>> thanks. [applause] >> you have about four minutes to leave it on a hopeful note. >> actually that's exactly what i want to do because first of all, i do want to associate myself on the second anniversary of the invasion of ukraine with saying we have to somehow convince congress to congressional leaders to let a vote happen to a ukraine. we've got to go speed we believe this to keep our over four-year commitment to congressional coverage. you can finish watching it on her c-span now out. we take you live now to the senate floor where lawmakers are taking votes on judicial and executive nominees. live coverage on c-span2.

the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the clerk will report the nomination. the clerk: the judiciary, david see more leibowitz of florida to be united states district judge for the southern district of florida. the presiding officer: the question is on the nomination. is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote: the clerk: ms. baldwin. mr. barrasso.

mr. bennet. mrs. blackburn. mr. blumenthal. mr. booker. mr. boozman. mr. braun. mrs. britt. mr. brown. mr. budd.

ms. butler. ms. cantwell. mrs. capito. mr. cardin. mr. carper. mr. casey.

mr. cassidy. ms. collins. mr. coons. mr. cornyn. ms. cortez masto. mr. cotton. mr. cramer. mr. crapo. mr. cruz. mr. daines. ms. duckworth. mr. durbin. ms. ernst.

the clerk: mr. fetterman. mrs. fischer. mrs. gillibrand. mr. graham. mr. grassley. mr. hagerty. ms. hassan. mr. hawley. mr. heinrich. mr. hickenlooper. ms. hirono. mr. hoeven.

the clerk: mrs. hyde-smith. mr. johnson. mr. kaine. mr. kelly. mr. kennedy. mr. king. ms. klobuchar. mr. lankford. mr. lee. mr. lujan. ms. lummis. mr. manchin. mr. markey. mr. marshall. mr. mcconnell. mr. menendez. mr. merkley. mr. moran. mr. mullin. ms. murkowski. mr. murphy.

the clerk: mrs. murray. mr. ossoff. mr. padilla. mr. paul. mr. peters. mr. reed. mr. ricketts. mr. risch. mr. romney. ms. rosen. mr. rounds. mr. rubio. mr. sanders. mr. schatz.

mr. schmitt. mr. schumer. mr. scott of florida. mr. scott of south carolina. mrs. shaheen. ms. sinema. ms. smith. ms. stabenow. mr. sullivan. mr. tester. mr. thune. mr. tillis. mr. tuberville. mr. van hollen. mr. vance. mr. warner. mr. warnock. ms. warren. mr. welch. mr. whitehouse. mr. wicker. mr. wyden. mr. young.

the clerk: senators voting in the affirmative -- baldwin, bennet, blumenthal, booker, brown, butler, cardin, casey, collins, cornyn, cortez masto, durbin, graham, hassan, heinrich, hickenlooper, hirono, kaine, kelly, kennedy, king, lujan, lummis, markey, menendez, merkley, murkowski, murphy, ossoff, padilla, peters, reed, romney, rosen, rounds, rubio, sanders, schatz, smith, warner, warnock, warren, welch, and wyden. mr. fetterman, aye.

mr. carper, aye. senators voting in the negative -- britt, cotton, cruz, fisher, johnson, lankford, marshall, moran, schmitt, tuberville, and wicker. the clerk: mr. daines, no. mr. thune, no. mrs. capito, no. ms. ernst, aye.

mr. barrasso, no.

the clerk: mr. coons, aye. the clerk: mr. young, aye.

mr. cassidy, no. the clerk: mr. mcconnell, no. mrs. shaheen, aye. the clerk: mr. scott of florida,

aye. the clerk: mr. hagerty, no.

vote:

the clerk: mrs. gillibrand, aye.

the clerk: ms. klobuchar, aye.

mr. sullivan, no. mr. risch, no. mrs. murray, aye.

the clerk: mr. mullin, no. ms. cantwell, aye. the clerk: mr. lee, no.

the clerk: ms. duckworth, aye.

the clerk: ms. stabenow, aye.

mr. grassley, aye.

vote:

the clerk: mr. schumer, aye.

the clerk: ms. sinema, aye. mr. manchin, aye. # #

the clerk: mr. hoeven, no.

the clerk: mrs. blackburn, no. mr. van hollen, aye.

the clerk: mr. cramer, no. the clerk: mrs. hyde-smith, no.

the clerk: mr. whitehouse, aye.

the clerk: mr. braun, no.

the clerk: mr. vance, no. mr. boozman, no.

the clerk: mr. paul, no. mr. hawley, no.

the clerk: mr. tester, aye. mr. scott of south carolina, no

vote:

dellinger.

the clerk: mr. budd, no. the presiding officer: the yeas are 64, the nays are 33, and the nomination is agreed to. under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table and the president will be immediately notified of the senate's action.

the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: cloture motion, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate, do hereby bring to a close debate on the nomination of executive calendar number 455, hampton y. dellinger, of north carolina, to be office of special counsel. the presiding officer: the mandatory quorum call has been waived. is it the sense of the senate that debate on the nomination of hampton y. dellinger to be office of special counsel shall be brought to a close. the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote: the clerk: ms. baldwin. mr. barrasso. mr. bennet. mrs. blackburn. mr. blumenthal.

mr. booker. mr. boozman. mr. braun. mrs. britt. mr. brown. mr. budd. ms. butler. ms. cantwell. mrs. capito. mr. cardin. mr. carper. mr. casey. mr. cassidy. ms. collins. mr. coons. mr. cornyn. ms. cortez masto. mr. cotton. mr. cramer.

mr. crapo. mr. cruz. mr. daines. ms. duckworth. mr. durbin. ms. ernst. mr. fetterman. mrs. fischer. mrs. gillibrand. mr. graham. mr. grassley. mr. hagerty. ms. hassan. mr. hawley. mr. heinrich. mr. hickenlooper. ms. hirono. mr. hoeven. mrs. hyde-smith. mr. johnson. mr. kaine.

mr. kelly. the clerk: mr. kennedy. mr. king. ms. klobuchar. mr. lee. mr. lujan. ms. lummis. mr. manchin. mr. markey. mr. marshall.

mr. mcconnell. mr. menendez. mr. merkley. mr. moran. mr. mullin. ms. murkowski. mr. murphy. mrs. murray. mr. ossoff. mr. padilla. mr. paul. mr. peters. mr. reed. mr. ricketts. mr. risch. mr. romney. ms. rosen. mr. rounds. mr. rubio. mr. sanders. mr. schatz. mr. schmitt.

mr. schumer. mr. scott of florida. mr. scott of south carolina. mrs. shaheen. ms. sinema. ms. smith. ms. stabenow. mr. sullivan. mr. tester. mr. thune.

mr. tillis. mr. tuberville. mr. van hollen. mr. vance. mr. warner. mr. warnock. ms. warren. mr. welch. mr. whitehouse. mr. wicker. mr. wyden. mr. young.

senators voting in the affirmative -- brown, duckworth, hirono, lujan, manchin, menendez, murray, reed, sinema, smith, tester. senators voting in the negative -- blackburn, budd,

cramer, graham, hyde-smith, mcconnell, murkowski, paul, scott of south carolina, thune. mr. welch, aye. mr. wicker, no.

the clerk: ms. klobuchar, aye.

the clerk: mr. grassley, no.

the clerk: mr. wyden, aye. vote: the clerk: mr. barrasso, no. ms. cortez-masto, aye.

the clerk: mr. braun, no. mr. casey, aye.

the clerk: mr. lee, no.

ms. hassan, aye. the clerk: mr. carper, aye.

the clerk: ms. butler, aye.

the clerk: mr. young, no.

mr. mullin, no. mr. peters, aye.

the clerk: mr. kelly, aye. mrs. gillibrand, aye. mr. heinrich, aye. mr. scott of florida, no.

the clerk: mer romney the clerk: mr. romney, no.

the clerk: mrs. capito, no.

the clerk: mr. schmitt, no. the clerk: mr. tuberville, no. mr. johnson, no.

the clerk: ms. collins, no. the clerk: ms. cantwell, aye. vote:

the clerk: mr. durbin, aye. mr. hagerty, no. mr. risch, no.

the clerk: mr. hawley, no. mr. sanders, aye. mr. boozman, no. ms. stabenow, aye.

the clerk: mr. coons, aye.

the clerk: mr. lankford, no. mr. kaine, aye. mr. daines, no. mr. schatz, aye.

the clerk: mr. fetterman, aye. the clerk: mr. padilla, aye. mr. rubio, no.

ms. ernst, no. mr. rounds, no. mrs. fischer, no.

the clerk: mr. van hollen, aye.

the clerk: mr. sullivan, no.

the clerk: ms. warren, aye.

the clerk: mr. murphy, aye. the clerk: mr. marshall, no.

the clerk: mr. vance, no. vote:

the clerk: mr. whitehouse, aye. mr. cardin, aye.

the clerk: mr. markey, aye. mrs. britt, no.

the clerk: mrs. shaheen, aye.

the clerk: ms. baldwin, aye. mr. kennedy, no. ms. rosen, aye.

the clerk: mr. cotton, no. mr. warner, aye. the clerk: mr. hoeven, no. mr. merkley, aye.

the clerk: mr. moran, no. ms. lummis, no.

the clerk: mr. cruz, no.

the clerk: mr. hickenlooper, aye.

the clerk: mr. ossoff, aye.

the clerk: mr. blumenthal, aye.

mr. cornyn: no.

the clerk: mr. cassidy, no. mr. bennet, aye.

the clerk: mr. schumer, aye.

s

the clerk: mr. booker, aye. mr. king, aye.

