. We must answer with action. That is what makes us lawmakers. For 13 years, here in Washington, change has come inch by inch when we should be miles ahead. I pick that time because that is when I first got here. That is when I first started doing work on crack cocaine and sentencing disparity, and I have seen those changes, but it is inch by inch. First, there needs to be justice for George Floyd. There needs to be criminal accountability to the fullest extent of the law. Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, with whom I have worked closely for years, has taken over the investigation and the prosecution of the case. I have full faith in his conviction for justice in this case and beyond. Sweeping reform starts with accountability in this individual case, but it doesn't end there. We all know that these officers work within a bigger system, so that is why I called for a full-scale investigation into the patterns and practices of racially discriminatory policing in the Minneapolis Police by the Department of Justice, in addition to ongoing local, State, and Federal investigations. Senator Smith and I led a request with 26 Senators asking the Justice Department to conduct what is called a pattern-and-practice investigation. This afternoon, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights announced that they are going to investigate the police department as well. The words engraved on the Supreme Court building, ``Equal Justice Under Law,'' we know have never really been true for millions of African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, and other minority groups. There is systematic racism at every level of our judicial system, and that calls for systematic change. We must take action to end unconstitutional, discriminatory policing across the country. We can start by making sure that policemen's conduct is independently investigated and that we hold officers criminally accountable when they break the law and violate the trust that is needed between law enforcement officers and the people they have sworn to protect. We also need strong Federal requirements for State and local police to collect and report data on the use of force. Right now, a patchwork of local policies, many of which allow local police to avoid accountability, make it far too difficult to identify and address patterns of discrimination and excessive force in police departments. Better data will help hold officers and departments accountable. Broader criminal justice reform and the standard for use of force-- all of those things must change. As I mentioned, we have done something. We passed the First Step Act when it comes to sentencing, but now we need to take on the Second Step Act to create incentives for States to restore discretion for mandatory sentencing for nonviolent offenders and reform the conditions in State prisons and local jails. We know these conditions have gotten even worse during the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier today, we held a hearing in the Judiciary Committee about the continued injustice we are seeing in our prison system during this pandemic. While some people, like Paul Manafort, have been transferred to home confinement, others, like Andrea Circle Bear or Andrea High Bear, who is serving 26 months for a nonviolent drug offense and had just given birth while on a ventilator--why? She was exposed to the virus. So the question is, Why did a pregnant woman with a preexisting condition--an American Indian woman who was there for a nonviolent offense--why was she there in the prison system and Paul Manafort gets out? We should also create a diverse, bipartisan clemency advisory board-- one that includes victim advocates as well as prison and sentencing reform advocates--that would look at these issues from a different perspective. We should strengthen post-conviction reviews with conviction integrity units across the country. According to data from the National Registry of Exonerations, there are currently fewer than 60 conviction integrity units in the United States, and many of those are too weak to be effective. Attorney General Ellison and I have been working with prosecutors in Minnesota to set up a conviction integrity unit in the Twin Cities with strong, strong standards for independence and transparency. This needs to happen nationally. We should also expand post-conviction sentencing reviews. Ensuring justice isn't just looking back at a case to see whether the evidence was right; it is also looking to see whether the sentence was right in a situation. All of this--expanding our Nation's drug courts, which is something that I have been leading on in the Senate for years, changing that conversation about drug and alcohol treatment, reforming the cash bail system--if there is anything we as a Senate can do to eliminate injustice within our justice system, we should do it, and we should do it now. Talk is no longer enough. We know this pandemic has shed a light on the injustice we have already seen, as Senator Durbin, who was here, and I discussed about the prison system today. We also see it in the number of people dying. In Louisiana, African Americans account for nearly 60 percent of deaths but 33 percent of the population. In Georgia, a study of eight hospitals found that 80 percent of their COVID-19 patients were African Americans yet 30 percent of the population. The workers on the frontline, the people who are working not just in the hospitals, not just in the emergency rooms, but in the grocery stores, driving the public transportation, are getting this virus--this sometimes fatal virus--at a much higher rate. This calls for not only the reforms that I laid out and that I have been advocating for years but also calls for investment, like Jim Clyburn's plan to invest in underserved areas and impoverished areas that have been that way for a long, long time. Senator Booker is carrying that bill in the Senate. Martin Luther King once said that we are ``all tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one of us directly, affects all indirectly.'' That means, in the long term, an economy that works for everyone, with fair wages, with childcare, and with retirement savings. It means closing the wealth gap. Black and Latino households have only about a tenth of the medium net worth right now of White households. It means voting rights. The scene that we saw in Wisconsin where people were standing in the rain with homemade masks and garbage bags just to be able to vote, risking their lives and their health, while the President of the United States was able to vote in the luxury of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue because he could get a mail-in ballot from Palm Beach, FL--that is a split screen for you. That is why people are out peacefully marching. That is what they are angry about. It is police misconduct. It is the murder of George Floyd. It is the longtime economic disparities, but it is also the longtime suppression of the vote and the unfairness of all of this. This has been a devastating time for Minnesota, but as George Floyd's family, whom I had the honor to talk with at length this weekend, said: We cannot sink to the level of our oppressors, and we must not endanger others during this pandemic. We will demand and ultimately force lasting change by shining a light on treatment that is horrific and unacceptable and by winning justice. That is what they are talking about in Minnesota today. That was the spirit that I saw when my husband and I went to drop off food, where hundreds of people were there with thousands of bags of groceries because their grocery stores in that neighborhood had been burned to the core and their stores had been looted, not by the peaceful, righteous marchers but the people who were hiding behind them. I will end with this. A few years ago I went to Selma, AL, with Representative John Lewis, like so many Senators have done. I stood there on the bridge where he had his head beaten in. I was in awe of his persistence, his resilience, and his faith that this country could be better, if only we put in the work. That weekend, after 48 years, the White police chief of Montgomery handed his police badge to Congressman Lewis and publicly apologized on behalf of the police for not protecting him 48 years before and not protecting his freedom marchers. I don't want to take 48 years for my city and my State to heal or for our Nation to fix a justice system that has been broken since it was built. I want justice now. The people of this country deserve justice now. Everyone has a role to play in coming back from these crises. The protesters are shining a light on injustice that we have pushed to the shadows for far too long. The frontline workers and volunteers are serving the communities they love, and they are looking to all of us to deliver the reforms we promised--not just in speeches, not just in campaigns, but in reality, and not just for George Floyd. His legacy should be so much more than those 9 minutes--or Philando Castile or Jamar Clark or Breonna Taylor--because we took an oath. We took an oath, colleagues. We didn't wave a Bible in the air for a photo op. We placed our hand on that Bible, and we swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The enemy we face now is racism. The enemy we face now is injustice. I don't know what else to say because too many words have been said, and maybe it is time to stop talking. Maybe it is time to start acting. It is time to get to work. It is time to do our jobs. