Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Erin McGinnis, be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my legislative fellow Long Lam and intern Erin McGinniss be granted privileges of the floor.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am glad to be here following my colleague who is the ranking member of the subcommittee and who has done such excellent work, as well as with the Senator from Alaska, in undertaking and really bringing together a vision for their subcommittee that we have needed on this floor for a long time--well done. I stand here as the ranking member of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. I am very pleased to be able to pass this bill today--or we will hopefully soon do so--with strong bipartisan support. Appreciation to the chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Hoeven, and his excellent Appropriations Committee team, including Carlisle Clarke, Elizabeth Dent, Patrick Carroll, and Carlos Elias. They worked hand in hand with my team of Dianne Nellor, Jessica Schulken, Bob Ross, and Teri Curtin. I came to the floor the other day to speak to the excellent work Jessica Schulken has done over her career, serving for nearly two decades on the committee and just being a powerful, intelligent, persuasive, and insightful force in agricultural policy. I think, together, we have produced a very good bill. It provides funding for programs that are important to every American in every community, from the smallest rural town to the biggest city. And we rejected draconian cuts proposed in the President's budget. Some of the essential items that we find in the Ag appropriations bill include rural development, which is very important to my State and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--we have so much going on in our rural towns. It is important to fund our rural business, rural utility service, and rural broadband. Rural business and rural broadband, by the way, were zeroed out by the President and faced draconian cuts. I am so pleased we were able to reach a bipartisan decision to support these rural development programs. We also support nutrition for Americans. In our country, there is no reason Americans should be going hungry. We also maintain international assistance, which largely means buying American food and shipping it overseas to places in the world that are desperate. I had the chance to visit some of those areas in Africa and see firsthand how important our contribution to the World Food Program is. Our environmental programs assist farmers in the stewardship of the land. It is something they have in their hearts, and it is helpful to have the EQIP program and the NRCS to support them. The Agricultural Research Service is essential and so important to the great diversity of crops we have in my State and the unending list of potential pests, problems, and diseases that occur. We have to continue that research. I recently visited, for example, a wheat research station, and it was fascinating to see. From a distance, you would say: Well, that is just another field of wheat; what could be the issues? Well, it turns out there are all kinds of important issues that require agricultural research. Then there is risk management for our farmers and having that structure to support them so they aren't wiped out in rough times. It has been a pleasure to work on this subcommittee and to see the broader Appropriations Committee returning to regular order, bringing bills to the floor, having a chance for all Senators to have a say in the process. So here we are in a better place, and I hope it is a course that we can continue. Recognition of the Minority Leader

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor tonight with a simple and clear message, which is that we must not allow internment camps to be built in the United States of America. I come with this message because we have heard on Capitol Hill that even as I speak, individuals are planning to bring forward legislation that would, in fact, create internment camps as a strategy of family incarceration--a strategy that President Trump has been championing. So I say tonight, absolutely not. We must not allow internment camps to be established in the United States of America. When we look at the history of the world and the history of America, we realize that in many ways, we are still a very young nation, with less than three centuries behind us. In that comparatively short time, we have accomplished great things. We have helped save the world from tyranny and fascism, while pushing the boundaries of science. We spread democracy and human rights to nations far and wide. We have broken down barriers of race and gender and sexual orientation here at home in a vision of equality and opportunity for all. Yet we cannot forget that along with those great accomplishments, there have also been some dark chapters in our history. We all are aware of these chapters when the United States embraced slavery from its founding up through the Civil War; that we embraced discrimination through segregation and Jim Crow laws; that we had in World War II a strategy of creating internment camps to imprison our citizens who were of Japanese ancestry. Now, we have another dark chapter--a chapter in which our government has decided to treat those fleeing persecution from around the world as if they are criminals, to greet them not with Lady Liberty and a torch, saying, ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free'' but a different saying--a saying that if you are fleeing persecution and you wash up on the shores of the United States, we will treat you as a criminal. We will tear away your children, and we will throw you in prison. In the span of just a few weeks, from May 4 and into June of this year, the Trump team tore around 2,600 young boys and girls from their parents' arms. They were families coming to the United States. They were fleeing persecution. They were seeking asylum. They were going through all kinds of trials and tribulations back in their home countries. They were going through all kinds of difficulties on the path of arriving in the United States. They had, in their minds, that vision that we are a nation where almost everyone has in their family history someone who fled persecution, who fled civil war, who fled drought and famine, who fled religious persecution, so surely they would be treated with dignity and understanding as they sought asylum from the persecution they faced back home. Instead, many were stopped from coming through the entry points to claim asylum. Many resorted, therefore, to coming across other points in between the official border points, and they faced this new policy-- this policy concocted by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, President of the United States Donald Trump, the Chief of Staff, and Steve Miller. This plan was deterrence--deterrence by afflicting children so as to send a message, if you flee persecution, do not think of coming to the United States. Let us recognize that the whole idea of establishing a political tactic, a political goal of deterrence through the infliction of trauma on children is a dark and evil place for our government to have gone. One that--now that light has been shed on it, now that America has cried out from boundary to boundary, from East to West and from North to South and said that this is wrong, it is immoral, no religious tradition in the world would support this, the administration has ended those family separations, those children being ripped out of their parents' arms. They are now under a responsibility to reunify the children with their parents. They have been ordered by the court to have deadlines for those children under 5 and for those children 5 through 17. They missed the first and second deadlines, and 700 children are still not reunited with their parents. Reports are coming in on the impact, the trauma inflicted on the children and how seriously this modified their behavior. A recent piece in the New York Times told the story of a 5-year-old boy from Brazil who was separated from his mother for 50 days. Thiago used to love playing with toys of the Minions from the ``Despicable Me'' movies, but now his new favorite game is patting down and shackling migrants with plastic handcuffs, and now when people come to their home, he flees. He runs away. He hides behind the couch, afraid he will once again be torn from his mother's arms. His story is not unique. In fact, we hear story after story after story of children and the reverberations of the trauma they have experienced at the hands of the Trump administration; children terrified of being separated from their parents for even just a few moments; children whose whole outlook on life--their whole disposition--has been modified; children afraid of engaging in a life outside the house. The act of tearing families apart has supposedly stopped with the President's order. He has an Executive order which I have in my hand, but what this Executive order plans next is also horrible and shameful. This is a plan to establish internment camps in the United States of America. The President has gone from family separation, tearing children out of their parents' arms, to family incarceration, where families would be detained indefinitely together. Internment camps, tent cities out in the middle of the desert or maybe on military bases. We have seen this type of policy before. We know how badly it ends for our Nation. We made a huge mistake in World War II locking up Japanese-American families in internment camps, and we are still dealing with the consequences. After visiting one of those camps in 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt remarked that ``to undo a mistake is always harder than not to create one originally, but we seldom have the foresight.'' In this instance, we should have the foresight. We know the history of the horror of internment camps. We have the ability to stop our Nation from making a terrible mistake. We know how history will look on us if we fail to prevent this mistake and follow the President's plan for internment camps, which he has laid out. In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, we allowed fear and bigotry to consume us. We took away the freedom of more than 110,000 Americans. Freedom, the most basic human right, was taken away by our government from 110,000 American citizens. We locked Japanese-Americans in prison camps behind barbed wire fences in some of the most inhospitable parts of the Nation for no other reason than their Japanese ancestry. Children grew up not in their communities but behind barbed wire. Adults were torn off their land, their farms, their orchards. They were torn away from their professions, which ran the full spectrum of professions across America, to be able to earn just a few cents a day, working inside those prisons. Families who once owned their homes, had a vision for the future, had a vision for the children's future were crammed together for years in wooden shacks behind barbed wire. In a 1943 radio interview, Dillon Myer, the head of the agency in charge of the camps, spoke out against them. Mind you, this was the middle of the war. He was in charge of the camps. He knows it is wrong; he knows it is destructive. He said: ``Public opinion feeding on prejudice and fanned by hatred and fear of the unknown will do some peculiar things.'' He went on to say: Even though the war relocation authority is responsible for the operation of the relocation centers, we are convinced that they are not good things. It is not a normal way of life. It produces many kinds of abnormal conditions that are not desirable. Indeed, as former First Lady Laura Bush pointed out in her op-ed article in the Washington Post a few months ago: ``We also know that this treatment inflicts trauma; those who have been interned have been twice as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease or die prematurely than those who were not interned.'' One Japanese-American hero, Fred Korematsu, challenged this racist policy. He challenged it all the way to the Supreme Court. In a 6-to-3 decision the Court would long regret, it upheld the constitutionality of these camps. Seven decades later, history embraces the view of the three dissenting justices. In the words of Justice Frank Murphy: Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States [of America]. This is why a commission, created by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, found that the internment camps were a ``grave injustice'' that stemmed from ``race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.'' It is why, when awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, President Clinton said: In the long history of our country's constant search for justice, some names of ordinary citizens stand for millions of souls: Plessy, Brown, Parks. To that distinguished list, today we add the name of Fred Korematsu. Fred Korematsu challenged the legitimacy of internment camps under the Constitution of the United States. In fact, just earlier this year, 2018, Chief Justice John Roberts said: ``Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and--to be clear--'has no place in law under the Constitution.''' So it was called a failure of political leadership that we established internment camps in World War II, and it would be an enormous failure of political leadership if we were to establish internment camps in 2018; yet I keep hearing this very plan is being cooked up to be put on the floor of the Senate when we return. That is why I am speaking about it tonight to say: No, absolutely not; those among us who are planning such a deed will face enormous opposition, not just from me but from everyone who cares about justice in the United States of America, everyone who cares about decency and fairness, everyone who knows that the strategy of ripping children out of their parents' arms was dark and evil and wrong. We are not going to allow family separation to be replaced by family incarceration. But here we are, with this Executive order, and it says, in somewhat bland language, ``Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation.'' This Executive order--this order right here--is an argument for establishing internment camps in the United States of America. This strategy, laid out by the President, must not happen. This statement says that it is the official policy of the Trump administration to detain immigrant families together. What are they talking about? Internment camps--not handcuffs for the parents where the children are ripped out of their arms; it is handcuffs for all. It is an Executive order calling on the military to provide facilities for housing the immigrant families and, if they can't find them, to construct them, if necessary. This document instructs the Attorney General of the United States to try to find a way to overturn a legal settlement known as the Flores consent agreement, which says that children cannot be detained indefinitely. So this document lays out two strategies to internment camps: one, by getting the courts to overturn the Flores consent agreement and the second, affording Congress an opportunity to address family separation. It calls on Congress to act, to make it legal to establish internment camps. Have we learned nothing? Here is what I have to say about this Executive order: no internment camps in the United States of America, not now and not in the future. I will absolutely resist such a strategy. This Presidential vision is anything but Presidential--this vision of a President who is operating in a fashion outside of a vision of the Constitution. I know there will be many among us who will join in this effort to resist this strategy. So if my colleagues--any one of them--should bring this to the floor, I want them to know this will be a fight. This will be a battle. We will call up the horror of the past and say that it will not be accompanied by a horror of the present. We will not go from family separation to family