Ben Sasse

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. I thank the Members of this body for reaffirming basic constitutional 101 stuff today. I will report back to Brian Buescher, the nominee for the Federal Bench for the District of Nebraska, that he can ignore those questions he received about whether he would resign his membership in the Knights of Columbus before this body proceeds to vote on his confirmation.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. I thank the Senator from Mississippi for yielding to me. Mr. President, I rise to highlight the work of some truly impressive Nebraska high school students. In September, to celebrate Constitution Day, my office offered a challenge to high schoolers in my State to submit essays describing ``The Relationship Between the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.'' We received contributions from across Nebraska from students in public, private, and home schools. Today, I am pleased to announce the three winners: Ingrid Williamsen from Logan View Senior High School in the First Congressional District; Patrick Collins from the AP U.S. History Class at Mount Michael Benedictine in Elkhorn in the Second Congressional District; and Kate Pipher from Nebraska Christian School in Central City in the Third Congressional District. The lessons these three Nebraska students can teach us are enduringly relevant not only for other high schoolers but in this body today. I would like to read briefly from each of their essays. Ingrid Williamsen wrote: The Constitution was put in place so that the rights and liberties laid out in the Declaration of Independence could be enforced. It puts limits on the government so that the government cannot infringe on the rights of the people. It gives the new government the power to guarantee the liberty of all the people. Both functions are directly tied to the Declaration. In her essay, Kate Pipher wrote: The Founding Fathers adopted a humble posture to both their Creator and a great humanity. They understood they did not possess the power to redefine the rights of man. Their role was to defend, discover, and reveal those rights for the citizens. The Constitution's goal is to protect the inalienable rights of every individual Image-Bearer that the Declaration of Independence lays out. Finally, in his essay, Patrick Collins referenced Abraham Lincoln's ``Fragment on the Constitution'' and declared that the Constitution is ``the silver frame that protects the golden apple of the Declaration of Independence. . . . Thus, the Constitution is indeed a structural embodiment of those famous Truths which we held then and hold now to be self-evident.'' I am grateful to have received so many great essays from students across Nebraska. I thank all of them for their work. It is clear to me that not only their classmates but Washington and this body can learn some Schoolhouse Rock Civics from Nebraska high school kids. I would like to congratulate Ingrid, Kate, and Patrick. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record their full essays.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I rise to say in public today what I have been discussing with many individual Nebraskans over the last 17 days about the ``me too.'' movement, the important ``me too.'' movement, about a nation that is accelerating our descent into tribalism and about our continuing decline here in the Senate as a deliberative body--or as a Nebraska woman put it a little more bluntly to me 2 nights ago: What the hell is happening in my country? One part of the answer to her urgent question is that the Senate is being swallowed whole by 24/7 cable news, and that inclination--that temptation--probably just can't be reconciled with being a great deliberative body. Doing reality TV and wrestling with big, hard, complicated, long-term problems are just fundamentally different things. I am not here tonight to talk about the Supreme Court confirmation votes that we will probably be taking this weekend. I am here to talk about the nasty process we have been navigating over the past 86 days and about the false choices some people are claiming stand before us and about where we in the Senate will go next week, next month, and next year after that vote. I am not here to talk about how fundamentally broken the Senate Judiciary Committee is or how absurd it is to think that the problems in our committee structures are going to be solved by preening and grandstanding Senators looking for sound bites, although both of those things are obviously true. No, I am here to talk tonight about the false choice that is being repeated hour after hour after hour on television that this confirmation vote about one vacant seat on the Supreme Court--in that vote we are somehow going to be making a giant binary choice about the much broader issue of whether we do or don't care about women. That is simply not true. That is not what we are doing this weekend. Fortunately, many Nebraskans the last 2 weekends when I have been home have been much more nuanced than the kind of screaming we hear on battling cable news channels. A Supreme Court confirmation vote isn't a grand choice about whether we love our daughters or whether we trust our sons. That is not the choice before us. This is a consent decision about one person for one seat. Again, I am not here to talk tonight about the particular vote. There is lots of lobbying going on around this body right now. I am not here to talk about that particular vote. But I will say that I have spent more than 150 hours at this point reviewing documents and in hearings and consulting investigators and experts related to this confirmation. Moreover, I will also say that although I have said many complimentary things about Judge Brett Kavanaugh and his distinguished record of 12 years of service on the DC Circuit Court, I will say that I urged the President back in June and early July to make a different choice before he announced this nomination. I urged him to nominate a different individual. I urged the President to nominate a woman. Part of my argument then was that the very important ``me too.'' movement was also very new and that this Senate is not at all well prepared to handle potential allegations of sexual harassment and assault that might have come forward, absent knowing a particular nominee. Let me be clear. There is some academic literature that suggests that very few allegations of sexual assault in the broader culture are fabricated. Or stated conversely, the hefty majority of allegations of sexual assault in our broader culture are probably true. But in politics, in this city, a place filled with politicians who constantly believe that the end justifies the means, that situation might well have been different, I argued in June. So in the interest of cautious prudence, I urged a different path than the one that was chosen. But so what? Once the decision was made, once the President made his nomination, that meant that the work the Senate needed to do was to evaluate the specific evidence and claims about the specific individual who was on the floor before us. But we are being told now that our vote isn't about a specific individual, a specific seat, or specific evidence; rather, we are being told that the choice before us in this confirmation is a much broader choice about whether we do or don't care about women. If you turn on cable news or if you open up social media--and I highly recommend against both of those things in times like this; for the last 2\1/2\ weeks I have stayed clear almost entirely of those two ugly places, and it is been good for my soul. But what you hear if you turn on cable or if you look at social media is this: Pick a side. It is good versus evil. Everything is immediate. Everything is certain. There is no doubt. There is no gray. There are only tribes of Hatfields and McCoys, Israelis and Palestinians--a world of generational hatred without end. There is no listening, no understanding, no empathy, no possibility that perhaps, just maybe in a broken world, violence, pain, and shame are all too real. Perhaps trying to make angels and devils out of your fellow countrymen and women is not the most useful way for us to try to make sense of the world. Everything might not be black- and-white simple. We regularly seem--in this body and in the politicized culture that we are trying to serve on cable news--to lack any awareness of the possibility that maybe, just maybe, constant, instant certainty about political battle lines might not be a good way to go forward. We might be undermining rather than building a better world for our kids. Well, I don't believe this is what most Americans want. I don't believe most Americans are political addicts. I don't believe most Americans trust us in this institution. I don't believe most Americans want our political class to be our leaders right now. I don't believe most Americans want to see each and every question, each and every sphere of life, each and every institution across the land politicized. I think most Americans are a lot more like my wife, who called me last week from Nebraska sobbing after both opening statements on Thursday. What we saw and heard during last Thursday's eight grotesquely public hours were two different families hurting badly--two families. The Ford family and the Kavanaugh family, both of them homes with children, have been the recipients of constant death threats, and for what? For one seat on the Supreme Court? We know this isn't about that when people are threatening death. This is about tribe. One of the two families can't let their girls go out alone now. The other family has been forced to move from their home. In both Northern California and suburban Maryland, there are extra folks being hired in the important work of protection and security detail, a part of our economy that we don't want to grow and that is indisputably growing in our time. This isn't right. We saw people having to grapple with the brokenness and the sinfulness of a fallen world. But they were not just grappling with it. They were grappling with the nastiness East of Eden in realtime on television as a kind of politainment art. No one really thinks that our body politic is going to get any healthier by giving more oxygen to the one-man clown show that is Michael Avenatti. But do you know what? Not being down with the circus is not the same thing as being indifferent to the complexities of the ``me too.'' movement. I believe we have a widespread legacy of sexual assault in this country. I believe we don't have much of a shared sexual ethic right now, and we haven't for quite some time, and I think that horrible stuff has happened and continues to happen. I have wept with the victims of sexual assault, and I believe the advocacy groups' data that between one-fifth and one-third of American women have been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. Given that most women have many other important women in their lives--a mom, and a daughter, sisters, and a couple of close friends--it means the overwhelming majority of American women have been deeply affected, deeply hurt by the tragedy of sexual violence. I have had two dear, dear friends who have been raped, and it is an act from the pit of hell. People, men and women, are created in the image of God--Imago Dei, we say in Christianity. Sexuality is a deep and precious gift. It is an intimacy; it is a oneness that is to be shared and given--never taken. Sex is big, not small, and you don't get to decide it for someone else. The ``me too.'' movement is a complicated movement, but it has been a very good thing. Far too often, many girls and women have been told that they are meat. They have been told this in word and in deed--that they are parts to be consumed rather than God's children to be cherished and respected and partnered with. Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic, one of the most profound writers on sexuality in our time, wrote recently about a horrible experience she endured during her senior year of high school on Long Island. She was the victim of an attempted date rape, and she contemplated suicide in its aftermath. She struggled in school, and she doubted her worth and value. After she struggled against this boy trying to violently force himself on her for many scary minutes, he finally gave up and just decided to restart the car. They drove away from that deserted beach in silence. Listen to her words. She writes: I told no one. In my mind, this was not an example of male aggression used against a girl to extract sex from her. In my mind, this was an example of how undesirable I was. This was proof that I was not the kind of girl you took to parties, or the kind of girl you wanted to get to know. I was the kind of girl you took to a deserted parking lot and tried to make give you sex. Telling someone would not be revealing what he had done; it would be revealing how deserving I was of that kind of treatment. Hear what she is saying here. This precious young girl was hearing in her sexual assault that there must be something wrong with her, that she is the kind of girl only worth being groped. She is not worth being taken to dinner or engaged in conversation as if she has a mind. If that doesn't make you cry, there is something wrong with you. And now-adult Mrs. Flanagan continues: My depression quickly escalated to a point where, if I had been evaluated by a psychiatrist, I would probably have been institutionalized as a danger to myself. I had plans for how I was going to kill myself. I managed to make a few friends, who introduced me to acid, which was no help with the depression. I sat in classes in a blank state except for English. (``To the girl about whom I will someday say, `I knew her when,' '' my English teacher wrote in that yearbook, words that stunned me when I first read them, and that I have never forgotten.) What a blessing to have had that kind of teacher, someone who proclaimed to Flanagan her dignity and her worth, who shouted meaning into her soul. Our culture has been living through an epidemic of sexual assaults, and these attacks on girls' worth, on women's worth, need to be grappled with. They need a reckoning. What we are dealing with here is horrible physically, but it is more than that. What we are dealing with--we are dealing with something that has a spiritual level as well. My view is that the ``me too.'' movement is going to make some mistakes. It is going to have some excesses. But overall, it has been an important and a needed development. A whole lot of brave women have stepped forward, and they have exposed their abusers who have been some of the most powerful men in Hollywood and media and corporate America and elsewhere. These women did this at unthinkable professional and personal risk. They deserve our respect. They also deserve not to have their progress co-opted by the cynics who run this town. Their stories are not fodder for fundraising emails. The ``me too.'' movement doesn't belong to the left or the right; the ``me too.'' movement belongs to the women who have found in it an inspiration to step forward and confront the people who hurt them. I have two daughters, and, God forbid, in the event that something ever happened to one of them, I want them to feel like they could come forward knowing that their accusations will be taken seriously, that they wouldn't be dismissed or vilified for speaking up, that they wouldn't be ashamed or blamed. We all know that the President cannot lead us through this time. We know that he is dispositionally unable to restrain his impulse to divide us. His mockery of Dr. Ford last night in Mississippi was wrong, but it doesn't really surprise anyone. That is who he is. Similarly, it was wrong last week when he said that ``if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities.'' It is wrong when people insinuate that a woman bears blame for her sexual assault because she was drunk. This reinforces the stereotypes that have caused millions of women to bury their experiences of abuse and assault for decades. This kind of repugnant nonsense creates excuses for abusers. Just because a woman drinks or even if she drinks too much does not make her body or her sexuality any less her own, and I don't want anyone telling those poisonous lies to my daughters. I also have a son, and in the event that, God forbid, he is accused of a crime, I hope that he is presumed innocent and that he is permitted to exercise his right to defend himself. I think there are a whole lot of parents out there who think the same thing. I don't just think this; I know this because I have taken the calls from Nebraska moms who say just this. We want this not because of our politics; we want this because we believe that girls and boys, women and men, daughters and sons are created with dignity and worth. This is not about choosing between believing our daughters and protecting our sons. That choice is false. But do you know what my constituents back in Nebraska told me this weekend they think this is now about? They think it is about us. They think it is about all of us in this town being addicted to the circus. They don't think very many of us are interested in truth; they think we are interested in political instrumentality. They think we are interested in exploiting differences and divisions in America because we are addicted to short- term power in a city that isn't worthy of much respect. In closing, let me read one more note from another Nebraska woman this week. This actually came in last Friday. I was angry at yesterday's hearing--angry that something as important as a conversation about the victimization of a woman at the hands of a man became just another move in a game of partisan chess. But I'm also deeply troubled. Troubled that the painful memories shared by Dr. Ford in that hearing. Troubled by the painful memories it evoked in women across our country who have suffered sexual violence. Troubled by the fact that this violence comes at the hands of men. I'm deeply saddened by this violence committed at the hands of men. I just can't comprehend it. I weep for our sons and daughters that it exists in our fallen world. To those victims for whom yesterday's hearing brought fresh pain, I am so sorry that a political circus opened these wounds anew. Sorry that this abomination of humanity was ever experienced at all. She continues: Senator, I want you to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, but I also worry that vote might be heard as a reflection on the validity of other women's experience. I worry that pundits are going to tell women that. I am tired of women's stories just being used for politicians' ends. I'm tired of women being used and discarded. Women's pain isn't supposed to be a political football. She is obviously right. The ``me too.'' movement doesn't belong to politicians. The ``me too.'' movement has elevated our consciousness and awareness of sexual assault and sexual violence against women. We must not give back the important ground gained in this movement by authorizing this media circus to stand in for generations of stories of tragic pain. And no matter how much cable news screams this, it would be an egregious offense against the cause of women to call this one up-our-down vote a proxy for the validation and validity of claims of sexual violence. We can do better than that, and we must do better if we are actually going to care about women and if we are going to serve our constituents in this body. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. SASSE

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

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, like so many here today, I rise to honor John McCain and to sing John McCain's praises. There are many here--most here--who knew him longer than I did. I will admit that when the Presiding Officer and I first got here in 2014, I knew John McCain as somebody from the history books. I knew John McCain as somebody destined for the history books. I knew John McCain as an American hero, but I didn't know John McCain, the man. I didn't know John McCain, the flesh and blood, genuinely hilarious guy, but over the past 48 months, I had the privilege of actually getting to become friends with John McCain. It is sort of weird to say, when you are roughly our age--I am 46 and John McCain was an octogenarian--that he befriended me. I went on many overnight flights with John McCain. I have been to refugee camps with John McCain. I have been to war zones with John McCain. I have been cussed out by John McCain lots of times. He called me a stupid bastard on a regular basis--and he meant it, affectionately. I am convinced he didn't use the term ``stupid bastard'' lightly. He reserved it for those he really cared about. I have laughed and cried with John McCain. I have wrestled policy with John McCain. I got to grill hamburgers and serve them to troops in Afghanistan on the Fourth of July with John McCain. As we in this body praise John McCain today and for the rest of this week, as we rightly should, there will be a lot of people talking about his time in the Hanoi Hilton. John McCain was in prison to fight for our freedom for more than 5 years. He was in solitary confinement for about 3 years. He was tortured for years. If you have ever met any of the POWs who were in the cells around him, almost to a man they credit the fact that they didn't lose their minds during that time to the fact that John McCain kept them sane. He kept them stable. John McCain told me a story one time on one of those overnight flights--and he has told it to many other people around here--about tap code, which is sort of akin to Morse code, but new folks in the Army learn tap code. It is a way to spell out a five-by-five grid: You can put letters together and make words, make sentences, and make paragraphs. John McCain thought it was very important that the men who were in prison with him would learn to tell each other stories--they would tell poems they knew from their youth; they would tap out songs they knew from when they were kids--because if they had a sense of history past, they would have a sense of hope and history future. John McCain kept those people sane. I remember one time hearing him wax on and on about this story, and I was just in awe of how long it must have taken to persuade these men that they were going to teach each other songs and poetry from their youth. I said: How long did it take to do that? He looked at me like I was just a complete idiot, and he said: What did I care? What the hell did it matter to me? We had infinite time, you moron. He didn't say ``you moron,'' but it was clear: How do you not get that time was the one thing that just was completely irrelevant when you are in prison? If something takes too long, that is a virtue, not a liability. One of the things we don't tell here and that we need to tell more is the connection between how he thought about time and why he acted the way he acted as a Senator. If we want to honor John McCain around here, one of the most basic things we should do is recognize that the reason he didn't suffer fools lightly is because he had a concept of time that was--as a man who had spent 5\1/2\ years in prison, he wanted to redeem the time. After he was released, he wanted to make sure he spent all of his time on big