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, we are here to vote on a nominee, James Trainor, to be a Commissioner at the Federal Election Commission--the independent agency responsible for enforcing Federal campaign finance laws. I am deeply disappointed in today's vote, which is a departure from the Senate's longstanding tradition of considering FEC nominees on a bipartisan basis and another step in eroding the traditions of the Senate--all for a candidate who holds extreme views toward the agency to which he would be appointed. Prior to today, the Senate has voted to confirm 47 FEC nominees, and 42 of those nominees have been confirmed through a bipartisan process. As the ranking Democrat on the Rules and Administration Committee, I have repeatedly urged my Republican colleagues to work with us to get the FEC running again, as it is unacceptable that the agency charged with protecting the integrity of our campaign finance system has been without a quorum for 261 days--the longest period without a quorum in the agency's history--but this is not the way to do it. The FEC has been plagued by partisan gridlock for years. With a general election only 168 days away, we should be working together to make sure that the agency is working to the fullest extent possible. Americans are tired of hyperpartisanship and gridlock. This is not the time to abandon the bipartisan tradition of moving FEC nominees together. We need to work to restore their trust in our political institutions, and with this vote, we are taking a step backward. We all know that our campaign finance system is broken. Everyone in this room knows it. Spending on campaigns has gotten out of control, and special interest groups are a major part of the problem. Experts suggest that at least $6 billion will be spent in the 2020 election cycle on political advertisements alone. That doesn't count the billions that will be spent by the campaigns themselves and the additional billions spent by dark money groups and special interests which are trying to influence this election. In order for our democracy to work, we need strong rules for campaign spending, and we need a strong agency to enforce those rules. We should be working together, on a bipartisan basis, to propose solutions to try to get the FEC back on track. I have a few ideas. We should work together to pass legislation to reform the FEC's rules so it functions better. We should establish a working group that will investigate bipartisan solutions to improve the function of the FEC. We should also work together to elect strong nominees from both parties who will serve on the Commission with the understanding that they are there to enforce the law and protect our election system--and, oh, does this election system need protecting right now. We are in the midst of a pandemic. We have people standing in garbage bags and homemade masks in the rain in Wisconsin just trying to exercise their right to vote. Nearly 50 of those people got sick. We have a poll worker who got sick. We have States all over the country, with both Democratic and Republican Governors, that are desperately trying to get funding so we can have more at-home voting and have the polls open earlier and have them open for days so people don't have to all congregate on 1 day, and on that day we have to also make our elections safer. We have a lot to do. When it comes to elections, we know that the enforcement agency for things like campaign finance is the FEC. We know it is broken, and we as a body should work to improve it. My Republican colleagues, on this particular nominee, have repeatedly said that by confirming Mr. Trainor they are doing some good restoring a quorum. OK. That is not the full story of this nomination. It ignores the fact that gridlock will persist, and Republicans have intentionally left a Democratic seat on the Commission vacant for more than 1,100 days. It ignores the fact that Leader Schumer and I referred a Democratic candidate to the White House for consideration and that she has been vetted and cleared. She is immensely qualified, and she would be the first person of color to ever sit on the FEC. Yes, that is right, the first person of color not only in this Congress but the first person of color in the history of the Federal Elections Commission to serve on the Commission. Since Republicans refuse to move forward in a bipartisan manner, the agency charged with enforcing our campaign finance laws will continue to remain ineffective. This undermines our country's political institutions, and it does not serve our country's best interests. Many people refer to the Senate as the world's greatest deliberative body because the Senate, as an institution, is designed for the careful consideration and debate of legislation and nominations. When we erode the bipartisan norms that make us the greatest deliberative body, we end up allowing unqualified nominees who hold extreme views to be appointed to important positions in our government just at a time when we should be doing the opposite. In addition to these process concerns, today we are also being asked to move forward with a nominee to the FEC who doesn't believe in basic campaign finance law. The FEC was created to enforce campaign finance law, so it is critical that the agency be staffed by Commissioners who believe in its mission so it can police people from both parties. Mr. Trainor has consistently worked to dismantle the rules that keep corruption out of our political system. He has spent his career arguing that people should not have to disclose political spending and has worked to stack the deck against voters by gerrymandering districts in Texas to dilute minority voting power. Trainor's views on disclosure are inconsistent with decades of Supreme Court precedent, including the views of late Justice Scalia. When fellow Republicans in the Texas Legislature worked to require politically active nonprofit organizations to disclose their donors, Trainor challenged them and said that such a law ``would have a chilling effect on anybody's ability to speak.'' Let's just step back. Those were fellow Republicans on the Texas Legislature simply trying to put some reforms in place so we knew where those donations were coming from, and he spoke out against that. Moving forward with this nomination today may restore a quorum, but it does not serve the American people. The American people deserve an FEC that works, an agency that enforces the law and protects our political system from corruption. At a time when unprecedented amounts of dark money and foreign money are flowing into our elections and influencing our courts, a fully functioning FEC is critical to safeguarding our political system. When it comes to the agency in charge of enforcing our campaign finance laws, the absolute minimum qualification should be that the person actually believes in the mission of the agency. Is that too much to ask? We need to focus on how we can help the American people safely vote during this pandemic. I mean, we need to focus on this pandemic, instead of the series of votes that we have seen this week, but if we are going to decide who should serve on the FEC during this pandemic, it should be someone who believes in the mission of the FEC. We need to work together to hold hearings with bipartisan groups of election officials, like we have been working to do on the State level when it comes to how to vote in this pandemic. There has been a lot of good work going on with Republicans and Democrats, Governors and Secretaries of State. We need to do the same thing in this Chamber as we approach major legislation and as we approach our working with the FEC. I oppose the process by which this nominee has come to the floor, and I believe the nominee's extreme views are disqualifying for this important office. I strongly urge my colleagues to vote no on this nominee. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague's words in that he is willing to work with me on this bill. We know we need the immediate fixes to the first piece of legislation, but we also need to look forward to what we have in front of us. That is to make sure that we help our States to be able to conduct their elections in a safe way so that Democrats, Republicans, and Independents--anyone who wants to vote, whatever party one is in-- is able to safely vote. Let's remember that, while people were lining those streets to vote in Wisconsin, the President of the United States was able to request a mail-in ballot from Palm Beach, FL, and vote in the comfort of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That is an image--a split screen--that I don't think anyone wants to see. I think what we want to see is fairness for all Americans. You do that by getting them the funding ahead of time, by making sure we have rules in place that work for everyone, by acknowledging this has never been nor should it be a partisan issue, and by telling all Americans that we have worked this out, that we are getting the funding to the States, that we are working with all of their States, and that we have put in some fair rules so that no American will be denied the right to vote. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to urge the Senate to immediately take action to address the issue of elections and specifically to address technical changes to the $400 million in election security funding passed in the CARES Act and to talk about the coronavirus threat to our democracy itself. Sixteen States have already postponed their Presidential primaries or transitioned their primaries to almost entirely voting by mail. We have seen Republican and Democratic Governors across the country, from States like West Virginia, Indiana--the Presiding Officer's State--New York, and Kentucky, issue waivers allowing all voters to cast their ballots by mail during the pandemic. This includes States that used to have requirements that you have to give a reason to even get a mail-in ballot to vote from home. Both Democratic and Republican Governors have waived it--not in every State but in a number of States. While it is important that individual States are taking action to protect voters during this pandemic, it is the responsibility of us, of Congress, to ensure that States have the funds they need to make our elections more resilient and to make sure voters don't have to risk their health to cast their ballots. We must do this because, as we have seen over the last several weeks, not all States are doing everything they can to protect voters. That is sad, but it is true. What is coming before us in the fall is a national election. Just yesterday, we learned that the attorney general of Texas has asked the Texas Supreme Court to stop county election officials from letting voters who are afraid of getting the coronavirus to vote by mail. He basically went to court and said that the counties that are giving out these ballots should stop. He tried, he tried, and he is continuing to try to stop them from simply sending out ballots to voters who are afraid to vote in person. Some of them have preexisting conditions. Some of them are veterans who served our country. Some of them are seniors. Basically, in this one State--by the way, there are other things going on in other States--the attorney general is trying to stop them from actually voting from home. Under Texas law, you have to have an excuse in order to vote by mail. This pandemic, as we know, has killed more than 85,000 Americans. Local officials in Texas have told the voters that the coronavirus-- they have looked at the law and said that it is a valid excuse to request a mail-in ballot. I guess it is. I would think it is. But the Texas attorney general disagrees and has asked the Texas Supreme Court to stop these local election officials from sending voters a mail-in ballot. That is a disgrace. We shouldn't be playing politics with people's lives. Even the most cynical Americans believe that. They know people play politics all the time, but they don't think you should play it with their lives. We know from what happened in Wisconsin that people who show up to vote during this crisis are, in fact, risking their health if precautions are not taken. A little over a month ago, both Democratic and Republican voters and Independent voters in Wisconsin stood for hours in the cold and the rain, wearing garbage bags and homemade masks, in order to cast their votes. There were just 5 polling locations open in Milwaukee instead of the usual 180 and 2 in Green Bay instead of the usual 30, and two-thirds of Wisconsin's African-American voters live in Milwaukee. There is no question that this vast reduction in polling places, without there being the adequate time to transition to mail-in voting, ended up disenfranchising voters, particularly in the case of African- American voters. At the same time, we saw people trying to vote in whatever way they could. They tried to mail in their ballots even when it was at the last minute. Now health officials say that more than 67 people in Wisconsin may have become infected with the coronavirus as a result of that election. This is unacceptable. No one should have to choose between exercising the right to vote and protecting the health of themselves and their loved ones. What happened in Wisconsin will be forever etched in the memory of our Nation. We can't allow this to happen again. In the face of this, yesterday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court actually struck down the Governor's stay-at-home order. We should actually be taking steps forward now instead of backward. Public health experts have warned of the possibility of another, more serious outbreak of this virus in the fall. Congress must act now to give States the funding they need. We know the States are strapped-- that every single State in this country is strapped. Even if we were to do nothing here, we would know there are going to be States that are going to get humongous requests for mail-in ballots that they have never gotten before. We know that in the State of Wisconsin, Senator Johnson's State. It is traditionally a State in which about 6 percent of the people vote by mail. Next-door, in my home State of Minnesota, it is 25 percent. Yes, it is more, but we know it is probably going to at least double--and more--no matter what party you are in. This is why the Republican Governors are asking for money. They may not agree with everything in my bill, but so many of them are asking for funding to be able to help them send out those ballots and send out the postage so as to keep their polling places open, say, for 1 week, 2 weeks, or, we think, 20 days in advance so that people could actually vote and not congregate in one location. That is why this is happening right now. Nearly 2 months ago, I introduced legislation, the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act, with Senator Wyden, along with 35 of my colleagues. The bill would simply ensure that every voter could cast a ballot by mail, that those who need it could have expanded access to early in-person voting, and that States could have the funding and resources that are necessary to safely administer elections. This week, the House introduced the COVID 4 bill, the fourth COVID relief package, the HEROES Act. It contains the election reforms found in my legislation as well as $3.6 billion to help States protect our elections from COVID-19. That is because mailing mail-in ballots all over the country is going to cost some change. We know that. Yet what is the alternative? Is it telling veterans who served on the battlefield in World War II, like the one I heard about yesterday, that they can't vote or that they have to stand in line? What is the alternative--telling seniors they have to stand in line? No, that is not a good alternative. The alternative is to make sure we expand mail- in ballots. I know negotiations will occur over the coming days regarding the next relief package. I look forward to working with my Democratic and Republican colleagues. I see the chairman of the Committee on Rules and Administration is here, Senator Blunt. I look forward to working with him just as we have recently done on remote committee hearings, which have actually, by all accounts, gone pretty well in the Senate over the last few weeks. I am here today to push for a change that we know needs to be done, and that is to make some changes to make sure the first grouping of money we got--the $400 million of emergency funding in the first bill-- can get out to the States, because