incarceration. Internment would be just as wrong today as it was seven decades ago. If we allow this to happen, it is more than a failure of political leadership. It is to allow America to dwell in a deep and dark and evil place. Some may say that families fleeing persecution are coming to America to ask for asylum, which they are allowed to do under the Refugee Convention, of which the United States is a member. They may say: Senator Merkley, you believe it is wrong to rip children out of their parents' arms, and you believe it is wrong to establish internment camps. What would you do? Well, here is what I would do: I would reestablish the Family Case Management Program. That is a program that worked well--that worked very well--but was dismantled by this administration approximately a year ago to pave the way for family separation, to inflict trauma on children. What is the Family Case Management Program? I don't think the President of the United States knows about this program--the program he ended--or he doesn't want to know about it. He wants to paint some other vision. So let's remind the President of the United States how this works, the program that he got rid of, the program that worked so well. A family comes seeking asylum. They present themselves with that case. They are treated with respect and dignity because we are a nation of individuals with family histories of individuals fleeing persecution. We understand what that is like. We understand what it is like, and we treat people with decency. The families are put into a case management program while their asylum case is being prepared. The whole point of the program is to make sure they show up for their court appointments, make sure they show up for their check-ins, make sure they have someone who guides them through the system so they understand how it works. If they understand how it works, they know when to show up and where to show up, and they know how to prepare for those meetings. This program was created by ICE and Homeland Security. They put their heads to work: How do we treat people with dignity and respect and make sure they show up at their check-ins and their court appointments? They designed a very good program, the Family Case Management Program. So families lived their life in preparation for their appearances in court, and we did not inflict trauma on the children. We did not treat them as pawns in some broader scheme of deterrence. We treated families with basic dignity. Then, if they won their asylum case, then they came into a country that had received and treated them with dignity. If they lost their asylum case, they went back to their country. They were deported, but they had memories of a country that treated them with respect and decency until that asylum case date arrived. This program had such a phenomenal success rate that I was stunned when I got hold of the inspector general's report. I want to make sure that folks can see this. This inspector general's report says, based on the information provided by ICE, that the overall program compliance for all five regions is an average of 99 percent for ICE check-ins and appointments and 100 percent attendance at court hearings. That number is stunning, and I wouldn't share it if it were anything other than from the inspector general himself or herself reporting after a thorough investigation--99 percent for ICE check-ins, 100 percent attendance at court hearings. Wow. How often do you see a program that works that well? There is another report, and that report came when the program was terminated. That report proceeds to have some additional numbers in it. This one came after the second report. It was an afterprogram report. It is called the Family Case Management Program Closeout Report, February 2018. This was in the hands of the Trump administration even as they were planning to end the program, actually did end the program. What it says is, the program operated for 17 months. It says it was launched in the following cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, and Newark. It had different nonprofits that operated it: Bethany Christian Services, the Frida Kahlo Community Organization, the International Institute of Los Angeles, the Youth Co- Op, Inc. in Miami, the Catholic Charities of New York. They served over 2,000 immigrants. It treated them by educating them about how this worked as they prepared for their asylum hearing. It provided them with individualized needs assessments and service plans, orientation and information sessions on legal rights and responsibilities and obligations, tracking and monitoring of those obligations, including showing up for check-ins, which they did 99 percent of the time, and showing up for court hearings, according to the IG, 100 percent of the time. ICE concluded it was an overall success. This evaluation came after the IG's report. It was no longer 100 percent attendance of court hearings. Instead, it was 99.3 percent--a 99-percent success rate, 99- percent compliance with ICE monitoring requirements, including telephonic and in-person check-ins. When participants reported on how they were treated, they talked about positive relationships with their case managers, and it centered on the trust that was established between the case manager and the participant. That is pretty amazing success for a program that the administration shut down in favor of choosing to deliberately inflict trauma on children. We have not one report, not one evaluation; we have two. This report from February this year, with all this positive information about how the program worked, is not easy to find online. It has essentially been hidden. After I raised this issue of the Family Case Management Program, a person brought this report to my team and said: Hey, did you know there is this other closeout evaluation that lays out the vision of how well the program worked in far more detail than the IG report? I said: No, I didn't know about that. Great, I will share it with my colleagues, which I am doing right now. I don't know why it wasn't circulated. Maybe it is because it had such glowing reviews of the program the administration shut down that they were embarrassed by their argument; the fact of this report says their argument that people wouldn't show up for their court hearings is simply wrong. I imagine that is why it wasn't circulated. In this Family Case Management Program, they talk about costs in this evaluation. They go through the different strategies. The Family Case Management Program costs $38 per day. That is per participant, per day, $38. That compares with family residential facilities at an average cost of $237 per day. That is $38 versus $237. The program worked incredibly well, and it was far less expensive than detention--family residential facility detention. In addition, we now have some recent numbers that have been put forward. Health and Human Services has told news outlets that it costs American taxpayers $775 per person, per night to house people at tent city internment camps--$775 per person per night versus $38. Thirty-eight dollars, no trauma--a relation of respect and trust versus incarceration at $775 per night. This Trump strategy of inflicting trauma on children is wrong at every single level you can imagine. It is a costly, inhumane, damaging program, with lifetime consequences for the children versus decency and respect and trust, and the program costs just a fraction, one-twentieth of this reported $700-plus per night. If you have those two options, which one would you choose? Would you choose the program that costs a fraction, one-twentieth, of the tent city internment camp strategy? Would you choose a program that builds trust and relationships and has a 99- to 100-percent rate of success in people showing up for their check-ins, a 99- to 100-percent rate of showing up for their court hearings versus a program that does so much damage to so many. I have come to the Senate floor to say one thing as clearly as I possibly can to every colleague. If you are part of the plan to bring an internment camp strategy to the floor of the Senate, I will fight that plan with everything I have. It is an evil and dark place for this country to go. We know that from our history. We know history has said it was a failure of political leadership to allow it to have happened in World War II. I will do everything I can to make sure we do not have another failure of political leadership that allows the vision of internment camps imbedded in the President's Executive order to occur in the United States of America. Lady Liberty says: ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'' It speaks to the fact that almost all of us come from family roots that involved immigrants, involved people fleeing persecution. In that poet's words, Emma Lazarus, goes on to speak about ``the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'' Let's keep that lamp lit here in the United States of America. Let's treat those fleeing persecution with respect and decency. That is what is in our blood as an American. That is what is in our DNA--a vision of compassion and freedom and opportunity that knows, through all too personal of family experiences, what it is like to flee religious persecution or famine or war and what a beautiful thing it is to be treated with respect and decency if you come to the shores of the United States of America.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, as ranking member of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, I rise today to discuss the Agriculture appropriations bill. This is a good bill that was drafted in a bipartisan manner and passed out of committee unanimously. A big thanks goes to Chairman Hoeven for his hard work on the bill, as well to members of his team who worked closely with members of my team throughout this process and considered requests and concerns from Senators on both sides of the aisle. In his budget request, President Trump proposed more than a 25- percent cut to USDA's funding. He also zeroed out a number of very important programs, including programs that benefit rural America, along with research programs and domestic and international nutrition programs. The bill that came out of the Appropriations Committee rejects those devastating cuts that were presented in the President's budget request. This bill, which is within the subcommittee's discretionary allocation of $23.2 billion, makes smart, targeted investments in programs that are important to the American people while keeping out controversial policy riders. In this bill we maintain funding for important rural development programs while building on the increases provided last year for rural infrastructure initiatives, including rural water and waste programs and a broadband pilot program. These programs are vital in providing rural communities the ability to support entrepreneurs to be able to grow their businesses, creating much needed jobs in the community. The bill protects vital research programs and makes important new investments for the organic industry. The Organic Transitions Program is funded at $6 million. The National Organic Program is funded at $15 million. The Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program is funded at $37 million. All of these are historic funding levels that demonstrate the commitment to a vital and rapidly growing industry. What else does this committee bill do? It supports funding for farm ownership and farm operating loans. With farm incomes on the decline, access to credit is crucial for farmers to stay in business. Farm loans will serve the most disadvantaged in the farming sector, including farmers who are just starting out, as well as ranchers, minorities, women, and veterans. I am also pleased that we were able to include $150 million in funding for the Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations Program to protect our watersheds and help to prevent floods, reduce erosion, and protect wildlife habitats. With a backlog of $850 million for projects that have already been authorized, this funding is much needed. For domestic nutrition programs, our bill maintains funding for the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer for Children Program, which provides access to food for low-income children during the summer months when schools are out of session. Beyond that, the bill provides for $30 million for school meal equipment grants, $18 million for the Farmers' Market Nutrition Program, and $238 million for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program. This bill also protects SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which 42 million Americans rely on. It does not provide provisions that would eliminate benefits to those who qualify. On the international front, the bill maintains strong funding for nutrition programs such as Food for Peace and McGovern-Dole. Since its inception, Food for Peace has reached over 3 billion people in 150 countries and more than 32 million people last year alone. I have been in the field to see the impact of this program for communities that rely on it in some of the hardest hit parts of the world affected by conflict and climate chaos and corruption. This support is a considerable feature of what people around the world see in terms of the United States reaching out to assistant communities in need worldwide. Meanwhile, in 2017, the McGovern-Dole Program fed 4.5 million children, and it helps to support education and food security for low- income countries, as well as increasing school attendance. This program supports good health and better education for children around the world, with a particular emphasis on girls. In the state of the world today, we need programs like Food for Peace and McGovern-Dole, which have a proven track record. I am pleased that we have worked in a bipartisan to ensure that these programs are funded. The bill in front of us supports the important work of the FDA, or the Food and Drug Administration, through a $159 million increase in the agency's funding. Included in that funding increase, among other things, is full funding for the Oncology Center of Excellence, modernizing the generic drug review process, investment and innovation for rare diseases, and the continuation of last year's work on opioid prevention activities. I know, and my fellow Senators understand, just how important that opioid addiction prevention program is. Tribute to Jessica Schulken Mr. President, before I conclude, I wish to take a moment to recognize an outstanding member of the Agriculture Subcommittee team. Jessica Schulken will be leaving us in the next few weeks after almost 19 years on the Appropriations Committee. Her accomplishments are numerous. During her years on the committee, she has been a tireless advocate for our Nation's farmers and ranchers, a fierce protector for rural America, a staunch advocate for ensuring that the Food and Drug Administration has all the resources it needs, and a defender of transparency who has worked hard to ensure that these agencies are answerable to Congress. I cannot begin to adequately express the tremendous work that she has done on this committee as clerk. I speak for many who know how sorely she will be missed. Here is a big thanks to Jessica Schulken for her years of service and dedication, and I wish her well in her new chapter of life. The process on this agriculture appropriations subcommittee bill has been emblematic of the type of good, strong bipartisan work that we would like to see much more often here in the Senate--bipartisan work that has assisted our ranchers, bipartisan work to assist our farming communities, bipartisan work to support rural communities and rural infrastructure. So I look forward to getting this bill passed, getting it through conference, and getting it to the Oval Office. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. I strongly object.