the clerk: mr. warnock, aye. the presiding officer: the yeas are 51, the nays are 466, the dpsh 46 -- 46, the motion is agreed to. the clerk: nomination, office of

special counsel, hampton y. dell dellinger, of north carolina, to be special counsel.

mrs. murray: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, we have the means

and just enough time this week to avoid a shutdown and to make serious headway on our annual appropriations. but as always, the task at hand will require that everyone rose in the same direction towards clean appropriations and away from poison pills. mr. president, those are not my words. the republican leader said that yesterday, and he is absolutely right. and i just heard the speaker said he doesn't want to shut down after meeting with the president. that's good. but leads be clear. a shutdown that hits air traffic controllers and food inspectors and so much more would be incredibly damaging, and it would make getting all of our funding bills done that much more chaotic and challenging. there is no reason for a shutdown, not if both sides in both chambers cooperate in a bipartisan way. so i am working around the clock to wrap up several spending

bills by friday. and if we need to pass this very short-term c.r. along with any bills we can finish this week, democrats are ready to make it happen so we can prevent a completely unnecessary shutdown and continue making progress on our bills. mr. president, i've been here before, too many times. and i can tell you a shutdown is costly and it is harmful to our economy. it hurts real people. federal employees, not to mention families, seniors, anyone who depends on basic services working smoothly, and it makes absolutely no sense. it doesn't save us money. it costs us more. it is no secret that the biggest obstacle right now has been republican poison pills that were never truly on the table. they were always going to be nonstarters. but we have made really good progress on the first few bills, and we can get them done if extreme demands are pushed

aside. we cannot let a few far-right extremists derail the basic functioning of government. there's no reason to listen to them, and there's no way we're going to let them impose extreme policies that go against the basic values of the american people. so, mr. president, i hope our bipartisanship will prevail. let's show the public that congress still understands a few very simple things. shutdowns are bad. working together is good. let's move past the poison pills and on to the hard work of legislating. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. i just returned from the miltdz east. we have 140 members of our wyoming air national guard, and they are currently serving our nation and they are stationed in djibouti. wyoming is very proud of these brave men and women who are fighting for our freedoms. visiting them was a reminder of

what makes america strong. it's also a reminder of the challenges that we continue to face. there's a confluence of crisis all around the world from el paso, texas, to jerusalem, israel. these term tries did not emerge overnight. they are the direct result of the weakness of the current president of the united states. president biden has been weak in the defenses of our nation. it's obvious to me. it's obvious to people around the country. it's obvious to people all around the world. since he took office, he and the democrats have taken a wrecking ball to so many different sources of our nation's strength. hollowed out america's military power in favor of wokeness. it's impacted and undermined recruitment. sold out american economic strength in favor of what? well, big government at home and massive government spending. they traded away america's energy dominance.

why? well, in favor of green new deal fantasies. and it does seem that democrats apologized for american excellence at every turn. they've worked -- they work to make us more dependent upon our enemies. president biden's latest energy, he would call it a move, i would call it a disaster, weakens our nation even further. the administration announced in january that it would freeze permits for liquefied natural gas exports. i view this decision as astonishingly foolish. affordable, reliable energy is the foundation of a strong affordable economy. america's energy revolution created many good-paying jobs all across the country and certainly in my home state of wyoming. it made us as a nation energy independent. some would go so far as to say

energy dominant. and it helped us build the world's largest lng export industry. this also gave our european allies a secure energy source. this is at the time of russia's incursion into ukraine. this is one of the best examples of how american economic strength makes the world safer. republicans want to make europe less dependent on russia for energy sources and more connected to the united states. that's not what i see happening with this administration. both by word and action, democrats and this president make america and our allies more dependent on our adversaries. attacking american energy dominance is a pattern of this administration. started on day one. remember, it was day one that after the president gave a speech right out here at the capitol building, how he wanted to bring a nation together, he went down and took an axe to the

keystone pipeline and opened the floodgates, the crisis we're having at our southern border. he's placed a moratorium on new coal permits on federal lands. all of these things undermining american energy security. and now comes this blow where he is cutting american natural gas exports. he's denying america good jobs, lower prices and empowering russia and iran. joe biden has failed fundamentally what should the goal of any president, which is to make america stronger, safer, more secure. president biden also has a long list of foreign policy failures. nobody can forget the deadly and disastrous withdrawal from afghanistan. taliban terrorists, they see $7 billion of weapons, so many of these americans had left behind. 13 brave soldiers lost their

lives, including one from wyoming, riley mccollu in. the fall of cabal was a deadly disaster. in january of 2022, the president made another damaging misstep. he suggested that a minor incursion by russia into ukraine would be met with minimal consequences. weeks later we saw russian tanks head into kyiv. then there's the chaos in the middle east. september of 2023, the president's national security adviser jake sullivan made a bold pronouncement. he said the middle east region is quieter today than it has been in two decades. eight days later hamas attacked israel. they killed more than 1,200 israelis. they took hundreds more hostage including american citizens. it was the deadliest di for the

jewish people since the holocaust. conflicts in the middle east are devastating, destructive, and destabilizing. they netten america's interests and -- threaten america's interests and america's allies. yet president biden works hard to accommodate our enemies. he is a fair weathered friend to our great ally in the middle east, israel. we see that in his maximum concessions policy toward iran. early on biden pushed to rejoin obama's nuclear iran -- iran nuclear deal. the biden administration's lack of sanction enforcement and use of sanction waivers simply funded the iranian regime. iran used this flood of cash to bank roll hamas, hezbollah, the houthis, and other terrorist proxies. in turn the terror proxies attacked america, attacked our allies, and the attacks have only increased since october 7.

iranian proxies have attacked american servicemembers in the middle east at least 180 times in the past four months. let me say that again. 180 attacks on american servicemembers in the last four months. we've lost five american troops because of these attacks. as the commander in chief, president biden bears full responsibility for the continuity of the crisis that he has created. no surprise that americans overwhelmingly believe our country is heading in the wrong direction. america needs to change course. the republicans are the party of american strength. we believe in peace through strength, not dependence on our enemies. america deserves a president of a nation that is safe and secure. that is our commitment. so i'll tell you, mr. president, the day i came back from djibouti, it was very distressing to see the report in

"the new york times." they reported that america and this administration has failed to do what it said it would do in terms of iran selling oil to china. failed. if it hadn't been for "the new york times" reporting, the american people wouldn't know because the administration would never tell them that tanker after tanker had moved 59 million barrels of oil from iran to china. every one of those tankers ended up in china, and the cash worth minimum $2.8 billion ended up back in iran. that's the money that iran is using to fund these 140 attacks on american servicemembers in the last four months. we know where the money is coming from. and yet democrats look the other way. the secretary of treasury hapless as she is came to

congress and testified inaccurately, possibly misleadingly that the administration is doing everything that they can. well, they are not. this administration is looking the other way as a hapless and diminished president biden continues to be outplayed by iran. and this is evident to the world. and as joe biden bungles along, russia, iran, north korea, communist china continue on the march. we need a strong president to keep us strong and safe and secure. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor.

.

mr. markey: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. markey: mr. president, i rise today in support of the children and teens online privacy protection act, or as its known coppa 2.0, child on online privacy protection act. we stand at a moment for protecting children online in our country. our kids are suffering from an acute mental health crisis. the statistics are staggering. one in three high school girls in the united states seriously considered suicide in 2021.

one in three teenage girls considered suicide. at least one in ten high school girls attempted suicide in the united states in 2021. one in ten teenage girls in america attempted suicide in 2021. amongst lgbtq youth, the number is more like one in five lgbtq youth-attempted suicide in 2021. we know that big tech's tracking, targeting, and traumatizing of our young people is contributing in a significant way to that crisis. as the senate judiciary committee hearing just a few weeks ago demonstrated, big tech ceo's still don't understand the damage they have caused and remain unwilling to make the necessary changes.

-- to fix their platforms and protect children, to protect teenagers. because, without a doubt, self-regulation by the ceo's of the tech companies has failed and mailed miserably -- has failed and failed miserably, otherwise we would not be in this crisis. in the face of this defiance by the industry, policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels have been introducing and passing new legislation to address the crisis. more notably, last week the florida legislature felt compelled to pass a law to ban all kids under 16 from social media altogether in the face of big tech inaction. you hear what i'm saying? florida is spassing a law banning -- florida is passing a law banning kids under 16 from

being online at all. i'm glad that bipartisan lawmakers and refreshmentings have mobile -- regulators have mobilized to address this problem. but we also must be careful because social media is not inherently bad. many young people have found their voices online and organize there on the issues such as climate crisis, gun violence, and online platforms allow young people to connect with loved ones, share their own experiences and learn from others that are just unavailable to them off-line. they need, in many instances, the online communities. if we shut down those spaces in our efforts to keep children and teenagers safe online, we may just trade one youth mental health crisis for another one. for most of my career, i have worked to get this balance right, to protect kids from the dangers of new technologies without undermining the social, the political, and the economic

benefits of those very same technologies. there's a did he -- there is hale a keynesian. . we want the benefits, but we also want to protect our soviet, especially young people -- our society, especially young people from the degradation that has now overcome so much parts of the internet. we just have to find a balance with social media, as we've done in many other areas of our country. fortunately, we are not writing on a blank slate. the children's online privacy protection act, the original coppa, laid the groundwork for protecting kids online by empowering parents and allowing corporate incentives with our policy goals. and unlike more draconian laws from that era, coppa remains the law of the land.