of some changes that were made to the original proposal that have made it hard for some of our States to be able to get that money out. There is a matching requirement, and we see it already playing out. Utah and Oklahoma have indicated they will only be able to access a portion of the funding they have been provided because they can't come up with the full matching requirement. Florida has not yet accessed the funds at all because it is working to see if its legislature can accommodate the matched funding. These are all things we have to work on for this forthcoming legislation, as well as to look at what we did in the first package. There are also issues with the reporting requirements in the bill, but the last thing we want to do is to put an undue burden on the States. What I really want to focus on now, at the end of my remarks, is the need to pass the legislation in front of us--and I know it will be negotiated--to make sure that we fund and help our States fund our elections. Let's dispel the notion that voting at home is somehow a partisan issue. One of the States with the highest number of mail-in ballots is the State of Utah. It is not exactly a bright- blue State. Another State that has a very high number of people voting from home is the State of Colorado. This is a State that tends to be a purple State. Then we have blue States, like Oregon and Washington. Then we have a State like Arizona that, again, has a high number of people voting by mail. On the other end are States that don't have as many people voting by mail, but we have a mixture of States too. New York is at like 5 percent right now. Then we have a number of States, like Alabama, that don't have a lot of people voting by mail. We don't think--at least I don't think--that every single person is going to vote by mail in the election this November. The key is to give them options and to be able to work with our States so that, if we do provide funding--and I am so hopeful that we will be able to come to some kind of agreement here--they can use that money to expand their votes by mail, because we know their citizens are going to request it, and also to make sure voting on election day will be safe. There are ways to do that by encouraging more people, if they don't want to vote by mail, to vote early so fewer people will be there on the same day. What do we see when we look at this? A recent poll shows that in some of the key States across the country, both Republican and Democratic voters--70 to 80 percent of them--want to be able to vote by mail. We have Governors in States like New Hampshire--Republican Governors--in Maryland, and in Ohio who want to vote by mail. That is the way they want to go. We have a secretary of state who is a Republican in the State of Washington who wants to vote by mail. Her entire State basically votes by mail right now, and they are good people who can talk about why this is working for them and how we can make it work but only if they have the funds. We are not going to be able to give them the funds in, say, October and then be able to make sure this has happened. In conclusion, 17 States still have Presidential primaries, and numerous others have primaries for other Federal offices, and, of course, we have the general election on November 3, which is less than 6 months away. We cannot let more Americans experience what we have just seen happen in Wisconsin with the garbage bags, with the homemade masks, with the people getting off work at the hospitals and standing in line. Nobody should have to choose between one's health and one's right to vote. I am committed to securing additional funding in the upcoming relief package, but we have fixes that we must make to the original funding that we made in the first bill, in the first piece of legislation, and we need to get that money out to our election officials today For these reasons, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of a bill at the desk to modify the provisions on funding for election security grants. I further ask that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

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

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today in the midst of this national crisis, this pandemic, to talk about one hero among, of course, many. First, I thank my friend Senator Durbin for his tireless leadership on a very important topic--and that is the topic of immigration--and for his taking the lead in bringing us together today to recognize heroes in healthcare during this coronavirus pandemic. As many of you know, this pandemic is personal for me. My husband John was hospitalized with the coronavirus not too long ago, and although he is a great person and I am so proud of him for coming through it all and giving his plasma recently, he is actually not the hero I am referring to. I am talking about an immigrant doctor who is on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic in Rochester, MN. She has asked that her name not be used publicly because she is applying for a green card. She came to the United States from her home country for postgraduate medical training and completed not one but two fellowships in critical care and pulmonary diseases at the Mayo Clinic, which happens to be where my husband gave the plasma, which we hope will save other lives. Under normal circumstances, an immigrant doctor who completes his or her postgraduate training in the United States has to leave the country for at least 2 years when their residency is complete. Now, let's look at that again. They have studied in an American medical school, they have completed their postgraduate training in the United States, but then they have to leave the country for 2 years when their residency is complete, just at a time when we need more doctors and more healthcare professionals and not less. Why? Because our immigration laws require them to be outside of the country for 2 years before they can apply to come back here on a work visa. But under the Conrad 30 program, doctors--and that is named after Kent Conrad, the Senator who once represented North Dakota. Since he left, I have taken this on, with many of my colleagues, to continue this program and make sure it gets reauthorized, and we would like to see it expanded. Why did he get involved in this in North Dakota? Well, that is because they had a shortage of doctors in rural areas, and under the Conrad 30 program, doctors who commit to caring for patients in an underserved area like rural communities or other areas that may be underserved, including urban areas, if they face a shortage of doctors, these doctors are allowed to start practicing in the United States immediately without having to wait 2 years. I just keep repeating this. They got their training in the United States. They got degrees in the United States. That is why for years I have led bipartisan legislation--which has been endorsed by the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the National Rural Health Association--that would extend this program and allow international doctors trained in the United States to remain in the country if--if--they practice in underserved areas. It was through this program that this hero I am talking about today, this immigrant doctor, was able to stay in Minnesota and eventually began practicing at the Mayo Clinic as a critical care specialist, where she sees patients from all over rural areas of southern Minnesota. She was working in the intensive care unit when the first coronavirus cases started coming through the door. Critical care and pulmonary disease specialists are some of the most in-demand doctors during this pandemic, and as one of these specialists, this doctor has been managing patients on ventilators, patients with kidney failure, and patients with blood clots. She has cared for coronavirus patients on oxygen, and she manages the team that resuscitates patients whose hearts have stopped. This immigrant doctor has literally saved lives. Her hospital regularly provides telemedical support to other Mayo Clinic facilities, and they even helped a hospital in Georgia. And when the Mayo Clinic received clearance to provide assistance to a hospital in the Bronx where the medical staff was stretched dangerously thin, as we see on TV every single day, she volunteered. This immigrant doctor volunteered during her free time using the hospital's telemedicine equipment. Talking about her service during this pandemic, she has said: ``This is not a job, this is a calling. We do this for love.'' Her requirement to work in an underserved area as a condition of the Conrad 30 program ends this year. She has no plans to move and to leave our country and