mr. gardner. the senator from tennessee, mr. corker. the senator from arkansas, mr. boozman. the senator from arkansas, mr. cotton. the senator from illinois, mr. durbin. the senator from washington, mrs. murphy. the senator from vermont, mr. leahy. the senator from minnesota, ms. klobuchar. the senator from wisconsin, ms. baldwin. the senator from new jersey, mr. menendez. and the senator from delaware, mr. coons. the speaker: members of the escort committee will enter the chamber through the lobby doors. asst. sergeant at arms: mr. speaker, the acting dean of the diplomatic corps. asst. sergeant at arms: mr. speaker, the president's cabinet. se sergeant at arms: the president of the french republic.

mr. gardner's death as recommended by investigators? and have you been briefed on this case and what are your thoughts? >> thank you. we take these matters very seriously. and have wrestled with quite a number of them and i would just say that we intend to do the right thing as we're given the ability to decide on this matter. as an ongoing -- i'm not able to comment on ongoing invests. >> i understand. let me just ask you a question because i'm not a lawyer and i don't understand some of these things. so the investigators are members of the department who recommend to the higher ups if you will that there should be a proceeding. is that what's going on now? without getting into it. >> in general, investigators investigate cases. they consult with the local prosecutors. state and federal. and decisions are made. sometimes it can reach the level of main justice in washington. and then whatever division, the criminal division, civil rights division, evaluates the evidence and can make a recommendation, also. >> thank you. well, there are

mr. gardner: i ask unanimous consent to be allowed to speak for one minute. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. gardner: i rise today to recommend and urge my colleagues to vote for jim bridenstine, director of nasa. we'll be voting on this nomination momentarily. jim bridenstine has incredible experience and incredible resume, incredible mission before nasa. we need somebody with a mission. we need somebody who actually has an idea of where we should take our great space mission. somebody who has commercial experience, somebody who has government experience, somebody should has management service and, yes, somebody who has experience within the industry itself, and that is jim bridenstine. jim has bipartisan support, support in the house. my fellow democrat congressman ed perlmutter from colorado said that jim bridenstine will be an excellent nasa administrator as well as a dozen other democrat members of the house of representatives. he has the understanding, background, capability, and, more importantly, the drive and desire to do an excellent an

mr. pompeo: yes. sen. gardner: will you commit to advance this lead act and others like it that continue these sanctions against such entities? mr. pompeo: i am not familiar with the details. sen. gardner: it is a great bill. [laughter] mr. pompeo: the president has made clear of the continuation of the pressure campaign is the tool that enables the opportunity to achieve successful diplomatic outcome in north korea. sen. gardner: and briefly, we have about a minute left here can you share with me the exact , goals of the presidential summit between the united states and north korea? mr. pompeo: yes, i believe i can. it is to develop an agreement with the north korean leadership so that the north korean leadership will separately from its efforts to hold america at risk with nuclear weapons completely and verifiably. sen. gardner: to be clear, the only goal that the united states has is complete verifiable and irreversible of the nuclear weapons? mr. pompeo: i want to be careful about complete. north korea has a s

mr. gardner, you're all right. we like that information. gartman, sorry, got it. sorry.alled worse. stuart: not by me. you're all right. see you again soon. thank you, sir. >>> next case, james comey making the rounds, and bret baer snagged an interview. it will be airing tonight. actually, it's going to be live tonight. but bret's going to join us later this hour, give us something of a preview. >>> a judge in new york ruled it's okay for bars and restaurants to refuse service to trump supporters. we're on it. >>> new york governor andrew cuomo threatened to sue i.c.e. agents over what he calls unconstitutional raids on undocumented immigrants. betsy mccaughey, former lieutenant governor of new york, on that next. ♪ ♪ mgx minerals' disruptive technology can extract lithium - used for batteries from expired oil wells. mgx's new pilot plant aims to produce lithium-carbonate one hundred times faster than from conventional lithium brine. mgx minerals stuart: new york's governor, andrew cuo, threatening to sue i.c.e. agents over what he calls unconstitutional raids on illega