in fact, the only federal privacy protection for kids online is my law, which passed 26 years ago, which protects kids under the age of 136789 -- the age of 13. but we can now see that it has expanded beyond anything that people actually thought about in 1998. and in the 26 years since coppa's passage, much has changed. but, at the same time, the core principles of that bill still hold the key for protecting young people today. that's why i'm fighting so hard to pass coppa 2.0 and update those privacy policies, and it's why it's worth revisiting the passage of coppa in 1998 and its successes over the past two decades. as many of my colleagues

remember, the late 1990's were an exciting period for technology. the spectacular growth in home internet access ushered in a digital and communications revolution, making it easier than ever to find information, discover new communities, and interact with friends, families, and strangers online. in fact, i'm the author of the key three bills that moved america from analog to digital, to brownback. i'm very -- to broadband. not one home had broadband in 1996. we want the benefit of the information superhighway. we want the revolution. but in that early period, the possibilities appeared endless -- on-lan classrooms, it threateneded to upend every aspect of society.

we were now trying to catch up with these changes that the laws that i authored were now ushering in. real changes in commerce, in education, health care. even in those heady days, the dark side of the digital revolution was already apparent. the sinister side of cyberspace. he heads rose almost immediately. it created vast opportunities for corporate surveillance along with new online platforms with our data. every click, their website visited became another data point in the ever-expanding. and this was in the b.f. air remarks the before facebook era. they were already doing it, as soon as we moved to broadband, as soon as the three laws

passed, the initial companies all moved in that direction e and that's when the big tech titans just began to master the lucrative art of advertising, using all of this collected data. but they understood that our data had value and they began building huge data collection apparatus. for those of us closely monitoring the digital revolution, the appetite for our data supposed extreme risks to our privacy. as our social, economic, and political lives increasingly took place online, big tech's near constant surveillance threatened to expose every part of every life in america to eliminate personal privacy as we know it. back in the 1990's, i was deeply concerned, and i introduced legislation to enact an electronic privacy bill of

rights across all technology platforms in our country. and like today, lobbists blanketed capitol hill warned that limits on data practices would block the internet revolution and threaten america's places a the world's economic leader. my comprehensive privacy bill even though i got it passed in 1995, which would be in place for all americans, and other privacy legislation, ultimately -- ultimately they all fell victim to this lobbying fire slump. and 26 years later, we still don't have a national comprehensive privacy law. we came so close in 1995 and 1996. one aspect of this problem reason prevailed, children's privacy. so what i did then in october of 1998 is i went back to my republican colleagues and i said, well, if we're not going to protect adults, if we're not

going to protect teenagers, at least let us protect kids in america under the age of 13. let's have a child's online privacy protection law for those kids. can i get that from you? so the law wasn't perfect, but c copper fundamentally changed how it interacted with children, it prohibited collecting data from children on children under 13 without parental consent, number two, it allowed companies access to their personal information, and, three, it required companies to post clear privacy policies describing their collection of children's personal information. no longer could websites vacuum up children's data without any parental consent, no longer could they think of this as a

hidden vast surveillance apparatus without even a disclosure. no longer could they amass troves of data on our kids without parental oversight. all of that ended with copper child providesy -- privacy prevention act for children under 13. ultimately because the core problem facing our children both in the 1990's and more so today is big tech's relentless and unyielding drive to achieve more and more data on its users, including on its children. this data may seem vague and uncertain, but it is anything but, it is a children's name, e-mail address, their height, weight, health conditions, and facial scan their likes and dislikes and sexual orientation appeared gender identity.

if you can identify a characteristic of a child, chances are big tech want to know about it and develop an ever more specific target to target that child with information that advertisers and others will pay to talk to that child? why? because targeted advertising, more data means more effective targeted ads at that child, at that teenager, which means more money for the big tech companies, biggerer mansions, bigger yachts, bigger super jets for them, but it all comes at that expense of targeting individual children and teenagers all across our country and the more money they make, it allows giants in big tech to invest in ways to keep young people glued to their screens. so the hearings i had in the

1990's were on a.i. and how a.i. is going to be used. in order to do all of this targeting. i had all of those hearings in the 1990's. it's not new. it's just now on steroids, even worse, even more dangerous. so the giants are absolutely committed to keeping this continuing because the media giants of today are really advertising giants. that's all they are. data is the fuel for big tech's profit machine and raw material that sustains big tech's business model. this endless quest for more data incentives big tech to maximize user engagement and attention. the formula is simple, more time on social media means more data to fuel the targeted advertising machine that means more revenue

for big tech coming at the expense of the privacy of teenagers and children in our country. addiction equals data equals money. simple formula. addiction equals data equals money. that's their business model. you can put it on a three with by five card, it's not complicated. and it's a lot of money. in 2022, according to a recent harvard study, the major big tech platforms earned nearly $11 billion in advertising revenue from u.s. users under the age of 17, $11 billion they made off of kids targeting ads towards them. that's 11 billion reasons to build ever more sophisticated data profiles on younger users, 11 billion reasons to build new addictive features, 11 billion reasons to keep our young people clicking and liking, and the

question is how to change big tech's incentives to modify their operations to benefit children rather than addict them. the answer is to address the underlying source of the problem, the data that fuels big tech's business model itself. if big tech no longer has an incentive to maximize the data collected on a young person, it will lose the incentive to have methods to addict that child, the teenager to the product in the first place. by breaking the incentive to collect data, we can permanently change big tech's approach to children and teenagers in our country. in 1998 my original online protection bill took a big step, it put up barriers that limited

website's to collect data on children, putting children in control. over the past 26 years, the federal trade commission has used its authority under the child online privacy protection act to hold all sorts of companies accountable for invading kids' privacy. using my law in 1998, by 2003, the federal trade commission, it was mrs. field's cookies and hershey collecting children's personal information online without parental consent. in 2008, it was sony and in 2009, google paid $170 million for its youtube's -- last year there were settlements for copper violation. in total, the federal trade

commission has held companies accountable for protecting kids online through copper. those 37 cases that the federal trade commission won are a deterrent to hundreds of companies trying to do the same thing because they will see how big the penalty will be if they violate the terms of law. and then last year, 33 attorneys general filed claims under copper against mehta , meta against millions of users who knew they were children. their allgorithms could hell thm they were -- could tell them they were children. one internal meta report estimated that in 2015, four

million users on insta gram were under the age of 13, and they knew it and it represented 30% of all 10 to 12 year olds in the country. they knew it. they knew what they were doing. in other cases anti-semetica -- in other cases meta employees targeted those under age 13 because such research would reveal children used its mrats forms. they -- platforms. they didn't want to know what they used, they didn't want the documentation to reinforce and prove they were in violation of the law. so if it looks like a duckling, swims like a duckling, quacks like a duckling, it's probably a duc duckling, we know, they know, everybody knows what they are doing. so the state's complaint makes this clear.

meta knew that facebook and instagraham were filled with ducklings, but stuck their head in the sand. facebook just changed their name to meta, but it's the same, it's still instagram, and it is owned by meta. thanks to coppa -- for its targeted advertising machine without even trying to obtain parental consent at all. and despite the valiant efforts of the federal trade commission and state regulators, websites and online services have found ways to skirt these privacy protections to amass troves of data on young people and feed their data-fuelled business model. most notably, teenagers are unprob tektd -- unprotected by coppa.

the law does not contain strict prot protections by targeted advertising by big tech. when i first pushed for coppa in 1998, i summarized my plan in three words, disclosure, knowledge, and knowing. disclosure of privacy policies, knowledge of the information collected on our children being reused for other purposes and the right to say no -- to say no to the reuse or sale of that information. today the same formula works except the no is now more like a no, no, no, no. stop it. end this. we have a mental health teenage and child crisis in our country that the surgeon general of the united states has pointed the finger at social media. no, stop it. end it. and the companies must still

disclose their privacy practices to users and still must ensure that parents can access the information collected on their kids and prohibit future use of that of information, but we need to adapt. we need to adopt stronger and more aggressive protections to disrupt big tech's business model, to provide big tech with financial protections for healthy platform for our children. and that's why for over a decade i have been introducing information to crack open big tech's business model by prohibiting targeted advertising for kids and teens to and -- and to prohibit big tech collecting data from young people beyond what is necessary to provide the service. these provisions along with raising the coppa age up to age 17 and preventing online platforms like meta to prevent

them from using teenagers, they fix the rot under the fwloordz of this whom system rather than just applying a new layer of paint. this is the no, no, no that this senate, in country must say to big tech. and it is the foundation of my and senator cassidy's coppa 2.0 legislation, which passed through the united states senate commerce committee. the committee unanimously last year won -- won and said no targeted advertising towards teenagers and children. number two, no unnecessary data collection from children and teenagers in our country. three, no deliberately ignoring young users and pretending you don't know that they are young

because your algorithms tell you they are young. you know it. you know it because of all the other sites these young people go to. by addressing the business model, coppa 2.0 allows young people to open accounts, converse with friends and family, find new communities, learn, grow, develop and take part in rich online spaces. i heard from countless young people that these spaces are essential for their own development and growth so as policymakers at every level, but especially in in body consider different approaches to social media and addressing the youth mental health crisis weeks must remember the source of the problem is the data which they collect. we cannot allow them, we cannot permit them to continue to collect that data and then use it to go back and target kids

with it. and any effort to combat this crisis has to include effective reforms to minimize the data collection, enhance privacy protection for young people online, and ban targeting advertising for kids and teens. that's what coppa 2.0 does. i'm deemly -- deeply proud to lead this legislation with my good friend from louisiana, senator cassidy, a physician who knows that there is a mental health crisis in our country. and i'm thankful for the thoughtful work of chair cantwell and ranking member cruz on this bill and i'm delighted to say that both have agreed to cosponsor coppa 2.0. coppa 2.0 is bipartisan 689 it's commonsense effort to address big tech's insatiable appetite for data. their incentive to addict our kids and teens to their platforms by returning to the lessons from the 1990's which we knew was going to be a problem