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, this moment hardly seems the time for the Senate to engage in debating rhetorical phrases of praise for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency when that agency--better known as ICE--is deeply mired in the scandal of separating children from their parents. It is ICE that partnered with Border Patrol and Health and Human Services in this diabolical situation. It is ICE that holds the parents in detention camps. It is ICE that has failed to arrange for the knowledge within the system of which parents go with which children. It is ICE that often has prevented individuals from having access to counsel, from being able to even phone their children, and charged them for using the phone. In this situation, some 2,500-plus kids have been torn out of the arms of their parents, and this particular resolution would engage in nice phrases of praise instead of addressing itself to solving the problem. We should right now be considering Senator Harris's act, the REUNITE Act, which would accelerate the reunification of the children, would ensure that family separation never happens again, would coordinate actions between ICE and the Border Patrol and Health and Human Services, and would set up a family case management system that worked, according to the IG of Homeland Security, to deliver 100 percent of the time when individuals had a date for a hearing--100 percent of the time. That is why I ask my colleague to modify his request so that the Committee on the Judiciary, instead, be discharged from further consideration of S. 3227, the REUNITE Act, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I so appreciate my colleagues from Minnesota and New York coming to the floor to share their insights on this challenge that we are in, where a 101-year-old convention is about to be smashed to smithereens by the majority in a determination to pack the courts and corrupt the constitutional application of law and in a determination to have judges who are not at all interested in the way the people envision our Nation. They are not at all interested in the rights of workers. Rather, they twist each provision to enable the powerful in our country to repress the workers of our country, to enable the interests of our country that simply want to roll on, on a commercial plane, to take away the ability of consumers to get a fair shake. They want to take away the ability of individuals to have fair access to healthcare. They want to take away one right after another after another on behalf of the wealthy and the well-connected. This corruption--this legislating from the bench that is occurring from the far right--absolutely flies in the face of the fundamental nature of our Constitution. But here it is. Not only is it their quest to put the powerful in the catbird seat to rule over everyone else in this country, to undermine the fundamental strategy of the distribution and equal voice principle that Jefferson so forcefully articulated, but they are even willing to run roughshod over their own rights in the future, because each and every person who votes for a judge who has no blue slip--not one, not a single blue slip--is saying that in the future they are giving up the ability to be consulted when it is an individual who has been assigned to their State for the circuit court. That is how intense they are at this moment of dancing to the tune played by the Koch brothers and the Federalist Society. It is really one of the saddest things we have seen in a series of abuses of the process here in the U.S. Senate. This nomination ends a tradition that has served our country well for over a century. It is a tradition that--just a brief span of time ago, my colleagues across the aisle were pleading with the Democratic majority to respect their rights. But not now. Not now. This is one of those cases where, in the transition from minority to majority, views have been flipped 180 degrees--a tradition since 1917, when Senator Thomas Hardwick objected to President Wilson's district court nominee, writing his objection on a blue slip of paper. That is where the phrase comes from. Not since then has any judge for the circuit court or district court ever been confirmed without a blue slip. In 2009, my Republican colleagues wrote a letter. All signed on to it. They wrote: We expect the blue-slip tradition to be observed evenhandedly and regardless of party affiliation. I ask you, which Member across the aisle has the consistency to stand up and honor the very principle they asked to be honored when then in the minority? Who? We are waiting. We are waiting for just one to come to the floor and be consistent in honoring the principle they begged the Democrats to honor when we were in charge. To be sure, when the tide turns and they again say suddenly that they love this tradition, and won't the Democrats once again honor the tradition they begged us to honor in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014? They begged us to honor it. They are going to be back asking again. But you cannot expect that after smashing this tradition, you can ask to have it back. So when it comes your turn, if you don't have any integrity today to honor the principle you begged for yesterday, don't let us hear you begging for it in the future. What did people have to say in the past? The former chair of the Judiciary Committee at the time, in 2014, said: ``Weakening or eliminating the blue slip process would sweep aside the last remaining check on the President's judicial appointment power.'' That is what the Republican chair said when President Obama was in office. He said: ``Anyone serious about the Senate's constitutional `advice and consent' role knows how disastrous such a move would be.'' Why isn't one of my colleagues today coming down to say how disastrous it would be? Our majority leader said just recently that Republicans will now treat a blue slip as simply notification of how you are going to vote. Is that the way each and every one of you wants it to be from this floor, that while you have had the privilege in the past of weighing in on an individual assigned to your State, no more will you be treated differently from any other Senator because you are just being given a chance to indicate how you are going to vote? That is what the majority leader says we are going to reduce your Senate prerogative to, which means it is gone, it is no different from any other Member here. There was a whole logic behind this blue-slip process, a logic that each circuit should have input from Senators whose States were represented on those circuit courts and that when the individual came from those respective States, it made sense to get the insight of the Senators from that State, not have decisions about your particular circuit court made by somebody from across the Nation. But that is where we are headed to now. This nomination was tainted from the start because the President didn't consult with our senior Senator from Oregon, Mr. Wyden, or with the junior Senator; didn't call us up; didn't sit down; didn't invite us to a meeting; didn't hold a conversation; didn't have a dialogue; didn't consult. So don't expect any consultation in the future if you vote for this nominee. Then at the end of the year, when the nomination was returned, we told the White House: You have another chance to wait until you get some consultation done, until you talk to us. No. They just forwarded it back again--no consultation. So there it is. When this individual, Ryan Bounds, was interviewed by our committee in Oregon, he was asked to provide anything that was potentially controversial from his past, and he didn't. He was asked about his views on diversity and what information he had put out in the past, and he didn't supply any. So not only are there the controversial viewpoints of the past, there is a lack of integrity in the present. It isn't as if Senator Wyden and I took it lightly. But how can you expect people to get a fair hearing or believe they have any chance of getting a fair hearing with these types of opinions being expressed? What did he say on diversity? He said that students working to ``promote diversity . . . contribute more to restricting consciousness, aggravating intolerance . . . than many a Nazi bookburning.'' So if you advocate for diversity, you are compared to being an individual who burns books--not just any individual; a Nazi burning books. That wasn't his only comment on diversity. He wrote quite extensively. Another phrase he used is that diversity training is a ``pestilence'' that ``stalks us,'' as if it is some kind of grim reaper to encourage people to reach out and embrace people who come from a different point of view or a different color or come from a different State. That is what he thought, that any training you might have in how to understand your own internal prejudices is a pestilence that stalks us. He didn't like the fact that the university was trying to address the issue of men abusing women. He said that there is ``nothing really inherently wrong with the University failing to punish an alleged rapist.'' That is what you want to vote for? He said more. He really disliked minority groups on campus taking a position on anything. In his essay ``Labor Unions and the Politics of Aztlan,'' he said: ``I would hardly suggest that no student group should be able to take up a political matter, if it is of direct relevance to its purported mission.'' So he is not objecting to most groups weighing in on something related to their vision, but, he said, ``I would contend, however, that no student group that is affiliated with an ethnic center or any other department of this university has any business holding political issues central to its mission.'' So if you are a member of a student group that isn't an ethnic group, it is wide open--demonstrate, argue, involve yourself, engage. But if you happen to be a member of an ethnic club or group on campus, then no way. You have no business taking a position. How can anyone expect to get a fair hearing with someone with this extensive hostility toward ethnic diversity or ethnic groups? That is a pretty serious question to ask yourself in your responsibility of advice and consent, in your responsibility to ensure that there is not just integrity on the court but a perception of integrity, not just fairness on a court but a perception of fairness. How does anyone get a perception of fairness with these writings? Mr. Bounds had the opportunity to inform the committee of these writings, but he chose not to. He kept them hidden away. The head of the Oregon selection advisory committee wrote the following: ``Mr. Bounds failed to disclose these writings when specifically asked by the committee about his views on equity and diversity.'' He did get asked about them later when they were discovered. There was a hearing in the Judiciary, and he had a chance to respond in questions for the record. He wrote in response that he regretted the rhetoric in the articles, but he didn't repudiate the viewpoint. He regretted, apparently, the particular words he used to express it, but he didn't say that he repudiated the viewpoint on his commentaries attacking diversity, attacking diverse clubs, saying that every other club has a right to participate and engage itself in issues relevant to its mission except the ethnic clubs. He didn't repudiate that. How do you expect to get a fair hearing before this judge? At his hearing before the Judiciary Committee, in questions for the record, Senator Blumenthal asked if he regretted not turning over the writings to the Oregon screening committee. He replied that it seemed reasonable to him that there wouldn't be a lot of interest in writings that have no bearing on someone's professional practice. These writings have everything to do with his professional practice, his consideration as a judge--a circuit court judge, not a district judge. He is not being nominated for the bottom rung; he is being nominated to the rung next to the Supreme Court. You don't think it has a bearing that you have written these things? You don't think it has a bearing that you hid them from the committee? That in itself tells you a great deal. It is why this nomination is opposed by so many groups: the AFL-CIO, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Women's Law Center, the Oregon Women Lawyers Association, the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Oregon, the Oregon Hispanic Bar Association, the LGBT Bar Association of Oregon. Why wouldn't they oppose when you have an individual who failed the integrity test by hiding the writings, doesn't repudiate the writings, and has it in for diversity and minority groups? Records are being broken. Two nominees up this week would mean 23 appeals judges confirmed. A lot are being confirmed. There are a lot in waiting. Why not bring someone to the floor who doesn't have these deep flaws? Why not vote down this individual and put up the next one? We have already broken the record for confirmations in the President's first year, last year. Obama's 14 circuit court nominees waited an average of 251 days; Trump is half that at 125 days--less than half. We are marching through this. Why not bring someone else to floor? Why not set this one aside? Because it fails the test of being fairminded and fails the test of integrity. Putting this judge forward does something else. It is not just a judge who fails the test on integrity and fairness; it is also the destruction of your rights, each and every Senator here, to have a say on circuit court nominees in your circuit. Is that really the place you want to go? We have seen judges come before us who have had hearings held without ABA evaluations. We have had two considered who were unanimously rated ``not qualified.'' We certainly, therefore, have a lot that has changed dramatically. Last year was the first time that a seat had been stolen from one administration and set a year into the future. That is a precedent everyone here should regret--to have failed advice-and- consent responsibilities, which is a failure that no other set of Senators ever failed before. Fifteen times before, there have been open seats during an election year. Fifteen times before, the Senate debated the nominee. Fifteen times before, they voted on the nominee. But not last year. The leadership of this body failed the test of leadership by failing to consider a nominee from the President for the Supreme Court. Is that the precedent you want to live with for the future? Of course, now we have a new nominee for the Supreme Court. Not only does this nominee come from a list secretly compiled by the Federalist Society to make sure that they met the test the President had put forward--opposing Roe v. Wade, opposing the Affordable Care Act that has provided healthcare to another 30 million people across this land, 400,000 in my own State, but also the President chose off that list the one person best suited to write him a get-out-of-jail free card because of the massive, expansive view of Presidential power--a view of Presidential power you can find nowhere in the Constitution; a view that is completely at odds with the checks and balances our Forefathers so carefully crafted into that document; a view that says that a President should never be indicted and, even more extraordinary, never be investigated. That is a President above the law. That is a President beyond the law. That is something that is not a President. That is a King. That is a tyrant. That is a dictator who answers to no one because he or she is above the law. That is not a President in a constitutional democratic republic where there are checks and balances. Indeed, this nominee has said that if a President deems a law to be unconstitutional because it is his or her opinion, the President doesn't need to follow the law. Can anyone remind this nominee for the Supreme Court that our system was designed to let the Supreme Court weigh in on what is and isn't constitutional, not to have a President dictate that? It is a scary proposition, an unworthy proposition to have that individual considered on the floor of this Senate. In Federalist Paper 76, James Madison said that it is the duty of the Senate to prevent the appointment of unfit characters. Each and every Member of this Senate on both sides of the aisle has that responsibility. These are questions you have to ask yourself: Is the person fit when they say the things that Ryan Bounds said? Is a person fit to serve on the bench when they say that no student group affiliated with an ethnic center has any business holding political issues central to its mission right after he writes that other groups should have that power? Is the individual fit who says that promoting diversity contributes more to restricting consciousness and aggravating intolerance than a Nazi book burning? Is the person fit who says that training in diversity--training that each and every one of us has to take and our staff members have to take in this body--is a pestilence that stalks us, as if embracing the notion of understanding one's own biasses is an evil thing? Is the person fit who said there is nothing wrong with the university failing to punish an alleged rapist? Is the person fit who hid these writings from the selection committee? Is the person fit when the selection committee said that based on these writings, they would vote overwhelmingly not to recommend this individual? Is the person fit when they fail the test of integrity and are asked to produce their views on diversity and hide them? I contend that standard that James Madison laid out for the responsibility of advice and consent--that standard of voting down individuals who are unfit--has rarely had a clear opportunity to be executed and should be executed 100 to 0 in turning down this nomination and in preserving the blue-slip tradition.