Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the life and memory of a dear friend, Thomas Tresselt, who passed away on July 12 in Hartford. Tom was an American classic. He grew up in Indiana where he was the star of his high school's basketball team before taking his talents to Yale University. In his first year, he scored 16 points on future NBA player, U.S. Senator, and Presidential candidate Bill Bradley's Princeton team. While he was not destined for the NBA, he never lost his love of basketball. In the early 80s--before computers were commonplace--he and a friend started their law firm's March Madness pool, providing comprehensive round-by-round standings, calculated manually using brackets drawn by hand. Tom went on to the University of Michigan Law School where he married the love of his life, Sally. Sally and Tom would be married for 57 years. Following law school, Tom was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Navy, where he served in Beachmaster Unit 2 from 1969 to 1971. After the Navy, Tom and Sally moved to San Francisco where Tom worked as a litigator for Orrick, Herrington, Rowley, and Sutcliffe. ``Tired of always arguing for a living,'' Tom moved back to Connecticut, the place he and his family would call home for the next nearly 50 years. From 1974 to 1977, he was assistant dean of Yale Law School before joining Shipman and Goodman, where he practiced corporate law until 2008. A leader in every sense of the word, Tom was an extremely active member of his community. At Asylum Hill Congregation Church, he served as moderator, was cochair of the capital campaign, served on the board of Christian service, was a deacon, and performed in the Boar's Head Festival as a king, log carrier, Beefeater, and other roles for nearly 20 years. He also served on the board of Loaves and Fishes, the American School for the Deaf, and Leadership Greater Hartford--3rd Age Initiative. I knew Tom as a great friend and coworker of my father who, like Tom, made Shipman and Goodwin his work home for five decades. To me, Tom was a legend. Thoughtful and kind, with this big, booming, smiling personality that drew people to him. That person in your life that everyone just wants to be around. He was a man of action who led by example and was committed to his country, his family, and his community. Tom battled Alzheimer's at the end of his life, but never lost his sense of humor, compassion, and love for his family and friends. I only wish I could have known him better. But I knew him well enough to know how great he was. Tom Tresselt will be missed by all.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled vote. Senator Murphy for up to 15 minutes; Senator Cornyn for up to 15 minutes; and Senator Coons for up to 3 minutes.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about a piece of legislation that was introduced yesterday by 16 bipartisan Senators: the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act. I am proud of the effort between Republicans and Democrats to put aside our differences on other issues and to be able to put before this body a proposal that will assure that the votes that are cast all across this country for President in 2024 result in the winner of that election sitting in the Oval Office. And I come to the floor today to underscore for my colleagues why this piece of legislation is so vitally necessary. All across the country, we are seeing an epidemic of candidates being nominated for Governor, for secretary of state, for Congress, who don't believe Joe Biden won the 2020 election. They instead believe these wild conspiracy theories about voting machines that magically switched votes from one candidate to another, Sharpies that voted for Joe Biden illegally. All of it has been debunked, but the conspiracy theories and the support for this notion that Donald Trump actually won the election, according to the rules of the electoral college in 2020, continue to spread. The Republican nominee for Governor in Pennsylvania, who appoints the State's chief election official, was right here at the Capitol, yards away from this Chamber on January 6, as individuals were storming the building trying to do harm to us. He took part in high-level meetings after the 2020 election, intended to overturn Biden's win in Pennsylvania. He is perhaps mere months away from being the next Governor and chief elections officer of that State. Across the country, former President Trump is organizing what he calls an America First Secretary of State Coalition, and he is pretty unapologetic about what the design is. It is to install election officers all across the country whose chief loyalty is to Donald Trump, not the vote. His endorsed candidate in Arizona, for instance, called for Biden's win in Arizona to be thrown out and for the Republican State legislature to appoint its own electors instead. In Nevada, the endorsed Republican candidate for secretary of state, another Trump loyalist, says if he was in office in 2020, he would not have certified Joe Biden's win, leading to an immediate constitutional crisis. What is happening all across the country right now is a complete, total rejection of democracy by Trump supporters and his endorsed candidates. Now, they aren't representative of the entire Republican Party, but, unfortunately, they are winning primaries all across the country, and they are winning elections all across the country. And these Trump loyalists, they are not interested in the winner of an election becoming President if that winner isn't Donald Trump. They effectively want Donald Trump installed as a monarch, and they are willing to just throw out democracy if that is what is necessary to keep their leader in power. And as I mentioned, this isn't some fringe phenomenon any longer. I think we have a lot of Republicans in the Senate and the House who see this danger coming and want to take steps to prevent it. That is why we are introducing this legislation, but there are over 100 winners of Republican primaries for Congress and statewide office this year who believe--who have stated this belief publicly that the 2020 election was stolen and that Donald Trump should still be President. There is just a very well-developed and well-organized movement, where Trump supporters are learning from his inability to overturn the election in 2020, and they are galvanizing themselves to leave nothing to chance in 2024. The operation to install Trump in the White House in 2025, if he runs, will be more sophisticated and better organized than 2020. The threat that 2024 will be the last year of American democracy is real. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but we came really close to losing our democracy in 2020. And if a President is installed in the White House who did not actually win the election, then I don't know how you claim that this experiment for 250 years is still ongoing. So we need to act, as a body, across the aisle. Those of us who believe that our loyalty to country is more important than our loyalty to party need to act to make it as hard as possible for a group of traitors to install as President the loser of the 2024 Presidential election. And so toward that end, we have introduced a piece of legislation that will seek to reform the way in which electors are sent to Congress and the way in which we count those electors to put up as many barriers as we can to these efforts to install the loser of the 2024 election as President of the United States. So I am grateful to Senator Collins and Senator Manchin for leading this process. I am grateful to be a part of it, along with Senators Portman, Sinema, Romney, Shaheen, Murkowski, Warner, Tillis, Capito, Cardin, Young, Coons, Sasse, and Graham. And so let me tell you, in just a few minutes, what the most important elements--let me just tell you about some of the key elements of the Electoral Count Reform Act. It engages to make the selection and counting of fraudulent electors harder by both addressing efforts by Congress to overturn valid State results but also to make it harder for States to submit to Congress invalid State results. Now, on January 6 of last year, we saw a handful of our colleagues attempt to throw out the valid elector slates from States like Pennsylvania and Arizona. And, luckily, in the end, those efforts only got a handful of votes here in the Senate, but the majority of Republicans voted to throw out those slates in the House of Representatives, which just tells you how mainstream these views have become. And so, in two important ways, we make that attempt by Congress to throw out valid results from a State a little bit, but substantially, harder. Under our current law, it only takes one single Senator in order to throw this entire Senate into a debate over whether or not we should count or throw out certain electors. In the end, there were, I think, 12 Republican Senators who suggested we should throw out ballots, but really all that was needed was 1. So what we do is we increase that threshold from 1 Senator to 20 percent of Senators, from 1 House Member to 20 percent of House Members to begin that debate. Ultimately, you still need a majority of the House and the Senate to throw out an elector slate, but you can't even begin that debate now without having 20 percent of each body. That is a substantial and important change. Second, we clarify the role of the Vice President. Now, some would argue that this isn't necessary; that the Vice President's role in this process is ceremonial, but that is not what Donald Trump thought. Donald Trump and his cadre of fringe lawyers believed, by reading a statute in a particular way, that Mike Pence had the ability by himself to refuse to count certain slates of electors. Now, that is not how the 1887 Act reads, but just to be absolutely clear, our reform act clarifies the law to make 100 percent clear that the Vice President's role is just ceremonial. And then, as I said, we also take steps to make it harder for States to send fraudulent results to Congress because that is the primary threat in 2024. I still think that there are the votes in the Senate, no matter what the elections look like in 2024, for the Senate to make sure that we don't throw out valid results that are sent to the Congress. The bigger threat is that one candidate wins in a State like Arizona or--depending on what happens in the gubernatorial election in Pennsylvania--Pennsylvania and instead that State decides to send electors for the losing candidate to Congress, making some vague, broad claims of fraud that they can't substantiate. So we make that exercise in fraud less likely through a number of means. First, there is a really ambiguous provision in the 1887 law which President Trump argued in the courts allowed for State legislatures to appoint their own electors if they judged that the election was incomplete. Now, what that was initially intended to mean was if an election didn't happen because of a natural disaster, but Trump's lawyers thought that that meant that these claims of fraud could satisfy that incomplete criteria. Well, we removed that ambiguity in this underlying piece of legislation. No longer will anybody be able to claim that State legislatures can just step in after the fact and appoint different electors. Second, we have a clear prohibition that State legislatures can't change the rules of how electors are chosen after the election itself. Now, it is up to State legislatures as to how they appoint electors. Every State right now appoints them based upon who won the popular vote in their State, but the Constitution does give that power to the State legislature. It does not give them the power to change that process after the voters have cast their vote. We make that clear in this piece of legislation. And then, most importantly, we clarify the process by which campaigns and candidates can contest a fraudulent certification or a fraudulent appointment of electors. As we saw in the 2000 election, there is overlapping contesting jurisdictions between States and the Federal court system. It often takes very--a very long time for those processes to play out and unwind. We set up in this bill a new expedited process of review by a three-judge panel. We limit the cases that can be brought to that panel by the campaigns themselves, just to make sure we aren't incentivizing spurious litigation. But that new process allows the candidates and the campaigns, if they believe that the laws of the State have not been upheld in allowing the majority winner of that State to dictate what electors get sent to Washington, to make that claim before a three-judge panel in an expedited fashion, to have that case go up to the Supreme Court in an expedited manner as well. Clarifying the way in which we solve for these contests, if they arise over a valid slate of electors and an invalid slate of electors is an important reform in this bill. Listen, what we have built over the last 250 years in the United States of America, it really is a miracle, and we should never forget how much of an anomaly American democracy is when you look at the broad scope of the governments under which people have lived. This idea that citizens, not dictators or Kings or plutocrats, get to decide who leads a nation--250 years later, it is still a revolutionary idea. And I remind my constituents