things. His impatience, his volcanic temper flowed directly from the fact that he thought life was too short to waste on small stuff, and if you were willing to do small stuff, he was going to get up in your grill. So the fact that John McCain is a hero because of the way he endured torture on our behalf and the fact that John McCain worked really hard on big issues and often ran over people rudely in his interactions with them in the Senate--those things were inextricably linked. If we are really going to honor John McCain, we have to understand that his impatience was a huge part of what he saw as his mission--to serve his fellow Americans. So how do we honor this man? There is a lot of talk around here right now about what we should do to honor John McCain, and it is an important conversation. My understanding is, the two leaders are going to get together and put together a commission to deliberate over the next many weeks or months about the proper way to honor John McCain. I am glad they are doing that. There is a lot of discussion about renaming a building after him or renaming a different committee room after him, and some of those tributes may be the right tributes. I am not meaning to prejudge that right now. Obviously, there is something just hilarious about the idea that a Senate office building may be renamed after John McCain because if you had the ``McCain SOB,'' it is obvious what John McCain would want you to call that McCain SOB building all the time. So there are important things to talk about. Yet I want to urge one bit of caution, which is: We should not think that what John McCain would want us to do in this time and place is in any way reducible to marble because just as America is not the sum of her cities, so, too, the U.S. Senate is not the sum of its buildings. The U.S. Senate is not the places where we meet. As John reminded us in his farewell charge, read posthumously yesterday, America is an idea. America is a cause. America is about liberty. America is about justice. America is about universal human dignity. Even though John could often run over you, when you were having a debate and an argument if you were in his way, probably more than any person I have ever met John actually believed in universal human dignity. The reason he was so big on the global stage is because he stood on a tradition 230 years long, announcing what America believes: There are about 7\1/2\ billion people who are created in God's image with universal dignity, and that applies to everybody everywhere. It isn't America's job to fix every problem everywhere, but it is certainly part of America's mission in the world to proclaim that universal human dignity, and that is what John did. That was a huge part of his calling. Unfortunately, we know all too well that when the public looks at this institution right now, when the public looks to this city, they don't see a place that looks like its beating heart is to proclaim that universal American idea, to proclaim that American sense that everybody is created with infinite worth, and though we know that, we are not doing that much about it. In this institution, most of the time we finger-point, we don't problem-solve, and the public is groaning for us to do better. The last few years should be blinking red lights for all of us who are privileged to serve here for a time. When the American people look at Washington, they rightly think it is shady for Cabinet members and their spouses to be raising money from foreign sources. When the American people look at Washington, they rightly think there is a whole lot of shady going on and that people's taxes and finances ought to be disclosed when they are running for an office of public trust. When the American people look at Washington, they don't see most Members of Congress as stewards of the public trust but rather as hypocrites with taxpayer-funded sexual lawsuit settlements. When the American people look at Washington, they think it is weird that the average Member of Congress has an investment portfolio that grows much faster than the market average, and when people leave jobs in this institution they often head for ``cush'' jobs on K Street rather than moving back home, which is where they said they were going to end up after they ran for office. We have seen multiple indictments across both the legislative and executive branches just in recent weeks in this town. Is it any wonder the American people look at us and wonder if we really care about the crisis of public trust? Is it any wonder that John McCain was impatient with the pace of us tackling big problems in this place? We obviously have a truncated week here, and many of us are headed to Arizona for a funeral in the next few hours so I will not introduce anything now, but I want to say that when we get back, and as this Commission gets kicked off trying to figure out the proper way to honor John McCain, I plan to make a proposal that we should find a way to honor John McCain not just in marble. Maybe that is a step that is important, but if John McCain were here, I submit to you that John McCain wouldn't be all that concerned about what names and placards and signs we put up on buildings and meeting rooms. I think we should find a way to honor John McCain in a way that John McCain would have seen fit, and that is we ought to pass a piece of legislation that we wouldn't have passed absent this moment. We ought to come together, in a bipartisan way, and we ought to do something that makes both political parties really uncomfortable. That was one of the things John McCain was great at. This man is gone and we are surely poorer for it, but we can do something big that is in line with the spirit of how he wanted to disrupt this place. If we wanted to make both parties uncomfortable--and John was a guy who loved to point both barrels at both parties--I think we can find a way to do that in a way the American people will applaud, and I think that might be the right way to honor John McCain. His willingness to take on everybody and all the sacred cows in this town was why a lot of people hated him, but it is why a lot more people loved him. I think, if we are going to honor his spirit, we ought to find a way to do something that is big and disruptive and uncomfortable for Washington, DC.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak to the issue of the leadership of the Department of Justice. It has been a strange couple of hours around this building with lots of talk about firing the Attorney General. I would just like to say in public what I have been saying to my colleagues in a message that I just communicated to the President of the United States; that is, that it would be a very, very, very bad idea to fire the Attorney General because he is not executing his job as a political hack. That is not the job of the Attorney General. The Attorney General's job is to be faithful to the Constitution and to the rule of law. Jeff Sessions just had to issue a statement about 2 hours ago that I would like to read. The Attorney General says: While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations. I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action. However, no nation has a more talented, more dedicated group of law enforcement investigators and prosecutors than the United States. I am proud to serve with them and proud of the work we have done in successfully advancing the rule of law. That is his job. The Attorney General is a man who, when he served in this body, would have policy disputes with probably all 99 of us or 100 of us now, but the 99 people he served alongside. There are a bunch of issues where I agree with Jeff Sessions on policy, and there are some issues where I disagree with Jeff Sessions on policy. The Democrats disagree with Jeff Sessions on lots of policy, but I think everybody in this body knows that Jeff Sessions has been executing his job in a way faithful to his oath of office, to the Constitution, and to trying to defend the rule of law. I think Jeff Sessions' statement today that the U.S. Department of Justice is filled with honorable, dispassionate, career prosecutors who execute their job in ways that the American people should be proud of is indisputably true. What he said is something that basically everybody in this body knows and agrees with. Yet, bizarrely, there are people in this body now talking like the Attorney General will be fired, should be fired. I am not sure how to interpret the comments of the last couple of hours. I guess I would just like to say, as a member of the Judiciary Committee and as a Member of this body, that I find it really difficult to envision any circumstance where I would vote to confirm a successor to Jeff Sessions if he is fired because he is executing his job rather than choosing to act as a partisan hack. I think everybody in this body knows that Jeff Sessions is doing his job honorably, and the Attorney General of the United States should not be fired for acting honorably and for being faithful to the rule of law. I yield the floor.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about what happened in Helsinki today. Let's not mince words. Today was a terrible day for the American brand, for the American people, and for all of our allies. We did not negotiate from a position of strength. We acted from a position of weakness. As a result, one of the world's worst despots walked away today from Helsinki with a win. Vladmir Putin is walking away from Helsinki with an undeserved legitimacy. The United States took a loss today when we backed away from our longstanding commitment to principled American leadership and, frankly, basic reality. Today the press asked the President of the United States whom he believed on the subject of Russia's information operation in the United States in 2016. Did he believe in the men and women of the U.S. intelligence community or did he believe in Vladimir Putin, a member of the Russian intelligence community, a thug turned Russian despot? The choice here was between the people who are risking their lives on behalf of our freedom and people who go around the world taking people's lives to limit freedom. The President of the United States-- how did he answer? He answered that he didn't see ``any reason'' why Putin would have interfered in the U.S. election. Make no mistake. Putin has a reason. The reason is clear to all those who have been watching growing Russian authoritarianism in recent years. Putin wants to weaken the U.S. Government. Putin wants to make the American people believe that our system of government isn't any different than his ``thugocracy.'' Putin wants to destroy NATO, which isn't just an alliance. It is, arguably, the most important military alliance in two millennia. Putin wants to undermine confidence in self-government, not only in this country but around the world. That is why Putin, a Soviet-style dictator who thinks a lot more about American elections than he ever thinks about his sham elections, attacked us in 2016. It is why he is planning to attack us this fall in 2018. It is why there are ongoing information operations against the United States and against our public at present, as everyone who goes into a SCIF and reads their intelligence briefing knows. It is why Putin is planning to attack the U.S. 2020 election already. That is why the men and women of the U.S. intelligence community unanimously and without any regard to party understand that Putin waged an information operation against the United States in 2016. That is why Dan Coats, an esteemed former Member of this body, went to the press today--not 6 months ago--and reaffirmed: ``Our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy'' remain