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate so much my colleague from Rhode Island laying out what is at stake here. Why has this 101-year tradition maintained itself over a period of time in which so many things have changed in our culture? The country has been transformed, but for over a century, there has been this mutual understanding that, when it comes to the circuit court, it is appropriate to have members serving on that circuit who have roots in and approval and understanding related to different States within that circuit. That is what has held it together. If I tear it down for one of my colleagues, I tear it down for myself. If I tear it down for their circuit, I tear it down for my circuit. That is what has held it together--that we each want the circuits to be able to reflect individuals who have an understanding of the issues that might come up in that circuit. There is embodied in the law a residency requirement for some positions on a circuit court. But that residency requirement isn't the same as a blue-slip requirement. You can establish residency very easily in another State. Previous decisions of the court have made sure it is possible to easily establish residency in another State. Therefore, it is the blue slip that has maintained this balance. We were taking a look at some of the writings of the individual who is up for this particular position that so bothered and concerned me and concerned the senior Senator from Oregon, my colleague Senator Wyden. I shared a little bit about his stated written views on diversity, that students working to ``promote diversity . . . contribute more to restricting consciousness, aggravating intolerance and pigeonholing cultural identities than many a Nazi bookburning.'' That was a direct quote. He referred to diversity training as a ``pestilence'' that ``stalks us.'' I have an article he wrote entitled ``Labor Unions and the Politics of Aztlan.'' This is about students who are part of a minority group on campus, and whether they should be able to take up an issue, and, at his campus, they did. They took up an issue about the ability of workers to organize into labor unions. He said: ``I would hardly suggest that no student group should be able to take up a political matter, if it is of direct relevance to its reported mission.'' He said: I wouldn't say that any group shouldn't be able to, but the sundry ethnic centers or the clubs that derive many a material benefit from those ethnic centers should not be able to take up an issue related to their mission. I am paraphrasing here, but I will come back to it and make sure I give the exact words. Here, we have it. He said, essentially, that for the Chicano or Latino Stanford students who protested against a hotel chain for firing workers who tried to form a union, if they stood up for those workers, he felt it was the wrong thing for them to be able to do so. He said: ``I would contend, however, that no student group that is affiliated with an ethnic center or any other department of this university has any business holding political issues central to its mission.'' Can you imagine? He says he wouldn't weigh in that any group couldn't pursue issues on campus, but when it comes to the ethnic groups, it is just plain wrong, in his opinion, for them to be able to take a position on an issue. That is a pretty significant situation, for somebody who is going to be a judge on a body to be able to say that, in his opinion, if it is an ordinary student group, they have every right to get involved, but if it is a Latino or Chicano group or an ethnic group, they shouldn't be allowed to get involved in an issue. How can people come before that judge and expect anything that resembles a fair hearing, here in the United States of America, where we have a vision of opportunity for every single American, where we have a 1964 Civil Rights Act that was passed long before this nominee attended college and that threw out the notion that discrimination was acceptable? I am delighted that my colleague from Massachusetts has arrived to weigh in on this issue of the appropriateness of a nominee coming to the floor of the Senate who, in the judgment of the two home-State Senators, isn't appropriate either because of views they have carried that bring into question their ability to fairly administer the law and, therefore, bring into question the entire integrity of the court at that moment, or because the individual also demonstrated a completed lack of integrity by failing to provide this information about their writings when they were asked to do so. I yield to my colleague from Massachusetts.

Mr. MERKLEY. So, in essence, if our colleagues across the aisle vote for this confirmation, they are basically saying that they are voting to give up the understanding among this body that has ensured that they would have a voice in making sure that a member of their circuit court was residing in their State and someone they felt had the qualities of integrity and understanding necessary to administer justice.

Mr. MERKLEY. So if we lose this blue-slip tradition for circuit courts, it would be the case that when the seat comes open that is now held in Rhode Island, an administration could nominate and conceivably a majority could confirm someone who lives, say, in Arizona.

Mr. MERKLEY. I very much appreciate his laying out this basic framework under which this conversation is taking place. But just for clarity, the Senator made the point that there is no law that requires a member of a circuit court to be in a particular State and that it is only under this tradition and agreement among the Members of this body that a judge reside in a particular State as part of a circuit court.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, will my colleague yield for a question?

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, the nomination of Ryan Wesley Bounds is just the latest in more than a year of attacks that have been based on a strategy of converting the United States from a nation that is based and organized on and that fights for the principle of ``we the people'' into one that bows to the powerful and the privileged. His nomination has already strained and degraded the Senate's blue- slip tradition as our colleagues rush to pack our courts with extremist judges to advance that vision--not of judges who call balls and strikes but of judicial activists who want to rewrite the Constitution to put down workers, to put down healthcare rights, to lay out and tear down consumer rights and women's rights--so many opportunities and empowerments diminished in the favor of the privileged and the powerful. That is what is going on with the packing of the Court. This deed of putting forward this nomination on the floor tonight changes a 100-year tradition of comity in the U.S. Senate and the recognition that the home State Senators have something important to say about the integrity of the individual who is being put forward. At stake in this confirmation is the Senate's advice-and-consent responsibility as applied through the blue-slip tradition--a tradition that incentivizes consultation and bipartisan cooperation. When you take away the blue-slip tradition, you diminish the incentive for consultation and cooperation. This tradition has existed since 1917. It was 101 years ago when Senator Thomas Hardwick objected to President Wilson's district court nominee, and he wrote his objection on a blue slip of paper--thus, the name. No judge until now--101 years later--has ever been confirmed by this body having not received a single blue slip from a home State Senator. Until this administration, just five had been confirmed without both blue slips having been returned. This tradition has been honored by both parties. It has been a bipartisan tradition. When the Democrats have been in power, the Republicans have wanted it to be honored. When Republicans have been in power, the Republicans have honored it. In fact, in 2009, at the start of President Obama's term when the Democrats controlled both the Executive Office and this Chamber, my Republican colleagues wrote a letter. They wrote that they expected the blue-slip tradition to be observed evenhandedly and regardless of party affiliation. It was not just that letter from which we have heard over time. We have heard from Chairman Grassley. Chairman Grassley wrote clearly about this: For nearly a century, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has brought nominees up for committee consideration only after both home State Senators have signed and returned what is known as a ``blue slip.'' This tradition is designed to encourage outstanding nominees and consensus. . . . I appreciate the value of the blue-slip process and also intend to honor it. He intended to honor it, he wrote, in 2015. Yet putting this nomination through the committee dishonored the tradition. Bringing it to the floor dishonors this tradition. It doesn't honor it because it violates it. During the time that President Obama was in office, the Republicans used the blue slips to block 18 nominees. The nominees never progressed without the return of two of those slips. We can turn back to the former chair of the Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch, who wrote in The Hill: Weakening or eliminating the blue slip process would sweep aside the last remaining check on the president's judicial appointment power. Anyone serious about the Senate's constitutional ``advice and consent'' role knows how disastrous such a move would be. The current chair and the former chair were pretty clear, and now they intend to tear it down--a moment of opportunity to sacrifice a century of comity and consultation. The clear factor is one principle when in the minority and tearing down that principle when in the majority. It is one principle for Obama's nominees and a different principle for Trump's nominees. Where has all of the honor and principle gone in this Chamber? There were no hearings for Obama's nominees without blue slips. There have been hearings for four of Trump's nominees without blue slips. Now, the majority leader helped to drive this change. He said: Republicans now will treat a blue slip ``as simply notification of how you're going to vote.'' That is what he said. It is simply notification. So it is up to the chair of the committee, the former chair of the Judiciary Committee, and all of the members who signed that 2009 letter saying how important this was to this Chamber to stand up and actually exhibit some trace of consistency with the position put forward just a short time ago. So now he is coming to the floor for a vote. This is a nominee on whom there was no consultation. We had a committee out in Oregon, set up by my senior colleague, Senator Wyden. We told the White House: Wait to make your choice until after the committee submits its list. This is the Oregon bipartisan--bipartisan--judicial selection committee. But the President was in such a hurry to pack the court that he didn't wait for consultation. I happen to have heard a Member across the aisle saying: Well, the White House said they consulted. Well, let me tell you that they didn't consult. They didn't ask me. They didn't ask Senator Wyden. What does that mean for the White House? Is it the case that everything we have heard in the last year and a half is accurate out of the White House, because I have heard virtually every Member across the aisle say otherwise. So here you have the two of us having asked the White House to wait so they can get some consultation and get some advice from Oregon, but they didn't wait. That was certainly the wrong thing to do. At the end of 2017, the nominations go back, and the White House has to resubmit them. We said: Here is another chance for you to honor the concept of consultation. And what happened? The White House did it again. They didn't care about consultation. If we hear from our colleagues tonight, this week, and in the days to come that they are going to push this nomination forward, don't expect consultation from any future President when you happen to be in the minority because that is what you are striking down--a tradition that encouraged, expected, supported, and promoted consultation. Have no doubt that this isn't an ordinary nominee. When asked about anything else in his record that they should know might be inflammatory, this nominee didn't breathe a word about key writings in his past. When this nominee was asked about his views on diversity and how they might have differed from before, he didn't breathe a word about his former views--and maybe they are his present views. What did this nominee say on diversity? He said students who work ``to promote diversity . . . contribute more to restricting consciousness, aggravating intolerance, and pigeonholing cultural identities than many a Nazi bookburning.'' That is his attack on diversity, but that isn't all he said. He said diversity training is a ``pestilence'' that ``stalks us.'' That isn't the only topic that he weighed in on in such a way that is way out of the mainstream and exhibiting massive intolerance for diversity here in the United States, where we come from every corner of the world. When it came to the process of a campus holding accountable young men involved in sexual harassment, young men involved in rape, he also said: ``There is nothing really inherently wrong with the university failing to punish an alleged rapist.'' I see that my colleague is here to speak, and I appreciate his coming down. He is coming down to speak on the principle of the blue slips and how it enshrines cooperation, and so I am delighted he is here. I will have more to say later, but at this moment, I defer to my colleague, Senator Blumenthal.