Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Department of

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, in a moment, I intend to put forward a unanimous consent request to pass my bipartisan bill with our colleague from Utah, Senator Lee, entitled the Protect Reporters from Excessive State Suppression Act, also known as the PRESS Act.

Before I make the unanimous consent request, I want to take just a few minutes to talk about why our colleague from Utah Senator Lee and I feel this legislation is so important, and I will start with the basic proposition behind the legislation.

If you don't have a free press, you don't have a democracy. My dad was a journalist. After fleeing the Nazis, he came to this country, taught himself English, worked in our Army developing propaganda that we dropped on the Nazis. He believed deeply in individual freedom and in press freedom and would always tell me: Ron, they go hand in hand.

If you want to see what happens when governments undermine and eliminate the free press, look at Russia, look at Saudi Arabia, look at Iran. Information became a tool of power, abuse, and manipulation. That is what governments do when they want to keep freedom from breaking out in their countries. And so they abuse power rather than promote education, expression, and enlightenment among the countryside and the people.

So--let's be clear--the threat of government overreach interfering with the free press in the United States is not some distant, far-off, hypothetical idea. It happened very recently. The Trump administration spied on several journalists at outlets the disgraced ex-President personally disliked and attacked, grabbing phone and email records. The extent of this abuse of power has come out in shocking revelations over the last few years.

And let me emphasize, the Trump administration was not the first to do this sort of thing. Both the Trump administration and the Obama administration went too far in prosecuting journalists just for doing their jobs.

Now, Members of the Senate talk pretty frequently about their interest in protecting journalism in America. My view is the bipartisan PRESS Act is the best opportunity we have to make progress on that goal before the Congress ends--and we all hope that that is fairly shortly.

The PRESS Act would protect the free flow of information by shielding journalists from being ordered by the courts to give up their sources. The bill includes key exceptions, such as when that information is necessary to prevent an act of terrorism against the United States or necessary to prevent the threat of imminent violence. Those exceptions were very important to Senator Lee and me.

I see our colleague here from Arkansas. He and I serve on the Select Committee on Intelligence, so we know about the importance of protecting our country against terrorism.

This legislation is very similar to legislation already on the books in several States, including my home State of Oregon and Senator Lee's home State of Utah. It is our view, though, that these protections should extend from sea to shining sea in our great country.

Now, I will close by saying this is a proposal that brings both sides together. The House passed the PRESS Act a few months ago unanimously. And I think our colleagues would agree that sometimes these days it seems you can't get every Member of the House to even agree that there are 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week, yet they passed our bill unanimously.

This is a can't-miss opportunity to protect the free press in America. It is good for the free flow of information. It is good for holding government accountable, and it is good for the democratic ideals on which this country was founded.

And I will just close by saying that if you read the writings of the Founding Fathers, it was almost as if they thought a free press was as important, if not more so, than government. That is how strongly they felt.

Let's pass this unanimous consent request when we make it, and let's send the PRESS Act to the President's desk today.

And I will now ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 4330 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I think the fact that there has been an objection here is very unfortunate. I am just going to briefly respond.

Our colleague from Arkansas has talked about the exceptions that are made in this bipartisan bill. And I would only say that the exceptions to make sure we can protect our country to deal with national security in this bill were strong enough to get the support of 435 Members of the House of Representatives.

I look at the President of the Senate, and he and I were in the other body. And sometimes, you would think you couldn't order a 7UP over there. But the fact is, it got the support of every Member of the House of Representatives--all 435--because they thought the exceptions made sense here.

Second, my colleague from Arkansas said that this was somehow giving special status--special protection--to the press in America. That is not accurate. This gives the press the kind of protection I believe the Founding Fathers would have supported because I have read their writings and saw what they had to say about the press and have already noted it.

And then our colleague seemed to make the case that this was somehow for liberal journalists--not for journalists for moderates and conservatives--for liberal journalists. The legislation extends to people in the press across the political spectrum. There are no special fast-track arrangements for people of one philosophy or another. And that was something that was especially important to me.

I mentioned in my remarks my dad, who fled the Nazis, taught himself English, and served in our Army. And he worked--particularly, after his service--writing historical nonfiction. He wrote a very important book about the Bay of Pigs where he highlighted what really happened. And what I enjoyed so much about my dad's book and what happened afterwards, the first person to call my dad, because, he said, Peter-- my dad was Peter Wyden--you are writing the truth about what happened, was the late Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois, one of the most conservative Members of the other body. And he and my dad struck up a fast friendship over the phone because they were interested in the facts. And that is what journalists do: They get the facts out.

So I think it is unfortunate there has been an objection here on all of these points. These issues were considered by the other body. And 435 Members of the other body said: This is important for our country. This is important for getting the facts out to the American people-- unvarnished information, not information from the left, center, or right--unvarnished information.

I just want to close by saying we are going to be back on this floor. We are going to push this again and again and again because at a crucial time in America, where--and I mentioned this has not been relegated to one administration or another. This has been happening too often. It happens in any kind of administration, any philosophy. It is time to end it, and it is time to make sure that our free press is in a position to get the facts to the American people. We need this particular bipartisan effort, Senator Lee and I. And we will be back on this floor until we get it passed.

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