Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, what is at stake with our climate and the environment? Our planet. Our planet is on fire, literally. Historic wildfires are leaving our forests and rural communities in ashes. Oceans are growing hotter and more acidic, devastating sea life from the shellfish of Oregon to the coral reefs of the Great Barrier Reef. There is so much damage, not just to the natural world but to our tourists and fishing industries, to our forest industry, and to our farming industry, the pillars of our rural economy both in America and around the world. More frequent and more devastating storms damaging crops, flooding cities, destroying coastal communities--the climate crisis is a clear and present danger. We are barreling headfirst at full speed toward catastrophic, irreversible climate chaos, and these special interests that my colleague just spoke about and which we expose in this report are using every tool at their disposal, especially the courts, not to stop the damage but to accelerate the carnage. It shouldn't be too surprising that they should turn to these strategies. They can't turn to the citizens of the United States because protecting our world is popular among the American people. They favor clean air. They favor clean water. They think our government has a responsibility to protect that air and water and land, and, more broadly, to protect our planet. In fact, 70 percent of Americans say government is not doing enough to reduce the effects of climate chaos, and they are so right. That is why the fossil fuel companies know that they can't win outright based on their arguments--or certainly not based on their ideas. No one says ``I want more lead in my water'' or ``I want more climate-damaging carbon dioxide or methane in the air.'' So what do you do if you can't win fairly? You rig the outcome. You fund bogus research. You spend huge sums with media to publicize that bogus research. You increase your influence through a vast, large legal team. You build a powerful lobbying team on Capitol Hill and every State capital across this Nation. You handpick candidates, and you fund their campaigns. You seek to take over control of an entire political party. But Members of Congress come and go, and even when the deck is stacked, there is that possibility of a grassroots uprising of American people to overturn your carefully laid plans to control the American Government. So what do you do? Strategy No. 7, perhaps the most powerful strategy of all--you bias the courts. Once you get someone on the Federal bench, they are there for life. They can't be tossed out by a vote of the people, and they wield immense influence over the laws and regulations, certainly over our environmental laws and regulations. If you control the courts, especially the Supreme Court--even if you lose the White House, even if you lose the House and Senate, even if you lose all three at once--you have immense power over the laws of our land. Our Constitution was framed to build a government of, by, and for this people. But with control of the courts, the privileged few--the fossil fuel barons--have created, instead, government by and for the powerful. That is why we saw such a committed effort by our colleagues on this side of the aisle to block President Obama from filling hundreds of open seats on the Federal bench. That is why we saw the theft of the Supreme Court seat for the first time in U.S. history 5 years ago. That is why the present majority leader is obsessed with ramming through more than 200 overwhelmingly White male, life-tenured judges, most of whom weren't chosen for their qualifications but for their rightwing ideology. And it is why 86 percent of Trump's nominees to the Supreme Court and the appellate courts are members of the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society, created in the 1980s--as described in the book, ``The Lie That Binds''--implemented an anti-Democratic policy agenda and political philosophy through a court system impervious to the will of the voters. It started one weekend with 200 conservative students and professors at Yale Law School, including Antonin Scalia, and it grew into the present-day shadowy behemoth promoting lawyers into prominent positions and starring far-right judges at every level of the bench to further corporate control--the powerful and privileged few over the will of the people. How are they funded? Untold millions from polluters and other corporate interests that benefit from judges who strike down environmental laws and related regulations enacted and pursued by the people. The Federalist Society is now, under Donald Trump, in charge of judicial nominations. He asked them to give him a list of whom he should nominate, and so it goes. The Federalist Society put Neil Gorsuch on that list, and President Trump nominated him. Justice Gorsuch, who said in the Chevron doctrine, a landmark decision that is the basis of 4 years of administrative and mariner law, which gives courts deference to administrative agencies and reasonable interpretations of statutes--ruled it should be overturned. The Federalist Society put Brett Kavanaugh on that list, and President Trump nominated him. Whenever the DC Circuit Court ruled to hold a corporate polluter accountable, Kavanaugh could be counted on to be in opposition of holding that corporation accountable. Observers call him a conservative critic of sweeping environmental regulations and a disaster for the environment. The Federalist Society put Amy Barrett on that list, and Trump dutifully nominated her. Amy Coney Barrett refused to answer whether climate change is real during her confirmation hearing. Her record is clear. In one case she ruled that a park preservation group couldn't sue to block a construction project in Chicago's Jackson Park. She signed an opinion that reversed the lower court decision that protected wetlands from being developed under the Clean Water Act. Earthjustice, an environmental nonprofit, remarked that her decision signaled Barrett's willingness to interpret environmental laws of the Clean Water Act narrowly in favor of industry interests--a perfect fit with the goal of the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society plays the tune, and their nominees dance the dance--the dance for government by and for the powerful and the dance that tramples on government by and for the people. If President Trump loses reelection and if Republicans lose the Senate majority, still, there is this court with this decision against the environment, against the worker, against civil rights time and time again, and a court that will work to stymie every effort to save our planet. There is a whole list of similar related positions in the lower courts with similar outcomes--corporate welfare over environmental stewardship, one judge after another after another. They are the examples of the pro-corporation, anti-environmental rulings and Trump- appointed jurists that we feared. They are the kinds of challenges that are going to stand in our way if we fight to undo the damage that this administration and its cabal of extreme rightwing allies have unleashed on our democracy and on our planet. So now we have the responsibility to act. The report that Senator Whitehouse and I are releasing today--and I applaud him for working so hard to develop this whole set of Captured Courts reports to understand the power behind the shift from government by and for the people to government by and for the powerful, because if you have read the Constitution, if you believe in ``We the People,'' you believe in the spirit of a government that draws its very essence from the people of the United States, not from the cabal of extremely wealthy, extraordinarily White, significantly privileged, enormously powerful individuals trying to be puppet masters and destroy that vision that we so cherish. That is why we must expose it. That is why we must fight it. That is why we must reclaim--for the future of every child in America, certainly for the future of our environment here in the United States, certainly for the health of the planet, we must reclaim that vision of government of, by, and for the people. Thank you.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, Senators come to this floor with greatly diverse life experiences and political theories and representing enormously different States. But we all share this in common: a vast appreciation of our team members, our staff, who enable us to do our work as U.S. Senators on behalf of our own States, but also on behalf of the Nation. These team members are not just staff. They are family. We share in moments of joy--marriage, the birth of a child. We grieve with them in those life moments that are so difficult. And when the team members choose to move on, it is a bittersweet moment. I come to the floor today to recognize and pay tribute to a beloved member of my team, Amy Amrhein, who in just a few short days will be leaving us to a well-deserved retirement. Even after knowing for months that this day was coming, it is still hard for me not to be saddened by her departure. She has been on my team from the very beginning of my time as a Senator, serving as my field representative in Southern Oregon and staffing our Medford office. That is now a dozen years. She took on the task of learning complicated natural resource issues and learning them with determination and insight, working to internalize the issues and challenges of every community in the region, from the smallest port to the biggest county. She mastered the art of putting on a townhall, as I do one in every county every year, and I think at last count that is about 80 townhalls she has conducted over the years. She has worked to bring the community together to discuss visions for the future. One of those was the potential expansion of the Cascade- Siskiyou Monument. She organized a gathering that gave public testimony, which helped share insights from all the stakeholders. Local leaders and regional Tribes and all members of the public shared their insights and perspectives. It is no exaggeration to say that there are few people in the world with a better grasp of the complicated water issues in the Klamath Basin. We have a saying in the West that ``whiskey, that's for drinking; water, that's for fighting'' because it is so essential to so many aspects of our economy and our natural system. For 12 years, Amy engaged in shuttle diplomacy over long-term solutions to water shortages. She found ways to help farmers and ranchers save their livelihoods through shattering droughts, truly making herself an indispensable facilitator to stakeholders across the board and an indispensable facilitator as I tried to work out agreements. That really came in handy with the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, developing that effort to have the stakeholders share a common vision for the future. It really came in handy when we worked to get funds to address the devastating droughts in 2010 and 2013--funds that would help the farmers who depended on irrigation but had no water to be able to temporarily, for a season, retire their water rights and therefore have some income for their ranch or their farm or be able to have money to pump groundwater to compensate for the lack of irrigation water during those drought years. One of the issues has been the water quality in the Klamath Basin and the competing environmental rules regarding the river and the lake, and a piece of that is the survival of two endangered species. So she helped to put all the details together to hold the Sucker Science Summit, which brought together again the farmers, ranchers, Tribes, scientists, local government officials, and Federal officials to devise a plan for the long-term survival of the C'waam and Koptu suckerfish in the Klamath Basin. There is no doubt that Southern Oregon could not have asked for a better advocate over these past 12 years. I have appreciated her diligence, her humor, her positive attitude, and her candor about our smart political tactics or policy tactics and our mistakes. I could share some of those stories, but perhaps they are better shared through the eyes of our fellow team members, so I will read some of their comments. The first goes as follows: Amy is the definition of dedication. No one can out work her. She is committed and she will keep asking questions and pushing buttons until she makes progress on an issue. She is fearless. She has been such a great leader and mentor for not only the field team, but the entire state staff. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to learn from her. Oregon is a better place to live because of her service and she will be dearly missed. A second team member expressed this: When I think of Amy I think about her fearlessness. A distant field rep's job is really challenging--[the rep] is the face and the voice of the Senator and you are all alone, far from DC, even far from Portland. Despite all our communications breakthroughs you are still all by yourself, driving remote highways, walking into rooms full of strangers, never knowing what is going to be thrown at you. They want a Senator, and instead they get you. Amy was open about her questions and concerns, but once she was out there and on her own, we always had confidence she would do and say the right thing. A third team member said this: No surprise that she is leaving behind big shoes. She makes covering some of the largest counties and most difficult issues in the state look easy. Her knowledge of the issues run deep and her contacts in counties is impressive. When you ask about a county, she'll give you the breakdown of all her contacts: who would give me straight answers and who has the juicy county political/social gossip. She has also been a great mentor to those in the field. I am pretty sure she has walked every one of us through our first town halls, roundtables and site visits. She was someone you could rely on to give you feedback and let you know if you were on the right path. The final comment from a team member: I would just say that every time I have ever come into contact with a community leader or elected official that has worked with Amy, no matter the political party, they absolutely love her. She has done so much for the Southern Oregon communities. Just a beautiful human who has worked incredibly hard over the last decade-plus to help rural Oregonians. She is funny, kind, and blunt--always tells you like it is. I cannot reiterate enough how imperative her mentorship has been. She is a wealth of knowledge and experience that can't be replaced. I certainly could not have said it better, so I appreciate the team members who contributed those thoughts. On behalf of myself and the entire team, thank you, Amy Amrhein, for all you have done for our team, for all you have done for the State, and for all you have done for so many constituents, working on so many complex and difficult issues. You are going to be deeply missed by the entire team but by me most of all. It is the wish of the entire team that you will have a joyous, healthy retirement.