all the time that democracy is really unnatural, right? There are not a lot of other things that are important to us in our lives that we run through democratic vote. Our workplaces are really important places, but we don't run our workplace through democratic vote. The boss--the CEO--makes the decisions there. We love our sports teams, right? We follow them. We live and die for them. But the decisions on those teams--they are not made by democratic vote. There is a coach, a general manager who makes the decisions. I love my kids, but they don't get an equal vote in the decisions of my household with my wife and me. Lots of things that are important to us in our lives don't run by democratic vote. We are very comfortable, in fact, with hierarchal systems, with one person or a handful of people making decisions for us, but we have reserved this idea of democracy for the decisions that are made that govern our community, our town, our State, or our Nation. We need to remember that over the course of world history, almost no one has lived in a democratic civilization. Why? Because it is natural for human beings to want their chosen leader to be in charge, their preferred leader to be in charge, no matter what everybody else in the community believes. It is also natural for leaders, once they have tasted power, to want to cling to that power and refuse to give it up, no matter the wishes of their citizenry. So we need to be constantly vigilant to protect this experiment. In the grand sweep of world history, that is what it is--a revolutionary experiment. We need to recognize the moments when the threats to that experiment are new and novel and more grave than normal and be nimble enough to respond. So I would argue that this is one of those moments, and I am so grateful to the group of bipartisan Senators who have worked so hard to introduce this legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, 4 weeks ago, I was sitting where you are sitting, presiding over the Senate on a quiet Tuesday afternoon, when news broke that 19 children--all the same age as my youngest son--had been gunned down in their Texas elementary school. As I scrolled through the early reports of the carnage, all I could think of were these two simple questions: What are we doing? Why are we here? I sat up there obsessing over our willful decision as a body to ignore the slaughter that has become so regular that the news only seems to pay attention now when over a dozen die. Our collective decision year after year is to do nothing. What is the point of this job that we fought so hard to get if we just decide that saving children's lives is too hard or involves too inconvenient an amount of political risk? Shooting after shooting, murder after murder, suicide after suicide-- for 30 years, Congress stood in its political corners and did nothing. But not this time. Within 2 days of the Uvalde massacre, Senator Cornyn, Senator Tillis, Senator Sinema, and I, joined by other Members of this body, had started talking, not about our disagreements--we have plenty of those--but instead about what could be possible if we sat together and refused to give up until we figured out the set of things that we could agree on--the things that could get 60 votes--to save lives. I am so grateful in the bottom of my soul to John, to Thom, to Kyrsten, and the other Senators here who took part in these talks for what they did over these last 4 weeks. I am grateful to Senator Schumer and Senator McConnell for empowering these discussions and allowing us to have this debate this week. I am equally proud of my team--Allison and Samir, Emily and Rebecca, Pete and Elizabeth--who worked 24/7 for the last 30 days straight to get this bill done. But mostly I am proud of the regular people all across this country, many of whom were forced to become advocates after this epidemic took from them a son or a daughter, a mother or a father. Those citizens, many of whom are watching this debate right now, who protested or wrote letters or showed up at townhalls year after year, failure after failure, roadblock after roadblock, refusing to give up because the stakes--their children's safety--was so high that they couldn't afford to give up, that is who I am really proud of today, people who would not take no for an answer and knew that the righteousness of their cause had to eventually prevail. This bill is a compromise. It doesn't do everything I want. But what we are doing will save thousands of lives without violating anyone's Second Amendment rights. Through more effective red flag laws, by keeping guns away from domestic abusers, by being more careful about giving weapons to 18- year-olds, by getting more people access to treatment for their mental illness, this will become the most significant piece of anti-gun violence legislation Congress has passed in three decades. As a result, this bill also has the chance to prove to a weary American public that democracy is not so broken that it is unable to rise to the moment when the need for action, like right now, in the wake of Uvalde and Buffalo, is most acute. What are we doing? Why are we here? We are answering those questions today--not fully but with enough force that anxious moms and dads and kids all across this Nation will wake up tomorrow and be a little more confident that the adults who run this country actually care about their safety, because, you know what, people still believe in us. People still count on us. Two months after his son was gunned down by a 19-year-old with an assault rifle in Sandy Hook, one of the dads came to Congress and gave this testimony: ``Before he died,'' Neil Heslin told Congress, my son ``Jesse and I used to talk about maybe coming to Washington someday. He wanted to go up to the Washington monument. When we talked about it last year Jesse asked if we could [go] meet the President. Now I could be a little cynical about politicians. But Jesse, he believed in you. He learned about you in school and he believed in you. I want to believe in you, too. I know you can't give me Jesse back. Believe me, if I thought you could, I'd be asking you for that. But I want to believe that you will think about what happened to my son and what I've seen. I want to believe that you'll think about it and then you'll do something about it.'' What are we doing? What are we here for if not to do something-- something meaningful, something real, something together--to end this carnage. Jesse believed in us. And, today, more so than at any time since I came to Congress 16 years ago, I believe in us too. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, in the Gallery right now listening to the Senate debate on the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is one of my interns. Her name is Sari Kaufman. I am glad to have her as an intern in my office this summer, but Sari has a story to tell because she is a survivor of a mass shooting. She was a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when a gunman entered that campus and shot and killed her friends, her classmates. She reminds us that she went to more funerals in a matter of a week than many adults do in their entire lifetime. She was in debate class when the shooting started, and she ran for her life, as did hundreds of other survivors of that horrible day. No student in America should have to experience what she went through. No young person should have the burden that she bears to come to Washington and argue for changes that will make sure that other students don't go through the same thing, and no parent should have to go through the grief that parents day after day do, mass shooting after mass shooting, urban homicide after urban homicide, as we lose a generation of kids, of young people in this Nation to an epidemic of gun violence that can be stopped by better public policy. I have been on this floor hundreds of times pleading with my colleagues to do something, and I am so grateful that Senator Cornyn, Senator Tillis, and a handful of their colleagues on the Republican side this time stood up and sat down with Senator Sinema, myself, and other Democrats to find the common denominator. I am here on the floor to talk a little bit more about what our piece of legislation does, but I agree with Senator Sinema--this is a moment where we have shown this country what is possible here in the U.S. Senate. I talked last night about the fear that families in Connecticut and all across the country felt in the wake of Buffalo and Uvalde and that twin fear about what fate awaited their children but also what fate awaited our democracy if we were unable to rise to this moment to deal with this existential challenge--the loss of life in schools, in shopping malls, in supermarkets. And while this compromise was hard-earned, every single day for the last 4 weeks proved to me what can happen in this body if we decide to come out of our political corners. And let me say that this moment that we are in today, on the precipice of passing the most significant piece of anti-gun violence legislation in the last 30 years, would not be possible if it were not for Senator Sinema. It would not be possible if it wasn't for her decision to sit down and help us find a path to what was possible. But it is also clear that without the leadership of Senator Cornyn, who has been through way too many of these tragedies in his State, and Senator Tillis, a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights but also somebody who believes in this place finding a way to that common denominator, this day wouldn't be possible either. So I want to talk for a few moments about what this bill does because there will be a lot of folks who focus on what it doesn't do. It certainly doesn't do all of the things I think are necessary to end the epidemic of gun violence in this Nation. But it will save thousands of lives; there is no doubt about it in my mind. And, in fact, I could make the argument that every single one of the provisions in this bill, in and of themselves, would save thousands of lives. We don't get to do that very often in this place. We don't get a chance very often to pass legislation that has this kind of impact. So if you want to focus on what is not in this legislation, you can, it is your prerogative, but I want to spend a few minutes talking about the difference this legislation will make in people's lives. Senator Sinema and Senator Cornyn rightly focused--and I put it right at the top--this major, historic investment in mental health access. I made no secret in my belief that you can't solve America's gun violence epidemic simply through mental health funding, but there is no doubt there is an intersection, and there is no doubt that our mental health system is just broken--period, stop--whether you believe that it has any intersection with America's gun violence epidemic. There are far too many kids and adults in crisis in this country who cannot get access to mental health services. In my State, kids get stacked up in emergency rooms in hallways, waiting days, if not weeks, for inpatient beds. There is $11 billion in this bill to unlock pathways to treatment for kids and adults all across this country; funding in this bill for school and community safety--$2 billion to make our schools safer, not just for better door-locking mechanisms, but also in programs inside these schools that can try to identify kids in crisis early. There will be supportive school environments that cut down on the pathways to violence. But also there is money for community-based intervention, what we call violence interruption programs. We have them in Connecticut where you intervene when a shooting victim comes to the hospital. You will make sure that that incident doesn't spiral into retributive violence in the community--funding for school safety and community safety in this bill. And then the parts of the bill that probably get the most attention, the changes in our gun laws--these crisis intervention orders do work. Not every State has them. It was important to Senator Cornyn for money to go to every State regardless of whether they have red flag laws; but if you have a red flag law or you want to pass one, you will be able to get funding through this bill--significant funding--to allow you to implement that red flag law better. There are States that have them, but they don't work very well because people don't know how to access them. Police officers or first responders don't know what to do when they see somebody in crisis, when they see somebody threatening violence to themselves. Now, we will have funding to help States that will allow the authorities with court orders to be able to temporarily take weapons away from people who were threatening to kill themselves or threatening mass violence. We are going to keep guns away from domestic abusers, and we know that in States that make sure that every domestic abuser is not allowed to purchase or possess guns that there is a significant impact on domestic violence. And so our bill makes it a national policy that if you have carried out an act of domestic violence against your partner, whether you are married to them or whether you are in a serious dating relationship, you are not going to be able to have guns in your home. But because this is a compromise, we built in a process by which those who have no