to stop providing care to patients if she can help it. She said: ``I love Minnesota. I hope Mayo never lets me go.'' I hope that too. She is an American hero, and we could use a lot more like her. Over the last 15 years, the Conrad 30 program has brought more than 15,000 doctors to underserved areas, including many rural areas that are short on doctors and rely on the program to fill the gap. I have been at VA hospitals in other parts of the country, and their No. 1 ask was this because they don't have enough doctors in the rural areas where their clinics are located to serve their patients. This is a commonsense program with bipartisan support. I introduced a bill to reauthorize the program, which we have successfully done in the past. I introduced a bill to reauthorize it with Senator Collins and Senator Rosen, and it has 15 cosponsors. Listen to the names here: Senators King, Ernst, Cramer, Coons, Blunt, Capito, Baldwin, Wyden, Thune, Merkley, Wicker, Carper, and Paul. What brings all these Senators together? It is not a common ideological belief on many issues; it is because they are looking out for their States, and they want to save the lives of people in their States, especially during this pandemic, by allowing doctors who have been trained in the United States of America, who have gotten their degrees, who have done their residencies here, to be able to stay in our country. Today I am asking all my colleagues to support its inclusion in the next piece of legislation that is coming our way that we must pass to address the coronavirus. I have also called on the administration to take action to increase the number of doctors who are here to help fight this pandemic and help alleviate the serious strain this pandemic has placed on our healthcare system. First, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services should resume expedited processing for employment-based visas for doctors. On March 20, USCIS announced a freeze on expedited processing during the pandemic, which would exacerbate our shortage of doctors, especially in underserved rural areas. With Representative Bradley Schneider from Illinois, I led a bipartisan group of 24 Senators--I again thank Senator Durbin, who has been such a leader on these issues, for his support for this--and 13 Members of the House in asking USCIS to expedite processing for doctors again. We still haven't received a response. Let's think about what has been happening since we sent that letter on March 20--the increasing number of deaths in the assisted living homes, including those in rural areas, which have been plagued by this pandemic, which have lost dozens of their residents to this pandemic. Think about some of the rural areas that have been hit hard that simply don't have the hospital beds or the ventilators. Think about all that is going on, the thousands and thousands of people who have lost their lives. And still we wait. March 20--a bipartisan group of Senators has asked for help since that freeze on March 20 was put into place. We await a response. Second, USCIS should give flexibility to health systems so that doctors on employment-based visas, like the Minnesota doctor, the hero I just told you about today who couldn't even have her name released when she is managing teams of people--not because she is here illegally, no; because she wants that chance to get her green card. Like that doctor whom I told you about today who can provide care where they need it the most, many doctors in similar circumstances are willing to volunteer to treat patients in the hardest hit areas, just like she did when she volunteered to help with the hospital in the Bronx. They are worried that doing so and leaving their home hospital will put their immigration status in jeopardy. Last month, I led a letter with Representative Tom Cole, Abby Finkenauer from Iowa, and Bradley Schneider, that was signed by 18 other Senators--again, including Senator Durbin and 29 House Members-- urging USCIS to waive restrictions so that doctors can practice in crisis locations. Once again, we have not received a response. Is that because the President wants to take a back seat again to the Governors of this country, when, in fact, Federal policy is holding back not just equipment from going where we have hot spots but now also actual doctors and medical personnel? And if they are good enough to get a degree in a medical school in the United States and if they are good enough to practice in some areas of the country, they are not good enough to practice where we have the hot spots? Rather than acknowledging the help that immigrant doctors are providing during this public health emergency, this administration's rhetoric has made them feel, well, unwelcome. That would be a euphemism. It is one of the reasons that Minnesota doctor asked that I not use her name. When discussing the process of applying for a work visa, she noted: ``At the same time you're taking boards [medical boards] you are also filling out hundreds of pages of paperwork to prove that you're worth keeping.'' OK, picture this. While she is saving lives, managing the team that resuscitates people, volunteering her time to help at the hospital in the Bronx, caring for patients on ventilators and bringing their hearts back to life, she somehow has to prove to our government that she is someone worth keeping. She said: It is very disheartening at times. But she isn't giving up on us. She said: All of us who come from foreign countries, we are here because we want to be here. We love this country. For these brave men and women, it is so important that we do everything we can to protect them and their loved ones, not just from the uncertainty that comes with being immigrants but the risk of the current crisis. So many of our immigrant medical personnel have died, not just in our country but in other parts of the world as well. They have died saving lives for people in the country that they love. We need to ensure that all our doctors and frontline health workers have supplies and equipment, like face masks, gowns, and shoe covers, so that no one has to reuse their supplies and risk exposure to the virus. We need to implement a real national testing strategy so that we can get ahead of the virus and target resources accordingly. The testing blueprint announced by the administration on April 27 falls well short of a comprehensive testing plan and puts all responsibility for testing on the States. Two weeks ago, I was proud that we passed an interim relief package that included $25 billion to expand our Nation's coronavirus testing capacity. It will go a long way to ramp up molecular and serum testing--something that Mayo was a leader in across the country--to diagnose active virus infections, identify antibiotics against the virus, and support contact tracing. This investment is a start, but we know there is so much more work to be done to ensure Americans across the country have access to accurate testing technologies and innovative treatments that they need to reduce the risk of infection. Our healthcare workers on the frontlines, including our immigrant health heroes who sacrifice so much in the pursuit of medicine and service, deserve better. When the President goes after immigrants in his press conference, do you know whom I keep thinking of? I keep thinking of this doctor, this hero in my home State who risks her life every day managing these patients and managing teams of doctors because of her know-how and because of the trust that an institution like the Mayo Clinic has put in her. What are we thinking? These heroes should be heralded and not condemned. In closing, I want to share this quote from President Franklin Roosevelt: ``Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.'' That is exactly what these immigrant health heroes are doing. They chose to be in this country and to come here because, yes, they wanted a good life for themselves and their families, and they knew they were going to have to work hard to make that happen. They got a degree. They are on the frontlines. Then they chose to keep working and to save lives during an incredibly dangerous pandemic. They understand that courage is not the absence of fear--of course, they are afraid when they go to those jobs--but, rather, the assessment that something else is more important than fear. Their life's mission, to them, is more important than fear. Saving someone's grandma or saving someone's husband--they decided that is more important to them than fear. They choose service over fear. What I am asking our colleagues to do here is--we understand there is anti-immigrant sentiment out there. We know it. We hear it every day from the President. But I am asking you to actually believe that your service is more important than that fear that has been stoked. Certainly, a number of our colleagues decided that when they were willing to get on that bill--Democrats and Republicans--to reauthorize the Conrad 30 program to allow these immigrant heroes, these doctors who were trained in our country, to be able to keep doing their work. Let me again mention the names of the cosponsors of this bill: Collins, Rosen, King, Ernst, Cramer, Coons, Blunt, Capito, Baldwin, Wyden, Thune, Merkley, Wicker, Carper, and Paul, and, of course, I mentioned Senator Durbin. They are willing to do that, and there is so much more we can do. We still await an answer for why the visa processing for these healthcare workers was suspended. Service first, fear last--that is what these doctors did, and that is what we must do first. That is what we must do now. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I come to the floor to mark the 1- year anniversary of the House passage of H.R. 1, the For the People Act. I am honored to be here with my colleagues, and I am here to urge the Republicans to bring this legislation to the floor for a vote. This bill has been languishing in the legislative graveyard for a year. I know because I have 13 provisions in this bill. This bill--the combined work of so many people in this Chamber, including of my friends Senator Udall, Senator Merkley, and many others--would fundamentally improve our democracy by protecting voting rights, securing our election systems, and getting dark money out of our campaign system. Why is it so important for us to act on this bill? Every one of the things we want to get done--finally addressing the climate crisis, immigration reform, improving people's healthcare, making healthcare more affordable--depend on there being a democracy that works so people can make sure their votes count. At a time when the right to vote is under attack, when foreign adversaries are trying to exploit our divisions and interfere in our elections--something we are going to be briefed about this afternoon from intelligence agencies--and when an unprecedented amount of money from special interests is drowning out the voices of the American people, we need to take bold action to restore Americans' confidence in our political system. That is exactly what the For the People Act does. As the ranking member of the Committee on Rules and Administration, I know this bill is important. I am frustrated that we have not had more Rules Committee hearings about things like the oversight of the FEC. I am frustrated that, just today, a Republican Commissioner was put forth for a hearing, recommended by the White House, when there is a highly qualified Democratic candidate who would be the first person of color in history to serve on the Federal Election Commission who has been vetted and has cleared the White House. Yet we only saw the Republican candidate. This is why this bill is so important. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. As we celebrate, we are reminded that, throughout our country's history, the right to vote has been hard fought and hard won. Just 2 weeks ago, I had the honor of joining Congressman John Lewis--a true hero for voting rights--on the 55th annual Selma bridge crossing to commemorate the sacrifices made on Bloody Sunday. When we reflect on the sacrifices that have been made for the right to vote, one thing is truly clear--that the fight is not over. There are people today who are working to take the right to vote away. Their work comes in many forms: voter ID laws, gerrymandered districts, purging people from voting rolls, and one that we just saw just last week on Super Tuesday--polling place closures that result in voters having to wait hours in line just to cast their ballots. Just last week in the State of Texas, some African-American voters waited more than 5 hours in line. When a reporter asked one group of voters how the group got through it, a man said: We thought they were making us wait on purpose, so we motivated each other to stay. The policies that led to those long lines didn't happen by accident. Discrimination in voting is happening, as the Fourth Circuit noted in a North Carolina decision on gerrymandering--and these are the words of the judges--with ``surgical precision.'' Discrimination in voting is happening with surgical precision against the African-American community. Our democracy is stronger when more people participate, and our policies are better when more people participate, so we should be making it easier, not harder, to vote. Every eligible American should be automatically registered to vote when one turns 18. That is a bill that I lead. If Target, which is my hometown company, can track a pair of shoes in Hawaii with a SKU number, if everyone gets a Social Security number, we should be able to make sure that people who are eligible to vote are automatically registered when they turn 18. So as to end the practice of gerrymandering, we also need to reform how we draw district maps by having an independent commission in each State. Certainly, we also need to ban the purging of voting rolls. As my friend Stacey Abrams has said, if you don't go to church or the synagogue or the mosque for a year or so, you don't lose your right to worship. If you don't go to a PTA meeting or any other kind of Rotary Club or anything for a few years, you don't lose your right to assemble under the U.S. Constitution, and if you have not voted in a few elections and show up when you have been registered but, somehow, they never sent you the notice and, because there is no same-day registration, you find out you cannot vote, even though you had been duly registered to vote, you should not lose your right to vote under the U.S. Constitution. That is exactly what is going on right now with voting purges. I am proud to lead provisions in the important For the People Act that would accomplish the goals to end these discriminatory practices. Of course, we also have to make voting more secure, which is my last topic. It has been 1,218 days since Russia attacked us in 2016, and we have yet to pass comprehensive election security legislation. The next major elections are just 240 days away, and primaries, as we know, are underway. We must take action now to secure our elections from foreign threats. That is why I have championed legislation to beef up our election systems, which was included in H.R. 1, by providing States with the resources to modernize our voting equipment--some of this has been passed here in this Chamber--but also to set standards for Federal elections, which is the key part--requirements like paper ballots and postelection audits. We still have States--entire States--that have no backup paper ballots. I am not going to spend time going through all of those States, but let me tell you that the Russians know exactly which States those are that have no backup paper ballots. We just had some caucuses in this country, and people resorted to looking at those paper ballots. Imagine if we were hacked in a certain county or in a certain State and there were no backup paper ballots. What would that do to a Federal election? These are the basics of a secure election system, but in 2020, as I noted, voters in eight States will now cast their ballots on machines that produce no paper trails. There are 16 States that still have no statewide audit requirements to confirm the results of an election, and a majority of States relies on voting systems that are at least 10 years old. That is wrong. That is why Senator Lankford and I, as well as Senator Warner, Senator Harris, Senator Burr, and many others, have been pushing the Senate to act, but we have been gut-punched because calls were made from the White House and calls were made from Senator McConnell a year ago to stop the votes to get that bill through the committee to the Senate floor. Making voting easier and more secure is only part of the solution. We also have to get dark money out of our politics and increase transparency. Americans know this. They know there is way too much dark money in our politics. In poll, after poll, after poll, they overwhelmingly want to have more transparency. Campaign finance reform is a central part of H.R. 1 for a reason. If we don't put a check on the corrupting influence of money in politics, American voices will continue to be drowned out by special interests. Think about the three things I have just proposed: making voting easier, securing our election systems, and getting Big Money out of our campaigns. These are not radical proposals. These are proposals on which nearly everyone in our country agrees. I conclude by noting, in addition to marking the 1-year anniversary of the passage of H.R. 1 in the House, today is Harriet Tubman Day. Most people remember Harriet Tubman for her incredible work on the Underground Railroad, where she repeatedly risked her life for the freedom of others. I recently watched the movie ``Harriet'' and highly recommend it to my colleagues. Yet Harriet Tubman didn't stop her fight for freedom and equality after the Civil War ended. She took up the cause of women's suffrage and worked tirelessly until she was 90 years old in helping women get the right to vote. We celebrate her life today because she spent a lifetime bending the arc of our moral universe toward justice. The best way we can honor her and the countless others who have risked their lives for our country and our democracy is to continue the work of improving our democracy so that it works better for the next generation. That is what the For the People Act is all about. I urge my Republican colleagues--I implore them--a group of people who I know believes in freedom--to allow us to have this bill come up for a vote to ensure that people have the cherished freedom to vote. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to address several proposals with significant consequences for our environment that have come before the Senate this Congress. In particular, I would like to express my support for the joint resolution of disapproval concerning the Environmental Protection Agency's regulations to reverse the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan rules and my opposition to two amendments to weaken existing protections for public lands. I am dedicated to promoting policies that address the urgent climate crisis. We cannot wait 50 or 100 years to address the climate impacts that threaten the livelihoods of our farmers, our businesses, our infrastructure, and our national security. It is for that reason that I oppose the administration's efforts to overturn, roll back, and weaken the Clean Power Plan rules, and I cosponsored S.J. Res. 53, a joint resolution providing for the disapproval of the regulations submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency to repeal the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan rules. In order to fully address our urgent climate crisis, the Clean Power Plan rules must be reinstated and strengthened. It is also our responsibility to preserve our natural resources and pass them on to future generations through responsible conservation and smart policies that allow outdoor recreation to thrive. This Congress, the Senate has considered proposals--which I oppose--to reduce, diminish, or eliminate protections for existing national monuments and to prevent the use of funds from the Land and Water Conservation Fund for land acquisition. These proposals would weaken the core mission of two critical conservation programs that preserve our natural resources. I have voted against similar proposals that would undermine the Antiquities Act or the Land and Water Conservation Fund when they have been considered as amendments to comprehensive public lands bills because I believe that we need to do more to protect and conserve our public lands. I have also cosponsored Senator Udall's legislation to reinforce existing law on the establishment of national monuments and Senator Manchin's bill to provide full, permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the two bills that the Senate considered this week that would severely restrict women's access to reproductive healthcare. I have always believed that a woman's most personal and difficult medical decisions should be made with her doctor and her family and free from political interference. These bills would prevent doctors from providing a full range of reproductive healthcare that meets the needs of their patients. These bills put women's health at risk, which is why they are opposed by groups that represent healthcare professionals, including the American Public Health Association. They would also disproportionately impact women of color, LGBTQ people, those facing intimate partner violence, and those living in rural areas. All Americans deserve access to affordable, high-quality healthcare, including the full range of reproductive healthcare. It is for these reasons that I oppose the motions to invoke cloture on these bills.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, it has been 1190 days since Russia attacked us in 2016, and we have yet to pass comprehensive election security reform. The next major elections are just 266 days away and primaries are already underway. We must take action now to secure our elections from foreign threats. I applaud my Democratic colleagues for coming to the floor today to urge the Senate to take action. Our intelligence officials have repeatedly warned that elections remain a target for foreign adversaries and that our election systems remain vulnerable. According to a recent joint statement from our military and intelligence agencies, the administration warned that ``Russia, China, Iran and other foreign malicious actors will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions.'' Our adversaries are emboldened, and we must do more to safeguard our elections. I have been coming to the floor for years now fighting to get comprehensive election security legislation passed because election security is national security. While we have made progress and secured nearly $1 billion in election security grants for States, we have been blocked from passing meaningful legislation that would ensure our election systems are resilient in the face of attacks, legislation that calls for paper ballots and reliable postelection audits--basic requirements that would dramatically improve election security. Despite my bipartisan work with Senator Lankford on such legislation, we have been repeatedly blocked from bringing it to the floor. There are other commonsense bipartisan election security bills that have been blocked from the floor. Late last year, I pushed the Senate to take action on the Honest Ads Act, my bipartisan legislation with Senator Graham that would increase transparency and accountability for political ads sold online. The goal is simple: bring our laws into the 21st century to ensure that voters know who is paying to influence our political system. That is a goal every elected official should be fighting for, but I was again blocked from offering the legislation on the Senate floor. We have a common set of facts about how our elections were attacked; now we must act with a common purpose to ensure it never happens again. This is about our democracy, not about partisanship. The freedom to choose our leaders and know with full confidence that those leaders were chosen in free and fair elections is something Americans have fought and died for since our country was founded. We need to be a united front in fighting against those who interfere with our political system, and we must do everything in our power to protect our elections.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, today is a somber day for our country. As Senators, we are here as representatives of the American people. It is our duty, as we each swore to do when we took our oath of office, to support and defend the Constitution. We also took an oath, as judges and jurors in this proceeding, to pursue ``impartial justice'' as we consider these articles--including the serious charge that the President of the United States leveraged the power of his office for his own personal gain. Those are the oaths that the Framers set out for us in the Constitution, to guide the Senate in its oversight responsibilities. The Framers believed that the legislative branch was best positioned to provide a check on the Executive. They envisioned that the separation of powers would allow each branch of government to oversee the other. They also knew, based on their experience living under the British monarchy, that someday a President might corrupt the powers of the office. William Davie from North Carolina was particularly concerned that a President could abuse his office by sparing ``no efforts or means whatever to get himself reelected.'' So the Framers put in place a standard that would cover a range of Presidential misconduct, settling on: ``Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.'' As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 65, the phrase was intended to cover the ``abuse or violation of some public trust'' and ``injuries done immediately to society itself.'' The Framers designed a remedy for this public harm: removal from public office. So now we are here as judge and jury to try the case