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks prior to the vote.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I join my colleagues here on the floor tonight to honor and pay tribute to a remarkable legal mind, an incredible American, an icon, an inspiration, and a wonderful human being: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, known to the younger generation as the ``Notorious RBG.'' RBG was born into a world in which few, if any, opportunities existed for women beyond the role of wife and mother. She helped build a world in which the doors were opened; the doors of opportunity were blown wide. It was a powerful, powerful undertaking, and she was extraordinarily successful in it. She graduated from high school at 15. She went on to college. She went on to law school. She graduated in a class of 500 students, and she tied for first in her class in 1959. I was 3 years old at that point. Then she applied for jobs, and she faced the discrimination of ``You are a woman, so we cannot hire you at our corporate law firm.'' Then she applied for clerkships with the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court Justices said: You are a woman, and our doors are closed to you. Perhaps this was a fortuitous moment because she went on, therefore, to take on a job as professor at Columbia University and from that to lead the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU. As director of the ACLU Women's Rights Project, she argued six landmark gender discrimination cases before the Court. Plain language, great heart, brilliant logic, and considerable legal tactics went into winning five of those six cases--an incredible record for anyone who has appeared before the Court. One of the tactics she undertook was to argue cases where men were being discriminated against because they were men, and by winning those cases, she established a principle where neither men nor women could be discriminated against. There is the Frontiero v. Richardson case in 1973, where a female Air Force lieutenant sued to get the benefits for her husband that a male member of the military would normally get for his wife. By winning that case, she opened the door to the concept, the principle, that gender discrimination is not acceptable under our Constitution. She put forward and argued the case of Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld in 1975 just 2 years later, again, arguing for a man who, as a spouse, was denied Social Security benefits that were available to a woman as a spouse and, by winning that case, more deeply established the premise that under our Constitution, you cannot discriminate on gender. She went on to the Court and had many momentous decisions that she wrote and dissents that she wrote. One of the cases that she wrote the majority opinion on was an 7-to-1 case to overturn Virginia Military Institute's men-only policy, arguing that it violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. She wrote the following: ``Women seeking and fit for a VMI quality education cannot be offered anything less, under the State's obligation to afford them genuinely equal protection.'' She continued: ``Generalizations about `the way women are,' estimates of what is appropriate for most women, no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description.'' And a law that ``denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature--equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society,'' violates the equal protection clause. Eight to one, that is a massive victory. I thought it was very interesting, the point she often made in her dissent. The Supreme Court decided in the 2007 case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.--the majority said: Do you know what? If you have been discriminated against in pay in your job, and you learn about it years later, you can no longer appeal for redress because you would had to have come to the Court at the moment the discrimination first occurred. Of course, that was a catch-22, an impossible situation. If you didn't know about it, you couldn't possibly come to the Court. She addressed this, and she said: The majority does not ``comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of paid discrimination.'' So she called on Congress to act to address, really, this mistaken opinion of the Court. And we did so in 2009, the first year I came to the Senate. There is another dissent that I think was powerful: Shelby County v. Holder. The majority struck down Voting Rights Act protections against voter suppression and intimidation, arguing that those things no longer exist. It is as if you have a penalty for robbery that is so effective that everyone quits robbing, so you get rid of the law; the Supreme Court strikes down the law that says that robbery is an offense. It made no logical sense. However, in her dissent, she described it in a way we can all understand. She said the ruling was ``like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.'' The foundation she laid on gender discrimination created the foundation for similar arguments to end LGBTQ discrimination. They came to play in Romer v. Evans, where the Court overturned laws around the country that criminalized gay sex, or Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that established marriage equality, or the case of Bostock v. Clayton County, decided this year, that banned employment discrimination against LGBTQ workers. So her arguments reverberate in continuous ways. Losing her is a very powerful and difficult moment because of her championship of opportunity in this country. So on Sunday night, I went down to the Supreme Court. I had thought about it on Friday night when word passed of her dying. On Friday night, I thought: It is going to be a scene of confrontation, of people with bull horns yelling at each other and confronting each other. That doesn't fit how I want to honor her. And I thought on Sunday night: I need to go and be at the Supreme Court. I was so relieved to find that there was not a scene of confrontation; there was a scene of hundreds of people coming to honor her championship of opportunity in our country, the role that she played for so many so often as an advocate and as a Justice. This is a piece of what it looked like, although you have to kind of multiply the flowers and everything you see over a huge expanse. This is just a small portion of it. I was very struck by watching people kneel down to write with chalk-- women, men, boys, and girls--to say what she meant to them, what she meant to this country, and what she meant to striking open the doors of opportunity. Then I started reading some of the things that were being written. This is one of them. This says: ``We can because she did. Thank you, RBG.'' In another written sign, there was a quote: ``I ask no favors for my sex. . . . All I ask of my brethren is that they will take their feet off our necks.'' Give us opportunity. This is actually Ruth Bader Ginsburg quoting Sarah Grimke of South Carolina, born in 1792. Sarah became the country's first female abolitionist and early pioneer of the women's movement. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg quoted her in the ``Notorious RBG'' documentary, it made this quote famous for a generation. I was struck by this sign, which I thought basically summed up her entire efforts on women's rights. It is a quote of hers that says: ``Women belong in all places decisions are being made.'' You can see at the end the massive number of flowers and signs people have left in front of the Supreme Court. Then I saw this, which summed up a young woman's commentary on that principle: I grew up never knowing there was a glass ceiling because of you. Thank you, RBG. So we mourn her loss. She was a champion for opportunity for all. She was a champion for so much that goes to making this world a better place for ordinary people--ordinary people--which brings us to the challenge we have before the Court because realize that the Supreme Court has become a very powerful, nine-member, appointed-for-life superlegislature. It is not calling balls and strikes any longer--no. It is a setting for a pitch battle between the original vision of our country--``we the people'' government or, as Lincoln said, government of, by, and for the people--and a different vision for our country; a Federalist Society vision for our country; a vision of, we the powerful minority want to control the government for our own benefit. That is the battle that is being waged on the Court. Is it government by and for the people or government by and for the powerful? This has been a battle that has been waged since our 1787 Constitution. In 1781, we had our first Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and the minority view of the White, wealthy, powerful South was protected by a requirement for a supermajority in that first Constitution, the Articles of Confederation. The Founders said: This isn't government by and for the people. This is not government by and for the people--no. The majority will is the power of government by and for the people. So that was embodied in the Constitution we have now, that vision of ``we the people.'' That minority from the South, wanting to protect slavery, said: We need strategies to prevent the majority from eliminating slavery, and we have to make sure that there are no civil rights granted to individuals of color in our Nation who might undermine our complete control of the governments at the State level. That minority said: We are very wealthy, and we don't want any laws that undermine our wealth, so we need a strategy to control and prevent the people from getting fair wages and fair working conditions because that means we make less money ourselves. So they pursued a strategy called nullification, a strategy that said no Federal law will have any impact on our State unless we endorse it at the State level. Eventually that fell before the Court, so then they pursued the development of the supermajority blockade of decisions being made in this very Chamber, on behalf of racism. The supermajority was forged in the fires of racism. For 87 years, no law was blocked by this Chamber, by the supermajority, except civil rights. Then this battle expanded. It expanded to issues of corporate power versus consumer rights, corporate power versus working conditions. This is where we come to the current battle between the Federalist Society weighing in on behalf of government by and for the powerful versus those who believe in the vision of our Constitution of government by and for the people. So we have lost Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who honored our constitutional vision, and we have a President and a majority in this Chamber who are intent in packing the Court on behalf of the wealthy and powerful. There is at this moment just tremendous damage being done to the integrity of this body because the same party in the majority 4 years ago said: We have a principle--the McConnell rule--that if a seat becomes vacant during an election year, we must listen to the people and let them decide whether the current President or a different President decides. Will it be the Republican nominee or the Democratic nominee? They took that vote, and they went with it. Many spoke out in favor of it, of the principle. Many said: This is the absolute right thing to do--even though it was the first time in U.S. history that this body did not debate the nomination or vote on the nomination, breaking the protocol of our entire history in order to steal a Supreme Court seat from President Obama and pass it on to the next President So here we are, 4 years later, much deeper into an election year. In fact, the election has already started, with many absentee ballots having been delivered, having been voted, having been returned. So any form of integrity would be to honor the McConnell rule from 4 years ago and say: What we did 4 years ago was principled. We said we believed in it. It helped out the Republicans enormously, but, you know what, we are principled individuals, and so we are going to stick with the same frame that we argued before the public 4 years earlier. So I ask my colleagues, are there not a whole number of you who will come together--together--and say: Yes, we have integrity with the decision we made 4 years ago, the McConnell rule we argued 4 years ago, the rule that gave a Supreme Court seat to President Trump and took it away from President Obama, for the first time stealing a Supreme Court seat in our history? But we are going to honor that same principle today. I ask my colleagues, search your hearts. I ask, do you want to be remembered in this role of so fiercely advocating a principle that benefited you then and so fiercely violating it now, to your own benefit once again, doing so much damage to the integrity of this Chamber and so much damage to the vision and principle of government of, by, and for the people? Let that not be the case. Let every Member come here to the floor and together actually hold a debate. We see no Members on the floor today--Republican colleagues. Having-- many of them--stated that they are quite ready to violate the principle they argued so strongly 4 years ago, we don't know where they went. They are gone. They are not here. So let the American people call attention because the American people love our Constitution. The American people love ``we the people.'' The American people love the principle of government of, by, and for the people and do not want to see it trampled in an effort to sustain a massive amount of corporate power against the consumer, wealthy power against the worker, and racist power against civil rights.