previous record and those who keep their records clean subsequent to the offense could get those rights back. It makes sense to us, especially if you are convicted of a felony, you have a pretty clear pathway in your States to get your rights back--your voting rights or your Second Amendment rights. So we set up that process for those who are convicted of domestic violence, dating misdemeanors. Enhanced background checks for young buyers--whether we like it or not, the 18-to-21-year-old profile, those are the mass shooters right now in this country. And so we want to make sure that we do a more significant background check to make sure you are a responsible gun buyer, including a check with the local police department. The shooter in Uvalde was known to local police. He didn't have an offense that would have prohibited him from buying those weapons. But, ask yourself, what would have happened if the local police department had gotten a phone call as a part of that background check, had been alerted that a young man who they knew to be in some form of crisis was going to buy AR-15-style weapons on his 18th birthday? Would there have been an opportunity for an intervention? Possibly. Maybe that tragedy could have been avoided by better public policy. In this bill, we also have new penalties for gun trafficking and straw purchasing. Why on Earth hasn't the United States of America had a law banning gun trafficking at the Federal level or banning straw purchasing when the main way that guns get into the flow of illegal traffic is through straw purchasing and through complicated gun trafficking networks? Now, our Federal law enforcement agencies are going to have available to them new tools that will allow them to cut down on the flow of illegal weapons throughout the country, but in particular and most importantly, into our cities. And the last thing we are going to do is more background checks because of this bill. We clarify in this bill the definition of a federally licensed gun dealer to make sure that everybody who should be licensed as a gun owner is. In one of the mass shootings in Texas, the individual who carried out the crime was mentally ill. He was a prohibited purchaser. He shouldn't have been able to buy a gun. He was actually denied a sale when he went to a bricks-and-mortar gun store, but he found a way around the background check system because he went online and found a seller there who would transfer a gun to him without a background check. It turned out that seller was, in fact, engaged in the business, but didn't believe the definition applied to him because the definition is admittedly confusing. So we simplified that definition and hope that will result--and I believe it will result--in more of these frequent online gun sellers registering, as they should, as federally licensed gun dealers which then requires them to perform background checks. Each one of these provisions arguably saves thousands of lives in and of themselves; but cumulatively, this is a groundbreaking piece of legislation--a true compromise--not as much as I would like to do but certainly more than some Republicans would like to do. And it is a message to this country that there is a path forward in this body to address the epidemic of gun violence. It is a message to the activists like Sari Kaufman, who have been coming to this place, who have been going to their State legislatures, asking time and time again for change that speaking truth to power works, that legislators do listen. And I hope it as an invitation for us to find more ways like this to work together in the future. My belief is that those who vote--even those who have been on the outside of these negotiations in the past will find that when they get back to their States, there will be unfamiliar supporters showing up at your events indoors, people who are cheering you on because we worked together to take this existential issue, the fear of death from gun violence, more seriously than we have in over 30 years. So I am glad to share in a little bit more detail than I was last night what is in this package. I believe this is a week to focus on what we have done and not what we have left undone and to accept this as an invitation to find other ways to come together around difficult, vexing issues in this country. I have a fourth grader the same age as those kids in Uvalde, and I do not want him to grow up in a world in which he and his classmates have to worry about their survival when they walk into their school every day. I do not want to live in a world where survivors of these tragedies in school after school have to become advocates and activists in this cause. And while this bill doesn't solve America's gun violence, it shows we have the potential to work together on these difficult vexing challenges in a brandnew lifesaving way. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, when I returned to Connecticut after the shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, I saw a level of fear on the faces of the parents and children whom I spoke to that I have never seen before. This country has lived through mass shooting after mass shooting, rising rates of homicide, but there was something different in the eyes of these families as they once again had to contemplate the idea that our schools are no longer safe places, that our supermarkets are no longer safe spaces. But they also were contemplating the idea that Congress was so caught up in its own politics, so addicted to backing into our own corners that we wouldn't be able to do anything meaningful about the thing that matters most to parents and to families in this country: the physical safety of their children. Think about it. What matters more to you than the physical well-being of your children? You would give away everything--your job, your car, the roof over your head--in order to guarantee that your children were safe from physical harm. So the anxiety and the fear that I saw in Connecticut and that I think many of my colleagues saw when they returned to their States was not just for the safety of their children but also a fear about the ability of government to rise to this moment and do something and do something meaningful. I believe that this week we will pass legislation that will become the most significant piece of anti-gun violence legislation Congress will have passed in 30 years. This is a breakthrough, and more importantly, it is a bipartisan breakthrough. I am glad to join my friend Senator Cornyn on the floor today to talk a little bit about the piece of legislation that our colleagues will be able to look at hopefully in a matter of moments and that this body will be