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Mr. COONS. Mr. President, yesterday, the People's Republic of China sentenced Jimmy Lai to 20 years in a Chinese prison.
His crime? Freedom. He was an outspoken, pro-democracy journalist, and he was jailed for his reporting on government.
At 78 years old, Jimmy Lai will likely die in jail. This is a tragedy for freedom in Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China--and one that reminds us that the work of liberty, the work of freedom, the sacrifice and the struggle required to maintain it are not cheap.
Our Nation was built on a yearning for the kind of freedom from government repression and overreach that Jimmy Lai stood up against. And our democracy rests on a lot of different foundations, but at the core of all of it is a restraint on government power.
A democracy rooted in free speech, freedom of worship, freedom of assembly, and a chance to have and hold our own ideas, to pursue our own dreams and our own lives, has also built strong bonds with allies around the world--bonds that have helped keep us safe and made us prosperous for decades.
We have had dark chapters in our history, certainly: the McCarthy era, the Red Scare, periods when we were not as committed to free speech as we might be. But, historically, we have not persecuted and jailed those journalists who dared challenge the government.
And so I chose to speak today partly because of the event of Jimmy Lai being sentenced and partly because of a growing concern that we are at risk of wasting, of watching slip from our grasp, that most precious inheritance that our Nation has earned: a hard-won, hard-fought legacy of millions who stepped forward and served on behalf of our Nation at home and abroad in defense of democracy--millions who have said: I will risk it all so that my children and the children of others I don't know and will never know may live free.
From the very first shots at Lexington and Concord to the fields of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, to the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima, to the sands of Southwest Asia and Afghanistan and Iraq, across the centuries, Americans have fought and served in defense not of an ethnicity, not of a religion, not of a language but of an idea--an idea that out of many, we could be one; that out of an incredible array of backgrounds, of languages, of faiths, of ethnicities, we could forge in the modern world the first real democracy since ancient times.
I have an ancestor who served at Antietam and Chattanooga and Gettysburg, who signed up as a young lieutenant and served through the whole duration of the Civil War with the New York 60th Infantry. And on a bipartisan visit by a group of Senators to that Gettysburg battlefield, I was challenged to think anew about what it meant that 50,000 Americans were the casualties of that pivotal conflict on the fields at Gettysburg.
President Lincoln, months after, spoke in dedicating the cemetery at Gettysburg. At that point, it was ``four score and seven years ago.'' Today, it would be 12 score and 10 years ago because we, this year, celebrate 250 years since the founding of our Republic through the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia.
I have often asked myself: If I served in this body, in this Chamber, if I served in the Senate of the United States in the 1840s and 1850s and 1860, would I have seen what was coming? If I had been a member of this body in the thirties, would I have seen what was coming?
And, in recent days, I have been chilled when watching a parade in Beijing where Xi Jinping, the dictator of the PRC, assembled the leaders of North Korea, Iran, India, and other allies of theirs to watch a parade of state-of-the-art weaponry. It reminded me of similar moments in the late 1930s, when the fascist states of Germany and Italy teamed up with the imperialist state of Japan to form the Axis and to plunge the world into chaos.
I have often asked myself: Would I have seen and known what was around the bend, what was happening next?
Well, to know the future, you need to know the past, and I have reflected a lot, recently, on the words spoken by President Lincoln in commemorating the sacrifice of those who served at Gettysburg. He said that it was an active question, that the point of the conflict was to answer whether a nation ``conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal'' could ``long endure.'' That was a question we have had to fight for, we have had to struggle for, and that is right before us today.
It goes back to the Framers in our founding. Federalist 51 is where Madison wrote:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
And so they came up with a structure, the separation of powers.
Our Constitution has often been remarked upon as the greatest piece of political architecture in human history because it kept the power of the executive and the judiciary and the legislative branches separate so that each might check the ambition of the other--all of this in pursuit of the restraint of power.
Yet, as I have watched in the last year the remarks and the actions of our President and Vice President, they are chillingly rhyming with those of dictators like President Xi and President Putin of the PRC and Russia--the growing and steady use of unrestrained state power to punish the President's perceived enemies. And I am wrestling with a growing sense of gloom, of concern, of alarm that a similar story will play out in our Nation today as it is in other countries around the world.