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, apocalypse, fire, fueled by wind coming over the top of the Cascade Mountains, turning into a blowtorch that races down the western slopes of those mountains, incinerating the towns in its path--that is what is happening in my home State of Oregon. Imagine suddenly waking up at 4:30 in the morning to a house filled with smoke. You realize you have to clear the area before the situation gets a lot worse. You and your partner race to pack up some essentials, load them and your pets into the car in your garage, and then you can't get the garage door open because there is no power. The power lines have been taken down by the winds and by the power poles being burned and falling over. So you open the garage door by hand, and just as you are about to lift it, you look out a little window, and you see an inferno engulfing your neighbor's home. So you make a desperate dash in the other direction and out the backdoor--the fire at your heels. You race toward the river at the bottom of the hill, hoping--praying--there will be some kind of safety. It is a terrifying scenario, but it is not out of some movie. For Larry Tripoli and Fran Howe, of Gates, OR, it was a reality just a few nights ago when the Beachie Creek fire roared through Santiam Canyon, incinerating homes, businesses, and entire neighborhoods. They got to the river, and they waded knee deep in the water as the trees burned around them on both banks. Fran recalled: ``I thought we were going to die.'' Fortunately, help arrived late that night, just before 12 midnight. The firefighters and emergency workers risked their lives and safety to come and rescue those who were fleeing the fire. Many folks worked to help their neighbors get noticed even as the fire was descending on the town. At this moment, all across Oregon, people are facing similarly terrifying experiences as historic wildfires have burned more than a million acres--more than twice those burned in a normal year. They burned in a small period of time--most of them over this past week. There are 10 citizens who have lost their lives, and dozens are missing. We are afraid there will be more bad news to come. It is hard to imagine. I mean, I have seen the results of a fire near John Day that came down a valley, and there were widely spaced homes in the forest on both sides of the river, and I have seen that those homes were burned. But I have never seen anything like this--neighborhood after neighborhood, the commercial district, the apartment complexes, the mobile home housing parks, completely scorched--every building you can see. When I toured this last Friday, the only thing I could compare it to were pictures I had seen of Hiroshima after the bomb; cities in Europe that had been firebombed, like Dresden--massive devastation, incinerating everything. This is what has just happened in my home State. In one town of Phoenix, OR--this is a picture from Phoenix. The mayor estimated that perhaps 1,000 residences had been burned between the mobile homes, the manufactured homes, the apartment complexes, and the standalone houses--several thousand people with nothing to return to. You know, I met with folks last Friday and Saturday as Senator Wyden and I started in the north part of the State and went all the way down south. I traveled 600 miles by car. I was driving. I never got out of the smoke. I remember fires where we passed 20 miles through the smoke, 30 miles through the smoke. I drove over 600 miles. I was never out of that smoke. Parts of the State glowed like the aftereffects of a bomb. This is our State capital with that orange, fire-infused sky behind it in Salem, OR, the result of the Santiam fire that comes down toward the city of Salem. That smoke doesn't just hover and stay in one place. As the wind starts to blow, it spreads across the country. So here we are. This is the September 15 fire chart. These purple areas--an index of over 500 parts per million--incredibly unhealthy to breathe, and you can see the State of Oregon covered, on through Idaho and Montana, right on across the country--California. Everyone is dealing with the smoke. I just got off a Zoom call just a little while ago, and the first three people who spoke were talking about how uncomfortable they were because of their asthma or breathing conditions affected by the smoke. The air quality in Portland has ranked as the worst among the world's major cities for the last 5 days in a row, and in smaller towns across the State, it has been far worse. People saw all kinds of dramatic, powerful scenes of the approaching fires, the approaching bank of clouds. It was a week ago Monday that I decided to drive up to the Columbia Gorge. I didn't get 20 miles from my house, and I saw this wall of smoke. So I got off the freeway and took the old scenic highway up to Crown Point--a lookout point high in the cliffs where you can see way to the east and way to the west--just to see that. What is going on with this massive cloud? You could see how dramatic the approaching smoke cloud was from these fires. As we think about these devastating fires, we have to think about them in terms of the individuals who have been so dramatically affected. Some have been injured by the fires; some have been killed by the fires. So as Senator Wyden and I proceeded from the northern border to the southern border to visit fire refugees in different centers that have been set up and to visit some coordinated care briefings and then to visit two towns--Phoenix and Talent--that had been incinerated, the most powerful moment was sitting down at a table with individuals along the way. I took away this collective impression: individuals who had escaped and were just thinking, my goodness, how fortunate I am that I got out with my life; individuals who had escaped, but they didn't know the fate of their family members who may not have escaped. One father lost the grandmother in the family and his son, who died in a car with the family dog in the son's lap, and as he was going to search for his wife, he met a woman on the road. He said, ``I am searching for my wife,'' and she responded, ``I am your wife.'' Because she was so affected by the smoke and burned by the fire, he didn't recognize her. I met folks who realized that they had escaped but also recognized that every single thing--a lifetime of records, photos, film, financial records, family heirlooms--all of it, everything, gone. So the issues become even more complicated. Think about the children who were just starting school when these Labor Day fires descended. They lost their laptops; they lost their tablets after being coached on how to attend school electronically. The family has lost, perhaps, their funds, and now they are driving 40, 60 miles to family or to a friend's house. How do they sign up for school? How do they deal with the stress that is on them from what has happened and the remaining stress of the impact on the family and those they are still searching for? And food--road closures stop the movement of food from getting to them, getting to stores and restaurants and communities. There are food shortages because they can't be resupplied. Whether it is Breitenbush Hot Springs, one of our State's most beloved resorts, losing half of its buildings or Simple Machine Winery in Talent burning to the ground--this is an adjacent city, Phoenix and Talent. One woman told me: I not only lost everything, I lost my job because the business I work at has burned to the ground as well. This is on top of the pandemic, and this is on top of the economic implosion. Many of the residences that burned were those that served lower income citizens--the mobile home parks, the manufactured housing parks where the houses are closer together and the fireproofing of the walls is less than required in stick-built houses. Apartment complexes--I saw this whole field where you could see steel girders going up two stories and crossbeams at the top of the steel and then steel stairs and nothing else. They were almost like a sculpture standing in the middle of the field, and there was one after another, after another in the heart of these apartment complexes. The apartments were completely gone. I also heard on this trip such appreciation for our local leaders and our first responders--the firefighters, the EMTs, the National Guard unit doing an incredible job of helping to rescue them, an incredible job of doing point defense or a lot more residences would have burned. They were risking their lives trying to get people out before that blowtorch of a fire descended on a town. They were building fire lines and clearing dead brush and trees from around houses, dropping water. I saw orange splotches as I toured these two towns from when the retardant had been dropped. But then, as the smoke compiled, the planes couldn't fly--not to drop water, not to drop fire retardant These families are going to need everything we can possibly do to help them out. They are devastated and rebuilding their lives. Getting their feet on the ground is going to be really hard. Friends will help, and family will help, and local government will help. But we, too, at the Federal level need to be there to help and make sure these FEMA programs are expeditiously conducted to assist the individuals with the individual assistance and then to assist the communities with the rebuilding--rebuilding of these towns. Local revenues? Those are gone. Property taxes? Those are gone. Revenues from the local businesses, the fees they pay? Those are gone. We are going to have to provide a lot of support. I applaud the White House for quickly approving Governor Brown's request for an emergency declaration. Our whole legislative delegation was calling and requesting and saying: Pay attention to this; we need it quickly. And we got it. We got it quickly. That emergency declaration is really about food and shelter assistance. Then we said that we really need the major disaster declaration, and we got that within about a day of its being submitted--again, prompt action by the White House. Then we applied for a health emergency declaration, and we got that this morning--again, expeditiously. Those are doors where you have to unlock the door to the resources, and those declarations are the keys that open that door. But now we need the supplies to come through that door to really start this long process of support for individuals and for our communities. One of the things we encountered was the valuable help of our Oregon State National Guard. Three years ago I worked to start funding a training program for the National Guard so they could help fight these fires, and our Oregon portion of this was the training of 375 National Guard members put into three 125-member teams. It was great that they were trained and ready to go, but we ran into a problem, and that problem was we didn't have enough crew chiefs. The crew chiefs come from outside to conduct the team's work, and you need five or six crew chiefs for every team, for every group of 125. The crew chiefs are all tied up all around the country. Then the Governor said: We need not only those 375; we need two more teams--another 250. The initial response was, no, the funds aren't available. But I checked and found out there were funds left, and they were approved quite quickly--again, a thank-you to the executive branch for approving them at that point. We still needed crew chiefs, and I just got word a short period ago that there are chew chiefs now en route to Oregon. We have found some from around the country to go and enable those Oregon National Guard members to be able to be deployed. So that is another step forward. We can't stop there. We have to look beyond the immediate crisis. We have to help the families rebuild the homes. We have to help the local businesses recover, rebuild. We have to think about not just the fire damage but the smoke damage. I have introduced the Smoke-Ready Communities Act that would enable communities to prepare safe zones where you have filtered air in key buildings so those who have lung conditions and are affected by the smoke have somewhere safe to get to, to be able to breathe. I think it is a pretty logical thing for us to do and a small-dollar investment in partnership with communities to create some highly filtered space of air for people with lung challenges. I have