able to consider this week. I want to thank Senator Cornyn, Senator Tillis, and Senator Sinema in particular. It was a hard road to get to this compromise, but nothing worthwhile is easy. And nobody in a compromise gets everything they want. This bill will be too little for many; it will be too much for others. But it isn't a box-checking exercise. This bill is not window dressing. This bill is going to save lives. This bill is going to save thousands of lives. It is going to be something that every single Member of this Senate who votes for it can be proud of. I want to tell you a little bit about it, and some of this has already been covered by my friend Senator Cornyn. First, let me talk about the provisions in this bill that change our Nation's firearms laws. First, we are going to invest in the development of crisis intervention orders. We are going to give money out to States that they will be able to use to implement what are commonly called red flag laws. These are laws that allow local authorities and courts to take weapons, firearms, temporarily away from individuals who are threatening to hurt themselves or others. We just saw Connecticut's red flag law be used just in the last month or so to take weapons away from a young man who was making threats to shoot up schools, potentially saving dozens of lives. Under this bill, every State will be able to use significant new Federal dollars to be able to expand their programs to try to stop dangerous people--people contemplating mass murder or suicide--from being able to have access to the weapons that allow them to perpetrate that crime. As Senator Cornyn said, we will also make those dollars eligible for a narrow range of other court-based anti-violence interventions-- something that was very important to our Republican colleagues. Second, this bill is going to make sure that no domestic abusers can purchase or own a gun. We are closing the boyfriend loophole. What we know is that in States that have taken this step already, there are 10 percent fewer intimate partner deaths. This is an incredibly important step forward. We know this provision alone is going to save lives of so many women who unfortunately die at the hands of a boyfriend or an ex- boyfriend who hunts them down with a firearm. To be consistent with State felony restoration rights, this legislation will allow individuals to be able to get their right back after a period of time but only for first-time offenders and only if there are no crimes of violence in the intervening time. This bill will provide for enhanced background checks for younger buyers. What we know is that the profile of the modern mass shooter is often in the 18- to 21-year-old range, and so this bill has enhanced background checks for those individuals, including a call to the local police department--a process that can take up to 3 days and up to 10 days if there are particular signs of concern that investigators need to perform followup on. That enhanced background check is going to make sure that younger buyers who are in crisis have another check performed--perhaps a short period of time in between their decision to buy a lethal weapon to perform a crime and their ability to get that weapon. This bill has new criminal statutes banning gun trafficking and straw purchasing. This is incredibly important for our cities. We have a flow of illegal guns coming into these cities, and yet, for decades, for some reason, Congress has not given our Federal authorities the ability to interrupt these gun-running rings because we have no effective ban at a Federal level on trafficking and straw-purchasing. We will after we pass this law. Finally, we clarify under this bill who needs to register as a federally licensed gun dealer. One of the individuals who sold a weapon to a mass shooter in Odessa, TX, should have been licensed as a Federal dealer, but he wasn't, and he sold the gun to a person who was prohibited from buying the gun because of his mental health history, without a background check. We will clarify in this law that individuals like that need to register as Federal firearms dealers, and they need to perform background checks. As Senator Cornyn said, this bill makes a historic investment in mental health--a historic investment in mental health. Thanks to Debbie Stabenow and Roy Blunt, we are going to be able to expand the certified community health center model nationally. That literally means millions of people in this country in underserved areas who have no access to mental health are going to be able to get it after we pass this bill. We have significant new funding in this bill for school-based health centers to make sure that kids are better served, especially those kids who are in crisis. We have help in this bill for pediatricians who are trying to do telehealth consults with behavioral health professionals who are trying to get more training on mental health so they can help their patients. Finally, we make investments in school and community safety, funds to help schools make their campuses safer places but also funds for community-based programs that are doing good work in cities from Boston to Hartford to Dallas interrupting cycles of violence in our communities. For 30 years--murder after murder, suicide after suicide, mass shooting after mass shooting--Congress did nothing. This week, we have a chance to break this 30-year period of silence with a bill that changes our laws in a way that will save thousands of lives. It is a compromise. It is a bipartisan compromise. It is a path forward to the way that both Republicans and Democrats can work together to address some of the most vexing, most difficult challenges this Nation faces. We have a chance to show parents and kids and families that we take their safety seriously and we are prepared to do not just something but something that saves lives in order to protect them. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, 13 kids dead in an elementary school in Texas right now. What are we doing? What are we doing? Just days after a shooter walked into a grocery store to gun down African-American patrons, we have another Sandy Hook on our hands. What are we doing? There have been more mass shootings than days in the year. Our kids are living in fear every single time they set foot in a classroom because they think they are going to be next. What are we doing? Why do you spend all this time running for the U.S. Senate? Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job, of putting yourself in a position of authority, if your answer is that, as the slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing? What are we doing? Why are you here if not to solve a problem as existential as this? This isn't inevitable. These kids weren't unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day. Nowhere else do parents have to talk to their kids, as I have had to do, about why they got locked in a bathroom and told to be quiet for 5 minutes just in case a bad man entered that building. Nowhere else does that happen except here in the United States of America, and it is a choice. It is our choice to let it continue. What are we doing? In Sandy Hook Elementary School after those kids came back into those classrooms, they had to adopt a practice in which there would be a safe word that the kids would say if they started to get thoughts in their brain about what they saw that day, if they started to get nightmares during the day, reliving stepping over their classmates' bodies as they tried to flee the school. In one classroom, that word was ``monkey.'' Over and over and over through the day, kids would stand up and yell ``monkey,'' and a teacher or a paraprofessional would have to go over to that kid, take them out of the classroom, talk to them about what they had seen, work them through their issues. Sandy Hook will never ever be the same. This community in Texas will never ever be the same. Why? Why are we here if not to try to make sure that fewer schools and fewer communities go through what Sandy Hook has gone through, what Uvalde is going through? Our hearts are breaking for these families. Every ounce of love and thoughts and prayers we can send, we are sending. But I am here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues: Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely. I understand my Republican colleagues will not agree to everything that I may support, but there is a common denominator that we can find. There is a place where we can achieve agreement. This may not guarantee that America never ever again sees a mass shooting. It may not overnight cut in half the number of murders that happen in America. It will not solve the problem of American violence by itself. But by doing something, we at least stop sending this quiet message of endorsement to these killers whose brains are breaking, who see the highest levels of government doing nothing shooting after shooting. What are we doing? Why are we here? What are we doing? I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I will probably get in trouble with somebody for saying this, but the question of when life begins, the deeper question of what defines life, which biological entities are alive or possess independent existence versus which biological entities are simply part of something else that is alive--man, those are really hard questions. I heard my colleague Senator Daines on the floor earlier tonight talking passionately about his belief that life begins at conception and that humans have an obligation to defend a day-old fetus equally to our obligation to defend the life of someone who has been born. Now, I disagree. I believe that life begins at birth. I believe that our legal obligation towards a born human is different than our legal obligation toward an unborn fetus. But on that narrow question of when life begins, I don't cast any particular judgment on Senator Daines for believing what he believes. His belief system is shared by millions of Americans--not the majority of Americans, but a significant share. This disagreement that he and I have over when legally protected life begins, though, is as significant and as important a disagreement as exists--right--because it is about the most foundational questions in human existence: What is life? Who decides whether a woman bears a child? Who has control over that woman's body? Who has control over the most sacred and critical function of a human being, the act of giving birth? It just doesn't get any more important than that set of questions. And given this fundamental disagreement, given the weightiness of these questions, given the large number of Americans who sit on either side of these questions, I come to one simple conclusion: No government, no group of politicians, should make this decision for anyone else. This decision about whether to abort a pregnancy, so morally complicated, so socially divisive, should and must be left to individuals--in this case, to women--to decide. Over the course of history, millions have died in fights over another weighty moral issue--the question of whether God exists, and if a God exists, exactly what form that being takes and what it requires of humans. Disputes over religion have eradicated entire civilizations. What does this have to do with Roe v. Wade? Well, our Founding Fathers decided that there were some topics that were so personal, so subject to disagreement and controversy, that government should just be barred from registering judgment. That is part of the reason why our civilization has not been plagued by wars between religious groups--a reality that continues to paralyze societies to this day in other parts of the world--because we keep government out of the question of which God is the right God. That is up to every American to decide for themselves, even though many Americans believe that the consequence of observing or following the wrong God is serious--eternal damnation, for some. The stakes are huge when it comes to religion, but government sits on the sidelines. To me, that is an imperfect but instructive corollary to the debate over choice and abortion. The decision about whether to have an abortion is so personal, and the lack of consensus in the country on the question is so unavoidable, as to make government intervention just as illegitimate as it would be if government tried to dictate to someone which religion they should follow. Now, that is not the exact route that the Supreme Court traveled to get to the Roe decision, but it helps me understand why, from 1973 until today, the decision about whether or not to have an abortion has been a constitutional right of the individual, not the constitutional right of the government to decide. Frankly, it has always been really hard for me to square how Republicans, who so readily evangelize about small government, about the importance of putting families and their decision-making processes first, about the evil of public sector overreach, are so enthusiastic about the government micromanaging personal decisions about pregnancy or marriage or adoption. Small government is great, I guess, for corporations, but it is not so great when it comes to the most intimate decisions that families make. And as I have said on this floor before, it is also hard to take seriously Republicans' passionate pleas for this