and to evaluate whether the President's acts have violated the public trust and injured our democracy. I am concerned of course that the Senate has decided that we must make this decision without all the facts. With a 51 to 49 vote, the senate blocked the opportunity to call witnesses with firsthand knowledge or to get relevant documents. Fairness means evidence--it means documents, and it means witnesses. In every past impeachment trial in the Senate, in this body's entire 231-year history, there have been witnesses. There is no reason why the Senate should not have called people to testify who have firsthand knowledge of the President's conduct, especially if, as some of my colleagues have suggested, you believe the facts are in dispute. During the question period, I asked about the impeachment of Judge Porteous in 2010. I joined several of my colleagues in serving on the trial committee. We heard from 26 witnesses in the Senate, 17 of whom were new witnesses who had not previously testified in the House. What possible reason could there be for allowing 26 witnesses in a judicial impeachment trial and zero in a President's trial? How can we consider this a fair trial if we are not even willing to try and get to the truth? We do not even have to try and find it. John Bolton has firsthand knowledge about central facts in this case, and he said he would comply with a subpoena from the Senate. We also know there are documents that could verify testimony presented in the House, like records of emails sent between administration officials in the days after the July 25 call. We cannot ignore this evidence--we have a constitutional duty to consider it. And since this trial began, new evidence has continued to emerge. One way or another, the truth is going to come out. I believe that history will remember that the majority in this body did not seek out the evidence and instead decided that the President's alleged corrupt acts did not even require a closer look. But even without firsthand accounts and without primary documents, the House managers have presented a compelling case. I was particularly interested in the evidence that the managers presented showing that the President's conduct put our national security at risk by jeopardizing our support for Ukraine. Protecting Ukraine's fragile democracy has been a bipartisan priority. I went to Ukraine with the late Senator John McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham right after the 2016 election to make clear that the United States would continue to support our ally Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression--that we will stand up for democracy. As the House managers stressed, it is in our national security interest to strengthen Ukraine's democracy. The United States has 60,000 troops stationed in Europe, and thousands of Ukrainians have died fighting Russian forces and their proxies. Our Nation's support for Ukraine is critically needed. Ukraine is at the frontline of Russian aggression, and since the Russians invaded Crimea in 2014, the United States has provided over $1.5 billion in aid. Russia is watching everything we do. So this summer, as a new Ukrainian President prepared to lead his country and address the war with Russia, it was critical that President Trump showed the world that we stand with Ukraine. Instead, President Trump decided to withhold military security assistance and to deny the Ukrainian President an Oval Office meeting. In doing so, he jeopardized our national security interests and put the Ukrainians in danger. But worse yet, he did so to benefit himself. Testimony from the 17 current and former officials from the President's administration made it clear that the President leveraged the power of his office to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation into his political rival. These brave public servants defied the President's order and agreed to testify about what happened despite the risks to their careers. Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch showed particular courage, testifying before the House even as the President disparaged her on Twitter. And I will never forget when Lieutenant Colonel Vindman testified and sent a message to his immigrant father, saying, ``Don't worry Dad, I will be fine for telling the truth.'' As Manager Schiff said, in our country ``right matters.'' What is right and wrong under our Constitution does not turn on whether or not you like the President. It is not about whether the disregard for its boundaries furthers policies that you agree or disagree with. It is about whether it remains true that in our country, right matters. Through his actions, the President compromised the security of our ally Ukraine, invited foreign interference in our elections, and undermined the integrity of our democratic process--conduct that I believe the Framers would see as an abuse of power and violation of his oath of office. The Articles of Impeachment include a second charge: that the President used the powers of his office to prevent Congress from investigating his actions and attempted to place himself above the law. Unlike any President before him, President Trump categorically refused to comply with any requests from Congress. Even President Nixon directed ``all the president's men'' to comply with congressional requests. Despite that history, President Trump directed every member of his administration not to comply with requests to testify and also directed the executive branch not to release a single document. The President's refusal to respect the Congress's authority is a direct threat to the separation of powers. The Constitution gives the House the ``sole power of impeachment,'' a tool of last resort to provide a check on the president. By refusing to cooperate, the President is attempting to erase the Congress's constitutional power and to prevent the American people from learning of his misconduct. As we discussed during our questions, the President is asserting that his aides have absolute immunity, a proposition that Federal courts have consistently rejected. Manager Demings warned, ``absolute power corrupts absolutely.'' But this President has taken many steps to place himself above the law. This administration has taken the position that a sitting President cannot be indicted or prosecuted. This President has argued that he is immune from State and criminal investigations. And now we are being asked to say that the Constitution's check on a President's power, as set out by the Framers, cannot prevent a President from abusing his power and covering it up. During the trial, we have heard this directly from the President's defense. In the words of Alan Dershowitz, ``If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected--in the public interest--that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.'' These echo the words of an impeached President, Richard Nixon, who said: ``When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.'' We cannot accept that conclusion. In this country the President is not King, the law is King. But if the Senate looks past the President's defiance of Congress, we will forever undermine our status as a coequal branch and undermine the rule of law. So as we consider these Articles of Impeachment, I ask my colleagues to think about the consequences. Our system, designed by the Framers 232 years ago, is one not of absolute power but of power through and by the people. We are, in some ways, faced with the same question the Founders faced when they made the fateful decision to challenge the unchecked power of a King. When signing the Declaration of Independence, John Hancock signed his name large and said, ``There must be no pulling different ways. We must all hang together.'' Benjamin Franklin replied, ``Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.'' We have the opportunity today to stand together and say that the Constitution, that these United States, are stronger than our enemies, foreign and domestic, and we, together, are stronger than a President who would corrupt our democracy with an abuse of power and an attempt to deny the rights of a coequal branch of government. We do not have to agree on everything today or tomorrow or a year from now, but surely we can agree on the same basic principles: that this is a government of laws, not of men-and women; that in this country, no one is above the law. If we can agree on that much, then I submit to my colleagues that the choice before us is clear.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. Chief Justice, on behalf of myself, Senator Cardin, and Senator Van Hollen, I have a question for the House managers that I will submit to the desk.