Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, last night, we saw the President of the United States, who has spent years maligning America, continue to malign Americans. The President once again whipped up a toxic brew of racism, xenophobia, and nativism, with his crowd chanting ``send her back'' about a duly elected Member of Congress and a U.S. citizen--one of the oldest and ugliest racist attacks against Americans of color.
The way the President appeals to the worst instincts of people and what was shouted and chanted at the rally last night without the President's upbraiding them was despicable and eerily familiar to what happens in dictatorships.
We all know that the only way President Trump will stop this is for Republicans--his own party--to demand it. The only way President Trump will stop is when Republicans on the other side have the honor, the decency, and the courage to tell him to stop. All we hear is silence and diversions from Leader McConnell.
So, America, if you don't like what the President says, if it gets you upset and makes your hairs stand on end, say: This is not the America I know and love. Whatever your political views, call your Senators and tell them to tell President Trump to stop this.
Argue the merits, argue the issues, but stop this appeal to the worst instincts--the worst instincts. And our Republican friends are silent.
History will show this. This is a moment. There is no John McCain anymore. When this kind of bitter racism emerged in his townhall meeting, he rejected it publicly when somebody used it against then- Candidate Obama. It went down in history as one of his finest moments. Where are the fine moments of my colleagues? There are 53 of them on the Republican side, and not one has spoken out strongly enough--not one.
They are quiet on everything else, too--things that matter to average Americans to help make their lives better. Where are our Republican friends on the substantive issues that can help Americans of all colors and creeds--all colors and creeds--help Americans whether their families have been in this country for 11 generations, as some of my friends have been, or are new immigrants, as some of my friends are? In New York, we have everybody.
Here are some of the things our Republican friends can do. The House has passed legislation to improve our healthcare system and intervene in the lawsuit against eliminating protections for Americans with preexisting conditions, but Leader McConnell--once again silent--sent the bill to his legislative graveyard. The House has passed legislation to close loopholes in our gun background check system. This is no longer controversial. Ninety percent of Americans are for it--90 percent. Leader McConnell has sent that bill, too, to the legislative graveyard. Climate change, voting rights, paycheck fairness for women-- all are in the legislative graveyard.
Where are my Republican friends on those issues? Why aren't they standing up and saying that we should at least debate them here in the Senate? Democrats have had to petition for weeks to even be allowed amendment votes on issues of importance to the American people.
It is a sorry state of affairs here in the Senate. I believe it has frustrated many of my Republican friends--I hear it from them privately--as well as us Democrats, because while we may not always agree on legislative solutions to a problem--we are not all supposed to agree; this is not a dictatorship--we want to debate the issues. We want to make forward progress.
My Republican colleagues know that they didn't come here just to rubberstamp an assembly line of the President's nominees, judicial and executive, and neither did we, but under Leader McConnell, legislative progress is the lowest and often last priority. H.R. 1327
Madam President, for example, yesterday, my colleague Senator Gillibrand asked unanimous consent to reauthorize the Victim Compensation Fund for the brave first responders who got sick after working on the pile after 9/11. It is as unobjectionable a piece of legislation as you can imagine. These are the people who rushed to the towers after 9/11. They got all kinds of gunk in their lungs and in their gastrointestinal systems and later developed cancer. Many of them are now gone, some of them are people I became friends with, like Ray Pfeifer and Detective Alvarez. And all we want to do is what we do with our soldiers when they are on the battlefield and get illnesses and wounds. We want to help them. That is all. Nothing more. Yet, over the course of the last several years, again, our Republican friends, aided and abetted by Leader McConnell, have either blocked this legislation or diluted it. But now it seems there is a breakthrough.
In the House, this bill passed with I think only 12 Republicans objecting. Conservative Members like Mark Meadows, who is head of the Freedom Caucus, Leader McCarthy, and Whip Scalise all voted for it. Why can't we just bring it to the floor and vote on it here? We should.
My colleague from Kentucky, Rand Paul, objected. Bring it to the floor. Bring it to the floor. Give him an amendment, but let's not just have this one lay in the legislative graveyard as well. I am hopeful it will not because as soon as it passes the Senate--and we don't want to amend it because that will send it back to the House, and who knows what will happen in the back-and-forth--if we just pass the bill as is and defeat an amendment that is not intended to help or improve it, it will go to the President's desk, and he will sign it. Even if he doesn't, there are veto-proof majorities in both Chambers to overcome it.
Senator Gillibrand, my friend and colleague who has done so much on this issue, will try again today to get this Chamber's consent to pass the bill. If the junior Senator from Kentucky again blocks the bill, I strongly urge the senior Senator from Kentucky, Leader McConnell, to put the bill on the floor. It is unacceptable that once again we are dealing with delays on legislation to help our brave 9/11 first responders, some of whom are gone, many of whom are ill, and many more of whom will get ill in the future from the diseases they acquired because of their bravery and selflessness on 9/11. FaceApp
Madam President, on another matter, over the past couple of days, millions of Americans have been downloading FaceApp--a viral tool that applies a little AI technology to a selfie to make your face look younger or older or add a beard. That seems like a benign new social media fad, but it actually may not be benign at all.
Who is the parent company of this app? Wireless Labs. It is based in, of all places, St. Petersburg, Russia. It also came to light that the app not only takes your picture but retains the right to access all your photos, your search history, and gives ``perpetual, irrevocable, and worldwide'' license to use your photo, your name, and your likeness. This is a breathtaking level of access--all too common in murky apps like these--that raises very substantial privacy concerns.
After everything we learned about Russia's unrepentant cyber aggression in 2016, the nexus of facial recognition, digital privacy, and a shadowy Russian company based in St. Petersburg, where so much of the Russian interference in our elections and interference with the internet emerged from, what happened with this app from Wireless Labs called FaceApp should set off alarm bells for all Americans.
At the very least, we need to know more about what the heck is going on here. I have called for the FTC and the FBI to investigate FaceApp to see if private information of millions of Americans could wind up in the wrong hands and used for very bad purposes. We need more than the assurances; we need the facts. The potential for our facial data and the data from all of our friends and families contained in our photos to fall into the hands of something like Russian intelligence or the Russian military is really troubling. I strongly urge the FTC and the FBI to get to the bottom of FaceApp. Border Security
Madam President, on one more issue, over the last few months, Americans have seen for themselves the awful conditions that migrant children are enduring at the Southern border. Faultless kids--many traveling alone, many very young--are subject to inhumane conditions, without the proper healthcare, nutrition, hygiene, or space. People have different views on immigration--we know that--but no one should want to see these kids treated so inhumanely. All they are doing is fleeing for a better life.
This weekend, I am leading a visit to the border with a number of my Democratic colleagues to investigate, inspect, and evaluate the latest conditions at these facilities. We hope--desperately hope--that the conditions have improved over the last several weeks. We will certainly report to the American people and to the Senate on what we find.
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