right from the beginning, we can put an end to big tech's inpuhnty. we can turn social media platforms into healthy spaces for our young people. we can finally look our kids in the eye and say we're making changes for them to protect them to deal with this mental health teen and children's crisis in our country. the surgeon general has pointed the finger at this as a major source of the problem. we have to do something about it. so i urge my colleagues on a bipartisan basis, and i know it's bipartisan at this time, that we move and we move rapidly. we have to give relief to parents and families all across our country. we just can't allow the tech ceo's to determine the morality of our country, the values of our country. the technologies should animate our values, not the values of tech ceo's. they should have the values of

the american people that are built into it. so that's my hope. i urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation. and i'll just add parenthetically that the other thing i was able to do in 1996 was to pass in that bill the legislation which pays for kids, the poorest kids in america to be online at their desk in schools. otherwise rich kids would have it and poor kids would not. so-so far that program -- so so far that program is a $75 billion program, $75 billion, the largest single educational technology program in the history of our country for make sure poor kids have it on their desks. and for the first team in american history, a new technology was introduced at the same pace for poor kids as for rich kids. but we still have much more work to do to make sure they can afford it at home, that they can have access to it. because our country is changing and the technology is helping to

change it and we must keep up with the policies we know to especially protect young people in our country. they're only 20% of our pop lakes but they're 100% of our future and we in the senate must act this year to protect them. i thank you, mr. president. for your indulgence and i yield back. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: today i want to take the time of my colleagues to set the record straight yet again about an fbi investigative report that's been generated that goes by the number 1023. and i do this because the breathless media is misr

misreporting, requires that i come to the floor to give a historical reorientation of the facts and the evidence. as i've said all along on the senate floor, i and chairman comer of the house made the 1023 document public for this single purpose. that purpose is to force the fbi to do what the taxpayers pay the fbi to do. and that is investigate, in this case, the information contained in that document that goes by the number of 1023. it's all pretty simple. i didn't promote or vouch for the allegations in 1023 as the

truth like some confused democrats and the partisan media have falsely said. i pushed the fbi to do their job because that's my responsibility to the taxpayers and the people of iowa. now, some confused democrats and partisan media have returned to their favorite line, fallsly saying -- falsely saying that our effort to get the fbi to do their job is somehow peddling russian disinformation. it's kind of like a nervous tick to all of them.

for years they falsely said the same thing about my and senator joh johnson's biden family investigation, even though our investigation was based on obama, biden administration records and really on authentic bank records. some democrats and the partisan media apparently don't care about observing and reading the facts. well, this senator does care about that. so let's discuss the facts of the matter that they either missed or more likely are choosing to ignore because it doesn't fit their narrative. the whistleblowers within the justice department who came to me said the fbi had this

document, the 1023, in their possession now three years ago, june of 1920, three and a half years ago in fact. because that document is dated june 30, 2020. those whistleblowers that came to me were right. whistleblowers said the fbi considered its confidential human source to be credible. that confidential human re source which i'll simply describe today as the fbi source formed the basis of the 1023. if you're following television, we now know the name of that fbi source, but until he was arrested, i did not know his name.

the fbi said the same to congress and used the credibility of that source, the credibility assessment of that individual as he chose to withhold the 1023 from congress when we first asked for it. even ranking member raskins of the house committee confirmed that the fbi told congress that the fbi source was credible. the fbi found their source so credible that the fick gave their source -- fbi gave their source the authority to engage in illegal activity for the fbi's criminal investigation. and, yes, i want to make clear the fbi said that he could do

illegal things in his work for the fbi. the fbi told him he may even have to testify in court based on the information he provided in fact, the fbi said this source was so credible that the public release of the unclassified 1023 could put his life at risk, and then when they use the excuse it could put his life at risk for our releasing it is another excuse that they used. now let me be clear. the fbi consistently and publicly vouched for their source. then the other week the biden justice made this source's name public for the world to see.

so if you watch television, you'll get his name off of television. apparently the fbi's excuse to withhold the goument from congress -- document from congress, as you can see, was pure smoke. remember, the fbi said releasing the 1023 could put their empl employees' confidential human source life in danger. the fbi conduct is of course obviously absurd and a disservice to the american people. that means a disservice to the american people when the fick doesn't do its job of following up on investigative reports, as they did in this case for three years. so you can see those same whistleblowers were right about

the fbi leaving -- believing that their source was credible. whistleblowers said the fbi source served as a source for many years dating to the obama administration, roughly 2010 as i result. according to the justice department indictment, the fbi source worked for the federal government and was paid by the federal government. so again those whistleblowers and justice were right. whistleblowers said the fbi failed to investigate the allegations in the document. so let me refresh this history by giving you the timeline. according to the justice department indictment, the fbi

finally interviewed the fbi source so september 27 last year. we made the 1023 public just a few months prior to july 20 -- on july 20, 2023. clearly the fbi finally acted because of our release of the document. in other words, we embarrassed them. and by that time, as i've said, by my timeline the document was over three years old. three years they didn't do their job that the fbi ought have been following up on. so the 1023 sat at the fbi collecting dust until we in congress acted. my releasing the 1023 got the fbi to do its job that they

should have been doing three years before. i think it's legitimate in this political climate we're in this year, a presidential year, to ask the question would special counsel jack smith have waited years to act if the 1023 was about former president trump. those whistleblowers were right about the fbi's failure to investigate. i started my oversight relating to the fbi's failure to investigate the 1023 on october 13, 2022, so i didn't have the document in my possession. i knew about it from the whistleblowers, but what information i got from the

whistleblowers without actually reading the document, i sent a letter to attorney general garland, director wray, and u.s. attorney weiss to ask this very simple question. and i quote from the letter. what have the fbi and the justice department to include u.s. attorney weiss done to inves inves investigate, end of quote. i also asked for an array of documents, including travel documents that the justice department has used to indict the source. and i also asked before i had read the document for the same records again. this would have been after we released the document so i

correct myself. i asked for the same records again in october 20236789 i said this on may 3, a year earlier. what we don't know is what, if anything, the fbi has done to verify these claims or investigate further. i asked on may 5, 2023, about the 10 23, quote, i wish i could say that i knew it was true or untrue, end of quote. on may 9, 2023, i said, quote, my focus right now is on the fbi and the department of justice. what have they done with this document -- meaning 1023 -- end

of quote. on june 1, 2023, i said, quote, we're responsible for making sure the fbi does its job, and that's what we want to know, end of quote. i came to this floor in the senate on june 12, 2023, to say to my colleagues this -- and i quote -- here with this 1023 document i've been referring to throughout my remarks, the biden justice department, the fbi must explain to congress and the american people what, if anything, they've done with this information, and they need to show their work. we're not accepting their word for anything.

we're seeking documentary proof of what they did to investigate the matter or their failure to do so, end of quote. then after corum and i publicly -- then after comer and i publicly released the document, i said this on july 25 -- quote -- i want to make sure what my oversight focus is and will be holding the biden justice department and the fbi accountable to explain to the american people what they did to investigate and what they found. what did the justice department and the fbi do to investigate the information contained in 1023? did the justice department and the fbi follow normal

investigative process and procedure or try to sweep all this under the rug because of political bias? more precisely, did the fbi and doj seek to obtain the evidence referenced in the document? did the department of justice and fbi seek to interview individuals relating to the 1023, and if not, why not? if so, one way or the other, what did they find? and that's the end of the quote from what i said here on the floor of the senate last year on this very subject. let me say that one line again so everyone hears me. one way or the other, what did they -- meaning the fbi -- find?

all these partisan media outlets, if they had a shred of intellectual honesty and decency, would report those facts and hold the fbi accountable for their failures. and, of course, our congressional request after another -- one congressional request after another went unanswered to the justice department and the fbi. so, considering that deafening silence and the fbi's assertion that the source was credible, we made the 1023 public to force the fbi to do what they're paid to do, to do their job. they were supposed to be

investigating this matter three years ago and doing it not for chuck grassley but for the american people. if congress didn't ask for transparency and accountability -- in other words, us in the congress doing our oversight work -- we'd break faith with the american people, just like the fbi didn't do its job and broke faith with the american people. and you know what else the biden administration hasn't answered? my and senator johnson's oversight request. let's not forget. there's a larger investigative picture here other than just 1023. senator johnson and i released two reports in 2020 as part of our biden family investigation.