written the Wildfire Smoke Emergency Declaration Act because in the past we thought only of the direct fire impact, but now we are seeing all this smoke that is having such a major impact. In the last major smoke episode, we saw our outdoor activities like the Shakespeare Festival close down. We saw furniture salesmen who couldn't sell the furniture because of smoke damage. We had a massive impact on our wine industry with smoke-tainted grapes. By the way, even though the buyers of those grapes turned them down, it turned out they were pretty good grapes, and the community came together and created an Oregon wine, a unity wine, and it was great wine and people loved it. So those grapes found a home and found a product. They came together to solve a problem. We had trouble with our hazelnuts with the smoke. So a declaration act and the Smoke-Ready Communities Act but also action to help field workers. Think about the field workers--the agriculture workers working right now harvesting, and they are in that smoke--500 parts per million small particles damaging their lungs. We need to be set up to help the agricultural community. They are truly frontline workers whose health shouldn't be compromised in that manner. And we need to make our forests more resistant to fires. Now, I know President Trump has said that is the whole key, and why can't Oregon and California get their act together. Well, let me point out that the majority of the forest we are talking about, those are Federal forests. It is Federal forest. It is Federal management that is so missing. What I proposed in the Wildfire-Resilient Communities Act is that we spend $1 billion. It should be $1 billion dollars a year thinning these overgrown second-growth forests. What do you get out of that? You get jobs; you get saw logs for our mills, and you get a forest that is much more resistant to fire. It isn't just the thinning. Then it is what they call the mowing to reduce the shrubs that have built up, and then it is the prescribed burn that goes back 2 or 3 years later. This is to avoid the pattern of the fire in the past we had which was to burn the shrubbery on the floor which grows back quickly and prevents that over-dense forest. So we should do that. We should pass the Wildfire-Resilient Communities Act, put the funding in, and create permanent authorization for our collaboratives. What is a collaborative? To those outside the forest world, that probably isn't a familiar term. It is where you bring the environmental community and the timber community together, and they develop what they call a prescription for thinning the forest and mowing it and doing a prescribed burn. By working together and having a plan, they stay out of the courts because court paralysis has been a major obstacle. So let's take that collaborative model. Let's build on the success of the collaborative and stewardship agreements, which are very similar, but it takes resources and here has been the challenge. Every time we seek the resources to do more on the front end to make the forest more fire-resilient, it is blocked by individuals who say: Hey, let's go back to the 1950s clearcuts. My friends, that doesn't work. When you clearcut and replant, you now create a new forest where the trees are too close together and they are all the same height and they are absolutely primed once again for fire. The thinning, the prescribed burns, the mowing, this has a big impact. I went to a forest outside of Sisters, OR, where these measures have been used, and there was a fire that had been bearing down on Sisters, OR. And when it met the section of the forest that had been thinned, it stopped because the fuel wasn't there to propagate itself forward, and because of the thinning, the fire crews could get through the forest to the frontline of the fire. So it worked very effectively that way. Now there are situations of high winds when the forest fire becomes a blow torch. Nothing is going to stop it. But often fires move at a modest pace, and that is where the thinning and mowing and prescribed burns can make a real difference. So I am hoping we can have partnership in that approach. Some have said: Well, isn't it the environmental laws that prevent us from undertaking this effort? And the answer is no. We have 2.3 million acres in Oregon that have gone through the environmental process. We could do the thinning, mowing, prescribed burns tomorrow if we had the funds to do it So jobs, fire resilience, better timber stands, better ecosystem, saw logs to the mill. That is all the win, win, win, win products of this approach. Colleagues, I know many of you have come to me and said: What can we do? Well, there are really two things. Help us do forest management in the collaborative style, in the stewardship style--in the thinning, prescribed burn, mowing style. Help us do that, and also let's recognize that this situation in Oregon and California and many, many other States isn't simply a freak occurrence of the winds. It is a situation where the forest is drier than it has ever been before. Drier than a kiln-dried 2 by 4. If you have gone to the hardware store to get kiln-dried 2 by 4s, they have been baked to have all the moisture baked out of them. There is less moisture in the forest during these periods of drought and heat then there is in that kiln-dried 2 by 4. They are ready to burn at a second's notice. So this is the result of the changing dynamic of climate. The forest season has gotten much longer. It is no longer a June through August affair; it is a March through October affair. In California, it is a year-round calendar affair now. If you track this decade over decade, each one is worse. There is a longer fire season with more intensive fires and more acres burned. So that is a more difficult project. Our Earth is wrapped by the commons of our air, and that air holds now a lot more carbon dioxide and a lot more methane and traps a lot more heat, and it is affecting everything. In Oregon, it isn't just the fires. It is also our snowpack. Our snowpack, decade after decade, is smaller and smaller. Why? Because it is warmer and warmer. How does that affect things? Well, do you like to fish? If you like to fish, you know that a warmer, smaller stream is bad for the salmon returning; it is bad for the trout. And if you are a farmer, you know that smaller snowpack means less irrigation water and less water to recharge the groundwater that you use when you don't have enough irrigation water, when you have to pump it out of the ground. So we have big impacts not just with the timber community with the forest burning but also on our ag community and our fishing community. The three pillars of our rural economy are all being substantially affected. Offshore, it is a warmer Pacific Ocean, and it is a more acidic Pacific Ocean--30 percent more acidic than before we started burning fossil fuels. And people say: What is the connection? Well, those waves take the carbon dioxide in the air and convert it to carbonic acid. There is a 30-percent increase in acidity that is affecting our shellfish reproduction. Worry about that--that shellfish are having a hard time reproducing. So this isn't an urban issue versus a rural issue. This is not a red issue versus a blue issue. This is the economy, the pillars of America, in farming, fishing, and forests being profoundly affected. So let's work together to take this on. Yes, improve our forest management. We have altered the forests dramatically with our replantings that grow up at the same height and are too close together, but we can make those same second-growth forests far more resilient, jobs, and saw logs at the same time. Let's work together to improve the health of the forest, especially around our urban areas, our small towns. To my colleagues who say this is a moment when we are seeing not just the fires, we are seeing other impacts around the Nation; we are seeing the intense storms in the Midwest; and we are seeing the tropical storms and hurricanes hitting the gulf and never-before-seen storm surges on the East Coast--so we are all in this together. Let's work together to assist the families so powerfully affected. Let's work together to rebuild the communities. Let's work together to fund forest management in a way it has to be funded as a counterpart to the strategy of forest replanting that we have undertaken. Let's work together to take on the warming planet because it affects everything and not just in Oregon and not just in the United States but across our planet. It is our responsibility. Let's get it done. Thank you.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, is this just another Thursday? Are things going along well in America, with nothing to worry about, nothing to keep us up at night, nothing to keep mothers and fathers up worried about the health of their children? Is this just another Thursday with America doing well, or are we here in the midst of the worst pandemic in a century since the Spanish flu? You wouldn't know it from this Chamber. You wouldn't know it from the majority leader's shutting this place down. Is it possible that we are in the worst economic implosion since the Great Depression? Is this just another Thursday? You wouldn't know that we are in a terrible economic collapse based on the fact that the majority leader is treating this period of time like just another Thursday, when everything is fine and everything is good in America. It is almost 3 months ago that the House passed a robust bill to address the pandemic and to address the economic implosion--3 months ago. Why didn't the Senate say immediately, we will act, as well, because we are having big issues in America? They didn't act after the first week after the House acted. They just treated it like another week, no concerns. They didn't act in the second week. We are now 11 weeks since the House acted and still the majority leader says: Don't worry, be happy. It is just another Thursday. All is good in America-- no concerns, no anxiety, no worry. Just be happy. I can tell you what I am hearing from Oregonians. They are saying it is not just another Thursday. They are saying our State government is estimated to lose $10 billion in revenue over the next two bienniums--a little less than $3 billion this biennium, a little more than $4 billion in the next biennium, and about $3 billion after that. That is $10 billion of lost revenue for core programs, like healthcare, housing, education, and transportation. That is a pretty big deal in terms of the foundations for the programs Oregonians count on. I am hearing from a whole lot of parents--moms and dads--and they are saying: This is not just another Thursday. We are worried about our children's education. I recognize there are a lot of rich people in America paying for tutors for their children, maybe two tutors for a child--maybe a math tutor and a reading tutor, maybe a special education tutor, who knows-- because they are rich. You know what, most of America are ordinary Americans who count on the quality of our public schools. I can tell you, a lot of parents are worried about how are they going to be able to have an education for their children given the challenge in the school if the school can't afford to convert the way it operates, either in the school, in a very altered manner, or providing workstations and computers and broadband so every child has the ability to work online. Now, we know that even that is going to be far insufficient because so many children are in households where there isn't going to be the type of full-on, all-day assistance to help them utilize that online access. We know that. Shouldn't we be providing the resources to minimize the gap between the best-off and ordinary families? Shouldn't we be trying to do everything for our children? My dad was a mechanic. A mechanic who works in the sawmill is called a millwright. He said it is the best job in the world. If he could keep the machinery humming, it meant that every worker had a job to come to, and it meant the company made money. Everybody was happy if he could keep the machinery running, and he did. He did a marvelous job. He was pretty disappointed when the company was bought by an investor and the mill was shut down overnight and the timber that the company had was sold to another company, a bigger company. But, in that context of a father with a powerful ability to keep machinery humming that would benefit so many other people, he loved the fact that we had good public schools. He told me: Son, because we live in America and have these public schools, if you go through the door of that schoolhouse and you study hard, you can do almost anything in our country. What a glorious vision for an ordinary, working American to say to their child: Because we live in America, you can do almost anything, in our country. The horizons are boundless because we have good public schools. But it is 11 weeks since the House acted. Have we acted to provide good public schools? All of our teachers and our administrators and our parents and our school boards are saying we are just around the corner from the ordinary start of school. It is either just before or just after Labor Day. Where is the U.S. Senate? Mitch McConnell sent us home. He shut this place down while our children's education, preparation for a very unusual and difficult year, goes untended because there aren't the resources. I can tell you, I am hearing a lot from the medical community. My wife, Mary, is a nurse. She is a home hospice nurse, so she goes and coaches families as their loved one goes through the final chapter of their life here on our planet. A lot of these folks that she visits, because they are in hospice, it, by definition, means they are quite ill. Often, the families around them are elderly, and they are very concerned about any presence of COVID, coronavirus. What she hears is that we need to tackle this pandemic. What do the scientists and healthcare experts say? They say a national investment in personal protective equipment; they say a national investment in a testing strategy to be able to do massive numbers of tests to help identify folks who are carrying the virus and spreading the virus but are asymptomatic, as well as those who actually have symptoms; and a massive national investment in tracing so that we can follow up when somebody is identified as carrying the virus--Who did they get it from? Who did they have contact with?