body to defend the existence of an unborn fetus when they seem to care so little about many of the existential threats that are posed to every American after they are born. Today, this day, over 100 Americans are going to die from gunshot wounds, from murders, and suicides. And whether my Republican colleagues agree with me or not that stricter gun laws is part of the solution to this uniquely American epidemic that plagues those that are born, I don't know that I have ever heard a Republican speech dedicated to this crisis on the floor of the Senate. I have heard dozens dedicated to the cause of those before birth. It seems that after birth, life matters a little bit less to some people in this body. So that is what I think. And as I said, I will probably get into some hot water for admitting that I understand the arguments that people like Senator Daines make. I don't agree with his views, but I understand them. And my hope is, is that as we begin this debate over the future of reproductive choice and health in this country, as this debate heats up--because it is not going away. We are taking a vote tomorrow, but this is a debate that is going to consume this Nation if the Alito opinion becomes law, which I believe it will. My hope is that we are honest about the complexity of this debate, but the Republicans are equally honest in the claims that they make. Let me just briefly tell you what I mean. Today, I heard Republican Senators making a whole bunch of claims that are just so ungrounded in truth as to diminish the quality of what should be a very important debate on a very weighty subject. For instance, I heard Senators make the claim that the protesters who were protesting outside or near Supreme Court Justices' homes threatened violence against those Justices. That was an explicit claim made by people who came down to this floor who might have heard it on some unreputable website, but it is not true. You can object to protesters being outside of public officials' homes. It has happened to all of us, by the way, but don't make up threats of violence just because it makes for a better story. I heard one Senator say that the Women's Health Protection Act, for which I will proudly vote tomorrow, allows for garage abortions. That is not true. That is just plainly not true. Every State requires that abortions be performed in licensed healthcare facilities and nothing in the bill changes it. Don't say that just because it makes a better story. Many Republicans claim that the bill we are taking up tomorrow allows abortions up to the date of birth. That is not true either. The Women's Health Protection Act does codify Roe v. Wade, but Roe only protects a woman's right to have an abortion without restriction until viability and then afterward protects for the woman's health or risk of death. The bill simply does not expand the circumstances under which an abortion can be performed beyond what currently exists in case law. So I am going to be honest with my colleagues about the admitted complexities--the political, moral complexities of this debate. But I expect opponents of the bill that we are debating tomorrow to be equally honest in the arguments they make as well. So I will have a lot more to say about this topic as we begin what I think is a debate that will consume this Nation, rightfully, over the course of the coming weeks and months, but for today I will leave it there. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, the provision in the underlying bill that Senator Cruz's motion argues for is a good one in that we should care about cooperation between China and Iran, but I would encourage my colleagues to oppose this MTI because of another extraneous provision in the motion. The motion argues that the United States should tie our Iran terrorism sanctions to our China policy, and that, frankly, is a bad idea. Terrorism-related sanctions are about punishing and deterring support for terrorism. If we want to use sanctions to deter cooperation between Iran and China, then we should craft those tailored sanctions; but to tie our Iran terrorism sanctions to our China policy would have the effect, really, of muddying the waters about the purpose of terrorism sanctions. Terrorism sanctions should be about stopping terrorism--period, stop. If we start applying terrorism sanctions for other purposes, it weakens our entire anti-terror strategy. For that reason, I would urge opposition to the motion. Vote on Motion

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I would urge opposition to this motion. This motion asks the Senate to endorse President Trump's Iran policy--a policy that, if you didn't notice, was a complete, total failure. The motion calls for a provision in the underlying bill to prohibit a return to the JCPOA and to keep Trump's ``maximum pressure'' campaign intact until a mythical comprehensive agreement is achieved with Iran, inclusive of all their malevolent behavior. This policy just hasn't worked. To apply it prospectively would be ruinous. Friends, Iran is weeks away from having enough nuclear material for a weapon. To deny this administration the ability to enter into a nuclear agreement isn't just folly; it is downright dangerous. I wish a comprehensive agreement with Iran was possible, but 4 years of failure by President Trump was proof that, for the time being, it is not. We should not endorse 4 more years of this failed Iran policy. I urge opposition. Vote on Motion

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I have five requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Mr. MURPHY

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

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4070, which was introduced earlier today.

Mr. MURPHY. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the upcoming adjournment of the Senate, the President of the Senate, the President pro tempore and the majority and minority leaders be authorized to make appointments to commissions, committees, boards, conferences, or interparliamentary conferences authorized by law, by concurrent action of the two Houses, or by order of the Senate.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 304, S. 2687.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Tester substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I know of no further debate on the bill, as amended.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 317, S. 3785.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 1875 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Rounds substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to, that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.