Elizabeth Warren

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it recess until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, January 19; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate resume consideration of the House message to accompany H.R. 5746, the legislative vehicle for the voting rights legislation; further, that the cloture motion on the House message to accompany H.R. 5746 ripen at 6:30 p.m.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand in recess under the previous order.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, January 6, 2022, marks 1 year since the attempted coup at our Nation's Capitol. I am deeply grateful for the Capitol Police for their heroic acts on that dark day. The American people will always remember the sacrifices they made to protect our democracy. But marking this date has another purpose, too. The January 6 insurrection made painfully clear that American democracy is seriously at risk. In November of 2020, American citizens braved a deadly pandemic to cast their ballots. But following that election, the defeated President refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. Instead, he falsely sowed doubt about the legitimacy of the election and inflamed his most dangerous supporters to attack this Capitol. His attempts to cling to power through lies and violence were a violation of his oath of office and a grave abuse of power that can never be tolerated in a free and democratic society. We mark this anniversary not only to reflect on that dereliction of duty, but also to call out the ongoing efforts to undermine our democracy. Threats to our democracy are not new. For years, in State after State, Republican legislatures have passed laws making it harder to vote, all on a purely partisan basis with simple majority votes. They have imposed strict voter ID requirements and purged voter rolls to disenfranchise minority voters. They have made it harder to vote by mail and register to vote. They have gerrymandered districts for partisan political gain. Over the past year, these shameless efforts have become even more brazen. Just as the former President was clear that he wanted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Trump and his allies are entirely transparent about their goal of overturning future elections. Today, Republican opponents of democracy are exploiting every possible avenue to allow their party to maintain control, even if that means overturning the will of the American people. Rather than putting a stop to these attacks on voting rights, the Supreme Court has enabled them. The Roberts Court gutted the core of the Voting Rights Act, which is why Republican legislatures right now can pass anti-voter laws with ease. Last year, they destroyed what was left of the country's landmark voting rights law, making it nearly impossible to block laws with racially discriminatory effects. They twice overturned key protections against dark money in our elections, and they gave a green light to partisan gerrymandering. The Senate must not turn a blind eye while the Federal judiciary and State legislatures lead an all-out assault against free and fair elections in America. It is clear that Donald Trump's Republican Party is embracing an increasingly authoritarian movement. In 2006, the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized unanimously in the U.S. Senate. And yet today, only one Republican supports the Voting Rights Act, and none have endorsed the Freedom to Vote Act. The Senate filibuster means that Mitch McConnell gets a veto and Congress cannot protect the sacred right to vote unless Republican politicians agree, all while they are actively undermining our democracy in State after State. My view on this is simple: We did not swear an oath to protect a procedural rule like the filibuster, which has been the tool of racial segregation and Jim Crow. No, we swore an oath to defend the Constitution. When the Senate rules stand in the way of voting rights legislation, then those Senate rules must change. A year after an insurrection at our Nation's Capitol, we must do more than speak up about the importance of democracy. Now, we must act. It is time to end the filibuster, time to protect voting rights, and time to defend our democracy. I yield the floor.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, had there been a recorded vote, I would have voted no on the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 453, David L. Cohen, of Pennsylvania, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Canada. Mr. President, had there been a recorded vote, I would have voted no on the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 454, Mark Gitenstein, of Washington, to be Representative of the United States of America to the European Union, with the rank and status of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. Mr. President, had there been a recorded vote, I would have voted no on the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 521, Jonathan Eric Kaplan, of California, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Singapore. Mr. President, had there been a recorded vote, I would have voted no on the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 617, Jamie L. Harpootlian, of South Carolina, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Slovenia. Mr. President, had there been a recorded vote, I would have voted no on the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 621, Scott Miller, of Colorado, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Swiss Confederation, and to serve concurrently and without additional compensation as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Principality of Liechtenstein. Mr. President, had there been a recorded vote, I would have voted no on the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 623, Michael M. Adler, of Florida, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Kingdom of Belgium.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I would like to offer my congratulations to Janis Santos as she retires as CEO from Holyoke Chicopee Springfield Head Start after 48 years of leadership in early childhood education and care. She deserves recognition for her steadfast commitment to ensuring that children of all backgrounds have access to high-quality early education. A graduate of Holyoke Community College and the University of Massachusetts, Janis began her professional teaching career in western Massachusetts. She soon became a trailblazer in her field. After opening Parkside Early Learning Center in Ludlow in 1973, she went on to join Holyoke Chicopee Head Start, Inc., as executive director in 1979. She continues to lead Holyoke Chicopee Springfield Head Start, which has grown to be the second largest Head Start Agency in Massachusetts and one of the largest providers of early education in western Massachusetts. In her career with Head Start, she has held several leadership positions, including chair of the Massachusetts Head Start Directors Association, chair of the New England Head Start Association, vice chair of the National Head Start Association, and member of the national advisory panel for the Head Start 2010 Project. In 2003, while serving on the board of directors of the National Head Start Association, she testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in a hearing on the reauthorization of funds for Head Start. Her advocacy on behalf of the children and families in Head Start programs is powerfully important. I want to offer my gratitude to Janis Santos for her lifelong commitment to America's children and for all she has done to advance early childhood education and care in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I congratulate her on her retirement and wish her the best of luck in her next chapter.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I rise today in support of Rachael Rollins, the U.S. attorney nominee for the District of Massachusetts. Rachael grew up in Massachusetts. Her dad fought in Vietnam, and then returned to Massachusetts to become a corrections officer. He sent his oldest daughter to college, UMass Amherst, and then to the law school at Northeastern, and then she went on to get a master's in law from Georgetown. She has had experience across a broad range of public service jobs. In 2018, she decided to run for district attorney of Suffolk County, which includes the city of Boston. And in that race, she promised to decriminalize certain low-level offenses, such as shoplifting or drug possession. The people of Suffolk County embraced her and embraced her ideas, giving her 73 percent of the vote. She is the first woman of color to be elected as a DA in Massachusetts, and if confirmed by this body, she will be the first Black woman to serve as U.S. attorney in Massachusetts. She has the enthusiastic support of my partner Ed Markey and myself. A dedicated public servant, Rollins has devoted her career to transforming the criminal justice system so that it actually reduces crime and provides equal justice for all. Her reform efforts have frequently focused on the root causes of crime and have taken aim at poverty, substance use disorders, and racial disparity. Since her nomination was announced, dozens of prominent Massachusetts Republicans, Democrats, and nonpartisan law enforcement officials, numbers of community advocates, and members of the legal community have written in support of her nomination. Among those who have spoken out publicly on her behalf are Massachusetts former Republican Governor Bill Weld, former U.S. attorneys and Suffolk County law enforcement executives, and many, many others. These are the people who know her best, the people who have worked with her, the people who know her record of success as a prosecutor. Now, Rachael has implemented some innovative policies--exactly as she promised to do when she ran for district attorney. Those policies may not be the preferred policies of some Senators, but the facts speak for themselves. These policies are designed to improve the administration of justice and to reduce crime, and they work. In the months following her start as a DA in 2019, homicides in Suffolk County reached a 20-year low. While homicides increased in 2020 as part of a nationwide trend following the start of the pandemic--a trend that was also seen in States like Arkansas and Texas--recent data from the Boston Police Department shows that homicides in Boston declined by nearly a third in the first 9 months of 2021. That drop--a drop of nearly a third in homicides--stands in stark contrast with nationwide crime statistics. It is not just violent crime, either; the city saw a decline in property crimes like thefts and burglaries this year as well. Rollins has demonstrated that progressive policies can be effective in cutting serious crimes, which seems to frustrate her opponents. The policies that Rollins has pursued have helped drive down crime in our State, but it is also the strong partnership she has built with law enforcement leaders from Suffolk County that has been crucial. In fact, leadership from the Boston Police Department, the Massachusetts State Police, the Revere Police Department, the Chelsea Police Department, the MBTA Transit Police Department, and the Winthrop Police Department wrote a joint letter to the Senate to express their strong support of Rachael Rollins to be U.S. attorney. While they admit they have not always seen eye to eye with her, they also note that Rollins ``respects us and the work we do to keep our communities safe. She can admit when she is wrong. She can also be incredibly persuasive when she is right.'' They add: Each of us have worked closely with DA Rollins on pressing and significant issues within our respective jurisdictions. She is responsive, attentive, and diligent. Her focus is on victims and how the community is impacted by violence and harm. Nobody should be surprised that Rollins' approach to prosecution is yielding reductions in crime. Nonpartisan research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research confirms why this is the case. After an analysis of 17 years of data and over 67,000 cases from the Suffolk County DA's Office, the study found that defendants whose misdemeanor charges were dropped before arraignment were 58 percent less likely to return to the criminal justice system in the next 2 years, and they were more likely to avoid charges for any serious violent crimes. By pursuing these policies, Rollins has freed up limited resources in her office to focus on the people and the crimes that actually pose the biggest threats to the community. Now, critics are quick to distort these statistics and Rollins' record and the details of her approach. This partisan sniping here in Washington bears no relationship to the reality on the ground in Suffolk County, MA. For example, even with her reform policies in place, Rachael has prosecuted more drug traffickers than her predecessor. Between January 1 and October 12 of this year, the Suffolk County DA's Office prosecuted 147 trafficking cases. Of those, charges of trafficking in fentanyl accounted for 67 percent of the total drug trafficking prosecutions. Just by comparison, her predecessor prosecuted only 130 trafficking cases during the entirety of 2018, of which only 40 percent involved fentanyl trafficking charges. Now, look, it is no surprise that some rightwing voices have sought to make an issue out of Rollins' nomination, and it is unfortunate that many Republicans who should know better have fallen in line behind this campaign of fearmongering. When a rollcall vote on her nomination was forced in the Judiciary Committee in September, Republicans quickly tossed out three decades' worth of precedent and attempted for the first time in over a generation to override the President's choice of a U.S. attorney nomination. I want to remind my colleagues that every single one of the 85 U.S. attorneys nominated by Trump--every single one--was moved by voice vote despite significant disagreements about the policies, views, and records of several of those nominees--every single one of them. But Rachael Rollins and President Biden couldn't get that same kind of consideration. This kind of political grandstanding has unjustly deferred the confirmation process, not only for Rachael Rollins but for many other well-qualified nominees who just want to get to work serving the people of this country. It is also extraordinarily disrespectful to the scores of on-the-ground law enforcement leaders in Massachusetts and others who support this nomination. Our police chiefs, our prosecutors, our former U.S. attorneys, our former Governors, Republicans and Democrats, do not need to be told by national politicians who know nothing about our community that their support and their understanding of what we need just really doesn't matter. They do not need to be told that the personal political benefit of attacking this well-respected prosecutor is somehow more important than what all of the data and all of their own experiences tell them about what actually reduces crime and improves the administration of justice in Massachusetts. What our law enforcement professionals need, what the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts needs is for the Senate to confirm this highly qualified nominee. Now, I have every confidence that Rachael Rollins will continue her partnership with law enforcement, with community advocates, and with other key members of the legal community to ensure the safety and well- being of all of the people of the Commonwealth in her new role. I look forward to the renewed energy and innovative vision that she will bring to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Senator Markey and I want to publicly thank our Massachusetts bipartisan advisory committee for all of the work they did to identify and recommend candidates like Rachael Rollins to the role of U.S. attorney. I want to thank President Biden for nominating her to this position. I urge my colleagues to set aside nasty personal attacks on a supremely well-qualified woman and to support the discharge and ultimate confirmation of Rachael Rollins, a supremely qualified candidate who is ready to serve on day one as the next U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts. I yield the floor.