we gave a series of floor speeches, introducing bank records connecting the biden family to communist china financial interests. then on october 26, 2022, we sent hundreds of pages of those bank records to u.s. attorney weiss. -- so then this question is appropriate. to my democratic colleagues and more so the partisan media that's not doing their job, are those you a anthony particular -- authentic bank records that johnson and i made public, is that russian disinformation? now, chairman comer, jordan, and smith have built on -- built an and advanced upon the foundation created by senator johnson and

this senator. so here's the question -- where's the biden justice department regarding those bank records and potential money laundering? where whiz the biden -- where's the biden justice department regarding biden family members registering under the foreign agents act? another question -- the biden justice department appears to -- appears concerned about their fbi source's contact with foreign nationals. so where's that same concern regarding the biden family foreign connections? are the justice department and the fbi sitting on it, just like they did with the 1023 for at

least three years? here's another question to pose to the media and my colleagues -- if we didn't make the 1023 public, would the fbi have interviewed the fbi source? or would he remain on the taxpayers' payroll for another ten years, continuing to misinform the fbi? and by misinforming, i presume that's the reason he's sitting in jail now in las vegas, waiting trial -- or waiting whatever they have to do to follow up on the arrest. what will happen to the defendants if this source's information was used for a conviction or a plea deal? this is really quite the mess for the justice department and the fbi, and it's one of their

own making. my oversight investigations are done without regard to power, party, or privilege, and i back that statement up with asking you to remember, i am ape the senator -- i am ape the senator that -- i'm the senator that did a transcribed interview with donald trump jr. when donald trump was president of the united states. that's when i was chairman of the judiciary committee. i also ordered my staff to interview other republicans during my crossfire hurricane investigations. and you know what? if i had the gavel today, i'd bring more bidens to congress to testify. because the american people really deserve the kind of

nonpartisan oversight that i've been conducting for years. and remember this -- and it's pretty simple. if the fbi came clean years ago about this document 1023, we wouldn't have had to release that very document. i wouldn't have had to rely on whistleblowers to make this public? . so this guy still could be working for the fbi for another ten years. instead, these people played games, withheld the document from congress, and provided false and misleading information to congress and the american people to not want to come clean on what they did with 1023. we all know that transparency in government brings accountability. now folks are being held

accountable because of my congressional oversight. my oversight will continue. the fbi has a lot of explaining to do for their continued shortcomings and actions in this case. when will the media ask the fbi to explain? i've just explained it for the american people. i'd like to see the media cover this instead of talking about russian disinformation when this issue is discussed in print media and on television r and on television. mr. chairman, i yield the floor. mr. kennedy: mr. chairman, i ask unanimous consent that ail be permitted to speak for up to 40

minutes and senator peters be permitted to speak for up to three minutes prior to the scheduled roll call vote. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kennedy: mr. president, with me today is one of my colleagues from my senate office, mr. matt turner. mr. president, not long ago on february 23, in fact, an article appeared in one of my state's local newspapers. if it had appeared on the opinion page where it belonged, i wouldn't be saying a word because everybody in america has the right to their opinion. instead, it appeared in the news section as a purportedly objective news article. and in this article which the

reporter said -- i want to quote -- the state -- referring to the state of louisiana -- the state has already banned transgender young people from receiving gender-affirming medical care. that's not true, mr. president, and i wanted to spend a few minutes responding to this inaccurate statement. -- in the news as opposed to the opinion section of one of my newspapers. mr. president, it is very hard to be a parent today, and it's even harder to be a kid. between social media and cell phones, this generation is growing up in a way that we could not have imagined a few decades ago. nowhere is this clearer than the issue of gender confusion among

our children. children today are facing an onslaught of obsess -- of identity-obsessed activism. well before -- well before a child learns the difference between adjectives and verbs, activists in many government schools are teaching their pre-k students lessons on transgender pronounce, pronounce like zee and zer. they're hosting drag queen storytime for children of all ages. the american federation of teachers, one of our largest, if not the largest, national teachers union, actually runs a website, mr. president, with a lesson on how teachers can help children hide their transgender

status from their parents. i kid you not. tiktok essentially functions as a how-to transition guidebook. the issue of gender, mr. president, has morphed from a topic that only involved the personal decisions of private adults into a movement, a movement that seeks to inject questions about gender and sexuality into every aspect of a child's life, with or without parental approval. in fact, parents who disagree with the notion that adults should be immersing young children into discussions about gender and sexuality fear being smeared as bigots. in more horrifying examples

parents risk losing custody of their children for refusing to adopt a particular, usually a pro-transgender ideology. it's not new for activists to target kids with their political rhetoric. unfortunately, we see it every day in america. but the gender and sexuality agenda goes far beyond the usual policy disputes that we see on a regular basis here in washington. we are talking about giving children irreversible medical treatments before they can even understand the consequences of those medical procedures. i want to be very clear here, mr. president. 85%, 85% of the children who express some confusion about their agenda, their gender, 85% of the kids who say they're confused about their gender will

outgrow it by the time they finish adolescence. that's just a fact. we have no idea unfortunately which 8-year-olds are going to outgrow their gender confusion but we know it will be most of them. 85%. yet some activists in this country, particularly at planned parenthood, want to put kid under the knife or pump them full of hormones before these minors have a chance to grasp the consequences. and it's happening throughout our country. like with a frog in a pot, mr. president, gender activists have gradually turned up the heat, and we've all seen it. now the united states is boiling over with some of the most

radical pediatric gender policies on earth. on earth. to understand just how extreme these policies are, i need to discuss a few of these so-called treatments and how they're implemented today. today many activists believe that the only way to respond to a child with gender confusion is by affirming whatever the child says about his or her gender. agree with the kids in all cases. activists warn parents -- we hear it all the time -- not to question their child's gender proclamation. if a first grade boy tells his parents he's a girl on a tuesday, if a first grade boy tells his parents on a tuesday that he's a girl, these activists say parents are just supposed to agree with the child until the child changes his mind on a thursday.

now, if you've ever raised a child, first, thank you. but if you've ever raised a child, there was probably a point during which your child told you that he or she was, i don't know, a lion, and that child would belt out a roar just to prove it. but i'm guessing, just a whiled guess, that if that happened to you with your child, you didn't call animal control and say hit him with a stun gun and take him back to the zoo. why? because you knew he was a child. we can acknowledge that gender dysphoria is a real condition. we can acknowledge that gender dysphoria is a real condition for a small subset of our population. and at the same time we can

understand that it is foolish and dangerous and like a rock, only dumber, to blindly affirm whatever a child tells you about their identity, gender or otherwise. if a 13-year-old kid tells you he's a nascar driver, you don't give him the keys to your sedan. he's a kid. she's a kid. yet gender activists not only encourage parents in all cases, without question, to affirm their children's gender confusion. they also pressure parents to subject those kids to life-altering surgeries and life-altering hormone treatments. puberty blockers. puberty blockers are often the starting point for these activists. puberty blockers are

hormone-based injections, and sometimes they're implants. they're given to kids in our country today as young as 8 years old. and the purpose of a puberty blocker is to delay the onset of puberty. these drugs can prevent breast development and menstruation in kids, in girls. they can cause genital -- rather, prevent genital growth in boys. they can also inflict lasting damage on a child's bone density. they can stunt bone growth, and they can harm future fertility. those are all medically proven facts. the hormones used in puberty blockers are known as -- let me say this carefully -- gonatathropin releasing hormone

analogues. that's the medical term. these are also the same hormones used to chemically castrate sex offenders. these are the same hormones, these hormones that some doctors are giving our kids, are the same hormones used to chemically castrate sex offenders. i didn't misspeak there. they give confused kids drugs designed to castrate adults. the fda has not approved the use of puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria, but nonetheless some doctors have been prescribing these hormones off label to kids. in some parts of the country, children don't even need a formal psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria before receiving puberty blockers. according to one estimate, from 2017 to 2021, the number of children prescribed puberty

blockers, chemical castration for boys, increased by 120%. at least 4,700 children underwent treatments during that period. now, most states, mr. president, as you know, require parental consent before they give children the same drug they use to castrate pedophiles. but not all states. for example, in oregon, children as young as 15 years old can receive medicaid-funded, taxpayer-funded puberty blockers and sex change surgery without ever asking their parents. without ever telling their parents. in other words, taxpayers help the state fund gender transitions in children while keeping it a secret from their mothers and their fathers. and that same 15-year-old likely needs a signed permission slip

to go on a field trip to pet lamas at the local zoo. but these kids can pump themselves full of life-altering hormones without mentioning it to mom or dad. if the child has already begun puberty, the next option that some radicals recommend is what they call cross-sex hormones. cross-sex hormones. these drugs begin physically changing the child to resemble the opposite gender. young girls are given testosterone. this increases their muscle development. the testosterone lowers their voices. it broadens their jaw lines, and it creates coarse body hair. young boys take estrogen. they're given estrogen. the estrogen shrinks their

testicles, diminishes their sex drive, and it redistributes fat to their hips and their breasts. according to the mayo clinic, these changes usually cannot be undone. they're permanent. boys who take estrogen often become infertile. they also risk blood clots, heart problems, and strokes. girls who take testosterone also often become infertile. cross-sex hormones can permanently hinder a person's sexual interest or function as well. it is undeniable, undeniable that the decision to use cross-sex hormones can change a child's entire life. yet, planned parenthood offers cross-sex hormones to children as young as 16. planned parenthood even brags

that individuals can begin cross-sex hormone treatment, i'm quoting -- this is what planned parenthood says -- the same day as your first visit. no letter from a mental health provider is required. come on down and get the drug. children can begin taking cross-sex hormones at age 13. 13-year-olds can't even drive, for god's sakes. they can't get a tattoo. they can't see an r-rated movie. are we supposed to believe that a 13-year-old can make an informed decision about whether he or she wants to have children? or whether he or she should risk their ability to function sexually with their future spouse? no child, no child is mature enough to make that decision. so no child should be able to opt into cross-sex hormones.

the surgeries that activists are pushing on our children are even more disturbing. the world professional association for transgender health, this is a group known for its support of pediatric transgender policies, has said that girls as young as 15 should be able to get double mastectomies to remove their breasts. by age 17 this group that purportedly cares about kids says that boys should be allowed to receive vaginal plasties. in a vaginal plasty, surgeons remove a boy's penis, remove the child's testicles and remove the child's scrotum. then the boy's remaining genital

tissue is stitched together to create something that mimics a vaginal canal. if the boy doesn't have enough spare tissue to complete the procedure, the doctor may slice a skin graft from his abdomen or his thigh. in other words, the doctor cuts up healthy skin, leaving significant scarring, just to finish the vaginal plasty. some boys never regain sensation in their reconstructed genital area. now these medical extremists also offer a similar procedure to young girls. it's called an faloplasty. doctors carve off skin and veins often from a young girl's wrist and thigh to create a fake penis. the surgery is very complex.