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Karina Ramirez Velazquez, be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, the most important words of our Constitution are its first three, ``We the People.'' It is the mission statement of our Constitution, the mission statement of our country, a nation ``of the people, by the people, for the people,'' as President Lincoln so eloquently stated, not a nation by, for, and of the powerful and the privileged. Critical to that vision of ``we the people'' is a strong and independent judiciary, particularly a strong and independent Supreme Court, since all the decisions from the lower courts can be appealed right on up to the very top. Today, there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court with Anthony Kennedy's announced retirement. On Monday night, President Trump announced his nominee to fill that seat--Judge Brett Kavanaugh. A single vote can make all the difference in the world on the Supreme Court in protecting the freedoms we hold dear. A single vote can tip the scales toward the vision of our Constitution, the ``we the people'' vision of our Constitution, or it can tip the scales away from that vision toward government by and for the powerful. We can see the impact of the single vote when we look at Justice Kennedy's own legacy, his own record of 5-to-4 decisions. Time and again during his three decades on the Court, he made the deciding vote in a critical decision--a single vote making a big difference. In 1992, he wrote the majority opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, not only reaffirming Roe v. Wade but protecting a woman's fundamental right to make decisions about her own healthcare. As Justice Kennedy wrote, ``These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime . . . are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment,'' the amendment prohibiting States from depriving a person of liberty without due process. In 2005, he wrote the ruling in Roper v. Simmons, which barred the execution of juveniles, declaring it cruel and unusual punishment banned by the Eighth Amendment, highlighting the ``evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.'' Justice Kennedy said that even when a child commits the most heinous of crimes, ``the State cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity.'' In Boumediene v. Bush, he appealed to the better angels of our nature and channeled the sentiment behind Benjamin Franklin's adage that ``Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety'' when he wrote the majority opinion that detainees at Guantanamo Bay had the constitutional right of habeas corpus to challenge their detention. Certainly, in looking at Justice Kennedy's legacy and the importance of a single vote, it is worth noting cases that involve the rights of opportunity for our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. Because of that 5-to-4 vote, our Nation declared finally that love is love and that everyone has the right to marry whomever they love, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. In United States v. Windsor, he helped strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, declaring it unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment's due process clause after the surviving spouse of a legally recognized same-sex marriage was denied the Federal estate exemption given to all surviving spouses. Then, in Obergefell v. Hodges, he wrote: ``No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.'' Justice Kennedy went on to say that same-sex couples who sought legal recognition of their unions in the case asked only ``for equal dignity in the eyes of the law,'' and that ``the Constitution grants them that right.'' Think about these powers, these freedoms, these rights: due process under the 14th Amendment; protection from cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment; the right to petition for a writ of habeas corpus granted in article I, section 9 of the Constitution; due process under the 5th Amendment, all upheld by a single vote. If there is any doubt about how much difference that vote can make, look at some of the recent decisions handed down by the court. The Janus case was a 5-to-4 decision undermining the rights of workers to organize. The ability of workers to organize is a fundamental right, a key power to be able to participate in the wealth that you work to create, yet it was undermined just the week before last by a 5-to-4 court decision. Trump v. Hawaii was a 5-to-4 decision upholding a travel ban against Muslims, effectively shutting the door of our country to a group of people simply because of their religion. What a 5-to-4 assault that was on the freedom of religion. Abbot v. Perez was another 5-to-4 decision green-lighting racial gerrymandering in Texas, violating the Voting Rights Act. One case after another has come down in recent weeks against ``we the people,'' decided by a single vote. How many cases are we going to see in the coming years where a single vote transforms the landscape of our country as we know it, where a single vote takes away a fundamental right in the vision of a ``we the people'' nation? That is why this nomination is so unlike any other recent confirmation; the impacts on the court and on our Nation will reverberate for decades to come. So many core issues are under consideration: the influence of money in politics; the power of big corporations to prey on consumers and workers; marriage equality; the right of every American to have their voice heard at the ballot box. How can you believe in the foundation and vision of a democratic republic if you don't believe in voter empowerment? Yet we have members of the Supreme Court who don't. The right of every American to receive a quality education, affordable healthcare and a woman's right to choose--it is clear that the very soul of our ``we the people'' Nation is hanging in the balance. But here is a certain circumstance that we may never have seen before; that is, we have a President who is under investigation for the possibility of colluding with an enemy, with an adversarial foreign power. In case after case, time after time, he has sought to make it difficult to conduct an investigation into the Presidency and the campaign that preceded it. He said in a tweet: ``As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?'' I ask this: Why would he tweet that topic if he is not worried about needing a pardon? He is a President who talks openly about the possibility of pardoning himself--something there is no precedent for, which no President has considered? This is the situation we are in. With a President at this moment nominating a Supreme Court Justice who well may have the power to determine whether it is possible under our Constitution for a President to pardon himself, who may well determine under our Constitution whether a President can fire a special counsel at will, the march to an authoritarian nation is one that should concern us at this moment because that is the issue of the expansive power of the Presidency. Is it so broad, so large that the checks and balances written into the Constitution become irrelevant? This is exactly what President George Washington warned the Nation about in his Farewell Address, when he said, ``The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism.'' He said this ``is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.'' Here we have this issue of the President having chosen as a nominee, off a long list of possibilities, an individual who has gone to great lengths to talk about the President being above the law. Therefore, we have every right to worry. About this expansive view of Executive power, in a 2009 Minnesota Law Review article, he said: We should not burden a sitting President with civil suits, criminal investigations, or criminal prosecutions. He said: [A] possible concern is that the country needs a check against a bad-behaving or law-breaking President. But the Constitution already provides that check. If the President does something dastardly, the impeachment process is available. So here he is saying directly that his reading of the Constitution is that the check on the President is through impeachment. ``The President,'' he says, ``should have absolute discretion . . . whether and when to appoint an independent counsel.'' In another point, he argued that it should be the President who has the power to dismiss an independent counsel and to do so without cause. In a 1998 panel discussion called ``The Future of the Independent Counsel Statute,'' he said: ``If the President were the sole subject of a criminal investigation, I would say no one should be investigating that.'' When the moderator asked how many on the panel believed a sitting President cannot be indicted, it is Mr. Kavanaugh who raised his hand. In his dissent in Seven-Sky vs. Holder, Kavanaugh wrote a footnote stating: ``Under the Constitution, the president may decline to enforce a statute that regulates private individuals when the president deems the statute unconstitutional, even if a court has held or would hold that statute constitutional.'' Wow, not only does this nominee believe that the only power to address a misbehaving President is impeachment--the power granted to the Congress--but also that the President has the power to ignore laws just by virtue of feeling that they are unconstitutional, even if a court says they are constitutional. That is not the system of checks and balances set up in our Constitution. That is a big concern, and it leads us to the conclusion that when a President is under investigation for the possibility of a serious crime of collaborating with the enemy, that President should not have this Chamber considering holding hearings and proceeding to take a debate and a vote on that nominee. Let that cloud be cleared first. There is more to be concerned about. There is a lot to be concerned about in healthcare. In Garza v. Hargan, he dissented from a decision protecting a woman's constitutional right to control her own reproductive health decisions. Then, there is Priests for Life v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he wrote a dissenting opinion in which he stated that the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive coverage requirement violated religious nonprofits' religious freedom. The nonprofits said that even submitting the one-page form from the Obama administration to allow religious nonprofits to opt out might make them complicit. As for net neutrality, in U.S. Telecom Association v. Federal Communications Commission, he wrote an opinion in favor of striking down the FCC's net neutrality rule. He argued that the net neutrality rule violated the First Amendment by ``restricting the editorial discretion of internet service providers.'' The editorial discretion of internet service providers? This issue of net neutrality is whether or not an internet service provider can charge a series of fees based on the content of the information. If you want to protect freedom of speech, then you protect net neutrality. This net neutrality issue was about whether an internet service provider can charge fees based on the type of platform you are using or the computer program you are using. It was about whether you can create a fast lane on the internet for those wealthy enough to afford it while the rest of us in America are stuck in the slow lane behind a truck going 30 miles per hour. That is what net neutrality is about. Did he even understand the basic fundamentals of the issue? He said it is about the editorial decision of the internet service providers-- talk about a decision warped and twisted and crafted to support the powerful or the fundamental opportunity for us as a nation to make rules that regulate fair opportunity on the internet. Our Nation is at a pivotal moment. We have a Court that in a 5-to-4 decision, a 5-to-4 decision, and a 5-to-4 decision has proceeded to weigh in on behalf of the powerful, against the people, against the workers of America, against the consumers of America, against the women of America and healthcare rights in America. Now we have the possibility of a nominee being considered who wants to make the Presidency of the United States above the law, not subject to investigation, not subject to the possibility of indictment, not subject to the courts saying that a law is constitutional or unconstitutional. Perhaps it is appropriate for a King in a kingdom but not for a democratic republic, not for a ``we the people'' constitution. That is why we absolutely should not proceed to consider this nominee until the President is cleared of the investigation for conspiring, for collaborating with an enemy of the United States of America. It is absolutely why if that cloud is cleared, we should still be dramatically concerned about the viewpoints of this nominee, who doesn't respect the healthcare opportunities and rights of Americans, who doesn't respect the government's ability to create a fair playing field, equal lanes for individuals on the internet, and who certainly doesn't understand that no one is above the law under the vision of the Constitution, not even the President of the United States. Thank you.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Whitney Wagner, have privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I really appreciate the comments of my colleague from California. She brings her background as a prosecutor, as attorney general to bear, as well as the heart of an American who understands that it is not within the scope of America's history or of our traditions or of our culture to treat those who are fleeing persecution by then persecuting them when they arrive on our shores. It is quite the opposite. Thank you for your comments tonight. Thank you to my colleagues who have spoken before, the 13 Members of the Senate who came and spoke this evening, sharing some very powerful stories. In several cases, they told powerful stories about their own family history, about their own parents or grandparents coming here to the United States of America, placing themselves in a situation. They spoke about how they might have suffered if President Trump had been in office when their families came to the shores of the United States and if they had been separated from their parents when they arrived. It really helps sometimes to put yourself in the shoes of others, to recognize that outside of our Native Americans, virtually all of us have roots that involve families fleeing persecution, fleeing civil war, fleeing religious oppression, fleeing starvation, and coming here to the United States of America. When they came to the United States, they knew that the general principle of our country was to treat them with respect and dignity. It has always been symbolized by Lady Liberty. Lady Liberty says: ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'' That quote is the one we all know from Emma Lazarus. Her poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty has some other powerful lines, like this one: ``From her beacon-hand glows worldwide welcome.'' That has been the attitude of America. She says ``the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'' Well, that golden door, Lady Liberty's torch lighting the path, has been desecrated by President Trump because he has a new inscription, a new message he wanted to send. That message is called a deterrent. If you are fleeing oppression abroad and you wash up here on the shores of the United States of America, we are going to put you in handcuffs, we are going to throw you in prison, and we are going to take away your children. That is hardly the powerful vision of respect and dignity that has been the hallmark of how we treated those fleeing oppression throughout our history. Pregnant and fearing for her unborn baby's life, a woman fled a death threat from a drug cartel in Honduras. She made her way to America, delivering her baby girl, Andrea, along the way. On Sunday, a group of seven Members of Congress--myself included--met her and her baby. We had gone out on the bridge to see what was going on because we had heard that our American border guards were blocking those seeking asylum from coming across that bridge. They were demanding to see papers of people on the pedestrian bridge, saying: You have a visa, fine. You have a passport, fine. You have no papers and you are seeking asylum, you are not welcome. You may not enter. I found it hard to believe that we would treat those fleeing persecution, seeking asylum, in that manner, but I heard from others that was the case, and there were articles in the newspaper. We went out there, and we saw it firsthand. Here