Ms. WARREN

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

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I rise to speak in opposition to the National Defense Authorization Act. As written, this legislation authorizes $778 billion in defense spending just for next year alone. That is more money than we spent on defense during the Korean or Vietnam wars. It is even more money than we spent at the height of the extraordinary Reagan defense buildup in the 1980s. Now Congress is set to pass this bill with virtually no debate and with virtually no discussion about how much money we are spending. Congress keeps the spigot of cash wide open so long as it is for defense. And please note that not one single dollar of this huge defense budget will be offset either with new taxes or with new spending cuts someplace else. Meanwhile, do you know how much money the President's Build Back Better plan will cost, on average, each year if Congress passes it? $175 billion. That is about one-fifth the size of this Defense bill. And unlike this Defense bill, every single dollar of the President's plan will be offset with new revenue or savings. But here is the thing: When we want to invest $175 billion a year on childcare and paid family leave and expanding access to healthcare and fighting the climate crisis, and when we are going to offset every single dollar for those new expenses, everybody suddenly becomes so very concerned about spending. When we want to make investments that directly benefit people across this country, we are told ``that costs too much'' or ``that is socialism.'' But when we spend nearly five times that amount of money in the Defense bill, it is just a shrug of the shoulders. Look around this Chamber. It is empty. And let's be clear where most of this defense money is going. It is largely going to the defense industry. The Pentagon will take this money and give approximately $400 billion to contractors. And nearly 40 percent of that will go to a handful of giant contractors. This is a huge amount of money in an ordinary year, but 2 years into a global pandemic that has killed 765,000 Americans, it is irresponsible to spend this much money on stuff that isn't saving Americans from what is actually killing them. America's spending priorities are completely misaligned, and the threats Americans actually are facing, the things that are quite literally endangering their lives--like COVID-19 and the climate crisis--don't get this kind of attention. Let me be clear. We can spend far less money on defense and still protect Americans and American interests. And you don't have to take my word for it. The Congressional Budget Office recently published a report outlining three different avenues for cutting $1 trillion in defense spending over the next decade. None of the three proposals were even close to radical. And, by the way, none of them achieved any savings from nuclear modernization, contract spending, and closing bases. And before somebody cranks up the outrage machine, let me say I do not believe that we should spend nothing on defense. There are real threats to our Nation and real interests that we must defend. There are some situations that may require military solutions. But this Defense bill goes far beyond that threshold. This bill continues to feed into the wrongheaded idea that America's strength can only be measured by our military domination. This bill is another example of Congress granting the Pentagon virtually unlimited resources while, at the exact same moment, pinching pennies on things that will make the American economy work for our children and for our seniors, for workers and students and retirees, for everyone who isn't part of a tiny little slice at the top. These misplaced priorities chip away at the strength of our Nation, and, ironically, they undermine the foundation upon which our military is built. If we don't come to recognize this soon, then all this money will have been wasted, and the world's most powerful military will rest on a foundation of sand. There are important and valuable provisions in this Defense bill. There are even places where we should spend more money, like on cyber defense, but it is long past time for us to rationalize the Pentagon's budget and align it with the threats we actually face. And this Defense bill, like so many before it, fails miserably to do that. For that reason, I will vote against it. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. WARREN

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

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I rise today to express concern about a culture of corruption among top officials at the Federal Reserve. Officials at the Federal Reserve are entrusted to make decisions that affect the global economy and touch the lives of every person in our country. These officials have access to private information, often gathered at the expense and even by legislative mandate. There is no room for self-dealing by Federal officials. There is no room for even the appearance of self-dealing. Every member of the Federal Reserve should know that without a reminder from Congress. But, evidently, there is a problem at the Fed. We don't know the scope of the problem or how long it has been going on, but a very disturbing picture is emerging. Last month, it was discovered that, during the economic turmoil of 2020, as the Fed was called on to take extraordinary measures to support our economy, Robert Kaplan, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, made multiple million-dollar-plus stock trades. It was also disclosed that, in the same period, Eric Rosengren, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, made multiple purchases and sales related to his stakes in real estate investment trusts and other securities. A new report last week revealed that a third key Fed official, Vice Chair Richard Clarida, also traded between $1 million and $5 million out of a bond fund into stock funds exactly 1 day before Fed Chair Powell publicly suggested possible policy actions that would significantly affect bonds and stocks. The Federal Reserve makes hugely consequential decisions--decisions involving interest rates, trillions of dollars' worth of lending and debt, and the regulation and supervision of the banking and financial systems. The year 2020 was particularly consequential, with the Fed taking unprecedented steps to backstop financial markets in response to the pandemic. To make these specific decisions, Fed officials needed access to vast quantities of proprietary, nonpublic data and information about individual firms, the state of the economy, and upcoming Fed actions. Under these circumstances, for Fed officials to actively trade in the market raises legitimate questions about conflicts of interest and insider trading. These Fed officials' actions show, at a minimum, very bad judgment. They also suggest that some Fed officials believe that building up their own personal wealth is more important than strengthening the American people's confidence in the Fed. In his years as Chair of the Fed, it is not clear why Mr. Powell did not take steps to prevent these activities. Surely, he understands that this kind of behavior by Fed officials corrodes the public trust in the Fed and that, in turn, such corrosion undermines the effectiveness of the Fed. Surely, he understands that the Fed officials' trades run afoul of Agency guidelines, which state Fed officials should ``avoid any dealings or other conduct that might convey even an appearance of conflict between their personal interests, the interests of the [Federal Reserve] System, and the public interest.'' Surely, he knows that, according to the Fed's policies, its officials ``have a special responsibility for maintaining the integrity, dignity, and reputation of the System. Accordingly, they should scrupulously avoid conduct that might in any way tend to embarrass the System.'' Surely he is aware that the Fed's policies instruct officials to ``carefully adhere to the spirit, as well as the letter, of the rules of ethical conduct,'' and to ``exemplify in their own conduct the high standards set forth in those rules.'' As the sitting chair of the Federal Reserve, the responsibility to safeguard the integrity of the Federal Reserve rests squarely with him. Setting the right culture at the Fed and making sure safeguards are in place to prevent self-dealing and to protect the public's confidence should be the minimum standard any Federal Reserve Chair should meet. And once there is a problem, a quick and aggressive response is critical. Chair Powell has failed at both tasks. Last week, I said that I would not support Chair Powell's renomination because in one decision after another, he has consistently failed to serve as an effective financial regulator. But that is not his only failure. Chair Powell has also failed as a leader. Our Nation needs leaders who are willing to set aside and enforce strong ethics standards and who act swiftly when a problem arises. Our Nation does not need a go-along-to-get-along leader who doesn't know or doesn't care when, on his watch, people with great responsibility advance their own interests over the interests of our Nation, or someone who drags his feet in dealing with problems that shake the public's confidence in the institution he leads. We need changes at the Fed. I have already called on key Fed officials to voluntarily abide by stricter ethics standards. Yesterday, I asked the SEC to investigate these trades to determine whether these Fed officials may have broken laws on insider trading, and I will continue to push Chair Powell to vigorously enforce the ethics standards that already exist and to put stronger ethics standards in place at the Fed. In the last Congress, I introduced sweeping ethics legislation, the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act. This legislation would ban all individual stock ownership by Members of Congress, by Cabinet Secretaries, by senior congressional staff, by Federal judges, by White House staff, and by other Agency officials while in office. It would prohibit all government officials from holding or trading stock if its value might be influenced by their Agency, their department, or their actions. And it would require senior government officials and White House staff to divest from privately owned assets that would present conflicts of interest. This far-reaching legislation would also tighten conflict of interest and recusal requirements and shut the revolving door between industry and government. Now, look, this proposal won't solve every problem. And for any officials who have engaged in illegal insider trading, we don't need a new law to hold them accountable. But the proposal would dramatically reduce the possibility for any appearance of impropriety at the Fed and at every other Federal Agency and in Congress and in the White House. I urge Congress to pass this legislation and to restore Americans' trust in our elected leaders and the officials who make key decisions-- key decisions not only about the economy, but about public health, the environment, and every other aspect of government. There is a lot of housekeeping we need to do, and the faster we start, the faster we get it done. I yield the floor.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I am here to honor the memory of my friend and the friend of every working person in America, Rich Trumka. We lost Rich this morning, and all I kept thinking is the kind of man we have lost and what that means to all of us. Rich was real. He was a third-generation coal miner who rose to become the president of the United Mine Workers and the president of the American Federation of Labor. Rich was also a hunter, and he had the patience of a hunter--the planning, the long hours, sometimes long days, but always on his target. And Rich was a fighter He was relentless. When Rich got in a fight, Rich never gave up. Might not plan every one of those fights, at least not the first time out, but he never gave up. From his growl to his laughter, Rich was real all the way through. He lived his heart every single day. He was always Rich. Back during the financial crash in 2008, 2009, we were trying to build an idea for a consumer agency to make sure that people wouldn't get cheated next time around the way they had been, and what led up to that crash. Rich was there, and he was there because he had seen firsthand what it is like. He had seen his brothers and sisters in the labor movement, who had lost their homes, had lost their jobs, and seen their pensions disappear because a handful of greedy banks and feckless regulators had permitted the rich and powerful to take over our government and to take over our economy, and they brought that economy to its knees. It fell hard on working people, and Rich was determined that would not happen again. I remember the day when President Obama announced that they were ready to lay out the first--first outlines of what the financial response should look like, what kind of laws we should pass here in Congress in order to make sure that this didn't come again. And there were a bunch of folks who were invited to the White House. I was invited. It was my first time there. I am looking around--wow. And a bunch of people crowded, and all we cared about was: Hand us the list. I want to see what is on it. Is there a consumer agency on this? And we get in our assigned seats, and I am sitting on these tiny, little chairs, jammed together so they can get as many people as possible. And Rich, who was a man of considerable size, is sitting directly behind me, kind of mashed up against the back of my chair and leaning out, and we were on the aisle, both of us, and furiously going through it to see what is there. And, sure enough, the White House had said there is going to be a consumer agency, or at least that is what they are going to ask for. So I am smiling. I turn and I say: See this? You see this? And he said: Yeah. And I said: You know, it makes me a little nervous for you to be right behind me here. And he leaned over and he whispered in my ear and he said: I will always have your back, Elizabeth. And I reached back, patted him on the leg. And it was true. I never got in a fight for working people that Rich Trumka wasn't already there, that he was already in that fight, that he already saw what was happening to working people on the ground, and what it was that we needed our government to do by way of response. Rich fought for decades for working people. It was his true north. He never varied from that. He never wanted anything for himself. All he wanted to do was to see workers get more power so that they were playing on a level playing field, to see workers be able to work in safe conditions, to see workers get a chance to build some real security for themselves and for their families. Rich measured everything that came his way against that test: What is it going to do for working people? And if you could show him this is going to help working people, Rich was in it all the way. During COVID-19, Rich was here back and forth and back and forth, trying to push this government to get more workers' safety in place, more regulations that were going to protect people so people weren't out there dying trying to do their jobs. Rich was there, trying to protect the economic security of workers, people who had been laid off, people who had been shut out of the workplace. It was Rich who helped lead the charge, watch out for working families. He didn't need the glory. He didn't need the spotlight, but, boy, he was in there pushing in the way that only Rich Trumka could do it. Rich understood that when we put workers at the center of our policies, then families win; when we put workers at the center of our policies, then our economy wins; when we put workers at the center of our policies, then our Nation wins. That is how Rich lived, and that is how Rich died. To Rich's family, I am so sorry for your loss. For Rich's brothers and sisters in the labor movement, I am so sorry for your loss. Rich is gone, and that is a hard blow to you and to our whole Nation, and this is the moment to honor Rich's legacy not just with words, but by staying in the fights that Rich led us on, by staying in the fights relentlessly for workers' rights. We are going to miss Rich. I yield the floor.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session for a period of morning business, and that upon the conclusion of my remarks, the Senate resume executive session, as under the previous order.