--so those folks can go into quarantine and stop the chain of infection from person to person to person. The House, 11 weeks ago, passed a bill that has massive resources for testing and tracing, and for 11 weeks, the leadership of this body has said: Not needed. Let's do nothing. Let's just treat this as just another Thursday. No concern. Then I hear from folks who are really worried about the nutrition for our children--not just the education but nutrition. We worked hard to get the EBT program to help out because of school sites being shut down, but what about this coming year? Why aren't we helping with nutrition? The House, 11 weeks ago, acted, but here, it is just another Thursday--no crisis, no concern when children across America are going hungry. The bill that the House passed had resources for State and local government to help address the hemorrhaging of funds. I noted that Oregon predicts, just in its State government, a loss of $10 billion over next three biennium--or this biennium and the next two. For them to sustain their basic programs, they need help. I heard today from the president of one of our public universities-- our 4-year university, Oregon State University in Corvallis--and they were estimating a massive loss of revenue. They need this bill, which would direct support for our 4-year institutions. They know that the State, if it is going to be able to sustain its support for the universities, so that the money doesn't come in the front door and out the back door, we need to provide help to the State government. I know this isn't a blue-red issue. I know that blue and red Governors are saying the same thing. I know blue and red county commissioners are asking for the same help. So I say to my colleagues, it is morally unacceptable to just say: This is another Thursday. All is well. We have waited 11 weeks to act after the House. What is another week? What does it matter if a family that has been able to pay its rent or its mortgage or its utilities or put food on the table because they got $600 a week extra help in unemployment, what does it matter if they lose their home? What does it matter if they are evicted? Well, I will tell you this: It matters a hell of a lot--a huge impact on that family for a long time to come. I don't know how many of my colleagues have worked in the area of assisting homeless families, but when you are destabilized, when you are tossed out, when you experience homelessness, when you are living in your car with your kids or it is a basement this week and it is a van the next and who knows what shelter will let you in, it destabilizes and knocks you down for a long time. It makes it hard to get ready to go to a job interview. It makes it hard to present yourself effectively in a job interview. It puts all kinds of stresses on the family relationship. Is it really OK that we shut the Senate down when families are going to be evicted because we shut off that $600 per week and the moratorium on evictions expired? This, colleagues, is not just another Thursday. This is a moment of national crisis, a pandemic crisis, an economic crisis, and we need to be in crisis mode. We need to be here day and night. We need to be working on each of these issues that were addressed 11 weeks ago in the House while this body sat on its hands. Sitting on your hands when the people of America need us, that is not acceptable in the U.S. Senate. Let's act boldly. Let's act decisively. Let's recognize that we must rise to meet this national challenge and do so now. I yield to my colleague from Michigan.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Connecticut for his intense effort to defend the civil rights of citizens--not only of his State but all Americans--and for the truth he speaks that, when you have anonymous officers in war gear attacking peaceful crowds and committing, really, disturbing acts of violence against them, it is an unacceptable thing in our democracy. He has noted that there was this conversation about the triumph of democracy as a strategy and it was going to spread and where we were going to find ourselves by this time was a world ruled by ``we the people'' governments across the land and how that is not the case. He mentioned several countries that have been backsliding, and I think we could add to that those places like Poland and Hungary. I believe he mentioned Turkey. It is tempting to be a strongman, and we have heard the President of the United States convey his admiration for these strongmen across the planet. But then he starts to bring their secret police, fascist tactics to the streets of America, and we have an obligation--under our oaths of office and simply as citizens of this Nation--to stand up and say no. I have been reading letters from women who were on the frontline down in the peaceful protests, clarifying that there was no violence except the violence of the Federal agents against them. Here is another such letter: I am a mom. I am a nurse. I live in Portland. I was peacefully protesting police brutality and racism tonight alongside other moms as part of the protests in downtown Portland. I had my arms linked with my own mom and my close friend when Federal agents in camo rushed us with guns pointed. They paused for a split second (as if to consider if they were really going to enact violence on a group of unarmed moms) then they pushed people down to my left. We were [chanting] ``don't hurt our kids.'' They threw flash- bangs at our feet. They tear gassed the crowd. I will not be silent. This is not ok. Don't just consume the line that it is a bunch of anarchists the police and feds are attacking. That is not ok. Black lives matter. I have many more letters of people explaining what happened. They all are basically the same: There were some kids doing some graffiti; there was some pounding on the door of the Federal courthouse, but there was no violence. The only violence came from the Feds attacking the peaceful protesters. I am going to reserve the balance of my time. I see my colleague is here from the State of Utah. I yield the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I would inquire how much time I have remaining, please.

Mr. MERKLEY. I thank the Senator for asking for my thoughts on this. Just before he spoke, I had described the story of Joy, who talked about the hit that her friend Krista had taken during this chaos after she had been gassed. I did check, and here is the picture of her. You can see her whole face is inflamed. There are so many people who can't see. They are dazed, and their lungs are on fire, and Patrick Hovakimian is sending best wishes to the people of Oregon. It reminds me of a cartoon I saw when I was young in which Lucy goes out after it is observed how cold Snoopy is, out shivering on top of his doghouse during a snowstorm, and Lucy goes out and says ``Hope you stay warm,'' and goes back into her house. Yeah--``Best wishes, but I am not doing a thing to help you out.'' I would love for Mr. Hovakimian to say: I will come and stand there. I will see what is really going on, and if peaceful protesters are being attacked, that is simply unacceptable, and as a leader I will take it to President Trump and tell President Trump that we don't do secret police in America. We don't sweep people into vans, and if you really want me to take this position, that is what I am going to change the policy to because that is what you do in a republic. We are not a dictatorship. That is what I would like to hear him say in response to your question to him. You asked about martial law. Secret police operating as rogue operators outside the framework of law, outside of the cooperation of the Governor or the mayor sound like the equivalent of martial law to me.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Oregon for his intense representation of these legal issues and the role of the Intelligence Committee, noting that this has all the trappings of a President bent on the equivalent of martial law, operating in this rogue fashion, shredding the constitutional rights of people, sending Federal officers to attack peaceful protesters. I was reading the stories of women who were down at the protests the night before last. The next one is from Stephanie. She says: I went downtown again last night to peacefully protest. To use my voice and my 1st Amendment rights. To feel safe-- repeat: TO FEEL SAFE--against these anonymous federal agents. I wore: --A bike helmet --Goggles --A double mask --Ear plugs And I was still terrified. The #WallofMoms stood locked, arm in arm, right up against the fence line at the federal courthouse. We stood between these federal agents dressed in war gear and unarmed protesters shouting behind us. Sweat poured down my back. The Moms stood for hours. On my bike ride home I texted [an individual] Geoff [not me] each time I stopped and called Amy . . . to have a ``buddy'' on the phone with me. Every time I heard a car, my heart skipped a beat. Is it a crew of federal kidnappers, ready to throw me into a van? This administration has been chipping away at our rights since day 1, but this past week in Portland has been an acceleration. Wake up, especially those supporting them. We are in a crisis of great magnitude and we are about to lose control. Candace Jimenez, member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, said she came out to protest after the deployment of Federal agents, and said: We have been dealing with that for 500 years. We understand the trauma, the terrorism, and the harm it causes. Bev writes: In less than eight hours, a group of moms helped me put together this #WallofMoms. We tried in earnest to give the kids a break by shifting the pervasive narrative that protesters are rioters. Case and point, we wore our whitest whites to show we weren't there to make trouble, we showed up to prove that the feds are the violent ones. . . . And we were right. Kids took down fences and did some skateboarding, two or three kids [banged] on walls, but the other people were peaceful. I want to tell you that I didn't vomit or pee my pants after being gassed, but I did. I guess I lost control . . . and soon after I couldn't open my eyes. To be clear, we moms weren't armed, [we weren't] throwing rocks, [we weren't] throwing water. That didn't happen. We were gassed for chanting ``Leave the kids alone.'' I want you to think about what's happening in this country and ask yourself how you're going to help change it. Heather was down at the protests, and I don't have her picture, her larger picture, but I can tell you that she posted a picture. She is very pregnant. How gutsy I think that is that she was there, even as she is about to give birth. She writes: I am . . . 9mo pregnant . . . and I stood between the police and the rest of the protesters last night with about 40 other moms. My unborn baby is the topic of many Twitter debates right now and symbolizes a thousand year old debate among those who want to stifle women's freedom. Right now I have even more power than usual and I am here to use it. I am SAFE. Thanks everybody for your concern. But we are

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, would my colleague from Oklahoma modify the request to include unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 2457, an amendment to limit Federal law enforcement officers from operating in a secret fashion on the streets of America without identification; that there be 2 hours for debate, equally divided between opponents and proponents; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate vote in relation to the amendment with no intervening action or debate?