gardner. >> thank you, mr. chairman. director pompeo, congratulations to the nomination to your family and thank you for your services. this is a major task you're about to take part of and i appreciate your willingness to serve our country again. thank you. director pompeo and i had the opportunity to work together for a number of years. >> for senator markey. >> we're going to take another very, very quick break. we'll resume our special coverage of this confirmation hearing in two minutes. internet providers promise business owners a lot. let's see who delivers more. comcast business offers fast gig-speeds across our network. at&t doesn't. we offer more complete reliability with up to 8 hours of 4g wireless network backup. at&t, no way. we offer 35 voice features and solutions that grow with your business. at&t, not so much. we give you 75 mbps for $59.95. that's more speed than at&t's comparable bundle, for less. call today. almost $800 when we switched our auto and home insurance. with liberty, we could afford a rea

gardner? >> thank you, mr. chairman. joan pompeo, thank you for your testimony today. i think you've done a great job at challenging us and being very forward with your answers and i appreciate that today, and it will serve you well as secretary of state and i look forward to supporting you. there's been some news that was made in the testimony earlier today by president trump. i think he has directed, according to news reports, ambassador heuser along with larry kudlow in re-engaging the national partnership. leading to this question on china, the national security strategy released in 2017 says china's influence in attempting to rope american security and prosperity, it has expanded its reaches of the state model, china suis using inducements an threats to get the states to uphold its agenda. we talked about the fact they are conducting or at least planning to conduct fire exercises in the straits of taiwan. can you talk about this, perhaps even including ttp, >> can you talk about how that we can make sure we have a policy toward china? >> that news was news to me.

gardner. >> thank you, mr. chairman. director, thank you again for your testimony. i think you've done an incredible job today. challenging us and also being forth -- being very forward in your answers. i appreciate that today. and it will serve you well as secretary of state. i look forward to supporting you. there's been some news that was made. while you were in the testimony earlier today by president trump. i think he's directed according to the news reports ambassador lighthighser along with larry kudlow to open up the new possibility of reengaging in the transpacific partnership. and so leading into this question on china, the national security strategy released into 2017 says china and russia challenge american power, influence and interest, attempting to erode security. to expand its state model. china is using economic inducements and implied military threats to persuade other states. i talked about the militarization of the south chinese seas. they're planning to conduct life-fire exercise in the straits of taiwan. can you talk about this perhaps includin

gardner? >> thank you, mr. chairman. director pompeo, congratulations. thank you for your commitment to service. this is no easy task that you are about to take -- take part of and i appreciate your willingness to serve our country once again. thank you. director pompeo and i had an incredible opportunity to serve together in the house of energy and commerce committee for a number of years. >> we were senator with marky. several on this committee and we had the opportunity to sit next to each other, to work together and i can tell my colleagues on the committee that there is no one who came better prepared to more understanding of the issues and always looking for a creative answer and the diligence that he pursued that work to find that creative solution, i think, is something that i admired about his work in the house. and i know that continued as director of the c.i.a. and will continue upon his confirmation at the state department. i have one request, director pompeo, that is very important to me. as secretary of state, kansas will have no greater au

mr. fasman: if you were betting, and the cory gardner bill, chuck schumer bill came to the house and senate floor, would they pass? i should ask, what are the chances they could go to the floor? and what are the chances of they would pass? ms. minton: schumer's bill, good chance. gardner's bill, less of a chance. of schumere leadership. leadership has for the most part taken a pretty anti-pro-marijuana position. you also have mitch mcconnell, who just introduced last week a hemp legalization bill, and pelosi said that she might eventually consider legalization of marijuana. her voting has been pretty good. she voted to make it legal for veterans, for rohrbacher farms, which stopped the department for going after the states where it is legal. i think the schumer bill has a good chance, and the gardner bill has gotten a lot of support. i think it has slightly less of a chance because of his rank. but they both have a good shot. mr. fasman: marijuana is still illegal at the federal level. are you surprised we have not seen more federal marijuana prosecutions? i imagine a sort of an ambitious y