Ms. WARREN

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

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Madam President, almost exactly a year ago today, I stood here and called for Congress to take action to protect renters before the expiration of the eviction moratorium enacted during the early weeks of the pandemic. Today, like a year ago, we are only hours away from a fully preventable housing crisis. The CDC's eviction moratorium expires tonight at midnight, putting millions of families still recovering from the economic fallout of COVID-19 at risk for losing their homes, from losing the bedrock of their safety and stability. Right now, more than 11 million renters report being behind on rent. That is one out of every seven renters. And people of color, who have been hit hardest by this pandemic, are disproportionately at risk. Nearly one-quarter of Black renters report being behind on rental payments. Last year, Congress worked together to account for that staggering reality. We provided more than $45 billion in emergency rental assistance. That money is now finally getting into the hands of landlords around the country. It is helping families who lost jobs get caught up on the missed payments. But the money is getting out too slowly. Some States and local governments opened their assistance programs only last month. Some hadn't spent a single dollar by the beginning of June. Now that is starting to change. In June, States delivered more than $1.5 billion in emergency rental assistance. That money went to help nearly 300,000 households, but there are still billions of dollars to distribute and millions of families in need. We have the tools, and we have the funding. What we need is the time. Look, I agree that the eviction moratorium is not a long-term solution, but let me be very clear: it is the right short-term action. It is how we keep families safely in their homes while States deliver emergency aid. It is how we keep families who are starting to recover from the worst economic crisis of their lifetimes get back on their feet. Millions of jobs have been lost, businesses are still shuttered, and childcare for too many families is still a patchwork of uncertainty. The recovery underway in this country is historic, and it will continue, but it has not yet reached every family. But the need is not just economic. We are still in the throes of a public health emergency that is trending in the wrong direction. Cases of COVID-19 are rising. Hospitalizations and deaths are rising. The Delta variant is more contagious, threatening to spread faster among the half of the country that remains unvaccinated. Needlessly evicting families would risk escalating our public health crisis. The CDC understood that reality when it issued an eviction moratorium in September. The Agency was clear, and I want to quote the language they used: ``Housing stability helps protect health.'' That's right. Research shows that moratoriums aid in reducing infections and deaths due to COVID-19. And research also shows that when eviction moratoriums expire, there is an associated increase in COVID-19 and mortality. Yesterday, Congresswoman Cori Bush sent Members of Congress a letter. Congresswoman Bush has lived through eviction. She has been unhoused. And I want to quote her letter. She said: I know firsthand the trauma and devastation that comes with the violence of being evicted, and we have a responsibility to do everything we can to prevent this trauma from being inflicted on our neighbors and communities. Cori Bush is exactly right. My office has heard from so many people in Massachusetts who are terrified about the possibility of losing their homes. I know that each of my colleagues here must be hearing these stories. In every State in this country there are families sitting around their kitchen table right now trying to figure out how to survive a devastating, disruptive, and unnecessary eviction. Congress has a choice to make. It is a privilege for us to represent people, and we have a duty to exercise our power on their behalf. Every Senator in this Chamber should be grateful that they have the power right now to keep families safe. My colleagues understood the stakes in March of 2020, when Congress passed the CARES Act eviction moratorium into law. They understood the stakes when we provided historic funding for emergency rental assistance. I urge them to join me now in continuing this lifesaving protection as States distribute assistance to keep renters housed; to keep landlords paid; and, most of all, to keep families safe. I yield the floor.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I would like to enter a statement into the record. The President swears an oath to faithfully execute the Office of the Presidency and to ``preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.'' At the very core of that oath is a commitment to democracy, to government of the people, for the people, and by the people. President Trump tested that commitment. Americans endured a pandemic while casting their votes in the November 2020 election. Following that election, the outgoing President baselessly sowed doubt about its legitimacy and refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power. In the days leading up to January 6, 2021, President Trump agitated his most dangerous supporters, who had already shown a propensity for violence, and called on them to interfere with Congress' duty to formally count the votes of the electoral college. Donald Trump wanted a riot to take place on January 6. We know because he said so. And when police officers defending the Capitol were overrun by his mob, he did nothing. Democracy is at its most fragile at the moment of transition, and that fragility is exactly what the former President sought to exploit. During President Trump's second impeachment trial, his defense tried to paint for Americans a picture of a President who called for peaceful protest and who bears no responsibility for the January 6 assault on the People's House. But the President's actions took place before our eyes. His conduct before, during, and immediately after the assault on the Capitol is well known to the American public. He is uniquely responsible for the events of January 6. Americans spoke clearly and forcefully in November when they elected a new President. Donald Trump's attempt to cling to power through lies and violence is just what the Framers of our Constitution feared. But part of the brilliance of our Constitution's separation of powers is that we, the Congress, have the power and obligation to defend against such gross misconduct through impeachment. I voted to convict and disqualify former President Donald Trump because he violated his oath of office and because our future leaders must know that such abuses of power will not be tolerated in a free and democratic society. I will continue to call out these abuses and to keep those in power accountable.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I send a question to the desk.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, more than 350,000 of our loved ones have died from a terrible disease. Small businesses have gone under, never to reopen. Millions have lost their jobs, and too many families don't know how they are going to pay the rent or put groceries on the table. It is tough out there, but Americans are fighters, and despite all the challenges, in November they did what Americans do when they are unhappy with their leadership--they voted for change. They turned their backs on a sitting President who fans the flames of hatred while bodies pile up in the morgue. Instead, they elected a new President who wants to save lives, to save our economy, and to save our democracy. Even as the pandemic raged, Americans showed up for democracy. States worked overtime to set up safe systems, ballot drop boxes, early voting, and gallons of hand sanitizer. Voters mailed their ballots earlier, put on masks, and stood in line at the polls. The election of 2020 shattered voting records. So here we are on the floor of the U.S. Senate in the aftermath of a historic election held in the middle of a pandemic. People are suffering, and we should be working to get them the help they need. Instead, we are here because Donald Trump wants to overturn the results of that election. The Republicans objecting to the results of this election will be judged by history, but the rest of us will be judged as well. It is our responsibility to stand up for our democracy even while other Senators work to undermine it. Losing is hard. I ran for President myself. It was a hard-fought primary, but Joe Biden won and I lost. I am not the only one to live through that; a number of Senators in this room have run for President. None of us was successful, and when we lost, we conceded and we got out of the race because that is how democracy works. None of us lied about the results. We didn't throw temper tantrums. We didn't tell our allies in Congress or the States to overturn the results. We didn't feed poisonous propaganda to our supporters. We didn't urge people to march on State capitals or to descend on Washington. We accepted the will of the voters. And it is not just us; it is everyone who has run for President since the beginning of America. Only once in America's history have the people who lost tried to burn down our democracy on the way out. They caused a civil war that nearly destroyed our Nation. Make no mistake, the violence we witnessed in this Chamber today was the direct result of the poisonous lies that Donald Trump repeated again and again for more than 2 months. His words have consequences. Our democracy has been grievously injured by this lying coward. This effort to subvert our democracy is not merely one last Presidential tantrum. This effort is designed to knock out the basic pillar on which democracy is founded: the idea that the voters--not the sitting President and not the Members of Congress but the voters decide who will lead this Nation. A democracy in which the elected leaders do not bend to the will of the voters is no democracy. It is a totalitarian state. And those who pursue this effort are supporting a coup. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this effort to overthrow our democracy. I yield the floor.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Madam President, a little over a month ago I came to the floor to honor the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a trailblazer, an icon, and a friend. I shared what she meant as a personal hero for me and as a role model to millions of other women. I discussed her groundbreaking work and how much of what she fought for is now on the line. I talked about the message Ruth left before she died, stating her ``most fervent wish'' that her replacement not be named ``until a new President is installed.'' It has been 37 days since Ruth died. I miss her. America misses her. It has also been 37 days since Mitch McConnell declared he would disregard Ruth's ``most fervent'' wish and move ahead with a corrupt and illegitimate process to fill her seat on the Supreme Court. Just 8 days--8 days--before the election, when tens of millions of Americans have already cast their ballots and just 15 days before the Supreme Court will hear a case that could overturn the Affordable Care Act, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and their Republican buddies are shoving aside the wishes of the American people in order to steal the Supreme Court seat. Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans violated the long- established rules of the Judiciary Committee to rush their nominee through, giving each other a wink and a nod before they turned a blind eye to their own rulebreaking. They even violated the rule Mitch McConnell made up in order to keep one of President Obama's nominees off the Court long before anyone was voting: no confirmations of Justices in an election year. So they made up the rules, then they broke those same rules. They cheated. Why? Why was it so important that they were willing to turn their backs on the very rules that they had put in place? Why rush through this nomination? Why? Because the Republican Party is scared that they can't win through the democratic process, scared that they can't win by playing by the rules, that they can't win when the American people decide the outcome, that they can't win when elections matter. What we are seeing today is the last gasp of a desperate party--a party working to undermine our democracy so that they can keep pushing their extremist agenda just a little longer, a party that doesn't reflect the views of a majority of Americans or the values that we hold dear. This is a party beholden to billionaires and extremists that is desperate to keep its grasp on power and willing to break any rule, any precedent, or any principle to hold on to that power just a little longer. The Republican Senators bat down every concern. No Supreme Court nominee has been confirmed this close to a Presidential election. They say: No problem. Republican Senators plunge ahead with an illegitimate nomination made by a morally bankrupt President. The Rose Garden ceremony to celebrate the nomination turns into a coronavirus superspreader event. Republican Senators brush it off. Republican Senators will press ahead with hearings while members of the Judiciary Committee are in quarantine, and some of them refused to get tested. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are dead and millions are waiting for the Federal Government to finally show up and fight this pandemic. Republican Senators say: Sorry, no time. Senate Republicans have better things to do than pass a relief package--things like steal a Supreme Court seat. Here is the ugly truth: Donald Trump and his Republican buddies know that confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Nation's highest Court is their path to advance an extremist agenda long after the country is fed up and disgusted with their failures. In the middle of an election, in the depths of a pandemic, their extremist agenda is all that matters, and that is why they are so desperate to ram her nomination through the Senate. The confirmation hearings were a sham. The conclusion was foregone, and the nominee spent days ducking and dodging legitimate questions about where she stands on issues of crucial importance to the American people. It was little more than a PR stunt. But what the nominee refused to say was actually very informative. She refused to say whether the ruling upholding the right to contraception was correct. She refused to say whether the government can criminalize a same-sex relationship. She refused to say whether it is wrong to separate children from their parents in order to deter immigration. She even refused to say whether climate change is happening and whether it poses a threat to human beings. This was no hearing. This was a farce. Their attempt to remain silent on key issues spoke volumes. It shows that she believes these critical rights, protections, and values are debatable, up for grabs. And Barrett's refusal to embrace these commonsense values shows just how out of step, how extreme, Barrett is and will continue to be if she is confirmed. Let's be real. We already know what Barrett is all about. We know why corporate interests and rightwing zealots are so excited about her, why so many Republicans will vote to confirm her, and why Trump, who has handed the judiciary over to the Federalist Society, has nominated her. It is because she will advance their extremist, conservative agenda. So her question-dodging isn't a problem for them. It is part of their strategy to get her onto the Court. They know where she stands, and so do the American people. We already know because her record is clear. Take reproductive rights. President Trump pledged to nominate Supreme Court Justices who would overturn Roe. Listen to him. He said he would only appoint someone who would overturn Roe, and then he picked Barrett. In 