it's very risky. it often results in serious complications, complications, frankly, so disturbing that they'll make you go weak in the knees. because complications during faloplasty happen so frequently even the world association for transgender health does not recommend it in girls under 18. but some states allow it. some states allow it. these procedures mutilate and they sterilize america's sons and daughters. doctors cut out healthy organs to build a pile of flesh that may never regain full sensation or function properly, and it is barbaric. no child has the psychological maturity, no child has the maturity combri to -- maturity

to make this life-altering decision. one would think to pump up a child's body with hormones, there must be a good reason for it. if you ask gender activists, they will tell you gender confusion is a matter of life or death. to be clear, there are higher suicide rates among those who identify as transgender, higher than the general population. gender activists know this and misuse that statistic, that's why they will say to a parent, would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter? have you heard that? it scarce parents half to death, and that's on purpose. what you won't hear this gender activists ask is whether these

extreme measures actually improve a child's mental health. they don't ask that question because they don't like the answer. they know the answer, but they don't like it. studies show that cross-sex hormones and reassignment surgeries have little to no effect on the mental health on children with gender disfora, a study was published that found there was no -- among adults following hormone treatments. this study also, and i will quote, demonstrated no advantage of surgery -- no advantage of surgery as it relates to reducing anxiety, reducing depression or to reducing suicidal thoughts. no advantage to the supposedly lifesaving cross sex treatments. activists are mutilating an

sterilizing children and they don't even have a good reason for it. still, thousands of children in the united states are receiving these treatments. a report from reuters found that at least 4700 american children facebook puberty wblockers from 2017 to 2021, more than 4,000 children took cross-sex hormones and girls received double ma secretary mys, and that only included girls who had insurance. the population of people diagnosed with gender disfora, introducing adults, by the way, increased in every state except south dakota from 2018 to 2022, in louisiana, the population of those with gender disfora has

increased in four short years. if we look at gender dysphoria, the population of those children doubled between 2017 and 2020. in louisiana, 13 to 17-year-olds are nearly three times more likely to say they identify as transgender than adults aged 25 to 64. from 2018 to 2022, children shared the total often, of course self-reported, transgender population in the united states increased from 17.5% to 20.4%, and that's over the entire population. now, here's a fact, mr. president, that should make everyone who cares about our societies more vulnerable members stop and think. a significant portion of these

often confused children struggle with severe autism and mental illness. a study out of the united kingdom found that 35% of children receiving care at the nation's transgender youth clinic suffered from moderate to severe autism. children diagnosed as transgender are up to 13 times more likely to have adhd, depression or anxiety than n nontransgender children. they're also more than four times more likely to have by polar disorder than the general population. these kids who say they have gender dysphoria face enough challenges without gender activists rushing them into treatments, cutting off their breasts, removing their penises

based on what will statistically will probably be temporary confusion. young girls appear to be driving this surge, quite frankly, in add less ant -- adolescent gender dysphoria, girls are more likely to present with gender dysphoria than boys. in the united kingdom, once again, the national health service record that it had 250 gender dysphoria referrals a decade ago. most were boys. by 2022, the nhs reported 5,000 gender dysphoria referrals that were girls. that's why it is considered a social containingon --

contagion, the same as when girls had bule mifrn a in the past, and why girls have gender dysphoria as well. one key difference between disordered eating in the 1990's and the gender dysphoria today is that educators didn't blindly affirm eating disorders. even today a doctor wouldn't give a teenager ozempeic, yet, doctors will give girls cross-sex hormones and give them ma secretary mys all in the quest to a -- my secretary mys

all in the quest -- the united kingdom, finland, denmark have all prevented sex reassignment surgeries for children, for minors. before children can prescribe children cross-sex hormones, many european countries require years of extensive documentation from a panel of psychiatrists, a panel of pediatricians, a panel endo kronologists, children can access hormone treatments without so much as a second opinion from doctors. a former case worker from the washington university transgender center at st. louis children's hospital, that's the foremost pediatric transgender medical center in the u.s., said some -- some kids at that

facility were eligible for cross-sex hormones after a single visit. one visit to a therapist. federally funded insurance programs won't pay for a woman to elect to tie her tubes, mr. president, until she is 21, and most insurance companies require a 30-day waiting period before a woman can consent to her own sterilization, yet children are allowed to take sterilizing medication at 13 years of age after a single appointment with a therapist all because adults are supposed to trust children when they claim they are a different gender. louisiana is full of compassion and common sense and we don't do that. we know that this agenda is dangerous and we know it's outrageous, and so does the un

united kingdom. the united kingdom used to have a similarly misguided policy until one brave woman came forward with her story, kera bell. she was 15 when she first attended a clinic which was then the u.k.'s transgender youth clinic. she had a rough childhood. her mother struggled with alcoholism, she faced bullies at school, in her own words, she said she was mentally ill and struggled with depression. ms. bell attended a few appointments at the hospital before she was put on puberty blockers, she began cross-sex hormones and received a double ma secretary my -- mase --

ma masetctomy. the clinic took her breasts and lowered her voice, they jeopardized her fertility before she understood the consequences of those treatments. she was a kid. her story horrified the people of the united kingdom. ms. bell brought a claim against the clinic to argue kids were not psychologically mature enough to make irreversibly medical decisions and the young people were put at considerable risk of long-term mental distress and that the treatments the clinic offered were not a safe or viable option and that the clinic no longer exists today. the nhs shut them down. mr. president, there's a growing

population of young people like ms. bell who regret receiving irreversible treatments when they were kids. they're generally known as detransitioners. a study out of sweden followed adults who received gender -- it founded that 30% retransitioned, a new study found that roughly 10% of people who received treatment detransitioned. given the nature of these types of studies on regret, we won't know what percent of the boys and girls receiving irreversible treatments today will regret it when they enter adulthood. if the 10% figure holds, gender activists will have wrongably mutilated or sterilized more

than 1500 american children between 2017 and 2021 alone and there's a good reason to believe, mr. president, that the rate of distransitioning will be high year than studies indicate. the majority of children who present with gender dysphoria outgrow it. a 2017 study published in the journal of metabolism kwound that many -- found that many outgrew it during adolescence. this figure is surprising only if you never met a kid. children change their minds often. duh. one week they're obsessed with dolphins, the next week they will be in love with race cars, and -- and children can change

in the course of a church service. that is normal. children don't have a mar tur -- mature sense of self and that's why god gave them parents. today, mr. president, if a little girl has a week where she thinks she's a boy because she hates wearing dresses, some activists believe we should give her puberty blockers so that she feels affirmed in his decision to play cops and robbers with the boys. secretary hillary clinton once famously said it takes a village to raise a child. what she meant was it takes the federal government to raise a child. no, it doesn't. kids need parents to succeed and parents have the right to raise their children according to their values. parents are here to protect kids from danger, from the kids's own immaturity and from misguided government agents and contrary

to what these activists say, there are sane ways to treat children who struggle with gender confusion. many doctors in europe and the united states recognize that permanently maiming and chemically castrating confused children is bone deep, down to the marrow stupid. that's why many physicians have adopted the practice of watchful waiting. that's a treatment plan we offer in louisiana whereby doctors and psychologists wait to implement any medical treatment to children with gender dysphoria while watching to make sure they have the mental health support they need. 85% of children will outgrow their gender disphoria. some activists don't want to let

doctors wait and a lot of those work in the biden administration. in 2021 the biden administration announced that it would start requiring going tors to issue hormone treatments or surgeries to transgender individuals, even if such procedures, even if such procedures run contrary to the doctor's medical judgment or religious beliefs. and i'm surprised the biden administration has been sued over that. it's not just doctors facing pressure to conform to gender anxiety sris. in some states parents have lost custody of their kids for refusing to do it. schools have fired counselors simply for wanting parents to be told about their kids' gender transition. i am terrified that our country is mass producing a generation of mutilated and sterilized young people because policymakers in our schools, in our cities, and our state

capitals in washington are too afraid to stand up and say enough. and that's why in conclusion, mr. president, i am so proud of the louisiana state legislature. louisiana state legislature pass passioned h.b.648. h.b.648 protects louisiana's children and supports their parents. h.b.648 makes it illegal to use puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery on children under the age of 18. period. full stop. it wasn't easy to get this bill passed. our lawmakers faced strong opposition from gender activists and our former governor, governor john bell edwards vetoed the bill. but in louisiana we will run into hell and back to keep our kids safe. and that's why senate and house members, democrats and

republicans in the louisiana legislature overrode the governor's veto. they said no. children are children. congress, mr. president, should follow the leadership of the louisiana legislature and so many european governments to ensure that parents, not activists, have the power to make medical and moral decisions for their children. and that's why i'm helping to lead the families rights and responsibilities act which would do that. this bill would require the federal government to pass the strict scrutiny test. that's the supreme court's toughest level of review before it could infringe upon a parent's right. nothing disturbs me, mr. president, more than the notion that a child's upbringing should be determined by some bureaucrat rather than the child's parents. especially when those bureaucrats use the power of the government to maim children. it makes me want to throw up.