Mr. MERKLEY. To my colleague from Illinois, that is exactly right, as seen in this picture and the testimony of all those who are present. Mark Morgan, the Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, said that is not the case, and he said: ``Our personnel are clearly marked as federal [law enforcement officers] & have unique identifiers.'' They were not. They are operating, as you say, like little green men, secret police.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I have been using this time to share stories from women who have been down at the peaceful protests in Portland and then as they relay that they are attacked even though there is no violence in the protest. And they are attacked in an incredibly violent way. This is not, of course, the story the administration is telling the world, the President is telling the world. He says: There is violence, and we stopped it. The truth is, it was a peaceful protest, and Trump's Federal agents, dressed in war outfits, assaulted those protesters, as you heard in letter after letter after letter. It is almost like acts in a play. You have women holding flowers, like this sunflower, and some had mums. They are dancing. They are singing. Act 2, the camouflaged secret police, Trump's secret police, come onto the street--no agency identifier, no unique identifier--and then they start assaulting the women. That is act 3, the assault. These women are describing that assault in graphic terms. It is tear gas. It is flashbang grenades. It is pepper spray. It is batons. It is a woman a few feet away being hogtied. It is a woman a few feet away being knocked to the ground. That is act 3. And why is this happening? Because the President likes the authoritarian, secret-police tactics of dictators around the world and wants them to bring them to the United States of America and is bringing them to the United States of America. Maybe the moment he is doing it--right now--is because he is running campaign ads about what a good person he is to stop violence in America. Let's understand that the President of the United States is creating violence in the streets so he can run campaign ads to say that he will stop the violence. That is this play. It feels like a Greek tragedy. It feels like something that would never happen in America--but it is. I have been relaying these letters that describe it in so much better terms than anyone can. This letter is from Karen--or this Facebook post is from Karen. She says: Mixed feelings this morning, waking up eyes still stinging and a metallic taste in my mouth after ending the night of nonviolent protest with the #WallofMoms being gassed, shot at, and manhandled to the ground without provocation. Here's what happened. The majority of the night was a calm gathering spent listening to speakers, chanting, singing, and marching. Toward 11:30ish, folks gathered on the steps of the Justice Center. I intentionally positioned at the front line with the Moms to see for myself the truth. There were definitely some idiot kids yelling stupid and unproductive things, but mainly we gathered calmly, sweating in the heat, holding signs and chanting in solidarity with BlackLivesMatter. More experienced protesters told the Moms without gas masks to get a few layers of people back since they knew to expect CS gas again tonight. The only physical actions taken before all hell broke loose is that some of the protesters were banging and kicking loudly on the thick plywood wall that had been constructed to block the entrance to the Justice Center. We waited and then suddenly some kind of bullets . . . started shooting out of a small hole cut in the plywood, I felt a few stings like small pebbles or sand, it didn't really hurt but it scared me. Then some kind of smoky stuff (tear gas in hindsight) was in the air. I already couldn't see very well since my swim goggles had fogged up, but I didn't feel any burning etc. Those without respirators started leaving when they couldn't see or breathe. Huge loud noises and explosions (?''flashbangs'') were going off in front and behind us. Some of us linked arms and stood together as there were (?where they came from) all these big officers in black riot gear with batons starting to push us off the steps of the Justice Center. We tried to hold our ground but then one Mom a few down the row from me was grabbed pulled back toward the group of officers and they started to drag her away. She must have said something inflammatory, but she was linked arms and could not have hit them, thrown objects, or resisted anything. We tried to pull her back to us for her safety and then suddenly I was grabbed by 3-4 officers who were shouting to each other to ``pull her down, get her on the ground'' etc. (indeed they shoved and pulled me to the ground, grabbing both arms and my backpack to do so). Someone from the Moms said, ``let's go, they are surrounding us, we can't do anything now.'' By then the swim goggles had leaked and my eyes were burning and tearing and I . . . couldn't see, and I just crouched on the ground in a ball and put both hands up. Then--I heard the officers asking if I was ok. Asking if I could stand (I couldn't since I couldn't see). At least one of them said ``I'm trying to help you.'' The crowd was yelling ``leave her alone'' and came from behind me and were coaching me to keep my hands up and stay still. Sat there awhile shaking, getting my bearings, and finally I asked if I was being detained or if I could leave. Heard several back and forth conversations between the officers about ``she resisted us'' and ``she tried to help her friend get away.'' [And then someone else said] ``if she's willing to leave, just let her go.'' I kind of scootched back on my butt into the crowd and then some kind soul asked if he could help me up and get away from the gas, took my arm and we walked up the block back into the park. Some other kind soul asked if we needed Maalox for our eyes (that helped a little) and then we were out of the bitter cloud. I felt sorry for the officers actually, who were only doing what they were told by some pretty evil higher-ups (to disperse nonviolent crowds by force), and as far as my experience last night, actually seemed to try to do their best not to truly hurt me (possibly because I am white, female, and was wearing yellow to identify as a Mom). I got away with some scraped knees and a sore hip, plus the stinging eyes and metallic taste which will soon pass. But also--worst--a heavy heart. It really is senseless out there. I don't have answers and am no longer convinced that showing up is helping anything. However, I am pretty sure if the Feds hadn't been called in this would have continued to fade as hopefully productive real change and progress were made involving the city government and PD about the actual issues--concern about police brutality and social inequities for POC [people of color]--but now look at us. We should look at these protesters who are calling for justice, for policing that treats everyone equally, and it doesn't profile, doesn't provide public safety protection to some and ignore others. It doesn't view some citizens as the clients and other citizens as the threat. It doesn't change their actions when they see a group with white skin versus black skin or dark skin. That conversation is being destroyed by the President of America. He is trying to replace that argument for a better America that treats people with respect and honors the civil rights of all with a different America where secret police are deployed to beat the hell out of peaceful protesters and then put up campaign ads to say that he will fix it. We cannot let this story go unanswered. At a minimum, collectively, all 100 of us should say: No secret police--they wear identifiers for agencies. They wear unique identifiers, and they don't go marching through the streets of our city. They stay to protect the Federal property they are charged to protect. They don't attack peaceful protesters with flashbangs and tear gas and pepper spray and rubber bullets and batons. We don't do that here in America. I hope all 100 Senators will stand up and say: Yes, let's have a debate on a very simple amendment that says yes to ID on uniforms-- there are no secret police--and yes to staying on your Federal property or the near vicinity if that is your mission, so we don't have folks on an unrestricted mission of sweeping through our streets, grabbing people, and throwing them into vans as we have seen on the streets of Portland. I am asking that this Senate do its job to address this issue, to hold a debate--long or short, as my colleagues would prefer--and vote. It is important we raise our voice. It is important we vote. It is important we have accountability. It is important that we defend the Constitution of the United States and the citizens of the United States.

Mr. MERKLEY. For clarification, will my question be credited to my colleague's time, and can I ask unanimous consent that that it be credited to his time?

Mr. MERKLEY. Would my colleague from Connecticut yield for a question?

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you. You made the point about lack of identification. I have here the picture of how these have been deployed. I will make sure you can see it as well. Many are in camouflage--the generic police, with no sense of what agency they are part of, no unique identifier, even as the head of their organization--it was later clarified, and we found out, that they were CBP, Customs and Border Protection. He said: Of course, they have unique identifiers and, of course, they are marked as Federal law enforcement--which they are not. But if one of these individuals, in the course of attacking protesters, shoots them with a rubber bullet that fractures their forehead and puts them in critical condition in the hospital, would we have any idea how to hold that officer accountable if they have no ID?

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I thank my colleague so much for coming down to stand up for the people of his home State and say that ``secret police don't belong in my State, in my city of Chicago, or anywhere in the United States'' and that we should act on this floor to make sure that is not the case. We must work and fight for the citizens all across this country. It would be the right thing for us to debate my simple amendment that says: ID, and you stay in the near vicinity of a Federal property, and you don't engage in these attacks on peaceful protesters. We should debate it. If people disagree with it, they should stand up and explain why. Maybe we can come to a common understanding. Do you know how rare it is for Senators to come down and actually have dialogue and debate? It just doesn't happen. On something as important as this, shouldn't every Member be here weighing in and considering it? How much time do I have left?

Mr. MERKLEY. You asked about coordination. My understanding is that there was not an invitation from the mayor to come, and there was not a conversation with the Governor. There certainly was no conversation with Senator Wyden and me and the other members of the delegation. The Portland police have indicated that they have not worked in cooperation with these Federal forces. They may have been engaged in what they call deconfliction, and I don't know the full extent of that.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I request unanimous consent that our dialogue be credited to my colleague's 1 hour because I am afraid my minutes will run out.