2006, Barrett signed a newspaper ad calling for the end of Roe and describing Roe as ``barbaric.'' She was a member of an anti- choice group while on the University of Notre Dame faculty. And how would she overturn Roe? After all, Roe is the current law of the land. But Barrett has that all worked out. She holds a dangerously radical view on legal precedent. In a 2013 Law Review article, she suggested that the Supreme Court is not strictly bound by precedent and that public debate about Roe leaves open the possibility of overruling it. To state it plainly, Barrett believes women cannot be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies. She is a clear and present danger to Roe. When it comes to the Affordable Care Act, again, listen to Trump himself. He said he would only nominate judges who will end the ACA law, judges who would take away healthcare coverage from millions of Americans. He picked Barrett. Barrett's record indicates that is exactly what she will do--work to gut key provisions that protect millions of Americans. She criticized Chief Justice Roberts' opinion in 2012 upholding a critical part of the ACA, saying that he ``pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.'' In a media interview in 2015, she said that in another Supreme Court decision that upheld the ACA, the dissenting Justices who wanted to overturn the ACA had the ``better of the legal argument.'' While claiming just to follow the text of the law, Barrett's record shows that her purported ``textualist'' approach is nothing but a facade, merely a cover for her to reach a result that will further the interests of those with money and power. Barrett's record isn't just cringeworthy; it is downright alarming. On November 10, just 1 week after election day, the Supreme Court will hear a case that will determine the fate of the Affordable Care Act. And right now, 17 cases that could undermine the right to abortion care are one step away from the Supreme Court. Twenty-one States are ready to go. They have already drafted laws they can pass immediately--laws that could be used to restrict abortion in case Roe is overturned. And it is not just reproductive rights and access to healthcare that are on the line. Trump and his Republican enablers want a Justice who will rubberstamp Trump's racist and xenophobic attacks on immigrants, from ripping away protections for our Dreamers to rewriting the census. Once again, this is exactly what Donald Trump told us he would do after he lost earlier court cases. Trump and his Republican enablers also want a Justice who will turn back the clock even more on workers' rights. Trump wants a Justice who will erode workers' ability to join together and fight for fair pay and working conditions and to push back against employment discrimination. We know this is what they want because those are the policies the Trump administration has pursued and what Barrett's anti-worker record tells us that she will do. There is another thing about Barrett's record that deserves special attention just 8 days before the election. Trump and his Republican enablers want a Justice who will strip away voting rights, especially from communities of color and marginalized communities. Trump wants a Supreme Court Justice who will help undermine our democracy. We know this because Trump already told us his game plan to do it. Trump and his Republican enablers are working to make voting as difficult, confusing, and scary as possible, and they are using every tool in order to do it. Trump has lied repeatedly about mail-in voting. He has falsely claimed it is a source of rampant fraud. Trump's lawyers have sued States that have taken action to try to help Americans vote safely during this pandemic by expanding vote-by-mail. And at the same time, Trump and his cronies are working to dismantle the U.S. Postal Service, slowing down mail delivery and creating even more barriers to the ballot at a critical moment in this election. We have all seen the President's reckless, dangerous statements over the past few months casting down on the election itself, peddling the fact-free claim that this election will be ``the most rigged'' in American history and that he is ``not sure'' that the election results will be accurate. Most alarming of all, Trump has repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, and he said that he would not accept the election results if he doesn't win And as her confirmation hearing shows, Barrett is just the Justice Donald Trump is looking for. In her hearing, Barrett refused to recuse herself in a case that might decide the outcome of the election, and she refused to say whether she believes that a President should commit to the peaceful transfer of power. She also refused to say whether voter intimidation is illegal, which it is; whether the President can unilaterally delay an election, which he cannot; and whether the Constitution empowers Congress to protect the right to vote, which it does. The stakes have never been higher for our democracy. On one issue after another, on one right after another, Trump and his Republican enablers have made it clear that they want a Court that will bend over backward even further for the wealthy and well-connected while running roughshod over everyone else. They want a Court that will keep them in power, even when voters have had enough of their fearmongering and division and graft, and Barrett is their choice to do just that. That is why this vote is so critical. A vote for Barrett is a vote to strip healthcare from millions of people. It is a vote to turn back the clock on reproductive freedom, to endanger Dreamers and immigrants, to let climate change rampage unchecked, to imperil efforts to address systemic racism, to support workers' rights, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, gun violence prevention-- all at risk. Ultimately, it is also a vote to rubberstamp an illegitimate process carried out against the wishes of much of the Nation and against the backdrop of a deadly crisis that Senate Republicans have ignored as Americans have died. Let's be very clear: If Trump and Republicans succeed in ramming this nomination through, the American people will expect us to use every tool we have to undo the damage and restore the Court's integrity. I am under no illusions here. Democrats have fought tooth and nail, but the Republicans control the Senate. The reason the Republicans are willing to break every rule to jam through an illegitimate nomination 8 days before the election is that they have realized a truth that shakes them down to their core: The American people are not on their side. People all over this country are fighting to reclaim our democracy. They are registering to vote, and they are voting. They are voting like never before. They are speaking out and telling their stories. They are fighting for a democracy that works for all of us, not just for the privileged few. And they will continue to fight until they have taken our democracy back from those who have worked around the clock to undermine it. Now, I want to spend some time drilling down on what is at stake with this vote, starting with the impact that dismantling the Affordable Care Act will have on my constituents in Massachusetts. I will start with an op-ed that I wrote with Amy Rosenthal, the executive director of Health Care for All, and Kate Walsh. She is the president and CEO of Boston Medical Center. It was published in the Boston Globe, and it was entitled ``The Affordable Care Act and coverage for Massachusetts residents is at risk.'' Here is what we wrote: Dave was laid off from his hotel job in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, and he lost his health insurance too. A week later, he was rushed to the emergency room with a lung problem. With support from an enrollment assister, he was able to enroll in MassHealth coverage that was made possible because of the Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare. He is just one of the hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents given a lifeline by the ACA. Yet, the multi-year effort to repeal the law is coming to a head at the worst possible time. Just days after the November election, the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case seeking to overturn the ACA. And Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has a clear record on the issue. She has openly questioned the constitutionality of the ACA, arguing the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the ACA's individual mandate was ``illegitimate.'' If she is confirmed to the court, she may provide the decisive vote to strike it down. For people like Dave, and more than 23 million others nationwide, access to health care hangs in the balance. The need for health care coverage has never been more dire than during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has laid bare devastating racial disparities in health care access and outcomes. The ACA coverage expansions led to progress toward equity, with the gap with insurance coverage rate for Black and white adults dropping by 4 percentage points and the difference between Hispanic and white adults falling by 9.4 points. Instead of building on these important steps, overturning the ACA would further exacerbate inequities in access to health care. The elimination of the ACA would also be devastating for people with specific health care needs, including 1.8 million people living with substance use disorders and mental illness. Protections would also be stripped away from 135 million people who have preexisting conditions like diabetes, cancer, asthma, and those now who have had COVID-19. Insurance companies could once again charge women 50 percent more than men for coverage and impose lifetime caps on benefits. It would strip a popular feature for families: coverage for those up to age 26 who have sought coverage on their parents' plans at a time when youth unemployment has doubled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Massachusetts, where our state's health reform law served as a model for the ACA, many falsely believe we would be protected if the ACA were struck down. This is not the case. Thanks to the ACA, a number of new protections were implemented in the Commonwealth: the provision allowing young people to stay on their parents' plan and the reduction of prescription drug costs for seniors caught in the Medicare ``donut-hole.'' These protections could be gone overnight if the ACA were invalidated. In addition, an ACA repeal would impact access to health coverage and healthcare for hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts consumers. The state's health insurance coverage expansions were only possible with the partnership and funding from the federal government. This is especially true for the expansion of MassHealth, our Medicaid program, as well as the availability of affordable coverage through ConnectorCare. Over 375,000 Massachusetts residents could lose their health coverage and the state stands to lose up to $2.4 billion in federal funds. These immense cuts would create a funding gap that would be impossible to fill even during normal times. The challenge is even greater now: According to some estimates, Massachusetts may face a deficit of up to $6 billion as a result of the pandemic. These funding shortfalls could have devastating implications for the health care safety net in Massachusetts. Taking coverage away from people during the worst pandemic we have experienced in the last century is simply despicable, and we should all be outraged. Massachusetts deserves more from its President and from its government. All of us must speak up, speak out, and make it abundantly clear that the ACA cannot be repealed. Speaking up includes speaking up about how the ACA has transformed people's lives. So many folks in Massachusetts reached out to my office to share their stories and how they would be harmed if healthcare were ripped away, so I want to introduce you to a few of those people: Marleny, Deb, and Charlie. Marleny is a single mom from Framingham. She receives her healthcare through ConnectorCare, the plans we have in Massachusetts for low- income families who don't qualify for any other program. Her children use MassHealth Family Assistance, which is our CHIP program. She says that, without the help she gets from MassHealth and from ConnectorCare, she couldn't pay her rent and bring food to the table for her kids. You know, the Affordable Care Act helped Massachusetts expand Medicaid and more affordable insurance plans like the ones Marleny uses. But if Trump's Supreme Court nominee overturns the ACA, Massachusetts could lose $2.4 billion in Federal funding. Over 375,000 people like Marleny and her children could lose their coverage. Deb from Greenfield knows what it is like not to be able to pay for healthcare. She told me: ``I was an American whom ObamaCare saved at the very moment I lost my career and my health.'' She writes: ``You must step in and take action. We cannot sit idly by while our access to affordable healthcare hangs in the balance.'' Deb is right, and there are millions of people across this country who have lost their jobs during this pandemic and economic crisis and could be in the exact same position that Deb was in. And, finally, I checked back in with my friend Charlie and her mom, Rebecca, who live in Revere. Charlie and I fought side by side at the Capitol during the healthcare fights in 2017. Her mom reminded me: ``Due to severe preeclampsia, Charlie was delivered at 26 weeks gestation and weighed 790 [grams]--about 1 pound 12 ounces. She was in the NICU for 3 months. Without the ACA, she would have exceeded a lifetime cap before ever coming home from the hospital. Additionally, she would have been uninsurable because her birth was a preexisting condition. With access to health care, Charlie was able to thrive despite some pretty significant diagnoses. Now, at the age of 8, Charlie lives a very much typical life.'' Repealing the Affordable Care Act now would be devastating for Rebecca and Charlie. They can't go back to lifetime caps or sky-high rates and denied coverage because of preexisting conditions. None of these families can. And, like so many policies, Black and Brown communities will be disproportionately affected if the ACA is destroyed. I want to read another op-ed I wrote recently that was published in Shondaland. It discusses the harm of stripping away healthcare for communities of color, and here is what it says: Over ten years ago, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law. Since then, we've made progress. Millions of Americans now have high-quality, affordable health insurance. We no longer have to worry about being denied coverage because of preexisting conditions. Millions of young adults can stay on their parents' plans until age 26. States were given the option to expand Medicaid eligibility--providing coverage to more than 12 million low-income Americans. But now, the ACA is at risk because Republicans are trying to ram through Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to serve as the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. They are trying to push her confirmation through at breakneck speed because just one week after the November elections, a case to overturn the ACA will be in front of the Supreme Court, and Republicans want Barrett to have their back, cast the deciding vote, and deliver a deathblow to the law. Republicans have railed against the ACA from the day it was passed, making its repeal a tenet of their platform in every presidential and congressional race. They've tried dozens and dozens of times to tear it down piece by piece--all while ignoring the plethora of data that demonstrates the good it has done for the American people. Among the chorus of ACA detractors is Judge Barrett. While she tried to claim during her Supreme Court hearing that she is ``not hostile to the ACA,'' her record says otherwise. She criticized Chief Justice Roberts' vote in 2012 to uphold the ACA