it makes me want to reach for the sick bucket. congress must do more to protect parents and their kids from the zealots of the transgender movement and from newspaper reporters who inaccurately report the news. mr. president, i yield to my colleague, senator peters. mr. peters: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from michigan. mr. peters: mr. president, i rise in support of hampton dellinger's nomination to lead the office of special counsel. federal employees must be able to report waste, fraud, and abuse across government without fear of retaliation. whistleblowers have exposed serious safety shortfalls, wasteful spending, and corruption. they help keep government accountable and they are indispensable in the oversight work of congress and the inspector general. the office of special counsel protects whistleblowers' rights. the agency investigates their

disclosures and prosecutes instances of retaliation against vulnerable employees. in addition to those responsibilities, osc ensures that the federal government is free from improper partisan activity and protects our servicemembers and veterans from employment discrimination. mr. dellinger is well qualified to lead the office of special counsel. he has nearly three decades of legal experience, including as a senior official in the north carolina attorney general's office and the u.s. department of justice. he has worked with whistleblowers in both the public and private sector, and has advanced policies that protect whistleblower rights. most importantly, mr. dellinger has demonstrated the utmost integrity throughout his career. he is willing to take on powerful interests for the public good and will lead osc as an independent nonpartisan way.

i urge my colleagues in joining me in confirming mr. dellinger to this important role today. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the question is on the nomination. is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote: the clerk: ms. baldwin. mr. barrasso. mr. bennet. mrs. blackburn. mr. blumenthal. mr. booker. mr. boozman. mr. braun. mrs. britt. mr. brown. mr. budd. ms. butler. ms. cantwell. mrs. capito. mr. cardin. mr. carper.

the clerk: mr. casey. mr. cassidy. ms. collins. mr. coons.

the clerk: ms. cortez masto. mr. cotton. mr. cramer. mr. crapo. mr. cruz. mr. daines. ms. duckworth. mr. durbin.

ms. ernst. mr. fetterman. mrs. fischer. mrs. gillibrand. mr. graham. mr. grassley. mr. hagerty. ms. hassan. mr. hawley. mr. heinrich. mr. hickenlooper. ms. hirono. mr. hoeven.

mrs. hyde-smith. mr. johnson. mr. kaine. mr. kelly. mr. kennedy. mr. king. ms. klobuchar. mr. lankford. mr. lee. mr. lujan. ms. lummis. mr. manchin.

mr. markey. mr. marshall. the clerk: mr. mcconnell. mr. menendez. mr. merkley. mr. moran. mr. mullin. ms. murkowski. mr. murphy.

mrs. murray. mr. ossoff. mr. padilla. the clerk: mr. paul. mr. peters. mr. reed.

mr. ricketts. mr. risch. mr. romney. ms. rosen. mr. rounds. mr. rubio. mr. sanders. mr. schatz. mr. schmitt. mr. schumer. mr. scott of florida. mr. scott of south carolina.

mrs. shaheen. ms. sinema. ms. smith. ms. stabenow. mr. sullivan. mr. tester. mr. thune. mr. tillis.

the clerk: mr. tillis. mr. tuberville. mr. van hollen. mr. vance. vote: mr. warner.

mr. warnock. ms. warren. mr. welch. mr. whitehouse. mr. wicker. mr. wyden. mr. young.

the clerk: senators voting in the affirmative -- brown, cantwell, cardin, carper, casey, coons, duckworth, durbin, gillibrand, hassan, heinrich, hirono, kaine, king, manchin, markey, menendez, merkley, murray, padilla, peters, reed, rosen, schumer, shaheen, sinema, stabenow, tester, warner, warnock, whitehouse,widen --

wyden. senators voting in the negative, budd, cassidy, cornyn, fischer, grassley, hagerty, hyde-smith, johnson, kennedy, lee, lummis, schmitt, scott of florida, tuberville. mr. thune, no. the clerk: mr. paul, no.

mr. daines, no. mr. cotton, no.

the clerk: mr. hawley, no.

the clerk: mr. moran, no. mr. booker, aye.

the clerk: mr. kelly, aye. mr. ricketts, no. mr. risch, no. the clerk: miss ernst

the clerk: ms. ernst, no. mr. fetterman, aye. the clerk: mr. van hollen, aye.

the clerk: mr. schatz, aye. ms. cortez-masto, aye. the clerk: mr. vance, no.

the clerk: mr. lujan, aye. mr. mcconnell, no. mr. rubio, no.

the clerk: mr. murphy, aye. mr. hoeven, no.

the clerk: mr. scott of south carolina, no.

mr. welch, aye.

the clerk: ms. butler, aye. mr. mullin, no. mrs. britt, no. mr. ossoff, aye. mr. young, no. mr. cramer, no.

the clerk: ms. murkowski, no.

the clerk: mr. barrasso, no. mrs. capito, no. mr. graham, no. the clerk: mr. wicker, no. mr. bennet, aye.

the clerk: ms. collins, no. mr. romney, no.

the clerk: ms. baldwin, aye. mr. lankford, no.

the clerk: mr. blumenthal, aye.

the clerk: mr. marshall, no.

vote: the clerk: mr. braun, no. the clerk: ms. warren, aye.

the clerk: mr. sullivan, no. mr. rounds, no.

the clerk: mr. hickenlooper, aye.

the clerk: mrs. blackburn, no.

the clerk: mr. cruz, no. mr. sanders, aye.

the clerk: mr. boozman, no.

the presiding officer: the yeas are 49, the nays are 47. and the nomination is confirmed. under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the president

will be immediately notified of the senate's action. mr. bennet: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate consider the following nomination, calendar 515, cara l. abercrombie, to be an assistant secretary of defense, that the senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, that the president be immediately notified of the senate's action. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, the clerk will report. the clerk: department of defense, cara l. abercrombie of virginia to be an assistant secretary. the presiding officer: the question occurs on the nomination. all those in favor say aye. all opposed say no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the nomination is confirmed. mr. bennet: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the

senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. bennet: mr. president, i have four requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders. the presiding officer: duly noted. mr. bennet: i ask unanimous consent that the committee on judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the senate now proceed to s. res. 496. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. res. 496, a resolution designating september 2023 as national cholesterol education month, and so forth. the presiding officer: without objection, the committee is discharged and the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. bennet: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without

objection. mr. bennet: i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following bills en bloc, calendar number 313, s.3412, calendar number 314, s.3570, calendar number 315, s.3577. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the bills en bloc? without objection. mr. bennet: i further ask that the bills be considered read a third time and passed, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, all en bloc. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennet: i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today it stand adjourned until 10:00 a.m. on wednesday, february 28, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, 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.

further, that following the conclusion of morning business, the senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the sneed nomination. further, that the cloture motions filed during yesterday's session ripen at 11:30 a.m., that at 2:15 p.m., if cloture has been invoked on the sneed nomination, the senate vote on confirmation of the nomination, and that if cloture is invoked on the damian nomination, all time be considered expired at 5:30 p.m. finally, that if any nominations are confirmed during wednesday's session, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, and the president be immediately notified of the senate's actions. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennet: if there is no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order. i ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of senator sanders. the presiding officer: without objection.

mr. bennet: thank you. mr. sanders: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. sanders: mr. president, for some reason that i do not fully understand, it always appears to me that the more important the is issue, the less it gets discussed here in the congress and in the media. more important, less discussion. today, i want to say a few words about one of those issues, and that is the ongoing and unprecedented humanitarian disaster which is is taking place -- which is taking place in gaza and which is getting worse every single day.

on october 7, as i think we all know, hamas established, went forward with a brutal terrorist attack against israel, killing 12,000 innocent people, and they took 230 hostages, some 100 of whom are still in captivity. and in my view, as i've said many times, israel had the right to respond to that attack and go after hamas. but what israel did not have the right to do, and does not have the right to do, is to go to war against the entire palestinian people, which is exactly what has occurred. mr. president, when i talk about issues that we in congress do not fully engage in, discuss, appr appreciate, what we are talking about is that in gaza right now

some 30,000 palestinians have been killed, and more than 70,000 have been injured since that war began. this is a country, an area of 2.2 million people. two-thirds of those who have been killed or injured are women and children. unbelievably, and i think this is another point that is not discussed very often, 1.7 million palestinians, 80% of the population, 80% of the population of gaza, have been driven from their homes. so, men, women, and children driven from their homes, with no safe place to go and no idea as

to whether or not they will ever return to their communities. imagine that for a moment. little kids, 5 years old, 3 years old, don't know what's going on, bombs falling, pushed out of their homes, they don't know where they're going or whether in fact they will ever, ever return to their communities. mr. president, the bombing of gaza, and again, it must be talked about over and over again, is almost unprecedented in modern history. 70% of the housing units in gaza have been damaged or destroyed. let me repeat that. 70% of the housing units in gaza have been damaged or destroyed. mr. president, the civilian

infrastructure of gaza has been devastated. there is virtually no elect electricity. there are few supplies of clean water. there is not one functional hospital for 2.2 million residents of gaza. there is not enough food, not enough water, not enough fuel, and not enough medicine. and increasingly, for the people of gaza, there is no hope. mr. president, this is a horrific reality, and i know here in the senate we deal with a lot of stuff, but this is a reality that cannot be ignored. it must be dealt with. the catastrophe unfolding in gaza today, right now, as we speak, is among the worst

humanitarian disasters in modern history. and while this body was in recess, we had a two-week break, while we were safely with our fam families, the urgency of this crisis only increased. we are truly approaching a point of no return. for months the united nations and other aid organizations have warned that the constant bombing and the restrictions on humanitarian aid entering gaza raise the risk of familiar yip -- of famine, of famine and disease. two months ago the u.n. warned that the whole population of gaza was hungry, people were going hungry, and that more than half a million people faced the most severe category of food

insecurity. that's a fancy terminology for talking about people in desperate need of food. mr. president, now, today, the worst of those fears are becoming reality. hundreds of thousands of children in gaza, beautiful little kids, are starving to death. last week, the world food program reported that nutrition screenings found that one in six children under the age of 12 in northern gaza are acutely malno malnourished, and 3% are experiencing child wasting, a terrible, terrible term that talks about, that describes the destruction of human life for kids. these children will die without urgent treatment. in other words, if all of the aid in the world came in