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, they have been present in the streets. I don't know just how many blocks from the Federal building but certainly not just in the perimeter of the Federal property. They have swept through streets. They have vans that have gone through the streets. They have grabbed protesters and thrown them into vans. So they have departed significantly from, if you will, the mission of defending the Federal building.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, my colleague described how his family was affected by fascism in Germany and how his family members died for fascism--attacking them, imprisoning them in concentration camps, and putting them to death. Don't we all believe that every German citizen should have stood up to that fascism and said: Not here; not by our government; not by our people. That is exactly why we are on the floor right now to say: Secret police--not here, not by our government, and not allowed in our Republic. Sweeping people off the street into unmarked vans--not allowed, not here, not our government, and we will put an end to it. Gassing, assaulting, and batoning peaceful protesters on the streets of our city--not here, not allowed, and we will put an end to it. I yield to my colleague, who I believe wishes to speak.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Connecticut for bringing his experience in the legal world to bear on this extraordinary development of secret police being deployed on the streets of America. As we heard from the President, he wants to expand this model. It was first in DC. Then it was Portland. Now he is talking about Philadelphia and Baltimore, Chicago and Detroit, Oakland. In other words, all across America, as the President says, where there happens to be Democratic mayors, he wants to go create that same mayhem. Thank you for bringing your expertise to bear on this. I had just read the story from Krista about the moms and the protesters all getting, as she put, it ``GASSED BAD.'' She said, ``It was brutal. . . . coughing and burning 4 hours later.'' Then she closes with, ``C'mon dads . . . we have [to have] meaningful change. Don't give up. . . . `' I was thinking about what I am describing, as I read these stories, or what these women are describing is the transition from this setting, where women are dancing; they are holding flowers; they are singing; they are chanting; they are eating ribs; and what unfolded a few moments later. And what unfolded? Two of these stories, so far, have described the sudden appearance of large men in camouflage, armed with sidearms, who shortly started to shoot them, gas them, spray them, throw flashbang grenades, tackle them--in one case, hogtie a woman who was a few feet away. And you can see how terrifying--these are men dressed for war against women dancing and holding flowers. This is beyond wrong. This is inconceivable. These unmarked, no agency, no unique identifier secret police--what my colleague just referred to like the little green men in Russia, coming to sweep people off the streets and throw them into unmarked vans. These pictures, I understand, are from 2 nights ago, and people were describing to me how batons were brought down--one on the neck of a woman--how they were thrown to the ground. This is showing maybe some of that right there. I can't imagine how terrified this woman was. Think about this: Within this week where we are recognizing John Lewis passing away--here is John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge being beaten by so-called public safety officers; I think they were Alabama police, but I am not sure who they were; they have badges; at least they weren't secret police--and this scene from 2 nights ago in Portland, these women being assaulted by these men ready for war with every armament you can think about, including impact projectiles; that is, rubber bullets and gas and flashbang grenades and batons, assaulting these women dressed in yellow T-shirts. I want to stress, as this last letter did, that for weeks and weeks and weeks before there was a ``wall of moms,'' protesters of every race were coming down to say we must reform systemic racism in America, and they, too, were peacefully protesting, and they, too, were standing, often with arms linked. The outrage over the Federal troops being deployed with these secret police tactics has swelled the numbers, including this most recent protest, but let's not think for a moment there haven't been people of great courage week after week, many of them organized and led by the Black population and Black leaders of Portland. How is it possible--Edmund Pettus Bridge, where a little over a year ago I was standing with my daughter and John Lewis, remembering what happened back when, when out-of-control leaders sent well-armed men to brutally assault peaceful protesters, and now, once again, we have out- of-control men, the President of the United States, sending well-armed men to brutally beat peaceful protesters. How is this conceivable? Protesters of all kinds have been working hard to basically say let's have public safety that works for all. But what is the President doing? While he is sending these forces to brutally beat peaceful protesters, he is running campaign ads, and here it is: ``You won't be safe in Joe Biden's America. Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President.'' He is deliberately assaulting peaceful protesters in order to run campaign commercials that say he is a strong man who can reduce violence in America. Let us all beware how twisted this is, how evil this is, how wrong this is, how much of an assault on the civil liberties of Americans this is, and how much we have a responsibility, having taken an oath to the Constitution, to put an end to it, which is why I am down here for the third day in a row saying: Let's insist that Federal officers be identified by whom they represent, the agency. Let's insist Federal officers have a unique identifier. Let's insist that if their mission is to protect a Federal building, they are on the perimeter of the Federal building, not sweeping through the streets of Portland, throwing people into unmarked vans That is my amendment. That is the amendment I am asking to be considered on this floor. Isn't it our responsibility to debate when egregious things happen in America, like a strongman, authoritarian President trampling on the Constitution by assaulting peaceful protestors with Federal forces? Isn't it our responsibility to debate it and vote on whether secret police are allowed in the United States of America? I have been reading these letters from the women who were down there. I will read one or two more, and then I am going to yield to my colleague from Oregon. As the two Senators from Oregon, we have heard from hundreds of people who have been protesting peacefully over these weeks and how hard local leaders have worked to deescalate, and how Trump, sending in these Federal forces to beat protestors--peaceful protestors--has completely escalated the situation, rather than deescalating it, all so Donald Trump can run a campaign commercial and try to persuade you he should be President. This story recounting is written by Joy, and she was down there with Krista, so she starts out: I don't know how my friend, Krista, managed to take a picture during the madness of this moment. I could not see anything and was struggling to breathe through the mass of foamy snot provoked by teargas that filled my mask. And she had posted a picture that Krista had taken of her right after she had been gassed. I don't think I have the--do I have the picture? I might have. Let me see if we can--no. If I find it, I will put it up. Getting gassed was painful and scary, yet still I felt secure and cared for by the several helpers that aided us with water and saline eye washes. Several people checked in to see if we were ok and help. That is the beautiful part of this otherwise unpleasant image. This is me on my knees, being helped by strangers. The ugly part of this moment is what happened before this . . . the moment when federal agents blasted us with teargas and rubber bullets despite ZERO provocation from our line of moms . . . we were simply standing side by side with linked arms. That's it. For no apparent reason they shot at a bunch of moms without giving a single warning. Nope, no warning. No request to move. They just blasted away at us like they were playing a video game. I yield to my colleague from Oregon and reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, across America, crowds have been assembling, saying: This is a moment in which we must not only have a national conversation about public safety and racism, but we need action. We need to change the scenario that exists in so many places where public safety departments have seen one group of citizens in a community as their clients and another group of citizens as the threat, which leads to systemic racism, differences in approach depending on the color of the skin of the person that you are dealing with. It may be as simple as saying: Let's stop that person. They have dark skin, and they are driving through this neighborhood, and maybe they don't belong here. Let's stop that person because they have dark skin, and maybe they are dealing drugs. That is systemic racism and profiling. This is a discussion about what value we should aim for here in America. That value is that every member of the community is a client; that there is the goal of providing equal public safety services to all and treating each and every person the same regardless of the color of their skin; and to have each public safety officer say ``How would I respond differently if I saw three young teenagers running toward a house and they were Black rather than White?'' and taking that into account and saying ``Would it change that? Would I respond the same?'' They are all our clients. We are here to serve everyone. That is the national discussion. People come into the streets and protest. This is a group of African-American, Black American protesters in Oregon. One of them is wearing a T-shirt saying ``We March, we sit down, we speak up, we die.'' When I read that, I was thinking about the experience I had a number of years ago when a Black American was working with me rebuilding a house, helping me out for a few weeks. We went out into suburban Maryland. This was back in the 1980s. We were trying to find a particular part or piece of equipment. We didn't know where that speciality store was. We pulled up next to a sheriff. The sheriff's car had two White sheriffs in it and a shotgun propped up between the seats. I said to my friend: Hey, roll down your window and ask those sheriffs where this place is. He started to roll down the window. He looked over and saw the two White sheriffs with the gun between them, and he never said a word. He just turned back. He looked straight ahead, and he looked terrified. I saw those sheriffs as people who work for me--who should work for everyone--and we could ask them for their help. He saw them as people who--if he started a dialogue with them, he might end up in deep trouble, in physical harm. That is what this conversation is about. That is what we are seeking to change in America. This idea of protesting for change is as American as apple pie. This is as American as the American Revolution, people standing up and saying: This is not right. Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are core values of what it means to be a ``we the people'' republic. These protesters--often African American, often of many races--have been coming together. There have been some folks--often younger folks-- who have come to cause a bit of trouble that goes beyond simple protesting. We had a challenge in Portland of White extremists--often dressing in camouflage, antifa members who are looking for a fight--conflicting, often late at night. Portland has worked very hard to deescalate that situation--to deescalate it, to empower the message that the protesters are bringing about restructuring systemic racism, ending systemic racism. These acts, these conflicts, take away from that message. As they worked so hard to deescalate, along came President Trump. Trump had a different objective: He wanted to escalate violence on the streets of Portland. I can tell you, there is a huge difference between protesting and making your message known and respecting that and having a government that respects it. It is our government, our ``we the people'' government. And this a government--an Executive in the Oval Office who deploys Federal forces to create chaos and violence and to attack peaceful protesters. I have come to the floor twice in the last 2 days to go through and show the camouflaged, battle-ready troops deployed by Trump who are coming in a secret fashion, eliminating any indication of whom they work for. Are they Customs and Border Protection? Are they Federal Protective Service? Are they U.S. Marshals? They have no identity and have stripped all their unique identifiers, which means they can club a peaceful protester, they can shoot them in the head, and nobody knows who did it because there is no ID on their uniform. There is no accountability and no discipline and outrageous attacks on peaceful protesters. I was here speaking yesterday, and I asked for consideration be given on this floor for my amendment to end secret policing. It is a very simple amendment that says: You wear identification of your agency. You wear a unique identifier. You don't go outside your mission of protecting a Federal building unless you are in partnership with a Governor or a mayor. It is that simple. So simple. But my Republican colleague came down and objected to consideration of this amendment. I think, in essence, he didn't believe the story I am presenting. He didn't believe the story I am telling you about peaceful protesters being attacked. Maybe because it is so outside the conception of what a President would do, the thought is just hard to acknowledge, that we have a President who embraces this secret police strategy of assaulting peaceful protesters and grabbing people out of the crowd and throwing them into unmarked vans. It is hard to imagine. It is hard to imagine a President of the United States admiring authoritarian dictators across the planet, but we have a President who admires the authoritarian dictator-style tactics of Duterte in the Philippines and who admires the Crown Prince, who assassinated and dismembered an American-based reporter for the Washington Post. We have a President who admires Putin, who crushes the civil rights of his people. We have a President who admires the strong-arm tactics Erdogan is employing in Turkey. That is what we have. Until now, he didn't bring the secret police to the streets of America; now he has. I am going to try a different way of conveying what is going on and do it in the voices of women who were there at the protests 2 nights ago to try to convey what is happening on the streets of Portland and how terribly, terribly wrong it is. The message ``All Mothers Were Summoned When He Called Out to His Mama'' is a reference to George Floyd dying with a policeman's knee on his neck, cutting off either his air or his carotid artery, blood supply to his brain or both, killing him. So mamas have responded. They said: Let's go join the protesters as well. Surely this is not the case, that they are attacking peaceful protesters. They formed a group who went down, and they did things like dancing and chanting and handing out flowers, like this woman here. Isn't she beautiful? She is coming down, holding a sunflower. Others were holding mums. It is unimaginable that a President of the United States would send Federal troops to attack women like this, holding peaceful flowers and dancing and singing in the streets. But they were scared because they knew that peaceful protesters had been attacked previously, so some of them wore goggles, and some of them wore bike helmets. But let's hear from the women in their own words. Two of these women work on my team. I didn't know they were going to go down. I didn't know until last night that they had gone down the previous night, that they had been there. They had experiences, and they chose to share their experiences. I have maybe another five or six things that women wrote up about their experiences and posted them. I will try to share those, reading it in their voice. The first one is from Stacey Jochimsen: I joined the Wall of Moms in Portland on Tuesday night to support black and brown Americans and voice my concerns about police violence in our city. I showed up in cut off shorts and a yellow shirt--the identifier for the Portland Wall of Moms--I was wearing sneakers and carrying yellow mums and sunflowers that other moms had gifted me on my way in. We participated in hours of dancing, chanting, and singing. It was a beautiful protest on a warm Oregon night. I saw no violence, I felt safe. We were demanding change. We were standing up for our black and brown brothers and sisters; we were there to amplify their voices. Was there graffiti? Sure there was. Graffiti is not violence. At around 11 p.m., the Wall of Moms was called to the front of the federal courthouse. We went. We stood--arms linked-- facing the building, creating a wall of protection between protesters and the building. We were moms called to use our privilege to keep others safe, and we tried. While we stood, arms linked, officers in fatigues and gas masks (we assume were federal, they were unidentified) rushed from the building and from behind us. There was no warning. They took a woman to the ground and hog-tied her on the steps of the Courthouse. They swiped at cell phones and yelled at us from behind gas masks. They pointed weapons at us. Us. We were non-violent, peaceful demonstrators. We were moms in Converse sneakers holding flowers. I am still trembling at the sight of their weapons pointed at us. I have never felt so threatened and unsafe as I did at that moment. I had the realization that these officers really are not here to protect, they are here to harm. Were we going to be shot? Would I be struck in the head by a canister? Am I going to make it home to my children? We held our line as they threw flashbangs and shot tear gas canisters at us. I was peaceful, I was standing still and holding hands with women around me--surely they would not shoot at me. I could feel the women on both sides of me trembling. The officers pointed their weapons at us. I put my hands in the air and begged them not to hurt us. They shot more tear gas. The tear gas overwhelmed us--the pain was unimaginable. It burned my eyes, my throat, my skin. I did not bring goggles or a helmet to this protest. I wore a tank top and shorts. Why would I need a helmet and goggles at a peaceful protest? I coughed to the point of vomiting. We ran. Fellow protesters came to us with water bottles and helped clean our eyes. Another brought wipes to clean our skin. We coughed, we vomited, and we cried. Today, I am still shaking. I cannot focus. I am scared. I am jumping at loud noises. My heart is racing simply recalling the events of last night. I am worried about what the federal officers are going to do to my fellow Oregonians tonight. Let me be clear: there was violence on Tuesday night, but none of it was from protesters. The only violence I encountered that night was from federal police officers. I am grateful that I made it home to my kids last night. Others were not so fortunate. Thank you, Stacey, for sharing your firsthand account of the night before last--Tuesday night--on the streets of Portland, when Federal officers attacked peaceful demonstrators, where there was no violence except the violence of the officers on the protesters. This next recounting is from Amy Bacher. She writes: Pre-protest normalcy. There are people hanging out in a downtown park by the Justice Center. They are wearing masks, playing music, and, thanks to Riot Ribs, eating free food. The Wall of Moms gathers a short distance from there, where they hand out sunflowers and yellow carnations. Protective gear is also distributed, like helmets, due to issues with the Federal police firing ammunition. Medics hand out water and other safety gear to everyone to try to keep protesters safe. Usually, about a few hours into the protests, the secret police come out. It is unclear who they are now because there are no markings for what unit--who they are with--and they fire at the protesters. When it was the Portland Police Bureau, they were allowed to have their badges covered. My experience yesterday included the following: About 2,000 people gathered, chanted, gave speeches, and danced in the blocks in front of the Justice Center and Federal Building in the name of Black Lives Matter. People were serious about wearing masks. A small, white plane circled the protest area repeatedly. It appeared to be the same or similar aircraft of the plane that circled earlier protests around Revolution Hall. There were a few protesters trying to block a door of the Federal Building and post graffiti. One of the chants we shouted in front of the Federal Building was, ``Tell me what democracy looks like.'' Then ``this is what democracy looks like.'' We were all using our voices. The next moment, though, about 15 to 20 large men in camouflage and military gear appeared like they were ready for war. They had no name tags or identifiers. We had no idea if they were soldiers, what branch they were from, or why they were there. Almost all of them were holding pepper spray guns and looked like they had customized sidearms. They stood under the eaves of the Federal Building. The Wall of Moms were there in yellow T-shirts, stretch pants, and sneakers, basically. There was a long line--more than a block long-- facing the Federal Building. We were trying to stand in front of all the other protesters who had already been gassed for some 50-plus days, thinking that Trump's military would not fire on moms. We were wrong. There was no ask by officers in front of us to step back, move, or do anything at all. The officers started kicking tear gas directly at us, shoving a nearby mom in the neck, and pepper-spraying another mom in the face at close range. I had not been tear-gassed before and can't believe that it's allowed, especially with such frequency. It produces violent and immediate bodily reactions and should not be used on peaceful protesters. There is a near-immediate reaction. You can't see without pain of blinking. It feels like you are inhaling fire into your lungs and like your skin is being burned. My lungs are still burning 24 hours later. These are weapons of war that should not be used on Portlanders exercising their constitutional right to freedom or assembly. If, after 54 days, officers are still using these weapons of war and it is not working, we should be asking why--why they are still deemed effective or legal. Just before the first tear gas was thrown, three to four of the other officers tackled a woman to the ground and hog-tied her. We didn't see where she was taken. At least four women were arrested from that group. Then she gives a reference to the story on the web and how to find it. She also notes that Federal agents pepper-sprayed the first aid tent, which could be a crime when done in war. Federal agents went by the Riot Ribs free food cart in the park and pepper-sprayed the food and the grilles. That is where she ends her commentary. Thank you very much, Amy, for sharing your story of what happened the night before last. I hope that all of America is recognizing that what we would never conceive of happening in America is happening--Federal agents, Federal officers, being deployed to attack peaceful protests. As these two women point out, there was graffiti, but it was not violent. From one of the other letters I am about to read, I note: There were young folks pounding on the plywood that covers the doors of the Federal Building, but that, too, wasn't violent. The only violence came from the Federal officers. This next story was posted by Krista. She writes: So the nonviolent Wall of Moms just got gassed for absolutely no reason. Then she puts in the tags ``PDX protest'' and ``Black Lives Matter.'' I don't need cookies for being there. Please. I have the privilege of taking the night off to let my lungs rest. Black and Brown people don't get to change their skin color to take a break from systemic and personal racism. Also, Black women have been on the frontlines for decades. The Wall of Moms is getting a lot of attention, but we are not the story. Abolishing racist systems and ending police brutality against people of color is the real story. If you want to get involved but aren't able to go downtown, please consider making a donation to ``Don't Shoot Portland.'' Honestly, the leaf blowers helped so much on Monday. I was wishing that the dads would come out in force again Tuesday because the moms got gassed bad. It was brutal. I am still coughing and burning 4 hours later. Come on, dads. Until we have meaningful change, the protests will continue. Don't give up yet. Krista makes a point that I want to accentuate time and again: Black Americans have been protesting, putting their lives at risk night after night after night--all kinds of protesters coming together and all kinds of skin color coming together in order to say Black lives matter and that we have to end systemic racism My colleague is here to speak. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to reserve the balance of my time.