and wrote reviews questioning the law's constitutionality. Her nomination is just the latest Republican attack on the ACA--and if she is confirmed, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump might get their wish and succeed in ripping healthcare away from tens of millions of people during a global pandemic. Here's what that would mean: In the middle of the Covid-19 crisis, insurance companies would instantly be able to enforce caps on coverage or deny coverage to the 133 million Americans with preexisting conditions like asthma, diabetes, and even pregnancy. Covid-19 itself could be considered a preexisting condition for the millions of Americans who have survived the virus. The 12 million low-income Americans now covered by Medicaid expansions would lose their coverage, including more than 850,000 Americans struggling with opioid use disorder, [people who] rely on Medicaid for life-saving medication assisted treatment and counseling services. Millions of young adults would be thrown off of their parents' insurance, forcing them to pay out of their own pockets even as many struggle under a mountain of student loan debt, stagnant wages, and high unemployment rates due to the pandemic. And the damage won't stop there. Repeal of the ACA would have devastating consequences for Black and brown communities that disproportionately benefit from its coverage. The ACA helped narrow disparities in access to healthcare in the United States and provided millions of Black and brown families affordable options for care. Without the ACA, one in every five Black Americans, and one in three Hispanic Americans would be uninsured. If the ACA is dismantled, Black and brown communities that benefit from Medicaid expansions would be kicked off their insurance. In the midst of a maternal mortality crisis that disproportionately impacts mothers of color, moms across this country could lose access to the well woman visits and the maternity coverage currently required by the ACA. So let's call out the Supreme Court nomination for what it is--Donald Trump and the entire Republican Party's big chance to complete a decade-long partisan attack on the ACA and on Americans' rights to health care. It's the big chance for a desperate party to impose its extreme views on the people of this country because they couldn't actually get it done through Congress. The majority of Americans want the Senate to wait until after the election to choose a new justice. It's because this is a life or death situation for their friends, their families, and for tens of millions of their fellow Americans. In 2012, after yet another attack on the ACA was defeated in the Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg wrote that ``the crisis created by the large number of U.S. residents who lack health insurance is one of national dimension'' and cited the ``inevitable yet unpredictable need for medical care'' as a reason to uphold the legislation. [Justice Ginsburg] was right. Health care is a basic human right. We fight for basic human rights. We fight against this nomination. And we fight any attempt to rip away healthcare from families. We do this together. It is not just healthcare for tens of millions of people that is on the line. A woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions is also in jeopardy. Roe v. Wade is a landmark case that protects a woman's right to abortion care. A few weeks ago, I published an op-ed in The Cut that discusses what this nomination means for the right to abortion care, and I want to read it now for you. This is what I wrote: The decision whether or not to bear a child ``is central to a woman's life, to her dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.'' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that 30 years ago, at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing. She understood that reproductive freedom is foundational to equality and critical to women's health and to their economic security. Without access to high-quality reproductive healthcare--including contraception and safe, legal abortion--we cannot have true equality. But President Trump, Senate Republicans, and their extremist allies just don't care. They've spent almost 4 years of the Trump administration--and . . . many years before [that]--undermining health care and turning back the clock on reproductive rights. That's why they nominated Amy Coney Barrett to sit on the Supreme Court. She's the ticket for a desperate, right-wing party that wants to hold onto power a little longer in order to impose its extremist agenda on the entire country. President Trump and his Republican enablers have tried to deny this obvious fact. The President recently said that he ``didn't know'' how Barrett would rule on reproductive rights, and Republicans in the Senate have fallen in line. The Republican Party knows the large majority of Americans do not support overturning Roe v. Wade. They benefit when we stay on the sidelines--and they want us to sit back and stay quiet while our fundamental freedoms are on the line. But we see right through their radical play. President Trump picked Barrett as his Supreme Court nominee to take us back in time. Roe v. Wade established the constitutional right to safe and legal abortion and has been the law of the land for over 47 years. But over, and over, and over again, President Trump has bragged about his plans to appoint justices who would ``automatically'' overturn Roe. The Affordable Care Act expanded access to reproductive health care--like no-co-pay birth control--for millions [of people]. But President Trump has promised to overturn the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, and sent his Justice Department to ask the Supreme Court to do exactly that. Barrett is Trump's ideal candidate to accomplish his plans. In 2006, she signed a newspaper ad calling for the end of Roe and describing the decision as ``barbaric.'' She was a member of an anti-choice group while on the University of Notre Dame faculty. She's also been critical of the Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court's past decision to uphold the law in court. Her position on abortion and other reproductive rights are clear: She believes women cannot be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies. If Barrett's nomination makes you scared and angry, you are right to be: 17 abortion-related cases are already one step away from the Supreme Court. Twenty-one States have laws that could be used to restrict abortion in the case that Roe is overturned. And if Barrett's confirmation is rammed through quickly, she'll have the opportunity--on November 10--to hear a case about overturning the Affordable Care Act and a lifetime on the nation's highest court to undermine the rights and the values we hold dear. Access to birth control has changed the economic futures of millions of women, and access to safe abortion care is an economic issue, too. For a young couple with modest wages and piles of student loan debt, the decision to start or expand a family is a powerful economic [one]. For a woman working two jobs with two kids already in day care, an unplanned pregnancy can upend budgets already stretched too far. For a student still in high school or working toward a college degree, it can derail the most careful plans for financial independence. Indeed, one of the most common reasons that women decide to have an abortion is because they cannot afford to raise a child. And let's be explicitly clear: If these attacks succeed, they will have disproportionately negative consequences for women of color who are already facing some of the most insurmountable barriers to abortion care. Rich women will still have access to abortion and reproductive care, but it will be Black and Brown women--women with low incomes, women who can't afford to take time off from work, and young women who were raped or molested by a family member--who will be the most vulnerable. This is not a moment to back down. Already, it is inspiring to see so many women and friends of women coming off the sidelines in this fight, and we must continue to speak up. Call your Senators and make sure this conversation is grounded in our real experiences. Men must speak up, too, because reproductive freedom affects us all. Voting is already underway across the country, and there are only 26 days before the election is completed. And the data shows that most Americans want to wait until after the election for a new Justice to be confirmed. Justice Ginsburg gave us our marching orders: Do not fill this Supreme Court seat until after the election when the next President is installed. We will fight hard together to honor her wish. There are countless powerful stories that demonstrate why abortion rights are so important. I am going to read a few of them. The first is from my friend and colleague from Michigan, Senator Peters, who became the first sitting U.S. Senator to share his abortion story. I will just read an excerpt of that powerful piece that was published in Elle magazine. In the late 1980s in Detroit, Peters and his then wife, Heidi, were pregnant with their second child, a baby they very much wanted. Heidi was four months along when her water broke, leaving the fetus without amniotic fluid--a condition it could not possibly survive. The doctor told the Peters to go home and wait for a miscarriage to happen naturally. But it didn't happen. They went back to the hospital the next day, and the doctor detected a faint heartbeat. He recommended an abortion because the fetus still had no chance of survival, but it wasn't an option due to a hospital policy banning the procedure. So he sent the couple home again to wait for a miscarriage. ``The mental anguish someone goes through is intense,'' Peters says, ``trying to have a miscarriage for a child that was wanted.'' As they waited, Heidi's health deteriorated. When she returned to the hospital on the third day, after another night without a natural miscarriage, the doctor told her the situation was dire. She could lose her uterus in a matter of hours if she wasn't able to have an abortion, and if she became septic from the uterine infection, she could die. The doctor appealed to the hospital's board for an exception to their anti-abortion policy and was denied. ``I still vividly remember he left a message on the answering machine saying, `They refused to give me permission, not based on good medical practice, simply based on politics. I recommend you immediately find another physician who can do this procedure quickly,' '' Peters recalls. The Peters were able to get into another hospital right away because they were friends with its chief administrator. Heidi was rushed into an emergency abortion that saved her uterus and possibly her life. The whole experience was ``painful and traumatic,'' Heidi shared in a statement. ``If it weren't for urgent and critical medical care, I could have lost my life.'' Reflecting on the experience now, Senator Peters says it ``enacted an incredible emotional toll.'' So why go public with it? ``Well, it's important for folks to understand that these things happen to folks every day,'' he explains. ``I've always considered myself pro-choice and believe women should be able to make these decisions themselves, but when you live it in real life, you realize the significant impact it can have on a family.'' Peters decided to share his story at this moment because the right to make such decisions as a family, free of politics, has never been more at stake. He is alarmed by the threat of Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett--the threat she poses to women's reproductive rights. The very conservative nominee once signed her name onto a newspaper ad calling Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that legalized abortion, ``barbaric.'' If Republicans successfully confirm her to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat, she could reverse legal abortion in America or significantly curtail it. ``It's important for folks who are willing to tell these stories to tell them, especially now,'' Peters says. ``The new Supreme Court nominee could make a decision that will have major ramifications for reproductive health for women for decades to come. This is a pivotal moment for reproductive freedom.'' Senator Peters is right: This is a pivotal moment for reproductive freedom. I have heard from so many of my constituents about the importance of Roe and reproductive freedom. I am just going to share two of their stories. The first is from Kate, who lives in Medford, MA. Here is what Kate wrote: Most of my life, my strong support for abortion was as impersonal as it was important. A late bloomer, I barely dated until I was in my 20s, then quickly met and married my wonderful husband. Our birth control always worked perfectly. Anyway, we are both family-minded, and dreamed of building our family big with lots of kids. My husband and I had one daughter, planned and loved. But the second child was not so easy. I suffered three miscarriages in two years before a baby finally stuck. Pregnancy brought months of crushing nausea. But the sicker I felt the better, the doctors said, things must be going [well]. Healthy, healthy, healthy, they told me, time after time. By late may, the end was in sight. Big and ripe and swollen, I bundled myself into the hospital for an ultrasound. I brought a tiny sweater to knit while I waited. After an hour of examination, a doctor entered the dark room. She saw the sweater and asked, ``Is it for the baby?'' I nodded proudly and showed her how all the pieces would line up, just so, to fit my newborn daughter. A month was plenty long to finish such a small project. ``It's beautiful''. She told me, her eyes filling with tears. Then she turned the monitor toward me so that I could see the big, black fluid-filled holes in my baby's brain. There was so little that I knew that day. I didn't know about Dandy Walker Malformation or Agenesis of the corpus callosum. I knew love. I knew fear. I knew my values. And I knew that I was in Boston, medical mecca, hub of the universe. I learned more about brains in general and my baby's brain in particular. MRI revealed poor prognosis. My daughter would not likely ever walk, talk, support the weight of her own head, or swallow. I learned that infant hospice was out of the question, and that I could not refuse a feeding tube for my baby. Dumbfounded, I asked the neurologist, ``What does a baby like mine do? Just . . . sleep all day?'' He winced. ``Babies like yours,'' he explained, ``are not often comfortable enough to sleep.'' I knew what I needed to do. 35 weeks pregnant, and I was afraid, even, to tell my husband, my mother, my doctor, my genetic counselor, but I talked to my family, and I called the hospital. It was a Friday afternoon. My doctor was busy delivering triplets. I left a message. ``I want to know all my options,'' I said. ``All of them.'' She called me back at 6:30 p.m. and talked fast. She gave me the number of an adoption agency in upstate New York that specializes in medically complex children. ``I'm so sorry,'' she said. ``But if you want an abortion, you have to decide right away. You have to call before the end of the work day, mountain time. You have to be on an airplane on Monday, you have to show up Tuesday with $25,000 up front. I'm so sorry,'' she said again. I did not have $25,000. I didn't know if the number led to a safe, legal doctor, or if it led to some back-alley quack. I knew only my desperation. I called the number right away. The woman on the phone was very kind. She, too, apologized. ``But Dr. Hern does not practice after 36 weeks, and you'll be 36 weeks on the last day of your procedure.'' ``Yes,'' of course, I said. ``Of course. I understand. We'll be there. We'll find the money.'' And we did. There wasn't one day of open banking before our trip, so a loan was out of the question. We had to rely on my family. They were able to increase their credit while we flew across the country and withdraw funds from