jer jeffrey blish and kay bailey hutchison. jeffrey, starting with you. on the issue in australia, the specific issue here that apparently caused the difficult phone conversation i think is something that's not familiar to many americans, certainly it wasn't on our political radar. if you could talk us through the issue here. as i understand it, you have got a deal that the obama administration struck where they would take -- australia would take refugees from central america that the u.s. has been holding and in exchange the u.s. takes refugees from the pacific that australia has been holding? is that the basis of what was going on here? >> yeah. i think that's part of it. the idea is that in australia they have had a large number of refugees coming in from southeast asia and the middle east. they've been processing them on some islands and wanted to make sure they didn't take all of them in australia, if they could share them with partners. it's something allies do frequently. when i was in australia, the australians took some people being released from

this was a bipartisan provision that i authored with republican senator, former senator kay bailey hutchison of texas. as i said, all 20 women senators supported this critical legislation, and it passed with bipartisan support on a vote of 78-22. with support from a majority of senators in senator sessions' own party, not to mention men and women across the country. the reasoning that senator sessions had for not voting for the bill was that it was -- the tribal provisions that he didn't like because of the dual jurisdiction. that just doesn't hold up for me, given what i've seen in my state. now, what does this really mean to people? well, let me end this portion of my remarks with two stories. the first is about a case that i handled -- our office handled and a prosecutor in our office who was very well-thought-of handled in our office involving an immigrant who basically -- basically two immigrants. and this was a case where this man, who was from russia, beat up his wife repeatedly over the years. they had a little daughter, and one day he killed her. and then he went to home depot and h