mr. van hollen: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mr. van hollen: thank you, madam president. i thank the gentleman from florida, and i thank him for his leadership on the specific issue that was in the defense authorization bill regarding z.t.e. but also for his leadership on the broader issue of protecting the united states against the grand theft of our technology by china and the risks that china poses to our national security in many areas. i want to just review what happened with respect to z.t.e., which is a chinese telecommunications company. number one, for many years they have been about the business of stealing technology from american companies. if you look at lawsuits and patent lawsuits filed over the last decade, you will see it's been grand larceny. so we have a chinese telecommunications company that's been ripping off u.s. companies in order for them to gain a market advantage. and they have been doing that in coordination and cooperation with the government of china. so, number one, stealing our technology. what are the

mr. van hollen about. will trump hurt republicans in the states? that is one of the most interesting questions. host: what role will super pac's play this year? nicholas: [laughs] a large one. there will be a ton of money flooding in competitive states all over the country. we were talking about this before. we started speculating about whether or not it will matter, because the republicans and democrats seem to have so much cash on their respective sides. i think in the house, it may have a bigger impact. where you see democratic candidates really raising their republican counterparts. in the senate, it may end up being a bit of a wash. we will wait and see. susan: house leaders are basically sending messages to their members to run your own race. what about on the senate races? are there key issues that will make the difference in these, or is it a state-by-state campaign? alexander: i think it is a state-by-state battle of control of the senate. what's interesting is chuck schumer has given his vulnerable members a lot of leeway to vote with the

mr. wheeler: i do. sen. van hollen: the bay ofeements over a long period time have been one of the great environmental success stories. like you areel running in place with the bay, but the good news is as a result of these agreements and most recently the 2014 agreement, we appear to be making progress. the most recent agreement included a provision with respect to the total maximum daily load. that you as the acting head of the epa will continue to enforce epa's role within that agreement? mr. wheeler: absolutely. it is good news on the bay. over the last 10 years the from 34,000 gone up acres to 100,000 acres and that's one of the first indicators of a healthy bay. we continue to make progress. sen. van hollen: i appreciate that. our house colleagues attached a provision to the environmental appropriations bill to eliminate epa's enforcement of authority under that agreement and i'm thating you would oppose limitation on your authority. mr. wheeler: we would like to keep all the enforcement authorities that we can.

van hollen. >> thank you all for your testimony today. mr. krebs, the department of homeland security focuses on infrastructure including elections and election infrastructure.i think we would all agree that even as we need to harden our defense, the best defense would be if we could deter the actions ahead of time. regardless of what they may be. mr. krebs, you have talked about some of the positive science you've seen with respect to sanctions. you talk primarily about other countries not engaging with the russians when it comes to he described the dog that did not bark, right? >> i believe that was mr. ford. >> i'm sorry mr. ford did that. but when it comes interference in our elections, the dogs are barking really loudly, right? i'm aware director of national intelligence, dan coats, data lights are flashing red. we had all of the presidents top national security advisers a few weeks ago say the russians are planning to interfere, already interfering with 2018 elections. we get the microsoft story today, the facebook story from a couple o

amendment 4004, they are senators baldwin, menendez, van hollen, blumenthal, reed, feinstein, markey, and carper. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. murphy: thank you very much, madam president. madam president, maybe one of the most memorable moments from secretary devos's confirmation hearing was her response to a question that i posed to her. i thought i was giving her a softball. i thought i was giving her a very easy question at the end of my five minutes when i posed a simple question to her, whether she thought that it was a good thing to have guns in schools. i thought that she would give me an answer how, of course, listening to teachers and parents, as she claims to have done during her career in education, that more guns in schools was not the right thing to protect our kids, and, instead, she said that, yes, in fact, she thought that that question should be left largely up to the states because of, quote, potential grizzlies. the idea that there have some schools that may need guns inside to protect against wild animals. i assume she would answer that question differently today. it became a but of jokes, but it turns

mr. van hollen: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mr. van hollen: thank you, madam president. i thank the gentleman from florida, and i thank him for his leadership on the specific issue that was in the defense authorization bill regarding z.t.e. but also for his leadership on the broader issue of protecting the united states against the grand theft of our technology by china and the risks that china poses to our national security in many areas. i want to just review what happened with respect to z.t.e., which is a chinese telecommunications company. number one, for many years they have been about the business of stealing technology from american companies. if you look at lawsuits and patent lawsuits filed over the last decade, you will see it's been grand larceny. so we have a chinese telecommunications company that's been ripping off u.s. companies in order for them to gain a market advantage. and they have been doing that in coordination and cooperation with the government of china. so, number one, stealing our technology. what are the

mr. van hollen: i thank my colleagues from maine and rhode island and others who are here today to draw attention to the trump administration's very dangerous proposal that takes a wrecking ball to the clean power plan that has been put in place. it's been put in place to try to reduce the costs that we are facing from a climate pollution and carbon pollution, and what we see in the trump administration's plan is going to drag us backwards. in fact, analysis was done of their plan, and it will be worse than doing nothing at all. we know and my colleagues have talked about this that every day the american people are already paying the costs of carbon pollution in extreme weather events, whether those are forest fires, whether they're droughts that are wreaking havoc on crops, whether it's flooding. my colleague from maryland, senator cardin and i were just in ellicott city, maryland, two days ago where within a two-year period they have been hit by what are called 1,000-year floods because there's only supposed to be one-tenth of 1% of a chance that that happens and yet we've seen two of them in t