their retirement account to cover the bill later in the month. Without them, I don't know what would have happened. I know, now, about the abortion funds. But just as I didn't risk asking if what I was doing was safe and legal, I didn't want to ask for financial help. Everything felt so fragile. I met Dr. Hern and his excellent team with great relief. They explained the procedure. My third trimester abortion was humane, gentle, safe--safer, even in the 36th week, than full term live birth. We laid my daughter to rest in my womb that first day, a Tuesday. Friday morning, after brief labor, I delivered her whole and still, into the hands of my savior. He brought her to me after. She was still warm, but not quite warm enough. Dr. Hern saved my daughter from immeasurable suffering. He saved my family from having to go against our deepest held values. Dr. Hern saved me from my own desperation. And every step of the way, he saved my dignity. I want to share one more story. This one is from Wendy in Greenfield, MA. I will just read a part of what Wendy wrote. She said: I know firsthand that overturning Roe--whether overtly or by chipping away at access to abortion until Roe becomes meaningless--will not stop women from seeking abortions. It will, however, deny women access to safe abortions. Abortion has been with us since women have been getting pregnant, and will continue to be with us no matter what the politicians and judges decide. In 1961, I was 17 and abortion was not yet legal, but I was pregnant and did not want to be. I was fortunate because I was able to tell my parents, and they helped me find a doctor--but finding a safe, compassionate doctor turned out to be a different story. We knew an illegal abortion could be expensive and my parents didn't have much money, so we made a plan together that I would go by myself in the hopes that he would take mercy on me and charge me less. I know there were many heroic doctors who helped women back then at great risk to themselves, but this doctor, who I'm sure had seen other young women who were alone and without support, thought he could take advantage instead. I remember finding the somewhat rundown building and walking up a dark flight of stairs to his office. There was nobody else there, just the two of us, the office was untidy and dimly lit with the window blinds down. And the doctor himself appeared unkempt and unprofessional. His clothes were rumpled, he sat too close to me and put his hand on my knee and said ``we don't have to use the word abortion, dear.' I knew immediately that I did not want this man to touch me, let alone perform an abortion, so I did what many young women in my situation back then weren't able to do: I walked out. I went back down that flight of stairs and out into the light of the street. I felt--and still feel--it was a narrow escape. So we found a second doctor--and in fact this time it was my younger sister who had a guitar teacher who knew someone, because that's how it worked back then--and this time my mother came with me. We had to go at night to the back door, and though there was no nurse or assistant, this office was clean and it looked like a real medical office, and the doctor looked like a real doctor. But he was not a compassionate man. As I lay there on the exam table with my mother in the next room, the doctor lectured me the whole time, telling me I was a sinner, that the abortion was the ``wages of sin,'' that he hoped I would learn my lesson, and he threatened that if I made any noise, he would stop the procedure, I would have to have the baby, and everyone would ``know my shame.'' Although my experience was scary and humiliating, my story is not as horrific as many from that time--I survived, without injury, as many women did not--but that's because I was lucky. I was lucky to have supportive parents, I was lucky they could afford to pay, I was lucky to have a precocious sister, and I was lucky her guitar teacher had contacts, and lucky he knew of a medically competent doctor. But nobody should have to depend on luck to get a safe abortion. Although that doctor tried to shame me, I am not ashamed. I don't think abortion is shameful and I have never had a moment's regret. My abortion allowed me to live the life I wanted and to become a parent when I was able to raise a child properly and responsibly. This was good for me and my life, but it is also a social and public health good. Abortion is a necessary part of family planning and women's healthcare and denying or restricting access to it means that women can not safely control their reproduction and therefore can't really control their lives, which means they can't participate fully and equally in society. It is bad social policy to hobble half of the population. Women of my generation already know what pain and hardship results from abortion bans, but younger women have grown up taking abortion access for granted as a right, and I urge them to speak out and tell their stories. And not only women, but men, and other family members and friends who have been involved and who have been affected. Bring up your experiences in conversation, contact your legislators and tell them. They are the ones in immediate danger and whose lives and whose families' lives will be affected. Senator Peters' story, Kate's story, Wendy's story are just about how gut-wrenching these decisions are. These are personal decisions that women should make for themselves. The Senate has no business taking up a vote on a Supreme Court Justice who is already committed to taking away healthcare from millions of people and to take away Roe v. Wade and this protection from millions of women. We may not have the votes to stop them, but that does not change the fact that what the Senate Republicans are doing is wrong. We will continue to fight it. We will fight it now in the Senate, and we will fight it come election day November 3. I yield the floor.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Madam President, ``trailblazer,'' ``icon,'' ``titan,'' ``Notorious RBG''--those are just a few of the words that describe the Honorable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away last Friday. But there is another of Justice Ginsburg's title that I will always hold dear: ``friend.'' As a young mother and a baby law student at Rutgers's Law School, I had almost no examples of female lawyers or female law professors. Like so many young women who were trying to do something as seemingly outlandish as going to law school, it was a really lonely undertaking. Ruth was one of the few women whom we could see--a woman who had made it, and, even better, a woman who was fighting for other women. As I arrived at Rutgers, Ruth had left Rutgers for Columbia Law School. Rutgers was a small family, and all the women and the men knew about her. She was putting together the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU to give her a way to fight for equality in the courts. Her sharp legal mind and stubborn determination were already legendary, and we were sure she would change the world. And she did. I am forever grateful for her example to me and to millions of young women who saw her as a role model. I am also forever grateful that she made real change, opening doors that had remained stubbornly closed. Justice Ginsburg may have been tiny, but she stands among the greatest fighters for justice our Nation has ever seen. She turned every barrier into an opportunity for change. And when she became the second woman in our Nation's history to sit on the Supreme Court, she continued her fight for justice, blazing a trail for women's rights, laying out the framework for protecting our democracy, and helping to secure justice for the most vulnerable. Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed the world, and I will miss her. While I mourn her loss, I also hold close one of the things I loved most about Ruth: She was a fighter. We honor her memory by fighting for the things that Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for during her long career: a woman's right to make decisions about her own body, healthcare for millions of Americans, Dreamers who have made a home here, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, workers' rights, union rights, and making our Nation a place where no one is more likely to be murdered or imprisoned or discriminated against because of the color of their skin, how they worship, or who they love. Yes, it is a long list. Ruth defended it all, and now she is gone, and because she is gone, these rights and values are all on the line, vulnerable to being snatched away by another rightwing tilt of the Supreme Court. Justice Ginsburg's replacements will determine who the highest Court in the land works for--women and sick kids and workers and immigrants or billionaires and giant companies and rightwing politicians who want to shrink our democracy in order to stay in power. Ruth left our Nation a note before she died, and her words were clear. She said that her most fervent wish was that her replacement not be named until a new President is installed. Senator McConnell has already told us how to deal with the death of a Supreme Court Justice in an election year--a Justice whom Senator McConnell treated with respect. In 2016, Justice Scalia died a full 269 days before the Presidential election--months before any American would be able to cast a vote. But in 2016, that didn't matter to Senator McConnell and his Republican henchmen. They locked arms and insisted there could be no confirmation until after the next President had been elected and sworn in. Now, in 2020, the world is evidently different. Senator McConnell has made it clear that the practice he used when Justice Scalia died would not be used when Justice Ginsburg died. On the very same night that Justice Ginsburg passed, Mitch McConnell announced that he and Donald Trump would move immediately to name a new Supreme Court Justice, despite the fact that voting is already underway across the country and there are only 42 days before the election is completed. Democrat or Republican, the American people know that is not right. Democrat or Republican, the American people know that treating a Supreme Court vacancy as an opportunity for a naked partisan no-holds- barred power grab is burning down the pillars of integrity that support our Senate, our courts, and our democracy. Democrat or Republican, the American people will judge these choices for what they are--shameful. If this feels personal, that is because it is. Ruth Ginsburg was a personal hero, for me and for millions of other women. Ruth Ginsburg was a woman who never let any man silence her. The most fitting tribute to her is to refuse to be silenced and to name exactly what Donald Trump and Senate Republicans are trying to do: steal another Supreme Court seat. This kind of sleazy double-dealing is the last gasp of a desperate party that is undemocratically overrepresented in Congress and in the halls of power across our country, the last gasp of a corrupt Republican leadership numbed to its own hypocrisy that doesn't reflect the views of the majority of Americans or the values that we hold dear, the last gasp of a rightwing, billionaire-fueled party that wants to hold onto power a little longer in order to impose its extremist agenda on the entire country. And if Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans ram this nomination through, it is our duty to explore every option we have to restore the Court's credibility and integrity; every option to expand our democracy, not shrink it; every option to ensure that a working single parent and a millionaire corporate executive have equal justice in our courts; and every option to ensure that all Americans are represented in our institutions. The list of what is at stake if Republicans get their way and their extremist agenda finds a home in the Nation's highest Court is truly staggering. Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted to protect healthcare for millions of Americans. In a 5-to-4 decision, healthcare was saved for millions of people. But in the midst of a global pandemic with more than 200,000 of our loved ones dead from a virus raging out of control, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans want to install a Justice who will rip that healthcare away. The Supreme Court will hear arguments just days after the election on whether the Affordable Care Act should be overturned. If Justice Ginsburg is replaced with a McConnell-Trump choice, the 5-to-4 decision that saved healthcare by a single vote could be overturned. That would strip away protection from anyone with preexisting conditions. It would tell people with diabetes or high blood pressure or cancer, people who have had strokes, people who have had hundreds of other diseases, conditions, and events: You are on your own--no protection from an insurance company that just wants to cut off your insurance policies. It would let insurance companies charge women more simply because they are women. It would end the requirement that insurance companies cover young people up to the age of 26. It would gut Medicaid. And if you are one of the millions of Americans who has had COVID and survived, well, gutting the ACA would allow insurance companies to deny coverage because of it. COVID could become your preexisting condition. Three years ago, Mitch McConnell couldn't get the votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, even in his own Republican-controlled Senate. And why? Because this is not what the American people want. They want access to healthcare and protection for people with preexisting conditions. But Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump have a plan B, a plan to advance their rightwing agenda even if most Americans don't want it, and McConnell and Trump seem to think that, if they can steal another Supreme Court seat, they will get it. There is more at stake. Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted to protect the rights of all women to make their own decisions about their bodies. Just a few months ago, in another 5-to-4 decision, Ruth Ginsburg's vote was crucial to the Supreme Court overturning a Louisiana law designed to make it harder for women to access abortion care. Trump promised to appoint a Supreme Court Justice who will overturn Roe, and his two Supreme Court picks have already delivered, agreeing to let Louisiana restrict a woman's right to choose Nineteen States now stand ready to gut abortion protections if the Supreme Court overturns Roe, and now Senator McConnell and Senate Republicans want to hand them one more Justice so they can get the job done. Ruth Bader Ginsburg also voted over and over for the principle that American citizens should have an equal right to vote and an equal voice in our democracy. She issued a scathing dissent in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court decision overturning part of the Voting Rights Act. As the pandemic continues to sweep the Nation, the Supreme Court has blocked attempts to make it easier for Americans to safely cast their vote. Just in April, in a 5-to-4 decision with Justice Ginsburg dissenting, the Court reversed a lower Federal court's decision to expand the deadline for absentee voting in Wisconsin by 6 days. Republicans know that, to stay in power, they need to make it harder for all Americans to participate in the democratic process, and they want a Supreme Court Justice who will be committed to rolling back voting rights for decades to come. Ruth Bader Ginsburg understood the threat that climate change poses to our children's and our grandchildren's future. She joined in the opinion in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, another 5- to-4 ruling, which required the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have actively rolled back regulations that keep our air clean and our water safe, and they are committed to putting another Justice on the Supreme Court who will help advance their anti-environment agenda and block any government attempts to tackle the dangers of climate change. Ruth Bader Ginsburg understood the importance of protecting the rights of workers to join together and fight for fair pay and working conditions. In Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, she joined the minority in a 5-to-4 decision dissenting from the Court's ruling that employers can ban workers from joining together to demand protections against wage theft and other abuses. A Supreme Court Justice handpicked by Trump and McConnell could turn back the clock even more on workers' rights. Throughout her life, Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for justice and equality for all Americans, and now Americans across this country are following in Justice Ginsburg's footsteps. Americans are speaking out and demanding change, and they are voting. With a pandemic raging out of control, thanks to the incompetence and the corruption of Donald Trump and his Republican enablers, with a battered economy and millions of people out of work, with Americans across the country calling for an end to the systemic racism that has cut short the lives of countless Black men and women, Americans understand now more than ever that this year's elections will determine the direction of our Nation for generations to come. Today, Ruth is gone, but her life's work endures. We will honor her with action and channel our grief into change. We are at the cusp of a brighter day in our Nation, and this is the moment. We must tap into the reserves that we didn't know we had. We tap into the reserves bequeathed to us from fighters we have recently lost--like Justice Ginsburg and Congressman Elijah Cummings and Congressman John Lewis--and from the knowledge that we cannot--we will not--leave our children worse off. Three years ago I watched our Nation rise up in the face of impossible odds and defend healthcare when Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell wanted to strip away care from millions of Americans. We face those same odds today as we again fight to protect the healthcare of those same Americans and to protect so much more. But I have hope because I know that this is a righteous fight, and I know that millions of other Americans are also in this fight. Before she died, Ruth gave us our marching orders: Do not fill this Supreme Court seat until after the election when the next President is installed. We have our call to action. We honor her legacy by continuing the fight for justice, for equality, and for dignity--the fight for a world where we finally make those words ``equal justice under law'' real. Now I would like to spend just a little bit of time focusing on Justice Ginsburg's legacy by reading just a few of the statements by her that really stood out to me as I reflected on her work. At a 2012 symposium to honor the 40th anniversary of Justice Ginsburg being hired as the first woman with full tenure at Columbia Law School, two of Justice Ginsburg's former clerks, Abbe Gluck and Gillian Metzger, now both law professors themselves, had a public conversation with their former boss. They asked Justice Ginsburg how she ended up working with the ACLU, which became a major part of her legendary career, and she began her answer by discussing the time that she lived in Sweden. Here is what she said: My eyes were opened up in Sweden. This was in '62 and '63-- women were about a quarter of the law students there, perhaps three percent in the United States. It was already well accepted that a family should have two wage-earners. A woman named Eva Moberg wrote a column in the Stockholm Daily paper with the headline, ``Why should the woman have two jobs and the man only one?'' And the thrust of it was, yes, she is expected to have a paying job, but she should also have dinner on the table at seven, take her children to buy new shoes, to their medical check-ups, and the rest. The notion that he should do more than take out the garbage sparked debates that were very interesting to me. Also in the months I spent there, a woman came to Sweden from Arizona to have an abortion. Her name was Sherri Finkbine. She had taken thalidomide and there was a grave risk that the fetus, if it survived, would be terribly deformed. So she came to Sweden and there was publicity that she was there because she had no access to a legal abortion in her home state. Well, that was at the start of the 60s. I put it all on a back burner until the late 60s when the women's movement came alive in the United States. My students, then at Rutgers, asked for a course on sex discrimination and the law. And I went to the library and inside of a month read every federal court decision on gender discrimination--no mean feat at all because there were so few, so very few. Also I had signed up as a volunteer lawyer with the ACLU of New Jersey, more because it was a respectable way of getting litigation experience than out of ideological reasons, I will admit. Complaints from women began trickling into the office, new kinds of complaints. For example, women who were school teachers were required to leave the classroom the minute their pregnancy began to show because, after all, the children shouldn't be led to think that their teachers swallowed a watermelon. Anyway, these were women ready, willing, and able to work, but forced out on so-called maternity leave, which meant ``You're out, and if we want you back, we'll call.'' Another group of new complainants were women who had blue- collar jobs and wanted the same health insurance package for their family that a man would get. A woman could get health insurance for herself, but she wasn't considered the breadwinner in the family. Only the man got family benefits. And just to indicate the variety, there was a wonderful summer program at Princeton. The National Organization for Women complained about it. Princeton had already become co- educational. The summer program was for students at the end of sixth grade. It was a Summer in Engineering program. The children came on campus, they had an enriched program in math and science. There was just one problem: it was for boys, not girls. I should also mention one other complainant. Abbe Seldin was her name. She was the best tennis player in her Teaneck, New Jersey high school, but she couldn't be on the varsity team. There was no team for girls, and although she could beat all the boys, she couldn't be on the team. So all this was under way. People were lodging complaints they were either too timid to make before or they were sure they would lose. But in the 1970s, they could become winners because there was a spirit in the land, a growing understanding that the way things had been was not right and should be changed. They brought those complaints, and Ruthie Ginsburg is one of the people who helped make those changes. As we all know, Justice Ginsburg went on to become one of the fiercest advocates for women's rights our Nation has ever seen. On the Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg became famous for her dissents. She was asked about this, and I think her response is worth sharing. [Y]ou can let out all the stops when you're a dissenter. I would distinguish two kinds of dissent. There's the great dissent written for a future age--the Brandeis and Holmes Free Speech dissents around the time of World War I are exemplary. They are the law of the land today. Another kind of dissent aims to prompt immediate action from the legislature. The Lilly Ledbetter case is a recent example. I should tell Lilly Ledbetter's story because some of you may not know it. Lilly Ledbetter worked as an area manager for a Goodyear Tire Plant. She was hired in the 70s, then the only woman doing that job, and was initially paid the same as her male colleagues. Over time, her pay slipped. She might have suspected it but she didn't know it for sure because Goodyear, like most employers, didn't give out its wage records. One day, she found a little slip in her box at the plant; it listed the salaries of the men employed as area managers. Compared to Ledbetter's salary, the disparity was startling, as much as forty percent. In the years of her employment at Goodyear, she'd done a pretty good job, earning satisfactory performance ratings, so she thought she had a winnable case. She filed suit and won in the district court, gaining a substantial jury verdict. On appeal, Goodyear argued that Ledbetter sued too late. She should have sued within the 180 days Title VII says, within 180 days of the discriminatory incident, so if you count from the very first time her pay slipped, that would have been back in the 70s. The Supreme Court agreed that her claim was untimely, which meant the jury's verdict for damages was overturned. My dissenting opinion pointed out that a woman in Ledbetter's position, the only woman doing a job up till then done only by men, doesn't want to rock the boat. She is unlikely to complain the first time she suspects something is awry. She will wait until she has a secure case. My opinion suggested that if she had sued the first time her paycheck was lower, had she found out about it, she probably would have lost because the excuse would have been ``She doesn't do the job as well as the men.'' But after twenty years, that argument can't be made with a straight face. By then, she has a winnable case. The Court's answer, she sued too late. She argued that every paycheck renewed the discrimination. I agreed. My dissenting opinion concluded: The ball is now in Congress's court to amend Title VII to say what I thought Congress meant all along. Within two years, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was passed. It was the first piece of legislation signed by President Obama. The audience to which my dissent appealed was Congress. Congress picked up the ball with a little help from many groups that prodded the legislators to amend Title VII. This is a reminder that Justice Ginsburg used all of her tools to make change. Speaking of dissents, in 2014, Justice Ginsburg was asked about the worst ruling this current Court had produced. Her unambiguous answer foreshadows the dangers we face today. This is what she said: If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United. I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be. So that's number one on my list. Number two would be the part of the health care decision that concerns the commerce clause. Since 1937, the Court has allowed Congress a very free hand in enacting social and economic legislation. I thought that the attempt of the Court to intrude on Congress's domain in that area had stopped by the end of the 1930s. Of course health care involves commerce. Perhaps number three would be Shelby County, involving essentially the destruction of the Voting Rights Act. That act had a voluminous legislative history. The bill extending the Voting Rights Act was passed overwhelmingly by both houses, Republicans and Democrats, everyone was on board. The Court's interference with that decision of the political branches seemed to me to be out of order. The Court should have respected the legislative judgment. Legislators know much more about elections than the Court does. And the same was true of Citizens United. I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed. And one last note, almost a year later, Justice Ginsburg's opinion hadn't changed. Let me read from a New York Times report about the remarks she delivered at Duke Law School: In expansive remarks on Wednesday evening, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg named the ``most disappointing'' Supreme Court decision in her 22-year tenure, discussed the future of the death penalty and abortion rights, talked about her love of opera and even betrayed a passing interest in rap music. The Court's worst blunder, she said, was its 2010 decision in Citizens United ``because of what has happened to elections in the United States and the huge amount of money it takes to run for office.'' She was in dissent in the 5-4 decision. The evening was sponsored by Duke University School of Law, and Justice Ginsburg answered questions from Neil S. Siegel, a professor there, and from students and alumni. Echoing a dissent last month, she suggested that she was prepared to vote to strike down the death penalty, saying that the capital justice system is riddled with errors, plagued by bad lawyers, and subject to racial and geographic disparities. She added that she despaired over the state of abortion rights. ``Reproductive freedom is in a sorry situation in the United States,'' she said. ``Poor women don't have choice.'' That was our Ruth Ginsburg, concerned to the very end about how law affects all of the people it touches. Ruthie, we will miss you I yield the floor.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I would like to offer my congratulations to Donna Kelly-Williams as she retires as president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association where she has represented our nurses and the patients they serve since 2009. Beginning her professional career in 1974, she aided nurses in the newborn nursery at the Cambridge Hospital, cementing her passion for the caregiving profession. Following nursing school, she served as a medical-surgical nurse and then as a pediatric nurse before eventually coming full circle and returning to the maternity unit. She has spent her entire nursing career serving her community at Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, MA. Throughout her career, she has always been committed to creating environments where every nurse is respected and valued for their contributions. This commitment and passion for advocacy led her to become involved in the Massachusetts Nurses Association, first joining the bargaining unit at Cambridge Hospital and serving in this capacity for two decades. She then served as vice president of the Massachusetts Nurses Association and on the board of directors before she was elected president in 2009. As president, Donna led the union as they became a part of National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in history. She understood this participation in a new national nurses' union enabled members to have an even greater impact on national pushes for legislation, including healthcare and labor reforms, supporting nurses serving in all of America's hospitals. Donna worked tirelessly to advocate for nurses' workers rights during strikes; I remember trading calls and texts with Donna late into the night to settle contracts during the Tufts Medical Center strike. I am deeply grateful to Donna Kelly-Williams for her lifelong commitment to America's working families, for all she has done for nurses across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and for her tireless fight to improve patient care. We have all benefited from Donna's passion, resilience, and empathy throughout her entire career and her lasting impact on our Massachusetts nurses will be felt for years to come. I once again congratulate her on her retirement and wish her the best of luck in the next chapter.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the passage of S. 4049, the clerk be authorized to correct the instruction line on amendment No. 2417.