mr. casey: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i rise today to speac about the -- to speak about the tragic passing of a 7-year-old child, jakeline cowl. he died in border and control custody reportedly due to shock and dehydration. it is an understatement to say that we need a thorough and independent investigation to understand exactly what happened in this case and to make sure it never happens again. jakelin entered border control custody and was held with her father overnight with about 160migrants nearly half of whom were minors. custom and border protection stated that food and water were made available, but the child's father -- and news articles stated that water was not available -- it's not visible from a distance, but i'll just hold up a story and headline from today's "washington post". the headline reads, lawyers: no water provided to migrant who died. here is what the first paragraph says. dateline from el paso. 7-year-old jakelin and her father were not provided water during the eight hours they were hel

mr. casey: is the birth of the new space industry.atellites from europe, many of them are technology demonstrators. we also have a number of satellites deployed from the u.s. companies like coca-cola -- pella. and to companies who are competing for the synthetic aperture market, both launching on this satellite. they have presented -- first imaging and ath follow on from their acquisition of terra bella. that happened a couple of years deployingey are satellites on this. artistic satellites that were funded by museums -- the nevada museum of art and the los angeles county museum. we are seeing a number of new players aside from the kingdom of jordan with their first satellites. museums and educational payloads, things that are going up by students are flying here. we have literally have to doesn't iot companies, internet of things satellites -- half a dozen iot companies, internet of things and satellites. this also includes a number of defense satellites for the u.s. there there are --joe: are so many different satellites and use cas

mr. casey: thank you, mr. president. i rise today to remember those killed at sandy hook elementary school in newtown, connecticut, in 2012, just six years ago. tomorrow will be that anniversary of that horrible day when america lost 20 first graders and six adults in one of the worst mass shootings in our nation's history. since 2012, i've kept -- and i know others have done similar things to remind us -- i've kept just a one-page from a newspaper on my desk here in the russell building and i won't show all of it, but here is the top half of it. it is obviously yellowed from six years. it is the -- just happens to be "the wall street journal" dated monday, december 17, 2012. at the top of the page is says "connecticut school shooting" and then the headline there just says two words -- shattered lives. and then gives a photograph of almost every child and every adult. they miss add few because of the timing of this. but then it has a biography of each individual killed. and as i said, 20 of them were children. we have to

mr. casey: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. casey: thank you, mr. president. i want to rise to join with the remarks of the senator from west virginia who worked very hard to make sure that we had a resolution that would allow us to direct the senate legal counsel to intervene in the lawsuit. now, of course, the lawsuit is beyond the district court. we await what might happen in an appellate court, but the best way for anyone in this body to express their disagreement with the removal of the protections for those who might have a preexisting condition, if you believe that those protections should remain in law, remain the law of the land, as they are now, then you should, as a member of the house or the senate, even if you wanted to be in favor and have voted in favor of repealing the affordable care act, you could still argue that in the interest of preserving those protections without question, in the interest of providing certainty to not just tens of millions of americans but many millions more than that who have these prot

mr. casey: thank you, mr. president. i'd ask unanimous consent to vitiate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. casey: thank you, mr. president. i rise today to speak about a very special child, whose photo you see on my left. her name was scar lot. scarlet and her mother stephanie are the people i'll talk about mostly tonight. stephanie was a former staffer in my senate office and scarlet was, as you can tell from the photograph, a ray of sunshine for her parents, stephanie and ryan, also for her extended family and for her many friends. and that's how they described scarlet. she was their sunshine. tragically, scarlet passed away on january 8, 2016, at just 16 months old. scarlet's mom stephanie said the following about her daughter, and i'm quoting -- our little scarlet lived up to her name. she was a little spitfire, strong and determined. she took in the world around her with such wonder. her favorite things were books, blueberries and our pets. her favorite song was "you are my sunshine." s

mr. speaker, i rise to recognize the amazing accomplishments of ms. casey cafold, a 14-year-old freshman at connecessary toga valley high school in -- conestoga valley high school in lancaster, pennsylvania. she's a winner and world record holder. last month she competed with olympic class archers from round the world at the world archer indoor series open in luxembourg. she earned 58 out of 600 possible points -- 589 out of 600 possible points to win a gold medal and set a world record for height hest score earned by an archer under the age of 17 during competition. we're incredibly proud of casey's achievements and looking forward to all that's in store for her in the future, which i believe will be as a future olympian. if she does so, she will represent our nation well. we wish her continued success in all of her endeavors. thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, i rise to recognize a man synonymous with railroading in lancaster county, mr. lynn modinger. after 51 years, 51 years working for the strasburg railroad, lynn is retiring as president of the stra

mr. bush's. it will be both fun and also a bit sad as well. >> bill: what do we know about the burial that will follow, casey? >> the funeral, once that concludes, then the former president will take one last trip and that will be by rail. the bush family will board a train in spring, texas, a suburb of houston, and take it up to college station where mr. bush will be laid to rest in a private ceremony at his presidential library and museum. that special locomotive with paint scheme will have a plexiglas window on each side so passer bys are able to see the casket and we expect that people will be lining the train route and trying to get one final glimpse of a piece of history. bill. >> bill: thank you, casey. we're eager to see day two there in houston and casey, thank you for that. really awesome moments ago today. so many yesterday, too. you know, the amount of american history we watched yesterday, sandra, was just remarkable. there is the episcopal church in houston. the two things that stick in my mind reflecting yesterday what we can expect today is the train ride casey just referred to and the 21-jet

casey said. the most extraordinary part of the letter to the president was when he brought up china and russia and said, mr friends. these are our competitors. these are our rivals. and there was a suggestion that donald trump did not understand that russia was behaving like an enemy. dan, let's start with you. how extraordinary was that? >> the entire letter is extraordinary. i wonder whether donald trump actually read it before he tweeted out the fact that mattis was resigning or if he read it comprehended what he was doing to him when he wrote the letter. but this shouldn't be all that surprising. what mattis said in the letter was consistent with what was put out last year in the national security strategy, which was in part mattis was an architect of that. when donald trump introduced that national security strategy, which talked about russia and china as sort of great power rivals, that we should be concerned about them. in his remarks introducing them donald trump undercut that message. this puts a period on the notion that anyone is running foreign policy in this executive branch except for donald

mr. casey: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from pennsylvania. mr. casey: mr. president, i would ask consent to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. casey: thank you, mr. president. i rise today to talk about not the mueller investigation, as much as i want to talk about robert mueller himself because of the substantial responsibility that he has -- and i think it is important for us to remind ourselves, as well as to remind our country, about his service at a time when he's been often attacked from folks here in washington. when i think of an individual like robert mueller, i think of two words -- public service. or maybe just one word -- service. he was inspired, as many people know, to become a marine by one of his friends from the college la crosse team that he was on. this man's name was david hackett, who later died on the battlefield in vietnam. as mr. mueller said in a speech -- and i'm quoting him here -- one would have thought that the life of a marine in david's death in vietnam would argue strongly against f