gardner? >> thank you, mr. chairman. director pompeo, congratulations on the nomination. thank you for your commitment to your service. this is no easy task that you are about to take part of and i appreciate your willingness to serve our country once again. thank you. director pompeo and i had the opportunity to serve together for several years. >> we were with senator markey. >> we worked together and i can tell my colleagues on the committee, there's no one that came better prepared with more understanding of the issues and always looking for a creative answer. i think that's something i always admired about his work in the house. i know that continued as director of the cia and will continue at the state department. i have one request, director, that is very important to me. as secretary of state, we won't get into water fights between colorado and kansas right now. but i would like to submit a letter written by former senior government officials with national security experience and administration to different parties who work on capitol hill, including general alexa

mr skripal remains in a critical condition in hospital four weeks after he was poisoned. our security correspondent frank gardneris that? it depends on how you perceive it. factually, this makes no difference. porton down, the laboratory where the substance was tested had the remit to find out what it was and they have identified it very quickly as a military grade nerve agent called novichok which means newcomer in russia. and the circumstantial evidence has been compiled with that by other agents of government, in other words, the intelligence agencies. they have come together with the conclusion that russia had an active programme to develop this stuff, it had an active assassination programme, a content —— considers traders as legitimate targets and they put that together with the fact that novichok is so toxic, so dangerous, so difficult to get hold of, but it could only have been russia. russia has seized on this straightaway and said, this shows that these are crazy allegations, the russian media is all over it today. even drawing comparisons with wmd saying that britain will have to apologise to them for

senator gardner: secretary karem, you made a comment, you said there is precious little theafed iran is interested in any kind of a settlement. is that paraphrasing what you said? mr. karem: i would really say iran benefits from continuing the conflict. they are fueling the conflict as they are in syria and elsewhere. senator gardner: ambassador satterfield, given what secretary karem said, we don't seem to be gaining anywhere at this point. ambassador satterfield: we have, in fact, a more promising olitical scene in yemen today. we see a greater degree of emiratey and saudi support, genuine support being proffered for him than was the case a year ago with his predecessor. on the iranian side, we're working actively to address the ability of the iranians to proliferate, particularly missiles, into houthi hands. that is an ongoing process which we hope can bear fruit in the ot distant future. the future of yemen on that macrolevel, single country, two states as it was prior to 1993, is a matter for them to decide. undoubtedly will be one of the issues addressed in any comprehensive peace process. one of the issues which the u.n. has been gramming with. more -- grap

mr. gardner: thank you, mr. president. in the past 24 hours, we have learned of a high-level meeting between director mike pompeo, the president's nominee to become secretary of state, and kim jong-un, the tie n rant leader of -- the tyrant leader of north korea who has threatened to use nuclear weapons not only against our allies but the united states and has a growing capability in his efforts to do just that. we have also seen incredible partisan obstruction threatened on his nomination. the absurd levels of partisanship in this chamber are a stain on our institution. we see it at every level of nomination from ambassadorship to commissions to boards, and now we see it at the level of the secretary of state, a position that will be instrumental in denuclearizing the north korean regime. director pompeo had his confirmation hearing last week before the senate foreign relations committee where he reiterated again, and we now know that this committee hearing, his testimony took place after he had visited kim jong-un, and i

mr. gardner: thank you, mr. president. over the past couple of weeks senate had its work period. during that time we would go back to our states and travel listening to our constituents. i had the incredible opportunity to go to colorado, spent time on the front range of the i--25 corridor where a vast majority of colorado lives and spend time in western colorado which most people identify being in that part of colorado they travel to often. ski resorts, rocky mountain national parks, great sand dunes. i visited some of the communities in southern colorado including the san luis valley, where some of the longest living colorado families have farms, families and businesses. but the focus of this visit was about how do we, how do we grow the economy. the san luis valley, eastern plains, western slopes, areas that haven't seen as much economic growth as perhaps denver has or fort collins or colorado springs. i wanted to spend time getting into the community tanned talking about issues -- and talking about issues these communities face when it comes to the opioid crisis this country