is this mother with her baby girl. We were able to talk to her because when we came off the bridge and went into the Hidalgo Port of Entry, through those doors, they had a variety of counseling rooms there. One room was holding 10 or so individuals. I said: Have you let in anyone who is seeking asylum? They said: Oh, yes. I said: Can we meet that person? They said: Yes. They brought her out to us with her little girl. She sat down. I sat down beside her. We asked her some questions. Why are you fleeing from Central America? She said: My family took a loan from a private bank. The private bank has a relationship with the drug cartel or criminal empire that runs that part of the city. We can't repay the loan. We had been told that I am targeted to be killed. I was safe as long as I was pregnant, but as soon as I delivered, I would be at high risk. With a month to go in my pregnancy, I fled. I fled to protect the life of my child and my life. I fled. Unfortunately, her uncle was killed. She escaped, but her uncle was killed. I think we all have to conclude that her fear was very real. There she is, 8 months pregnant, taking the journey from Honduras north up through Guatemala, through Mexico, to get to the United States, stopping along the way to deliver her baby. I think about the journey of Mary and Joseph with Mary pregnant, seeking shelter, a place to deliver her child, Baby Jesus. She was let in, given accommodation, taken care of, welcomed. This woman was largely on her own, as far as I could make out. She continued north with her newborn, and she made it to our border finally, escaped the drug cartel, escaped the death threat, and delivered her baby. She made it through Guatemala and Mexico. She got to our shore--the shore so long symbolized by Lady Liberty and her beacon of hope and welcome. She got to the border, and she tried to cross the pedestrian bridge, and she was stopped. She was sent back. She said she tried multiple times to get across that pedestrian bridge, and she was rebuffed again and again. I said to her: How did you get across the bridge? We had been out there. We had seen the border guards stopping those without papers. How did you get across? For just a moment, an absolute smile lit up her face. She said that as she was sent back time and again, she would study the situation, and she saw that there were people out washing the windows on the car bridge. She said: I had a plan. She went out and she borrowed a squeegee from one of the car window washers who were washing car windows and asking for tips. She washed windows all across the bridge, making her way through the cars to the United States of America, and then she was able to open that door to the port of entry in Hidalgo. That is how hard it was for one young woman with a 65-day-old child in her arms to get the opportunity to seek asylum in the United States of America. It troubles me to reread the transcript of Secretary Nielsen, who proceeded to say that there is no reason for people to cross our borders; all they have to do is come to the port of entry. That is all they have to do. But she is in charge of this program of slow-walking those seeking asylum to only let in a few at a time and send them back time and time again. There was an attorney who was doing pro bono legal work for immigrants. On my first trip down 2 weeks ago before last Sunday, she told me that when she got out to that bridge, there were some 40 families sleeping on the bridge, waiting to be allowed to come in. When I went on Sunday with the congressional delegation, we said we wanted to go out on the bridge. The officer said: Well, there is nobody on the bridge. I asked: Why not? They were there 2 weeks ago. He said: There is no one on the bridge. You can go out and see for yourself. Well, here is why there was nobody on the bridge: There is nobody on the bridge because they are not being let past the American border guards to come to the American side of the bridge. This pro bono immigrant advocate and attorney said that those folks are trapped in a terrible, no-win situation because if they return to the Mexico side, the gangs in that city know they are easy prey. She recounted how some had been kidnapped and then their families had been extorted to get the money to free them. It is almost better for somebody to be on the bridge waiting than to be sent back to the Mexican side. Those who run out of patience and end up crossing the border by going across the nearby river--the bridge is actually over the Rio Grande River. If they do that, then the administration says: You have committed a crime. We are going to lock you up and take your children away. Another young woman we met on this trip was hanging her head with hopelessness and resignation. She told us she had presented herself for asylum at an official port of entry because she heard the right thing to do was to ask for asylum. Despite doing it at a port of entry, she was charged with illegally crossing the border. Now she sits in an ICE detention center with no idea where her child is, no communication with her family, no legal representation. Will she ever see her toddler again? She doesn't know. I don't know. Do you know whether she will ever see her child again? Another mother we talked with was panicked over her child's health. She said that her child had medical conditions. When the border guards took the child away, they didn't get any of the information from her about how he needed to be cared for. She is deeply disturbed. She was pleading with them to take the medical information. She still doesn't know where her child is. She doesn't know how he is going to be cared for. How is that mother going to find out about her son's health? Here is what we know. This policy, which was run as a pilot project last summer, was officially sanctioned with a policy memo on April 6 and was officially announced on May 7. This policy of separating children from their parents is an extraordinarily egregious assault on the welfare of the parent, and it inflicts massive trauma on the child. The American Academy of Pediatrics describes it this way: ``irreparable harm.'' It is harm that cannot be fixed. Our colleague from Hawaii shared the story of family separation when her mother was not able to bring all of her children with her when she escaped domestic violence and came to the United States to start a new life and the lifelong impact that this has had on her brother. Well, here is a piece of the puzzle we should spend a lot of time thinking about. Attorney General Sessions just changed the policy of the United States about what qualifies for asylum. So my colleague from Hawaii, whose mother fled domestic violence, would no longer qualify for an opportunity for asylum in the United States of America. She would have been turned away and sent home, back to the horrific circumstances from which she escaped, and my colleague today would not be a U.S. Senator, sitting here helping us to understand this issue through her personal, powerful experience. That mother, the window washer who carried her baby, Andrea, 65 days old, she told us, in one arm and a squeegee in the other, washing windows to get across and finally bypass the American border guard so that she could present her case for asylum--she was fleeing a gang. A drug cartel is defined as a gang, so she is not eligible for asylum--a change that was just made by Jeff Sessions unilaterally. This was an established policy to serve thousands of families fleeing from oppression overseas, and they have just lost their legal standing to be able to present their cases. I was distraught about this Executive order that came out. It is very vague. The President--was he ready to stand up and take responsibility for the policy he implemented? Was he ready to say: I thought it was right, and here is why. I hear the American people. I hear the Southern Baptists. I hear the evangelical leaders. I hear the United Methodists. I hear the citizens profoundly disturbed by the treatment of children from every corner of the United States, from every part--from Alaska to Florida, from Maine to Southern California, and across Hawaii. I hear them, and I am going to do better. I am going to change this. I am going to modify what we do. Did he take responsibility? No. He titled it ``Affording Congress An Opportunity To Address Family Separation,'' and then he proceeded to say nothing about actually uniting the families he has already separated. There is not a thing in here about actually remedying the harrowing plight that he has now put several thousand families into--and counting. The last count I heard was 2,300, and that was days ago. Where are we now? There are 2,500 families separated, children separated from their parents. What do we know about this situation in which the existing children are going to be united or not united? We have an article from the New York Times that my colleague from Colorado referred to this evening. It answers the question very plainly. I have heard various analyses saying that this Executive order fails to address what is going to happen to the current children, those children who were sent far away from their parents and their parents are incarcerated. The parents are in prison far away. Where are the children? Far away. What is going to happen to them? This doesn't say. It does say that it is the policy of this administration to maintain family unity, as if it has always been the policy of the administration to maintain family unity. It doesn't announce that they are reversing the previous policy. It doesn't announce a new policy. It says that it is the policy to maintain family unity. If it is the policy to maintain family unity, then why do I have this in my hand, this article from the New York Times, quoting Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families? Realize this: When the Department of Homeland Security takes children away from their parents, it then ships them out to a different agency, the Administration for Children and Families, which is a part of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the Department of Human Services. So the children are torn away by Homeland Security, and then they are put in a different department over here, a subsection called the Administration for Children and Families. So here is the spokesman, and he says: ``There will not be a grandfathering of existing cases.'' ``Cases''--what a word to describe children ripped away from their parents. They are cases; no ``grandfathering of existing cases,'' he said. He goes on to say: ``I can tell you definitively that is going to be [the] policy.'' Well, I can tell you definitively, I am going to fight that policy. I am going to fight that policy of failing to reunite these families after the administration says that it is policy to keep families together and then says: But not all the children we have already harmed. This is pretty disturbing, but it is only the half of it. What is the other half? The other half is that the administration has not given up on its strategy of deterrence based on injuring children. It is a strategy laid out by Jeff Sessions, supported by Chief of Staff John Kelly, with Steve Miller chiming in to say: This will work. They want to deter people from seeking asylum here in the United States of America by mistreating those who arrive and try to seek asylum. They use the word ``deterrence'' to send a message of what will happen to you if you try to come here. There is no moral code in the United States of America or in the world that would support hurting children to send a message to families still overseas. There is no religious tradition on this planet that supports injuring children to send a message overseas. But here we have Mr. Wolfe speaking definitively that nothing is going to be done for those children, those more than 2,000 children who have been separated from their parents. Moreover, the other half of the policy is that for those now coming in, it will be the official strategy of the United States of America to incarcerate the children along with the parents. That is the plan. We have already gone down that path in the past. Experts have already weighed in, saying that incarcerating children with their families--they may not be separated, but they are incarcerated. They can't go to school. They can't play on the playground. To continue this policy of deterrence, that is another strategy of injuring children. That is deeply, deeply disturbing, and it is profoundly unacceptable. We have done this before. We have put families together in prison camps. We did it in World War II. We took our Japanese-Americans, and we put them into prison camps. It was a profoundly disturbing chapter in our history. Now the President says that is his new plan--to put families together in prison camps. So, no, I am not happy that the President has ended the policy of family separation because he hasn't ended the strategy of harming children. The fight must continue. The pressure must continue. The weighing in by religious group after religious group needs to continue. The legal challenges need to continue. The debate here on the floor of the Senate needs to continue. We cannot accept family prison camps here in the United States of America. I was struck by the fact that we had a program that was working pretty well. That program is called the Family Case Management Program. Here in my hand is the report from the Office of the Inspector General of Homeland Security. This is the inspector general's analysis of the Family Case Management Program to keep families together and out of prison and to make sure they show up for their hearings, their asylum hearings. This report is from just a few months ago, November 30, 2017. For those who want to look it up online, just look up OIG--for Office of the Inspector General---18-22. That is OIG-18-22, and you will immediately see a copy of the inspector general's report. It takes a look at this program, the Family Case Management Program, which addresses this challenge in a whole different way. Here is what it says, in summary: As of March 30, 2017, ICE reported that it expended $17.5 million in program costs to enroll 781 active participants in