the opinion of the U.S. intelligence community. This isn't a question of Republican versus Democrats. This is a question of patriotism versus deciding that you want to be on the side of sowing discord and doubt in America. We shouldn't sugarcoat this. Vladimir Putin is a despot, and he is propped up by a band of oligarchs every bit as corrupt as he is. Putin fakes democracy while preventing free and fair elections. Putin funnels massive amounts of Russian wealth from himself to himself and his cronies and keeps an iron grip on the press. These matters are not matters of dispute. It is not ``on the one hand'' or ``the other hand'' or what some people are saying. The Russian people know who Vladimir Putin is. You can ask the leaders of political opposition in that country who tried to get a free and fair election. You can ask the human rights activists or the international observers who try to speak up against what he has done or show up in my office to give firsthand accounts in certain situations in which Putin has intervened. You can ask the journalists who tried to expose corruption in the country. Do you know who these men and women often end up being? They are the men and women who just randomly, disproportionately happen to fall out of fifth story windows of office buildings in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the people who just randomly happen to show up in one-car accidents that either are never investigated or, when they are investigated, unfortunately, there weren't witnesses and there are never prosecutions. Vladimir Putin is working overtime to make the Soviet Union great again. Over the past decade, he has carried out an aggressive, often brutal expansionist campaign. In 2008, he invaded next-door Georgia. In 2014, he invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. Putin has provided military support to the Assad regime in Syria. Russian troops are responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. Under the guise of attacking the Islamic State, Russia has targeted hospitals and schools and many other civilian locations. Putin is currently flexing his muscle across Europe, although his preference there is always for more subtle means than tanks and Kalashnikovs, if he can get away with it. One, he has more deniability and, two, it is cheaper. In 2007, Estonia was hit with a wave of cyber attacks originating in Russia--the beginning of a campaign of cyber warfare that has become one of Mr. Putin's primary tools. Not only in the Baltics and Ukraine but in Germany and France, as recently as last year, Russian hackers attempted to interfere with elections, disrupt parliamentary proceedings, and shut down media operations. This is in addition to trying to put his thumb on the scale of pro-Putin parties across Europe, including by spreading misinformation through influential Russian-backed and Russian-originating social media accounts. These questions are not actually gray--gray space war--but any Member of this body who does their homework, any Member of the House down the hall who does their homework, and lots of the good and well-meaning people who serve around the President who do their homework know these things to be true. These questions are not in dispute. Putin's most daring performance to date, though, was deciding to take on the most powerful country in the world with an influence operation inside the United States. National political committees in 2016 saw their computer networks breached and their data stolen. Vladimir Putin isn't obsessed with the ups and downs of political life here in the United States. He isn't an agent of one party or the other--one candidate or the other. Vladimir Putin is an agent of chaos, and his objective is to undermine trust. His objective is to make Americans doubt ourselves and doubt whether U.S. leadership over the last 75 years has been a good or a bad thing and to doubt whether we should keep our word to our allies. Vladimir Putin's objective is to make us think there is no difference between countries on the global stage that believe in human rights, that believe in free press, free religion, free assembly, and free speech versus those who don't. Vladimir Putin's goal is to breach a moral equivalency that allows his thugocracy to be no less ugly than what happens in our country, where people who often disagree decide to argue by means of reason and persuasion, not by violence. His goals aren't that hard to figure out. His enemy is trust and good faith. Vladimir Putin is trying to create mistrust in this country, and today the President of the United States decided to let Vladimir Putin off the hook and, in so doing, he creates an incentive for Putin to ratchet up his campaigns of misinformation. This should be a time for all Americans to stand together against what Putin is doing. It is a fundamental part of the President's job to articulate basic truths. While we are being clear about who Vladimir Putin is, we should also be clear about who we, the American people, are. We are a nation that believes in human dignity. We believe this isn't just true of 320 million Americans; it is true of 7.5 billion people across this globe. We believe in free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right of protest--not because government gives us those rights but because God created us with dignity. Government is not the author or source of people's rights. Governments are just tools to secure the rights that people have by virtue of having been created with dignity. In other words, we believe the very stuff that terrifies Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin believes only that might makes right. Americans don't believe that. We never have, and may we never devolve to believing only that. We are dedicated to the thesis that the dignity of every person is worth protecting. It is not the job of the U.S. Government to be the policemen of every Nation on Earth, but it is most clearly part of the job of the United States to articulate, on the global stage, things that are true of everyone, everywhere. We are dedicated to the idea that humans should flourish. Vladimir Putin is dedicated to the opposite. He crushes men, women, and children underfoot for the purposes of keeping his hold on power. Americans do not stand with Vladimir Putin. Americans stand with the Russian champions of liberty and of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right of protest against tyrants like Vladimir Putin. We believe in peace through strength, and we believe in basic moral clarity. That is why, in the wake of the world's two most destructive wars, Americans created an international order. It is an American-led international order. The international order embodies America's fundamental values, and we push back against the drift to Old World authoritarianism in all of its forms--the very things Vladimir Putin lusts after. This world isn't made for the elites, but it is made for American interests to be articulated because we are the de facto leader of the free world. That is why we have always negotiated from a position of strength. Sadly, today, we negotiated from a position of weakness. In previous years, many Americans, myself included, have spoken out against the crazy idea that America could somehow ``lead from behind.'' Today, America decided to simply give in. As I came to the floor tonight, the President tweeted that ``in order to build a brighter future, we cannot exclusively focus on the past.'' Fair enough, but let's talk about that future. What do we want from it and at what cost? Is the cost of the future President Trump wants the sacrificing of American moral leadership on the global stage? Is it walking away from the idea that 7.5 billion people have been created with dignity? Is it walking away from the idea that America fundamentally announces to the world that we believe everybody has the rights of free speech, press, religion, assembly, and protest not because a government might decide to condescend and grant you this right? The government's job is to serve the people by preserving these rights which come from nature and nature's God. The problem today is not the United States. The problem today is not the Russian people. The problem that needed to be named today was Vladimir Putin. Instead, our President decided to advance a faith moral equivalency that plays right into the hands of Vladimir Putin's bloody hands. Everyone in this body should be disgusted by what happened in Helsinki today. I yield the floor.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, one of the most consequential duties of the Senate is the consideration of a Supreme Court nominee. This is the Congress's opportunity to shape the direction of the Federal courts and to defend a judiciary that is focused on laws, not policy. For those of us who have been called to this role for a limited time, this work is important. It will outlast us by decades. None of us should take this duty lightly. With the appointment of Justice Gorsuch last year and now a record 22 judges to the courts of appeals, the past 18 months have been among the most consequential for the judiciary in the history of the Nation--and that was before Justice Kennedy's retirement. As significant as these confirmations have been for the last year and a half in the judiciary, the current Supreme Court vacancy is arguably the most important task before the Senate this year. This vacancy is a remarkable opportunity to affirm the role of a judge under our constitutional system of republican self-government. Fundamentally, this shouldn't be an exercise in policymaking, as vital and important as policymaking can be. Making law is not the job of the courts in any way, shape, or form. Don't get me wrong. Setting goals and making policy can be very important, but it is done in the open, and it starts at home. Americans answer our biggest questions outside of government with our friends and neighbors, with our communities of worship, in our rotary clubs, and in our small businesses with entrepreneurship and all sorts of volunteerism in America. With regard to government, policymaking choices are made by the American people through their representatives whom they elect and can hire and fire. To put it bluntly, Members of the Senate and Members of the House of Representatives at the other end of this building can be fired. In fact, 435 of the 535 people we work with in the Congress are always within 23 months and 29 days of being sent back home by the ``we the people'' who are actually in charge of policymaking in America. But the Court is different. Nobody back home can fire a Supreme Court Justice. They have lifetime tenure. We should reflect more often on why our Founders decided to give members of the judiciary lifetime tenure. That is why we don't want those judges with their lifetime tenure to be writing laws or making policy. If a judge wants to make policy, he or she should take off the black robe of impartiality and run for office. It is a legitimate thing to do. All of us in this body have done it. We think it is a way to love our neighbor and serve our country, but in our system of ``we the people,'' the voters decide who gets to make policy. Judges have black robes, and they have lifetime tenure. They are not policymakers. Regrettably, as our ever-fraying sense of common identity in America is falling apart in the eyes of many of our citizens, we are warping the role of the Court and of judges, reducing the role of the Court from the plain and ever-compelling words of Marbury v. Madison ``to say what the law is,'' not what some judge wishes it were; we are, instead, seeing the judiciary