mr. whitehouse: mr. president, i assume we're in a quorum call and ask unanimous consent it be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: i ask to speak as if in morning business for up to 15 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, i'm here for my 254th time to wake up speech i. in the time i have been giving these speeches, i have watched the shifting trajectory of climate denial. first climate change was a hoax. then there wasn't enough science. then the science is still uncertain. then solving this problem would hurt our economy. then innovation will magically save us. and now there's a new entrant in the climate denial lexicon, china. china isn't doing enough on carbon emissions goes the argument. so we shouldn't do anything at all. it is a talking point you hear all the time from the fossil fuel industry and it's array of front groups working to block climate action here in congress. now, china has done plenty to complain about. chin

mr. whitehouse: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: we are here tonight when we should not be. because the epidemic, the pageant of gun violence in this country should have been addressed by us by now. we have not acted. we have not acted in large part because we are engaged in a bizarre self-inflicted political experiment in this country in which we allow big special interests to use secret money in elections to manipulate our politics. this ought to be easy. there have been 293 mass shootings since january 1, 2019, this year alone. these tragedies have galvanized the american public in support of sensible restrictions on guns and the amount of agreement among the american public is astounding. 86% of americans support implementing what we call red flag laws that allow a judge to remove guns from someone who's determined to be a danger to himself or others. 86%. you could barely get 86% of the senate to agree on the day of the week. 89% support expanding federal background checks to cover private sales and to close the gun

mr. chairman, it's all about partnership. when i talked to senator whitehouse' comments, i talked about the risks that states take when we do something different, something new. i mean, we are inherently risk -- we have been trained to be risk adverse. there is little accolades that come from taking a risk and being successful. we are pretty good in the media, members of congress know how this goes as being punished for perceived mistakes. we tend not to be the riskiest types of people. what the federal government has done really well. we were the first state to build a bridge off to the side of the highway and move it into place on an interstate over the weekend and when we did that, there was, yes, there was additional costs. when the media came and said how much extra money is this costing? i was able to say it was about $600,000. but the federal government gave me a grant to cover that additional cost, that additional risk. i was able to pass that kind of red faced test that you have to do with the media and with my legislators so that type of partnership t

mr. rush. . or five minutes. without objection. i rise : madam speaker, racially ddress how discriminatory housing policy has contributed to the unjust racial wealth gap in our nation. urrently, madam speaker, 72% of whitehouse holds own their own home. black ust 41% of households. the result of this disparity can be traced to discriminatory practices implemented by the federal housing authority which loans in only 2% of being issued to african-americans between 1934 nd 1968. this was a super classic form organic and institutional acism. the ongoing ramifications of this most insid with us discrimination continues to be felt acutely by people like many of my constituents. found that the to emic denial of loans led the widespread use of predatory in source contracts [communities. -- in black communities. these contracts, madam speaker, ed to a situation where my home saved over $71,000 on average. more for over $71,000 their homes than white meowners who had assets, unfiltered access to federally bank loans. in total, madam speaker, redlining, the process of rating predominantly black neighborhoods as "high risk" for traditional mortgage 3 $3.2 million. this is by conservative estimates, $3.2 million. so up t

mr. whitehouse: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, i ask that any pending quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: may i ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 25 minutes as if in morning business? the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: thank you, mr. president. i, as the presiding officer knows, have often spoken about how climate change is affecting rhode island. rising sea levels will remake my state's map. warming seas are shifting or traditional fisheries away from rhode island. a hotter climate creates public health risks for rhode islanders. the list goes on. in the senate, i've also tried to learn how climate change is affecting our states, and the presiding officer was courteous about joining me in louisiana when i made a trip to his state. i have been doing a fair amount of traveling. last month i visited wyoming to hear about climate change in the cowboy state. this was the 17th state i visited on these climate trips. a little backgroun

mr. whitehouse: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator is recognized. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, i am here today on the senate floor for time to wake up speech number 253. if you felt like the heat this summer was particularly brutal, you were not imagining things. july was the hottest month ever recorded, according to noaa. the secretary-general of the world meteorological association noted july has rewritten climate history with dozens of new temperature records at the local, national, and global level. noaa says 2019 is on track to tie for the second hottest year on record. overall, the past five years are expected to take the title of the hottest five-year period in recorded human history. this rapid heating of our earth is wreaking havoc on our environment and public health. here's a list from noaa that you can find on their website, selected significant climate anomalies and events, july, 2019. all around the globe. in one day, one day, the greenland ice sheet lost 12.5 billion tons of ice melted into the sea. throughout the world from france to india to the arct