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, many members of the Democratic caucus are coming down to the floor to speak to the abomination of a policy of separating children from their parents when people are seeking asylum in the United States of America. The Senator from Minnesota is going to speak first, followed by the Senator from Hawaii, then the Senator from Washington, followed by the Senator from Illinois. I yield to my colleague.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, for generations, the Statue of Liberty-- Lady Liberty we like to call her--has stood as a symbol of how open America has been to treating those fleeing oppression when they arrive on the shores of America. We hear those famous words written by Emma Lazarus: ``Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'' That is a vision that we can connect to because virtually every American family has family roots tied to immigrants and tied to people pursuing freedom and fleeing oppression--fleeing religious oppression, fleeing civil war, fleeing famine--but who come to the refuge of the United States of America, knowing that here they could be treated well and have a fair chance to thrive. In modern times, we have converted this into an asylum policy. An asylum policy means, if you are truly fleeing repression, oppression-- if you are truly fleeing danger and your life would be in danger if you returned--you could gain admission into the United States of America. In fact, we put into international treaties and into national law-- there it is--the torch, the beacon, that signals to the world that we stand for human rights. Yet now we are in a new and different place. On May 7, our Attorney General announced a dramatic change that is completely contrary to the Statue of Liberty. What the Attorney General put forward was, should you flee oppression overseas and find yourself washed up on the shores of the United States of America, we will not greet you with a fair chance to present your case and thrive. Instead, we will grab you, treat you as a criminal, rip your children out of your arms, and lock you up. That is the new policy. That is the Jeff Sessions-Donald Trump- John Kelly policy of the United States of America. When I heard about this, I didn't really believe it was possible that any administration could adopt a policy of inflicting deliberate trauma on children. There is no moral code in the world that supports such an action, and there is no religious tradition on our beautiful planet that supports such an action. Yet there it was--the decision to create a deterrence for people to come to our shores by our mistreating the children who had already arrived. Mistreat the child today, and deter some family abroad from ever thinking about coming. That is a dark stain on America, this strategy of deliberate harm to children. Last Sunday, a week ago Sunday, I went down to find out if this were really true. I went to a detention center and gained admission to the detention center. The detention center is a large space that is split into different cells--you can call them cells--of fencing. There are fencing posts, and there is chain link fencing. The first room that I went into had smaller cells, maybe 12 by 12 or 15 by 15. They looked like cages. People were just arriving and being put into them. It is, really, deeply saddening to see the terror in their eyes, the tears on their cheeks. They didn't know what was going to happen to them. Then they went through a series of desks, at which they were interviewed--many by computers because they were talking to people far afield, somewhere across the United States. They were being interviewed by electronic connection. Then they were taken to a very large room, a warehouse-styled room. This is not the facility I was in, and this is not a 2018 picture, but it looks very much like what I saw. Since people are not allowed to enter the facility with any camera now, I am using this picture to share with you approximately what it looks like. There are the same green pads. There are the same space blankets. There are the same chain links. There is the same fencing. There is a sad, big room. Now, what is there today in terms of that physical structure is no different than what was there in the last administration. That isn't the issue. The issue is how that is being put to work, because under this new policy, instead of treating families seeking asylum with respect until they have their hearing, instead of keeping families together so if they do gain admission into the United States they will be in good shape and they will be in good care, we are inflicting harm on them, harm on the parents, and harm on the children. Any child psychological expert will tell you that when people have fled trauma abroad, perhaps gone over some very tough hurdles to the United States, the one thing they hang on to is the parent's hand, the father's hand or mother's hand--that close connection that they will see this through together. It is the one little sphere of safety in a big, dangerous world. Then, in a room like this, after they have gone through the processing desks, the children are ripped out of their parents' arms. Their parents are incarcerated in one of these divided cells and children in another. They may not be able to see each other across the warehouse. They don't know what is going to happen. So when I was in a room that looked very much like this a week ago Sunday, I was standing in front of a big cell that held just young boys, and they were lining up. They were lining up to be able to get some food, and they were told to line up from the smallest to the largest. That made a pretty dramatic picture with the smallest tyke in front, knee-high to a grasshopper, maybe 4 or 5 years old. Then, older boys lined up, maybe through 16 or 17 years old. As you stare at this group of children and see this group of children, you realize that some of them are unaccompanied minors. They arrived in the United States by themselves. But there are others. Within the previous 24 hours or maybe just a couple hours before you were present, that child was separated from his or her parents. I asked about the dramatic scenes that come from this--the wailing children and the frantic parents. I was told that happens occasionally, but not so often. Then I heard the stories of how the children are now being separated, and I don't know how often this happens or if this is the way it is being done. But the parents are told: We are taking your child to the bathroom or we are taking your child for a bath, and the child never reappears. The parent is shepherded off to one holding cell and the child to somewhere else. There is something so wrong with the idea that this is the plan to deter families from seeking asylum in the United States by mistreating massively those who have already arrived, but that is what is going on. John F. Kennedy once wrote: ``This country has always served as a lantern in the dark for those who love freedom but are persecuted in misery or in need.'' He uses the phrase ``lantern'' rather than torch, but I imagine he might have had in mind the glowing orb in the Statue of Liberty--Lady Liberty holding up that light. He said: ``This country has always served as a lantern in the dark for those who love freedom but are persecuted in misery or in need.'' That is not so now, because the new policy is if you are persecuted, we will treat you as a criminal. We will lock you up. We will take your children away, and we don't care if it is inflicting massive trauma on the child, because we want to send a message to some other family that is still overseas. That is so profoundly disturbing. After the children have been separated, they are sent elsewhere. But to where? Some are sent to a large holding area or detention facility. I tried to visit one of those in Brownsville, TX. This is a converted Walmart. It is run by a nonprofit that, by all accounts, works hard to take good care of the children. Ironically, it is named Casa Padre, or House of the Father, because there are no fathers there because the children have been torn away, and they have been brought here. No matter how well they are cared for in this Walmart, it can't erase the stain of the trauma inflicted on the child by tearing them away from their parents. Now I wanted to go in and see how these children were being cared for. So I applied and I was told: Well, you can get in if you apply 2 weeks in advance, and maybe we will grant you permission. So you can't put it on your calendar. That makes it difficult. No. 1, it makes it difficult for Senators to go because of the complexity of our schedules. Then, if permission is granted, they have 2 weeks to prepare to put on a show for you. So you will not actually see how the detention center is being operated. That is what Members of Congress need to be able to see. They need to be able to know what is really going on behind those doors. I was told that behind these doors there were hundreds of children being held, maybe as many as 1,000. I wanted to know how many are there and how many were unaccompanied minors; that is, arriving unaccompanied. How many of them were torn away from their parents? Do they have the right resources for counseling, and do they have the right food for nutrition? How crowded has it become with this surge of new children? We know there was a surge in roughly one time period in May. The Department of Homeland Security told us they took 658 children away from 638 parents in 12 or 13 days. That is hundreds--more than 600. That is over 50 kids a day being taken away. How is that per month, if that was the same schedule going on, at 50 per day? Well, it would be about 1,500 kids per month. We are told that the number of children in the care of the United States of America increased by 21 percent between April 29 and May 29. So that is a real concern about who is being crowded in and how they are being taken care of. Well, I didn't get behind those doors. Instead, our good friends inside called the police. Now they had to ask me to leave, and, in fact, when I called up the phone number that was posted on the wall of the Walmart, the wonderful nice secretary said the supervisor wanted to come out and talk to me. It actually turned out that the supervisor wanted to come out and talk to the police who had been called. I find it quite interesting--that level of defensiveness about seeing what was inside the facility. I knew I didn't have official permission because I tried to arrange it and I had been turned down, but I also thought: Really, a supervisor of a children's facility can't walk you through and explain to you what is going on there? I wanted to draw attention to the fact that this secrecy has to end. We have to be able to know, as Members of Congress, what is going on with these children across the country. First and foremost, they should never be torn away from their parents while the family is seeking asylum, but if they are unaccompanied minors, they need to be treated with incredible, appropriate care, not concealed in buildings where Members of Congress can't gain access. That is why I am putting forward the Congressional Access to Children's Detention Facilities Act. There is no clever acronym for it. It is straightforward. We are having to legislate that in our role under the Constitution of supervising and understanding what is going on in the executive branch so we can enact appropriate policies or allocate appropriate resources. Do we actually have to pass an act to be able to do it? I am told by the nonprofit leaders at this facility that they are lobbying. They have no problem showing a Member of Congress what is going on and talking about what they need and what they don't need, but we need the administration to have the same philosophy, the same respect for the people who serve here. We also have another bill, and this is Senator Feinstein's bill. It is called the Keep Families Together Act. It is just a simple statement with some additional advice, caveats, and supporting structure and arguments. Basically, it comes down to a simple statement: If people are seeking asylum, do not injure the children. Do not injure the parents. Let them be a whole family until they have their hearing. That is the best thing if they do win asylum, and if they are going to be deported and don't win asylum, there is no reason to inflict harm deliberately on the children or on the parents. This is so distressing that one refugee father, who came with his child and his child was torn away from him, was so upset, as I would be if my child was torn out of my arms, that he committed suicide. Marco Munoz from Honduras came to our shore with a vision of the Statue of Liberty and was met by people who tore his child away to who knows what end, so that he would ever see his child again. Who knows what kind of treatment that child was going to receive and what kind of stress that father went through to get his child safely from the most abominable conditions one can imagine--to get them safely to the United States to apply under international law. Yet we responded by treating him like a criminal. There is more going on here. There are these ``no man's land'' areas between Mexico and the United States, and people walk across from one side to the other. The idea is you walk across one side and go in the door on the other. But when I met with an immigration attorney, a pro bono volunteer who works with refugees, she had gone out on the bridge and found that there were people left on that bridge, she said, in one case for 10 days and in another case for more than 10 days. This is very hot territory. How would you like to be stranded in no man's land between two countries for more than a week, perhaps not being prepared with water or food? Where do you go to the bathroom in that 10-day period while you are stranded in between those places? I was told it appeared to be a deliberate effort to slow-walk people at the border point, where it is absolutely legal to come into the United States of America seeking asylum, in order to persuade them to leave and go back to the Mexican side, where they were incredibly vulnerable to Mexican gangs and had no support structure. She told me that there had been kidnappings and then extortionists who asked the families for money to release individuals who had returned to the other side. She told me how people had gone elsewhere and crossed the border and presented themselves to the border guards in order to get into the custody of the United States and present themselves for asylum, but then they were treated, once again, as criminals. Now, to add insult to injury, the day before yesterday, the Attorney General announced a new asylum policy. Here is the policy that has been forever, but now we are going to change the definition so that those who are fleeing domestic violence, those who are fleeing organized crime, those who have been attacked by drug gangs and have had their lives threatened and their children's lives--no matter how well you document it, no matter how well you can prove it, no matter that you can prove that if you go back, you will be targeted for death--do not qualify for asylum in the United States of America. That is a change that has to be closely examined. I met a woman in a respite center down in Texas. She had been released because she was very pregnant. So they said: Well, we are not going to put her in prison. We are going to release her until she has her hearing. She told me her story. Her family had gotten into a dispute with the drug gang that ran the community. So they had sent a team of people to gang rape her. Her life had been threatened, and she had to leave immediately. She couldn't make accommodations for her children. Her children couldn't come with her. She didn't know how they were. She said: I have no idea who the father of this child is because it is a product of the gang attack. She qualified under our rules for asylum if she could document her case, until 2 days ago, but now she can't go to that asylum hearing under this new rule designed to keep people who have experienced enormous trauma abroad from qualifying--who have always qualified. Not only is this administration inflicting trauma and pain on children to send a message to some other group of families overseas, but they are changing the rules for folks who arrived here, who have stood up for so long and stood up so well. I think about how Lady Liberty no longer has a torch. Lady Liberty's torch has been snuffed out. The symbol to the world under the Sessions- Trump-John Kelly policy is, you will be treated as a criminal if you flee persecution and come to the United States. She doesn't carry a torch. She carries a pair of handcuffs, and that is absolutely wrong. When John F. Kennedy wrote that ``this country has always served as a lantern in the dark,'' he could never have imagined the evil policy, the darkness of heart, the deliberate infliction of pain and trauma on children that would come out of this administration's policy. It is our responsibility in this Chamber to debate this issue, to change that policy, and say America will never allow children to be deliberately harmed to send some political message to some family overseas. In fact, we will never allow them to be deliberately harmed under any circumstance. Let's restore the lantern that Lady Liberty has so proudly borne for so long. Thank you.