warped into a profane occupation of pronouncing policy preferences but without any mechanism of meaningful accountability by which the people could still be in charge. We should not let that stand. We should not want to see that perpetual warping of the judiciary into a place of being policymakers--yet policymakers without accountability. We need a recovery of basic civics in the country about what the role of a judge is and what the purposes of the courts are. We should not let this confirmation process turn into a battle for our own policy preferences that just breaks down our constitutional architecture--the constitutional architecture on which an American free society depends. Sadly, that is apparently what many people in the Resistance aim to do. They aim to bork Judge Kavanaugh's nomination by any means necessary. We are less than 24 hours into this, and folks are already declaring that if you can't see that Brett Kavanaugh is a cross between Lex Luthor and Darth Vader, then you apparently aren't paying enough attention. The American people are smarter than that. That kind of charge is silly, and the American people don't want judges who think of themselves as superlegislators. Unfortunately, far-left super PACs are shouting that we have reached the apocalypse. I was outside last night, right at the edge of the Supreme Court steps. In addition to the signs that were being held up, saying that Brett Kavanaugh was hastening the end of days, there were other signs on the ground, which had been printed with the names of other potential nominees to the Court, about how they were the ones who would bring about the end of days. This isn't true. We need less WWE ``Thunderdome'' and a lot more ``Schoolhouse Rock.'' The confirmation process of the Supreme Court nominee should be an occasion to do basic civics with our kids, and it shouldn't be dividing Republicans and Democrats about policy preferences. It should be an occasion for Americans to come together and talk again about why judges wear black robes and why they have lifetime tenure. This should be a test of the character, competence, and constitutional commitments of someone who has been nominated to the judiciary because in the American system, judges have a peculiar role--no more and no less than what article III of the Constitution gives them. In Judge Kavanaugh, we have a compelling guy. He is a standout dad, and even his most ardent critic will acknowledge that he is one of the most thoughtful and influential judges on the courts of appeals across the Nation today. He has a ton of impressive opinions to his name, especially on the subjects of separation of powers and administrative law, which are now dominating the docket not only of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, where he currently sits, but also at the Supreme Court to which he has been nominated. Judge Kavanaugh was put on the circuit court at age 41--12 years ago--a remarkably young man to be put on such a prestigious court. In his 12 years on the court, he has authored more than 300 opinions. I think the current count is that more than 100 of his opinions have been cited by more than 200 of his peers on other courts across the country. He is truly a judge's judge. Last night, I heard from people on both the right and left ends of the policy spectrum, but legal experts said to me quotes that were remarkably eerie in their echo: Brett Kavanaugh is always the smartest person in every room he is in, yet when you are in the room, you would never know that he knows it because of his humble manner and his winsome ways. If my colleagues want to pursue these confirmation hearings as mere naked partisanship, they should actually resign their seats and try to get cable news jobs. But if we want to take our jobs seriously, if we want to have an honest debate, then we should be taking seriously our charge to uphold the three branches of government, their separate responsibilities, and the ways they check and balance one another. With those more than 300 opinions, we have a lot of homework to do. I am looking forward to beginning to dive further into Judge Kavanaugh's opinions over the course of the last 12 years. I am pretty confident that what we are going to find is a guy who has lots of deference and respect for the limited job that a judge is called to fulfill. I hope my colleagues in this Chamber will join me in diving into those opinions, sort of foreswearing the ``Thunderdome'' silliness that many people outside are urging us to turn the confirmation process into. Thank you.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I rise to draw attention to one particularly important element of the National Defense Authorization Act, which sits before this body. First, it is worth noting that--despite the bizarre dysfunction of the last couple of days around here--the NDAA is usually a time each year when the Senate looks like an actual deliberative body. We look like an actual legislature. Most of the typical bickering and made-for-TV sound bites get set aside this week or two every year as we focus on the first purpose of the Federal Government, which is to provide for the common defense. The NDAA reveals our shared commitment to the men and women in uniform who serve our country so well. This legislation aims to scrutinize and annually reprioritize among the many important tasks that are going on in the Pentagon and in the broader Department of Defense. If we are going to call on the men and women in the armed services who defend our freedoms to stand ready to defend us and to go into battle when necessary, we must equip them with the right tools to be able to get their job done. That is what this legislation is about each year, but it is not enough to simply be about defending against traditional enemies and traditional threats. We also need to use this annual occasion to pause and deeply look at new and emerging threats we face. When you ask national security and intelligence experts in private and in public what keeps them up at night, as I do multiple times every week--I ask this question of people in the SCIF. You find something strange in this city. You have an agreement. Public and private sector experts, legislative and executive branch folks, career folks, political folks, whether Republican or Democratic, have widespread agreement that the long-term domain challenge we face is that America is woefully unprepared for the age of cyber war. Thirty years ago, when the digital age was still in its infancy and the first computer viruses and bugs were created, the United States did not have a cyber doctrine to defend our interests. That was understandable in 1986 because these were new threats. It doesn't make any sense in 2018, and yet it is still true. We don't really have any coherent doctrine to defend our interests. This is inexcusable. We are, today, overwhelmingly the most advanced digital economy and digital society in the world. Thus, we are, almost inevitably, the No. 1 target globally for cyber crime, but our adversaries are attacking us not merely as targets of opportunity, they are also attacking us because they sense our passivity. State and nonstate actors alike are becoming regularly more brazen. Year over year, from 2012 to 2013, to 2014, to 2015, and to the present, we see this brazen action coming from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and lots of jihadi nonstate actors. Yet we still do not have a cyber doctrine to guide our planning process, we don't have a cyber doctrine to guide our actions, and we are unprepared for the warfare of 2020, 2025, and 2030. How can this be? How can we lack a strategic plan, not merely to respond to the attacks against U.S. public and private sector networks but also to go a step further and deter them in real time? Why do we lack this plan? Since joining this body in January of 2015, alongside the Presiding Officer, I have pushed for a strategic plan that clearly articulates how we will defend ourselves against the new threats in this cyber space. Unfortunately, this call has fallen on deaf ears in both the legislature and the executive branch, both Democratic and Republican administrations. There is far too little urgency. When you speak with generals, when you speak with CIA station chiefs around the world, nobody disputes this. Everyone knows we are unprepared, and we are underinvested in this domain. Yet no one is really in charge. Fortunately, we are taking a major step in this NDAA to address this deficit in our war planning. While no one piece of legislation and no single proposal can possibly address all of our cyber deficits, there is, nonetheless, some very good news in this NDAA for both the public as a whole and those of us who are losing sleep about our cyber underpreparedness. The legislation we are debating today, and will vote on in some form tomorrow, includes a proposal to bring American national security into the 21st century by establishing a Cyberspace Solarium Commission. This Commission is modeled after President Dwight Eisenhower's 1953 Project Solarium. At that time, as the Soviet Union was on the cusp of achieving a devastating thermonuclear weapon, Ike recognized that our Nation needed a clear strategy. We needed to be able to defend ourselves and our allies against the expanding Soviet threat. This is where both the historian and the strategist in me gets excited. Never one to lack a plan, Eisenhower sequestered three different teams of experts at the National War College for 6 weeks. He tasked them with articulating a menu of large-scale, strategic frameworks for the age of nuclear confrontation. The result of Ike's competitive effort was a new national security directive, NSC 162/2, that charted a course that would successfully guide U.S. policy and bureaucratic development over many decades of the Cold War. We desperately need similar strategic clarity today. The threats to American security are actually even more dynamic and unpredictable than in those early years of the Cold War. Then there were giant technological and scale barriers to becoming a nuclear power; whereas, today, launching a cyber attack that has global reach requires only some coding capability, a laptop, and an internet connection. This new group, the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, will be made up of 13 members, putting cyber and national security experts, along with many Silicon Valley types, in the same room to debate, to think through, and to propose a comprehensive path forward to guide our cyber policy. One of the reasons Ike's Solarium Commission worked so well was because there was urgency and focus. Under this Cyberspace Solarium Commission, there will be a deadline for the delivery of a comprehensive plan with blue sky freedom to reenvision all current bureaucracies and organizations across our cyber plan and response units within 1 year. By September 1, 2019, this Commission would be delivering to both the President's Cabinet and to the defense and intelligence committees of the Congress a comprehensive plan to guide cyber security policymaking going forward. We cannot continue to stand idly by waiting for a massive cyber attack to occur and then figure out how we will use that as a catalyst to begin future planning. We should be planning and prioritizing before the crisis. For 30 years, we haven't yet developed or committed to a serious strategy. Now is the time to act, and this NDAA represents one of the best innovations we have had; that we can set up this national Cyberspace Solarium Commission to report back, within 1 year, a comprehensive plan. Thank you.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I yield back all time.