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Brown for the leadership on this. I am very sorry that the Republicans will not agree to moving forward on this bill today. The urgency of the moment cannot be overstated. President Trump's utterly failed response to the coronavirus pandemic has allowed a dangerous virus to spread, uncontrolled, throughout our Nation. More than 4 million Americans have contracted coronavirus, and more than 140,000 people are dead. While the death toll mounts, the President's failure to control the spread of COVID-19 has caused a second crisis, following closely on the heels of the virus. Our economy is in shambles, and now we are forced to fight on two fronts: to keep families safe from the coronavirus and safe from the economic fallout. So I am here on the Senate floor today to talk about one piece of the economic emergency unfolding in our country. Right now, we are just days away from a completely preventable housing crisis. The CARES Act eviction moratorium is currently protecting more than 12 million renters from losing their homes while the virus rages across our country. On Friday at midnight, those protections will disappear, allowing a tsunami of evictions that will hit communities of color and low-income families the hardest unless we act now. Let us be clear. Eviction is not a new problem in this country. Too many families were already on the financial brink before the virus crashed our economy. Close to 40 percent of adults don't have enough cash to cover an unexpected $400 expense. More than half of households didn't have enough savings to cover 3 months without income. More than one in four renters were paying more than half of their income to housing. Now families are facing the worst economic crisis of their lifetime. About 30 million Americans are officially unemployed or out of work. One-half of all Americans have lost employment income since the start of this pandemic, and communities of color have been hit the hardest. It is not possible to fix this economy without containing the virus, but we can make sure that millions of Americans don't lose their homes because President Trump closed his eyes and hoped that the pandemic would just go away. This is really a commonsense solution. My bill, the Protecting Renters from Evictions and Fees Act, would extend the Federal eviction moratorium through March of 2021, and it would expand the moratorium to protect every single renter. Congress should pass this bill immediately, and we should pair it with Senator Brown's bill to create a $100 billion emergency rental assistance fund to help struggling renters make their payments. Families would get the help they need to stay in their homes and stay current on their rent, and landlords would get their payments. This would help families. It would cover landlords, and it would help protect renters and communities from the spread of coronavirus. So the answer is really simple. The Senate can--and must--pass these two bills today because the consequences of inaction would be devastating. More than one out of every three renters have already missed a housing payment. More than one-third of renters have little or no confidence that they can make the next payment. And let's be clear about who is most at risk. Closer to half of Black and Latinx renters aren't sure they will be able to make the next housing payment. Black Americans are already more likely to be renters because of decades of racist Federal policies that denied Black families Federally insured mortgages, and our government failed to protect Black homeowners from predatory mortgages leading up to the great recession. So when the economy crashed, millions of Black Americans lost their homes, wiping out nearly all of the gains in Black homeownership since the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Failing to institute an eviction moratorium would further deepen existing racial injustices. Letting eviction protections evaporate at midnight on Friday will also result in widespread housing disruption and needlessly cause long-term harm to millions of families' future housing, financial stability, and their health. It will put more families at risk of homelessness at a time when providers are already stretching every dollar to connect unhoused Americans with sheltering resources, and it will take away one of the most critical protections from furthering the spread of coronavirus: safe, stable housing. President Trump's shameful inaction has allowed this virus to spread throughout every community in our country. He has denied the scope and seriousness of this pandemic. He has dismissed calls to take lifesaving action, and he has refused to use the powers of the Federal Government to implement even the most basic mitigation measures. But crisis does not stop growing just because those in power refuse to acknowledge it. That is true for the spread of the coronavirus, and it is also true for the looming eviction crisis. This is about our values. The Senate has the opportunity--right now-- to stop a massive wave of evictions that will displace families right in the middle of a global pandemic. My colleagues understood the stakes in March when Congress passed the existing eviction moratorium into law. I urge them to join me now in continuing this lifesaving protection while providing emergency rental assistance to keep renters housed, landlords paid, and most of all, to keep families safe I yield the floor.

Ms. WARREN

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. For the 60th consecutive year, the Senate stands poised to pass legislation that authorizes funding for national defense and sets the course for the Department of Defense's policies. This year, we consider this legislation during a moment of deep reflection and anguish, as Americans reckon with our ugly history of systemic racism and the original sin of chattel slavery. For weeks, all across this Nation, Americans have taken to the streets to call for justice and call for an end to the racist violence that has stolen far too many Black lives. We say the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Atatiana Jefferson, and so many other Black men and women to reaffirm the simple but powerful truth that they mattered. Their lives mattered. Black lives matter. This moment is about ending police brutality once and for all. It is also about ending systemic racism and dismantling White supremacy in every aspect of our economy and our society. It is about building an America that lives up to its highest ideals. The Defense bill we are debating today takes an important step in this direction by addressing the honors that our Nation continues to bestow on Confederate officers, who took up arms against the United States in defense of chattel slavery. This bill denies those honors to military leaders who killed U.S. soldiers in defense of the idea that Black people are not people, but instead, are property to be bought and sold. It has been more than 150 years since the end of the Civil War, but 10 U.S. Army posts around this country currently bear the names of officers of the Confederate States of America. Think about that. These bases were named to honor individuals who took up arms against our Nation in a war that killed more than half a million Americans. They took up arms to defend an institution that reduced Black people to property. The Defense bill now before us includes language I wrote that would require the Secretary of Defense to remove Confederate names from all military assets. The Senate Armed Services Committee, which has a long history of bipartisan leadership within this body, adopted this language with the support of Senators from both parties, recognizing that this is an opportunity to correct longstanding historic injustice. This bill covers more than military bases. It also requires name changes for Federal buildings and streets on those military bases and at other installations that celebrate the traitors who took up arms against the United States to defend slavery. The USS Chancellorsville, for example, is named for a Confederate battle victory, a defeat for the United States of America. The ship's crest pays homage to Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Defenders of these symbols of oppression speak often in generalities, glossing over the details of the Confederacy, the Civil War, and the specifics about the individuals whose names are attached to American military installations. Let's begin with the truth about the men for whom some of these bases are named. Fort Benning, GA, ``Home of the Infantry,'' is named for Brigadier General Henry L. Benning. Benning led Georgia's secession from the Union and commanded the Confederate soldiers at Gettysburg. He was a leader of the secessionist movement. Why? Because, according to Benning's own words, he had a ``deep conviction that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of [Georgia's] slavery.'' He was fearful that the end of slavery would lead to ``Black Governors, Black legislatures, Black juries, Black everything. Is it to be supposed that the White race will stand for that?'' Fort Gordon, GA, is named for Major General John Brown Gordon. Historians believe he led the Georgia chapter of the Ku Klux Klan's murderous terrorists in years after the Civil War. Fort Pickett in Virginia is named for Major General George Pickett. During the war, Pickett ordered the execution of 22 former Confederate soldiers, men whose crime was declaring their allegiance to the Union, the United States of America. For this despicable act, he was later investigated for war crimes and forced to flee to Canada after the war. Fort Bragg, NC, is named for Major General Braxton Bragg. Bragg was a slave owner and, like the others, Bragg chose to take up arms against the United States and kill U.S. soldiers. But with an infamously poor record as a military commander, he wasn't very good at it. Widely regarded as the most disliked man in the Confederate Army, Bragg commanded forces that were so badly defeated at the Battle of Chattanooga in 1863 that he ultimately resigned. Those are just a few examples, as are Fort Hood, Fort Lee, Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Polk, Camp Beauregard, Fort Rucker. American military bases that carry the names of Confederate generals are not named for heroes, and they are not named for men who risked their lives defending the United States and its soldiers. They are named for men who took up arms against the United States of America and killed American soldiers in the defense of slavery. They are the names of men who were directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the defense of slavery. Those who complain that removing the names of traitors from these bases ignores history ought to learn some history themselves. These bases were not named in the years following the Civil War. No. They were named decades and decades later--during the Jim Crow era--to strengthen a movement that tried to glorify the Confederacy and reinforce White supremacy. As the Nation prepared to fight in World War I, the Army needed more bases to train new draftees. The military decided to establish half of the new bases across the Southern States. Only 40 years had passed since the end of Reconstruction, and putting Federal troops back into the South was a sensitive matter. Choosing Confederate commander names for these bases curried favor with the same local politicians who were devoted to maintaining the brutal regime of White supremacy. The strategy was successful. In August 1917, the magazine Confederate Veteran noted: ``For the first time since the War between the States, the United States government officially paid tribute to the `military genius' of noted Confederate war chieftains in naming four of the training camps.'' Naming these bases after Confederate rebels was wrong. After years of resistance and denial, the Department of Defense is finally recognizing that it is time for our military to stop paying homage to individuals who betrayed the United States and who took up arms against it to defend slavery. Secretaries Esper and McCarthy have both said they are ``open to a bipartisan discussion on the topic.'' Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley also ``fully supports the discussion and Secretary McCarthy's efforts . . . to explore this issue.'' GEN Robert Abrams, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, announced on June 15 that he is prohibiting the Confederate flag in all U.S. installations in that country. Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger has banned the Confederate battle flag from Marine bases worldwide because ``this symbol has shown it has power to inflame the feelings of division.'' The Chief of Naval Operations, ADM Michael Gilday, also issued an order last month prohibiting the Confederate flag from all public spaces and work areas aboard Navy installation ships, aircraft, and submarines, saying that the step was necessary ``to ensure unit cohesion, preserve good order and discipline, and uphold the Navy's core values of honor, courage, and commitment.'' It is time to follow the example of these military leaders and to take steps to remove all forms of commemoration of the Confederate States of America from all of our military assets. Senate Republicans have suggested that Congress should simply study the issue. They suggest forming a commission that prioritizes the wishes of State and local officials but that doesn't make any decisions. Let me be completely clear. The current bill already includes a commission charged with thoughtfully executing the requirement to remove these names from U.S. military installations, and it requires consultation with local officials. The intent of the Republican amendment is simply to erase the requirement currently in the bill that requires the Confederate names to be eliminated--not studied, eliminated. It has been 150 years since Lee surrendered at Appomattox and the rebellion against the United States in defense of owning human beings was finally put down. We know whom these bases were named for. We know why they were named. There is nothing left to study. We are long past the time for action. The Senate Committee on Armed Services has declared that the time for honoring the legacy of men who championed the cause of slavery and White supremacy on military installations is now over. The committee voted to rename the installations where millions of servicemembers of color have lived, trained, and deployed abroad in defense of our country. Now the entire Senate has an opportunity to add its voice to the chorus, and I am certain that the House will join us soon. President Trump has already declared his opposition to this provision. He has, instead, chosen the well-worn path of hatred and division. So, despite the fact that the Department of Defense already has the statutory authority it needs to change those names, it has hesitated to take action in defiance of the Commander in Chief. Congress has the power and the responsibility to end decades of injustice. Servicemembers of color have been pledging to support and defend the Constitution of the United States for a long time. They have done so knowing they might be called upon to give what Lincoln called the last full measure of devotion, and they have done so despite being surrounded by these visceral reminders that the military in which they serve honors men who fought to kill fellow Americans and to keep their ancestors enslaved. We can tear those visceral reminders down, and we will. The Confederate soldiers who betrayed the United States to fight for the Confederacy were fighting for the institution of slavery--plain, simple, ugly. It is time to put the names of those leaders who fought and killed U.S. soldiers in defense of a perverted version of America where they belong--as footnotes in our history books, not plastered on our Nation's most significant military installations. The tens of thousands of Americans protesting the appalling killings of Black men and women are calling upon us--on all of us--not just to say the words ``Black lives matter'' but to take a tangible step toward making it true by breaking apart the systems that have stolen countless Black lives and denied Black Americans opportunity and equal treatment. Being race-conscious is not enough. It never was. We must be anti- racists. Removing the names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederacy and anyone who voluntary served it from military property is, in the broader scheme, only one step toward addressing systemic racism in our society, but it is an important step. It will bring us closer to acknowledging the truth of that ugly past, and it will give us a firmer foundation on which to build a better future for everyone. I suggest the absence of a quorum.