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for letting us come down to talk about the trumped-up healthcare prices in America. It is trumped up because the prices are going up specifically because of the policies of President Trump and his team. The sabotage is at full speed. Long before the sabotage occurred, in 2017, here on the floor of the Senate, we had five different versions of trying to wipe out healthcare for American citizens. They varied in range from wiping out healthcare for 22 million Americans to wiping out healthcare for 30 million Americans. How is it that in a ``we the people'' republic, people can come down here and vote to wipe out healthcare for millions of people across this country? Quite simply, we have a team in power that believes in government by and for the powerful and the rich. They have healthcare, so they don't care about the rest of us, but we should be here fighting for the ordinary citizen in America. What is more important to peace of mind than the knowledge that if your loved one gets sick or injured, they will get the healthcare they need and you will not go bankrupt in the process? That is why this is so important to Americans. Just by a little bit, just by a thin, one-vote margin, we defeated those efforts to destroy healthcare last year, in 2017. We thought, thank goodness the people have triumphed for once in this Chamber. But no sooner than that occurred, then we had a tax bill--a tax bill that itself was written by and for the wealthy and well connected rather than the people. It borrows $1.5 trillion and gives most of it to the wealthiest of Americans. Embedded in that terrible assault on the finances of America, that terrible failure to address the fundamentals of things that enable families to thrive--healthcare, education, living-wage jobs, and good housing--embedded in that was pulling the plug on the insurance pools. What does that mean? It means that the healthiest can jump out of the pool, and when they do that, they leave sicker people, and the price goes up. The price goes up, so more of the healthy people jump out of the pool, and the price goes up. This is known as the insurance death spiral. For ordinary citizens, it is known as double-digit increases in the cost of your healthcare policies brought by these Republicans and Donald Trump with this deliberate effort of sabotage. The sabotage didn't end with pulling the plug on the insurance pools, no. Then we had the effort to undermine the marketplace, where people can compare policies and get policies that abide by the healthcare bill of rights, the Patients' Bill of Rights, things like, yes, you can buy a policy at the same price as everyone else even if you have preexisting conditions--that healthcare bill of rights. It is the healthcare bill of rights that allows testing and screening because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. What is Team Trump doing? Well, they cut the enrollment period in half. They cut funding for outreach by up to 92 percent. They slashed the budget for advertising--so people wouldn't know that there was an open period and would miss the opportunity to get a healthcare plan--by 90 percent, 9 out of 10 dollars. They put up anti-marketplace propaganda. They periodically proceeded to shut down the website so people would get frustrated while trying to sign up for insurance. That is a real winner--make it hard for people to sign up for healthcare. Just how bad does it have to get--this attack on ordinary Americans by this administration, making it difficult, sometimes impossible, for people to sign up for hours at a time, right in the middle of an open enrollment period. They are wiping out the cost-sharing subsidies, so healthcare will be more expensive for people who have the least means. Then we have even more. We have the junk policies--these junk insurance policies that make you feel good, they are very cheap, you can buy them, and they are good for filling your filing cabinet, but when it comes to actually getting healthcare when you are sick or injured, they don't pay for anything. That is a junk policy. It is really a predatory policy to try to say to people: Here, buy this, and you have insurance--but you don't really, not when you need it. That really is another assault on an ordinary American about the peace of mind of having healthcare when you are injured or when you are sick. So there we are. We thought this assault had gone as far as it could possibly go. Someday the people in this country will rise up in an election and proceed to say: We really do believe in that vision of our Constitution, that ``we the people'' vision of our Constitution of the United States of America; we believe in that vision, and we want an elected body that believes in that vision. But a new assault came just days ago in which the President--who promised to make sure that every healthcare policy was cheaper than it was before, and that turned out to be a lie; the one who said that every person will be covered, and that turned out to be a lie; the one who said that whatever happens, I will absolutely make sure we continue to protect Americans who have preexisting conditions, and they will get the same or better treatment than they have now--issues an order that says: We are not going to defend the requirement that people with preexisting conditions can get healthcare at the same price as everyone else. What is this called? This is called a sellout. This is called a deception. This is called a whopper. This is called an assault on ordinary Americans when it comes to healthcare. This is why insurance rates are going up all over the country. We are seeing double-digit increases in every State, even my State, which tried to protect ordinary people by wiping out and barring those junk plans but was assaulted by the rest of the sabotage. This isn't limited just to Connecticut and my State of Oregon; it is State after State after State, including the State of Virginia. Before my colleague from Virginia speaks, I yield to my colleague from Oregon, the senior Senator from Oregon, who knows this issue so well and who has been in this Chamber fighting for peace of mind in healthcare for year after year after year. This is why we must come together as a nation and repair our healthcare system to have a simple, seamless healthcare system that does right.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Jaime Hamre, have privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, today we remember Robert F. Kennedy, whose life was brutally, savagely cut short 50 years ago. Robert Kennedy was a Presidential candidate, a U.S. Senator, a Member of this Chamber, an Attorney General, a naval officer, a father, a son, a husband, and a brother, but more than all of that, he was a beacon of hope amidst turbulent and difficult times in our Nation, and he was an inspiration to generations of Americans. Speaking at his brother's funeral, our former colleague Senator Ted Kennedy said that Robert Kennedy ``need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.'' I was inspired by his efforts to right wrong, heal suffering, and stop war--inspired enough that when I became a U.S. Senator and was assigned an office that happened to be the former office of Robert F. Kennedy in the Russell Building, I proudly pointed out to visitors that here, in my office, once sat the great Robert Kennedy, who did in fact see wrong and tried to right it, suffering and tried to heal it, and war and tried to stop it. In May 1968, I was in sixth grade. I was an 11-year-old out in Oregon, and Bobby Kennedy, as we affectionately refer to him, was campaigning in my State. He was going very quickly from community to community, delivering speeches in one high school after another. My sixth grade teacher announced that he was going to give a speech at David Douglas High School--my future high school, except I was only in sixth grade, and I had never set foot in the halls of that high school. He was going to give a speech the next night. My father was a mechanic. He worked very hard. He was off in the evening, quite happy to settle in, watch the national news, read the newspaper, and reflect on the news of the day. I came to him, and I said: I understand Robert Kennedy is giving a speech, and we can go see him. My father said: It is the end of the day, Son. I just don't feel like going out again. At that moment, I wish so much that I had said: I think I will go down to that high school, find my way down to that high school I had never been to, and see him speak, but I didn't, and it is one of the things I have regretted all my life. When he was campaigning in Oregon and going from high school to high school, he went also to some iconic places. Here he is in the surf near Fort Stevens. Fort Stevens is a place I used to camp as a kid. It has a historic shipwreck, the wreck of the Peter Iredale. Now it is pretty much rusted into the sand and disappeared, but I can imagine Robert Kennedy walking and seeing that wreck as he was on this beach. He went out to Baker County, OR. This is an iconic photo of him on the runway, with the mountains in the background, with his dog. There is a version of this picture that Ted Kennedy gave to me the month before he passed away, and you can see here the snow-covered mountains in the background and walking down the runway in one of those few moments of peace and reflection in between his speeches all across the State. When Senator Ted Kennedy gave me this picture, he also wrote me a letter. This was in July, a month before Ted Kennedy passed away. He said: I've always loved this photo of Bobby and his dog Freckles taken in Baker City, Oregon, on May 22, 1968. He said he has a copy of it hanging in his office. He knew a little bit from our conversations that Bobby had been an inspiration to me, and he wrote: I know that Bobby played an important role in shaping your political views, and I thought you'd like to have a copy of the photograph for your Senate office as well. I only wish I could give it to you in person. I do have that photo proudly displayed on my Senate office wall, and it is a reminder of the very special feelings we had about the campaign. We had war abroad in Vietnam in 1968. We had riots at home over the war. We had deep, deep civic tensions between the generations. There was a sense that his leadership and his ability to bridge the divides among races and genders and classes could, in his words, ``bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.'' Those words have resonance for today, where our divisions are so deep. Anyone who spent much time paying attention to Robert Kennedy's life knows that his life was full of contradictions. He was a man of wealth, well educated, and could quote poets like Tennyson and philosophers but who also had an unmatched ability to touch the hearts of, and fight for, the poorest among us. He was a ruthless enforcer of the law who never thought twice about taking on organized crime or foreign dictators but had a heart of tenderness and could spend hours playing with young children. He was a younger brother who stood in the shadow of his older sibling, but he stepped out of that shadow to inspire us and to run for the Presidency of the United States. Bobby was raised in a family that recognized the privileges it had, the advantages it had from its history, its affluence, its connections, but also recognized that with all that they had, they had an extra responsibility--a sizable responsibility--to use those advantages to help others. That, too, is something that is worth all of us thinking about. Whether it was the fight for civil rights, championing the poor and destitute living in Third World conditions in Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta, challenging South Africa's students to stand up against apartheid, or organizing the end of war in Vietnam, his life was dedicated to helping others. When our Nation seemed poised on the brink of tearing itself apart, there was Bobby Kennedy, preaching a message of love, wisdom, and compassion toward one another--a message of reunification, a message of reconciliation. But with all of this, his efforts to take that vision to the Presidency--that vision of wisdom, compassion, and reconciliation--never happened because that opportunity was cut short by an assassin's bullet. That happened just after Bobby Kennedy left Oregon and flew to California, just 2 weeks after I had the opportunity to see him speak in a high school gymnasium and didn't seize the moment to do it. As Bobby Kennedy said in his speech to the City Club of Cleveland, ``Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great,'' but we cannot let that stop us from working together to seek and build a new world. We will never know whether Robert Kennedy would have succeeded in his election to be President or exactly what would have flowed from a second Kennedy administration. We can only speculate on how our Nation's history might have been changed and how different our country might have been with his vision, his inspiration, his effort to tackle the issues of poverty, the issues and challenges of war, the issues and challenges of division in our Nation. One thing we know for sure, the world has been a lesser place these last 50 years because Robert F. Kennedy is not in it, but his thoughts live on. In this institution, Members of the Senate should carry those thoughts forward on these important issues he addressed--of war, poverty, bigotry, discrimination, and ensuring opportunity for all. In his speech to students in Cape Town, South Africa, Robert Kennedy said: ``Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.'' That is advice we need now more than ever--that we need to work to create those ripples that together can create a mighty current to set our Nation back on track. When it comes to war, we now have not one but many--a war in Afghanistan based on false assumptions, a war in Iraq based on false information, wars in Africa, Syria, and Yemen for which the issue of authorization has never been debated on the floor of this Senate, despite the constitutional call to do so. When it comes to prosperity, despite our Nation's enormous growth and wealth over the last four decades, we still have people suffering in Appalachia, in Mississippi, in our inner cities, and in our rural towns. Because income equality has surged over four decades, we have seen that workers' wages are flat or declining while the cost of everything goes up from healthcare to housing to the cost of a child attempting to attend college. While we may have come a long way from the firehoses and dogs turned against peaceful protesters demanding voting rights and civil rights, a long way since Attorney General Kennedy crusaded for civil rights, calling in the National Guard to register the University of Alabama's first African-American students--while we may have come a long way on that trail, we still have a long way to go, as we saw in Charlottesville last year, as we have seen through the last several years of campaigning, an administration in which the temptation too often has come from the Oval Office to denigrate different groups of Americans, whether they be African Americans or Haitian Americans or Latin Americans or women Americans or Americans with disabilities or Muslim Americans. When we hear that, let us remember the vision of America, of equal opportunity, and stand with our brothers and sisters in any given group, arm to arm, hip to hip, and say: Here in America, we believe in the vision that is indivisible, that we cite in our Pledge of Allegiance, that recognizes we come from a tremendous number of backgrounds, but together, with those talents, those differences, we have a nation of greater strength, greater beauty, and greater opportunity for the future. Fifty years after his passing, I think it is of value to all of us to reflect on the lessons of the life of Robert F. Kennedy--his hope, his optimism, his fierce determination to fight the battles to make the world a better place. RFK was famous for regularly quoting the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, saying: Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not. I think it is up to all of us, each and every day, to dream of the things that have never been here in America but could be a greater, more beautiful, stronger, more prosperous, more hopeful America and say ``Why not?''

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to use a prop in my presentation.

Mr. MERKLEY

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