Mr. SASSE. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. SASSE

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

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I have 7 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: committee on armed services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 22, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing. committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 22, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight of HUD.'' committee on energy and natural resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 22, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Theodore J. Garrish, of Maryland, to be an Assistant Secretary (International Affairs), and James Edward Campos, of Nevada, to be Director of the Office of Minority Economic Impact, both of the Department of Energy, and James Reilly, of Colorado, to be Director of the United States Geological Survey, Department of the Interior; to be immediately followed by a hearing to examine S. 2539, to amend the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015, to reauthorize certain projects to increase Colorado River System water, S. 2560, to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to establish a program to facilitate the transfer to non-Federal ownership of appropriate reclamation projects or facilities, and S. 2563, to improve the water supply and drought resilience of the United States. committee on energy and natural resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 22, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``2018 Western Water Supply Outlook.'' committee on finance The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 22, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled, ``The President's 2018 Trade Policy Agenda.'' committee on the judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 22, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: John B. Nalbandian, of Kentucky, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit, Kari A. Dooley, to be United States District Judge for the District of Connecticut, Dominic W. Lanza, to be United States District Judge for the District of Arizona, Jill Aiko Otake, to be United States District Judge for the District of Hawaii, and Thomas T. Cullen, to be United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, Robert K. Hur, to be United States Attorney for the District of Maryland, and David C. Joseph, to )e United States Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, all of the Department of Justice. Select Committee on Intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 22, 2018, at 2 p.m. to conduct a closed hearing.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, yesterday at the White House, two terrible things happened, and it shouldn't be difficult to condemn both of these things at once. First, at the podium in the White House press room, it was suggested that the U.S. Government is unsure if Putin's reelection was perhaps legitimate, free, and fair or that perhaps the United States is morally indifferent to the question of whether Putin's reelection was fair, free, and legitimate. It was not fair or free or legitimate, and it matters. The second horrible thing that happened yesterday is that the President's confidential briefing materials for his call with Vladimir Putin were anonymously leaked to the public. That should not happen. The President's congratulatory call was terribly ill-advised, but that doesn't change the fact that the leaking of the confidential briefing materials for his call was also wrong. It shouldn't be difficult to say both of these things. They are both true. So we should be able to say both of them at once. Our people are very divided right now. They are unclear about who we are and how we conceive of ourselves on the global stage. Our tribalism has run amok. If you listen to some of our cable news today--I haven't--I suspect that what you would find is that on certain networks there is only discussion of the leaking and no discussion of what a terrible abandonment of American foreign policy yesterday's failure to condemn Putin's phony sham reelection was. And on the other networks, I imagine you are going to get exactly the opposite story, where the only thing that matters is how stupid this call was to Vladimir Putin, and nothing about the leaks. That isn't helpful for building a nation of 320 million people who know what we stand for together. Here is what is true. A President's staff shouldn't leak. In cases of principle, you may need to resign. So resign. Do the right and honorable thing if you believe your conscience is compelled to do so, and resign your position and go out and publicly make a case for why a certain policy is failing. But that is a different thing than anonymously leaking the information that a President has--not just this President, but that any President has--to make his or her decisions, to deliberate with their staff, to plot their actions. Leaks like this weaken us both at home, in terms of public trust in our institutions and our public servants, and they weaken us abroad, in terms of whether or not we have any coherence to who we are as a people and how we make our decisions. Now, as to this decision to fail to condemn Putin's sham reelection, it is very foolhardy. Vladimir Putin is not a friend. Vladimir Putin is a despot. The President of the United States was wrong to congratulate him, and the White House Press Secretary was wrong to duck a simple question about whether or not Putin's reelection was free and fair. It was not. The American people know that, the Russian people know that, and the world knows that. Yesterday, when the White House refused to speak directly and clearly about this matter, we were weakened as a nation, and a tyrant was strengthened. Around the world, there are two great symbols of America from this city. The first is the dome of the Capitol, in which we stand. This building testifies to the strength of our self-government and to our belief in inherent human dignity, but the other symbol that comes from this city that is known around the world is the podium in the White House press room. Tucked into a small room and surrounded by members of a free press, it is simply the free world's biggest megaphone. It symbolizes Americans commitment to the universal dignity not just of 320 million people--the citizens of this country--but to 7.6 billion men, women, and children across the globe. Speaking clearly about tyrants is one of the things that we do. It is not seeking monsters to destroy. For more than 200 years, the American people have clearly understood this. For more than 200 years, administrations of both parties have clearly understood this. At times in the past, previous administrations have made mistakes. They have split hairs. They have smoothed edges. They have dodged. They have hedged. But what happened yesterday at the podium at the White House--the dodge on Putin--broke with the basic American moral tradition. It broke faith with our core values, and it broke trust with freedom seekers across the globe. This very day there are dissidents all over the globe struggling against totalitarian regimes in darkness. To them, America has always said and America still says: We see you. We stand with you. We may make long and deliberate decisions about how we engage in the world and about what particular commitments are prudent to exercise at different times with different allies, but we have always spoken unequivocally about the universal dignity of 7.6 billion people. To those who struggle, we have always said: We see you, and we stand with you. These simple truths matter. The moral responsibilities of the Office of the Presidency matter. When we don't affirm these basic truths, it is a failure to who we are, and it is a failure to do what we do. It is a betrayal not just to the millions of people who were denied free and fair elections in Russia this week, but it is a failure to people all across the globe who are struggling in darkness against tyrants. Each and every Member of this Senate--all 100 of us--was elected in the kind of free and fair election that Vladimir Putin fears--the kind of election that he would not win. Vladimir Putin is a coward. Vladimir Putin is a despot. Just this month, Vladimir Putin tried to assassinate a political dissident and his daughter on NATO soil in the UK. Given that we have taken an oath in this body, after our free and fair elections, to uphold and defend the Constitution--given that--we ought not, in this body, find it difficult to say basic true things, like that we condemn leaks by the President's staff against him. We also condemn Vladimir Putin's sham election. We condemn a Russian despot who aims to make Soviet tyranny great again. I yield back.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Madam President, as we consider this legislation to protect 20-week-old babies who feel pain, I want to ask my friends in this body to put aside whip counts and score cards, politics and reelection, and let's talk today simply about beauty and about science. We love beauty. Beauty calls us. Beauty inspires us. Beauty captivates us. It is part of what makes us human. It is not surprising that there is almost nothing more universal on this Earth, almost nothing more beautiful, than our natural impulse to care for a little baby. We all start in the same place--vulnerable and dependent in every way. We all ``ooh'' and ``aah'' over sonogram pictures of our children, our grandchildren, our nieces, our nephews, even sonogram pictures from a stranger on a bus or a plane. We all ``ooh'' and ``aah'' in the same way. When we look at those pictures, we love. We love. You don't have to be taught this. You don't have to be conditioned to love. You don't have to be conditioned to know that we should help the vulnerable. This isn't because of economics. This isn't because of politics. We love because they are babies. You don't need anyone to explain this to you. Every one of us has experienced this when we have seen the sonogram pictures. We should note that this love is not just a feeling; it is also built on and backed up by facts. As we consider whether these unborn babies--having been carried by their mamas for almost 5 months--deserve legal protection, whether they deserve our protection, we should think, too, about the science and what is becoming clearer year by year