tomorrow, many hundreds of thousands of children in gaza have been permanently damaged, malnutrition in children causes cognitive and emotional distress, physical distress. so let us contemplate that. let us think about that for a moment. if nothing changes in the coming weeks, thousands of children in gaza will begin to die of starvation and easily preventable diseases caused by the lack of food, medicine, and clean drinking water. was this a natural catastrophe? was this a storm? was this an earthquake? no. this is a man-made disaster. already, some 90% of children under 5 in gaza have one or more

infectious diseases, according to the u.n., and 70% have had diarrhea in the past two weeks due to a lack of clean drinking water. this is an urgent humanitarian crisis. it cannot be ignored. it must be addressed. without an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and an urgent, urgent expansion of the relief effort, even more people could end up dying from the lack of basic supplies that have been -- than have been killed in the bombardment. in other words, what we're looking at is thousands of people are dying, have died from the bombs, and now you are going to see more people die from starvation and diseases as a

result of no clean water or sanitation. scientists at johns hop kips university -- johns hopkins university recently modeled what can happen over the next six months if nothing changes, and concluded that some 85,000 more people could die in gaza over that period from war and disease. mr. president, we cannot allow this disaster to continue. and let us be clear, let's be clear why this is happening, and it is happening because israel is simply not letting in enough aid, not enough food, not enough water, not enough medical supplies, not enough fuel. it is not more complicated than that. this is a man-made crisis caused by israel, and it can be changed tomorrow. israeli restrictions on aid

entering gaza mean that only a tiny fraction of the food, water, medicine, and fuel that is needed can get into gaza. even then, once aid gets in, israeli bombing and military activities mean that very little of that aid can reach beyond the immediate area around the rafah border crossing from egypt. and what that mean is that some of the most desperate areas of g gaza, that in those areas virtually no aid can get through at all. so, it's not only that aid is not getting in. what aid is getting in is not going to those locations where it is needed the most. mr. president, even more dis distressing, aid convoys have been turned back or fired upon even after previously clearing

their route with the israeli military. in other words, the aid people tell the israeli military where they are going, and the result of that is they in fact get bombed. bottom line, despite the urgency of this crisis and the growing starvation of the people of gaza, humanitarian access has actually gotten worse, worse in recent weeks. about 80 trucks per day have gotten into gaza over the last three weeks, down by roughly 40% from earlier periods. before the war, before the homelessness, and before the starvation, some 500 trucks per day delivered basic necessities into gaza. almost all aid deliveries to northern gaza have been

suspended. the israeli government has rejected most requests for access to the north. and the situation has become too dangerous for aid to be safely delivered. and the reason that aid delivery has become increasingly dangerous is that the israeli military has shown little regard for the safety of humanitarian operations. quite the contrary. earlier this month, the israeli military fired on a un food -- on a u.n. food aid convoy, even though it had previously clear its route and timing with the israelis. and here is something that i hope every american hears -- that up until now, since this war began, 161 u.n. staff and at least 340 health workers have been killed in israeli attacks since october 7.

in other words, the people who are trying to help the d desperate, people trying to deliver aid, people trying to deliver health care, they are being killed in large numbers. the situation today is obviously desperate and getting more and more desperate. and, as an indication of that desperation, humanitarian aid trucks that do get through to northern gaza have been mobbed by starving people. that is the reality. when a truck manages to get through, aid is not distributed in an orderly way. hungry people are mobbing the trucks to grab food to feed their kids. the u.n.'s leading expert on access to food this week said israel is intentionally denying access to food. mr. president, that is a war crime. unbelievably, in the midst of this humanitarian cataclysm,

rather than work to improve coordination with the u.n. and get basic supplies to palestinians in the war zone, there has been a concerted attack on unilateral -- on unrwa, the largest agency operating in gaza, they are the ones who do the lion's share of the work in getting humanitarian aid to the civilian population. unrwa runs schools, health care, water sanitation, and food assistance for palestinians in gaza as well as the west bank and the wider region. israel has accused 12 unrwa employees of taking part in the october 7 attack. 129 employees. -- 12 embryos. this is a -- 12 employees. this is a serious allegation and it is being investigated seriously. but, mr. president, you don't

starve two million people because of the alleged actions of 12 unrwa employees out of a total workforce of 30,000. despite unrwa's indispensable role in addressing this unprecedented humanitarian disaster, congress is now considering legislation -- senate-passed legislation -- that would actually prohibit funding for this agency, which would only make a horrible situation even worse. children are starving. people don't have water. people don't have medical supplies. the agency that historically has done the work getting aid out to people is now being unfunded. the u.s. decision to pause its funding for unrwa has left the agency at a breaking point. mr. president, that decision

must be reconsidered immediately. and, mr. president, that brings us to the united states' role in this crisis because the point is, what we are not just looking at is the some distant part of the world where terrible things are happening and we are just learning about and we had nothing to do with it. quite the contrary. put simply, mr. president, we are deeply complicit in the humanitarian disaster and the horror that is taking place in gaza today. most of the bombs and most of the military equipment that the israeli government is using in gaza is provided by the united states and subsidized by american taxpayers. this is not just an israeli war. this is an american war as well.

we are providing the weapons for netanyahu to wage this war. mr. president, i met earlier today with human rights experts from amnesty international. amnesty researchers have painstakingly documented the use of u.s. weapons and numerous israeli strikes that break the international laws of war. most recently, amnesty documented four unlawful strikes in rafah in december /january that killed at least 95 civilians including 42 children and some of those attacks were done with u.s. weapons. mr. president, the u.s. has laws on the books intended to prevent these kinds of human rights violations that are being done with u.s.-provided weapons.

the problem is that we have very rarely enforced them with any country, and we've never enforced them with israel. for months, as i think all of us know, president biden has been trying to get israeli prime minister netanyahu and his extreme right-wing government to scale back the indiscriminate bombing. so far netanyahu has not changed his tactics and, in fact, humanitarian access has actually deteriorated. the situation is getting worse. netanyahu makes polite sounds when u.s. officials visit him in israel, and then he proceeds to do exactly what he wants. and what he wants increasingly seems to be the wholesale destruction of gaza. mr. president, the united states

is now focused on negotiating a cease-fire agreement that would allow for massive humanitarian aid and the freeing of the remaining hostages. i desperately hope that this deal comes together. i trust that all of us want the killing to stop and the hostages to be freed. but, once again, despite what president biden is fighting for, netanyahu is resisting. it appears that he and his extreme right-wing government are trying to prolong this war to hold on to their power and to avoid accountability. president biden has repeatedly said that the only viable path to lasting peace for israelis

and palestinians alike is a two-state solution. i agree. but, of course, netanyahu has made it very clear that he is completely opposed to that outcome, and he has been opposed to that outcome for his entire political career. mr. president, on issue after issue, prime minister netanyahu is deeply opposed to the goals of the united states. we want civilian life protected. he doesn't seem to care. we want more aid getting into gaza. he won't allow it. we want a two-state solution. he is vigorously opposed.

mr. president, given all of that reality, given the fact that at every aspect of this crisis, netanyahu disagrees with what the united states wants to see happen, it is beyond comprehension as to why the united states is preparing to send another $10 billion in unrestricted military aid so that netanyahu can continue the murderous campaign that we oppose. enough is enough. the united states cannot continue to be complicit in netanyahu's war crimes. no more military aid for israel e -- for israel. whether netanyahu likes it or not, the united states must continue working towards an

urgent humanitarian cease-fire to allow for the release of the hostages and massive influx of humanitarian aid. we should join other countries all over the world to pass a cease-fire resolution at the u.n. security council that includes the release of the hostages and full humanitarian access, as previous drafts have done. the united states should begin the process of recognizing the state of palestine as a full u.n. member state. this is both a fact -- palestine is a nation recognized by 139 u.n. member states -- and a moral imperative in the face of what amounts to illegal israeli

annexation. president biden should also make clear that he will not release any additional military funding for israel without firm commitments that the cease-fire will be honored, unless broken by hamas, and that full humanitarian access will be ensured and funds for the palestinian authority will be released and that illegal israeli settlements in the occupied territories will cease. mr. president, none of this will be easy. but, to my mind, it is absolutely morally unacceptable that the united states continue its complicity in the humanitarian disaster that is taking place in gaza right now. the time is now to say no to the

right-wing extremist government of netanyahu. no more money for the israeli military. and with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until stands adjourned until >> the senate is work on a few of president biden's judicial and executive nominations. senate leaders chuck schumer a mitch mcconnell met with the president earlier along wh house leaders to continue negotiations on government spendingo avoid a partial deral government shutdown at midnight on friday. 20% of the federal govt could close, and ifo deal is reache friday, march 8th, a full government shutdown could take place. also a yet to beetmined day in time, house impeachment managers are expecte to deliver impeachment articles t the senate against homeland security cretary alejandro mayorkas.

as always, live coverage of the u.s. senate here on c-span2. each night this week we're featuring state of the state addresses from across the try. from coast to coast, these eeches by governors offer a wide range of perspectives highlighting priorities and lenges faced by different regions of t u.s. tonight hear from the if governors of virginia is, rhode island, new jersey,bama, michigan and washington state. that allins at 8 p.m. eastern o c-span2. you could also watch on our free video app, c now, or online are at c-span.org. ♪ >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we're funded by these television companies and more including comcast. >> you think this is just a community center? no, it's way more than that. >> comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create wi-fi-enabled lift