and month by month. I want to associate myself with the comments of the Senator from Montana who preceded me. A huge part of why the millennials are becoming more pro-life than the two generations older than they are is because they are seeing these sonogram images, and it is changing them year by year and month by month. I have been on the floor for about 45 minutes today, and I have heard many claims about polling and facts that just aren't true. I am not here to argue this case and argue how we should vote on this legislation because of polls; I am here because we should all love babies. That is why we should be doing this. But just at the level of polling, there have been claims on the floor today that are absolutely not true. Younger people are becoming more pro-life, as the Senator from Montana said, year over year right now, and it is because of the prevalence and the pervasiveness of sonogram technology. This movement, the pro-life movement, is ascendant, and it is because people are grappling with science, grappling with images, and grappling with the reality of that intrinsic feeling we have to love. We can and we should appeal to ethics. We can and we should discuss human dignity. We should reaffirm intrinsic value. For now, for this conversation today, we can limit ourselves to just scientific facts. As we consider those facts, I want to respectfully ask my colleagues in this Chamber today, where will we draw the line? No one seriously disputes that the little girl in that image is alive. No one seriously disputes that that little girl is a human being--no one. There is no one in this Chamber and there is no one outside this Chamber who has ever looked at that sonogram image who will come to the floor and say: Do you know the debate I want to have? I want to say that baby is not alive and she is not a human. Somebody who is going to vote no on the legislation today should come to the floor and make that case, say that is not a life and that is not a human, because it is not true, and no one believes it. The science is clear. We all know and understand that little baby in that sonogram image is a unique and separate being. We know she has unique DNA from her mother, and she has DNA that is unique from her father. The baby apps are now telling new moms and dads-to-be when that baby is the size of a sesame seed, then a blueberry, and then an apple. With the help of the sonograms, we are now catching pictures of her sucking her thumb, flexing her arms and legs, yawning, stretching, making faces. Here is what is really new the last couple of years: We are catching pictures and images of her responding to voices--familiar voices of other human beings that she is already in community with, people who are called to love her. As early as 20 weeks postfertilization, which is about halfway through the pregnancy, scientists and our doctors now tell us that this unborn baby can feel pain. In fact, it has become routine procedure of late for us to give unborn and premature infants anesthesia for their fetal surgeries. Why? This is new. We didn't used to do this. Why do we do it? It is because we have new scientific evidence that they feel pain. It turns out that babies who are 20 weeks along in gestation are pain-capable inside mom's uterus. As Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand testified before the Congress, ``The human fetus possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks gestation, if not earlier, and the pain perceived by the fetus is possibly more intense than that perceived by term newborns.'' Not only can she feel pain, not only do the images show us that she recoils from being poked or prodded, advances in modern medicine are now helping babies who are born at 22 weeks, at 21 weeks, and at 20 weeks postfertilization survive outside the womb. The pain that those babies feel outside the womb is supporting the evidence that those babies also feel pain inside the womb, which leads me to ask my friends: Have our hearts grown cold to truth? Have we become indifferent to questioning our previously held convictions? Are we indifferent to what the science is clearly showing us? This body, captive to abortion zealot-activists, might be ignoring the sonograms. That might be what is happening in this body today, but the American people are actually listening to the science and the sonograms. Contrary to those bizarre claims that were made on the floor a couple of times over the last hour, a hefty majority--it is not close--of Americans support this legislation, including a supermajority of women, including most young people, including most Independents, and now ticking up just shy of half of all Democrats. This should not be a partisan issue, and in the future, it will not be because more and more people are looking at these images. It is not going to be a partisan issue; it is going to be a bipartisan issue. But you have to tell the truth--that those pictures are pictures of babies, and they are alive, and they deserve our protection. But have our hearts in this body grown cold to the truth? We should also not forget the mothers because the pro-life message is about being both pro-baby and pro-mother. Late-term abortions are actually not safe, even for the mother. Women seeking abortion after 20 weeks are 35 times more likely to die from an abortion than when done in the first trimester--35 times more likely. The United States is one of only seven countries on Earth that allow elective abortion after 20 weeks, and we are actually tied with only three other countries as having the most permissive abortion regime on Earth. Do you know who our peers are? North Korea and China. That is who our peers are. If our rhetoric about human rights should mean anything, it should mean we don't want to be on a ``human rights worst'' list with North Korea and China. That is where we are today. There are many reasonable people who are going to argue against this legislation. They are reasonable in other ways in life, and they want to make an argument about the very complicated issues about abortion in the first trimester. There are many reasonable people who can have a reasonable debate about that. But when you listen to the arguments being made today, they are not actually grappling with today's legislation; they are talking about abortion in general. But nobody is telling us why we are tied with only China and North Korea as having the most permissive abortion regime on Earth. My friends, beauty and compassion can stir our hearts, and science and facts should still confirm the truth. This legislation--the actual legislation we are voting on today--is pro-baby, it is pro-mom, and it is pro-science. These little babies, who are capable of feeling pain, deserve legal protection. They deserve our protection. I invite--I beg my colleagues to join in that conviction and to vote yes on this legislation today.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I say thank you very much to the Senator from Oklahoma and thanks to the Senator from Montana for spelling me. I have been sitting in the Presiding chair during this colloquy, so I have not been on the ground floor able to participate, but I would like to associate myself with this colloquy and with the leadership of the Senators from Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa, and Montana. I, too, know Micah, and it is an amazing thing. I wish all 100 Senators had a chance to know Micah and his family. I also want to associate myself with the comments of the Senator from Oklahoma, as he began this, that we are one of only four countries in the world that allow elective abortion at any time for any reason. Our peers in this are North Korea, China, and Vietnam, and it is a genuine shame. The American people need to understand that, and this body needs to grapple with that reality. As the Senator from Missouri said, it is special to be a part of the rally and march over the next 36 hours because the college kids who are coming here understand this far better than the general public. There is a movement in this country to want to respect and celebrate life, and good things are happening generationally with this cause. I want to associate myself with this colloquy and thank the Senator from Montana for spelling me from the chair. Thank you.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I thank my senior Senator for leading us in this resolution. Nebraska volleyball continues to dominate. If there is any debate about the best volleyball State in the Union, there should be no more. Nebraska has proved, yet again, we have the best team, the best coaching staff, and indisputably the best fans in the country. Two years ago, this team won the national championship at home in Omaha, setting records with the crowds that attended the games there, and last week in Kansas City, we set another alltime record with the most watched championship volleyball game ever at 18,516 fans, including my 6-year old who stayed awake at nearly 11 p.m. as we were finishing, and he was deciding to watch it upside down, hanging over the seats from the upper decks at the arena in Kansas City. So I proudly join the senior Senator and Husker nation in congratulating these young women, saying ``Go Big Red'' on behalf of all 1.9 million Nebraskans. Just two stats of note. First, in the earlier round at the final four, Nebraska beat Penn State. Those are the two winningest teams in the history of volleyball. Nebraska has the most wins at 1,308. Penn State has the greatest winning percentage. We have now won five championships in 22 years, as well as three runner-up, second-place finishes in the last 30 years. Coach Cook, as Senator Fischer mentioned, has won four championships at Nebraska over the last 17 years. The alltime record for the history of volleyball is five national championships, and we expect that Coach Cook will set that new record. So I join my senior Senator in urging the Senate to pass this resolution for the University of Nebraska women's volleyball team. I yield the floor.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I rise today in continued support of Steve Grasz's nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Some of those who have been attacking Mr. Grasz have claimed that he doesn't have the character or the temperament to treat litigants fairly and decide cases based on the facts and the law. In evaluating those claims, I hope my colleagues in this body will listen to the hundreds of Nebraskans of all partisan and ideological stripes who have stood up in support of Steve's nomination. I urge everyone to listen to what those Nebraskans have to say specifically about his character and about his temperament. One Nebraskan wrote to Mrs. Fischer, the senior Senator from Nebraska, and to me, as well as to the Judiciary Committee: I was the plaintiff in a First Amendment defamation and political speech action against the Nebraska Republican Party. . . . Mr. Grasz represented the Nebraska Republican Party. I was not successful in my lawsuit. However, I did have the opportunity to meet and interact with Mr. Grasz during the case and found him to be . . . a consummate professional. Based on my observations I believe his judicial temperament would be of the highest quality and all parties would be given equal opportunity. . . . I can think of no one better qualified or suited to be appointed to this prestigious judgeship than Steven Grasz. Another Nebraskan wrote to us: I know Steve personally having served as opposing counsel to him on cases. . . . Steve was a formidable opponent. . . . While he zealously advocated for his clients, he did so in a level-headed and even-keeled manner. Yet another Nebraskan writes: I . . . have . . . represented clients in cases where Mr. Grasz was opposing counsel. In all circumstances he demonstrates the utmost professionalism. . . . I am a registered Democrat and, quite frankly, am not a strong supporter of the current administration. However, as a practicing attorney dealing with complex litigation and appearing regularly in the federal courts of appeals, I want intelligent, thoughtful individuals appointed to the Bench who will administer the law and apply existing precedent. I have no doubt that Mr. Grasz can do that very effectively. Also, consider the words of this Nebraskan: Steve does not allow his role as an advocate to cloud his analyses and judgment. He reviews statutes, regulations, rule and common law with a clear eye, and he applies these authorities to the facts presented to him. . . . [H]is respect for precedent and his high regard for the works of other branches of government show his dedication to following the Constitution and our nation's laws as they are written. Steve Grasz is a Nebraskan through and through. As I said here on the floor yesterday, Steve bleeds Husker red, but he is a guy who is well suited to take on the black robes of the judge, for he understands that we do not have blue or red partisan jerseys on our article III branch of government, the independent judiciary. Steve is well suited to serve as a judge on the Eighth Circuit. I think that not just Nebraskans but folks across all the States represented in the Eighth Circuit are going to find a man of unbelievable temperament. The ABA is a liberal advocacy organization. That is absolutely their right. What is not OK is for the ABA to masquerade as a neutral arbiter of professional qualifications. Attacks on Steve's character have come out of this process because the two reviewers from the ABA cite again and again and again anonymous sources of his supposed rudeness. We have seen none of that in Nebraska. Again, hundreds of people have written to the senior Senator and to me and now to the Judiciary Committee in support of the President's decision to nominate Steve Grasz to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the specific letters I have just cited.

Mr. SASSE. I urge all of my colleagues to listen to all of the Nebraskans, again, of all backgrounds and across the partisan spectrum, as they have urged us to confirm Mr. Grasz today. Thank you. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Madam President, I rise today in support of the nomination of Steve Grasz to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. One of the most important things this Senate has done this year and will do for the remainder of the year--and, in fact, well into 2018--is to consider nominees to the Federal courts. When I talk to Nebraskans, I constantly hear from women and men who tell me that the No. 1 issue they care about when they vote for President is the judiciary. Nebraskans want judges who understand that judges are not lawmakers. Nebraskans want judges who understand that a lifetime appointment isn't designed to do politics. Nebraskans want judges who understand that the courts are to uphold the laws fairly and impartially. My colleagues and I on the Judiciary Committee agree with those Nebraskans from townhalls and coffee shops and Rotary clubs. In the Judiciary Committee, we have worked to advance a record number of judges who know exactly that. We are looking for thoughtful men and women of integrity. That is why it is a pleasure today, it is an honor today, to come to the floor in support of Steve Grasz. Steve is a Nebraskan through and through. He is a fifth-generation Nebraskan who grew up on a family farm--walking beans, raising sheep and pigs, branding cattle. When he was a young man, life in the Nebraska Panhandle taught him hard work. He then moved east to Lincoln, where the University of Nebraska taught him the law. Steve graduated at the top of his class and then put his law degree to work serving his fellow Nebraskans. He served as the chief deputy attorney general for our State for nearly a dozen years. Steve's job was to represent the people of Nebraska in court. That means he was bound by the law and by his professional duty to defend our laws, including our State's ban on the gruesome procedure known as partial- birth abortion. In his role in the Nebraska AG's office, he litigated multiple cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Nebraska Supreme Court, and the U.S. Eighth Circuit, to which he has now been nominated by President Trump. Every time he represented us in court, Steve did so with integrity, with humility, and with decency. That is just what Nebraskans do. Steve bleeds Husker red, but he is now ready to put on a judge's black robe. He knows that judges in America don't wear red or blue partisan jerseys. He knows that policy preferences, whether his or anyone else's, have no role in how a judge applies the law. He knows that, in his courtroom, two things matter and only two things--the facts and the law. Anybody who wants to ensure that Steve will approach his job as a judge without partisan or ideological bias should listen to the words of hundreds of Nebraskans who have spoken out in support of Steve's nomination. Democrat Ben Nelson, Nebraska's U.S. Senator from 2001 through 2013 and, before that, our Governor for 8 years, offered this testament to Steve's fitness for office: I first got to know Steve when I served as Nebraska's Governor and he served as our state's Chief Deputy Attorney General. . . . With me as a Democrat and him as a Republican, we sometimes found ourselves disagreeing on policy; nevertheless, I quickly learned that Steve was the kind of consummate professional who is capable of putting whatever personal views he may have aside when appropriate in his capacity as a public servant. . . . If Steve is confirmed, I fully expect him to follow the law and the facts in each case because I know his loyalty is first to the rule of law, rather than to any personal views he holds on matters of policy. He possesses first-rate legal skills and a respectful, even-keeled temperament, key ingredients in the making of a good judge. As a Nebraskan, I hope our state has the opportunity to benefit yet again from Steve's public service in this new role. Then there is Deborah Gilg, who was President Obama's choice to be U.S. attorney for the District of Nebraska, who served in that office from 2009 through 2016. She wrote glowingly to our committee of Steve: Steve has always enjoyed a reputation for honesty, impeccable integrity and dedication to the rule of law. He possesses an even temperament well-suited for the bench and always acts with respect to all that interact with him. . . . Without a doubt, he would be a tremendous asset to the bench as he demonstrates excellence in all that he does. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that these letters be printed in the Record.

Mr. SASSE. Madam President, Steve's reputation for honesty and integrity and decency have earned him bipartisan support across Nebraska. I am a bit sad in that, when I got here to Washington, this nomination took a bit more of a partisan turn before the committee. Happily, we have the chance to do the right thing here in the full Senate tonight and return to a bipartisan tone. I hope that my colleagues will listen to the broad array of Nebraskans of all ideological and partisan views and support Steve's nomination tonight. Thank you. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, today the Judiciary Committee had the opportunity to advance the nomination of Steve Grasz, one of the foremost appellate attorneys in the State of Nebraska, and I would like to make one brief comment about that. The Judiciary Committee has now heard and soon the full Senate will be hearing about the impeccable credentials of Mr. Grasz. Steve has served with distinction as Nebraska's chief deputy attorney general for nearly a dozen years. During that time, he defended our State's laws with integrity, humility, and decency. Whether he was litigating before the Eighth Circuit, before the Nebraska Supreme Court, or before the U.S. Supreme Court, Steve's character and professionalism earned the respect of Republicans and Democrats alike. Members of the committee became familiar with Steve and in particular his recommendation from President Obama's U.S. attorney for Nebraska, Deborah Gilg. She wrote to the committee: ``Steve has always enjoyed a reputation for honesty, impeccable integrity, and dedication to the rule of law.'' She continued by noting that Steve ``possesses an even temperament well-suited for the bench and always acts with respect to all that interact with him.'' Steve has earned the support of Republicans and Democrats back in Nebraska, and I hope that when his nomination comes to the floor of the Senate, we will take to heart all of the support he has across the political spectrum and from well-respected lawyers across our State. Thank you for the time, Mr. President.

Mr. SASSE

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

Mr. SASSE

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

Mr. SASSE

Mr. SASSE. Will the Senator from Maine yield for 30 seconds?