In barely more than a year, we have seen journalists covering protests arrested. We have seen masked and unaccountable government agents murder American citizens and then senior members of the administration lying about who they were and what they were doing. We have seen the administration sue media organizations and reporters--not just a few: Washington Post, ABC, BBC, New York Times, Des Moines Register--sue media outlets to cow them into compliance; using the power of the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission--the FTC to investigate media matters, violating their First Amendment rights in an effort to bankrupt them, and using FCC broadcast licenses to dictate who gets to be on late-night TV based on whether the President thinks they are funny or not; steady pressure applied on an incredible range of fronts and with a dizzying change in tempo and focus so that we are distracted. This week, it is Jimmy Kimmel. This week, it is Venezuela. This week, it is the FTC. This week, it is going after Harvard.
Our President declared war on law firms: revoked security clearances, threatened their viability by taking away their capacity to walk into Federal buildings, ending Federal contracts. Why? Because if you can control who a law firm is willing to represent, you can suppress dissent.
Some of our Nation's most reputable and accomplished firms--Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale--investigated, denied access, sued for representing the President's opponent in the 2016 election, for representing a major philanthropist, George Soros, for representing those who would advocate on behalf of trans children, for representing Robert Mueller. The point here was to make it clear: If you pick a lawyer the state doesn't like, your rights are in jeopardy.
Sound familiar?
The administration has gone after some of our Nation's best known, longest established universities, among our very oldest--Harvard, Penn, Duke, Brown, Columbia--revoking funding, conducting investigations, shutting down partnerships, depleting their endowments, coercing compliance.
Even major businesses have been dragged before the White House and pushed to comply with the administration's agenda--from Apple, to Exxon, to Nvidia--summoned to the White House, pressured to avoid disfavor or bad regulatory decisions; suing a globally known company like Nike for choosing to have a diversity program.
Where is the alarm and the concern from the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, those who have stood up in the past against Federal overreach by previous administrations?
Executive branch Agencies and regulators of independent agencies post that their reviews and approvals will depend on companies' conduct and whether they align with the administration's agenda. This undermines the very foundations of rule of law that undermine capitalism itself.
Something that has alarmed me more than any development in recent days: criminalization of the dissenters and disfavored, including Members of this body--Senators who are veterans, who have served in our intelligence services or as an astronaut and a pilot in combat--for recording a video reminding members of our military that they can refuse an illegal order; Members of the Senate and House investigated for seditious behavior, which our President claims is punishable by death.
Many of my colleagues have said: Pay no attention to what the President says; pay attention to what he does.
I will say: I am paying attention to what he is doing because, in addition to a steady stream of late-night rants on social media, we have seen actions--actions--by Federal Agencies: investigations, prosecutions, persecution, labeling protesters as domestic terrorists, reclassifying dissent as something punishable by law.
In an event just last week, our President spoke at the Prayer Breakfast and said, ``I don't know how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat'' and then said jokingly, ``[I]f you do say something bad about Trump . . . I will have your tax-exempt status . . . revoked.'' Who does that? Who threatens faith leaders from across our Nation with revoking their tax-exempt status?
I was in Europe with a bipartisan delegation from this body just 2 weeks ago visiting our trusted, loyal NATO ally Denmark, as they were alarmed about the rising tide of threats from our President to extract the territory of Greenland from their nation.
This coming weekend and week, I will travel to the annual Munich Security Conference, which my friend and late colleague Senator John McCain helped build up into a critical gathering of the North Atlantic community, of NATO allies, of Ministers of Defense, heads of state, parliamentarians from all over the world, principally focused on the alliances rooted in values that have kept us safe, prosperous, and free. And I know what I will hear from our allies--that they are gravely concerned that the values that connect us are slipping away.
Last year, I had the blessing, the honor, of meeting again with Yulia Navalny, whose husband, an advocate for democracy in Russia, died in a Russian prison. Yulia will once again speak with us as a delegation about the cost of freedom.
What gave me hope last year at this conference was a panel I participated in with three legislators from three other countries-- young women serving in the legislative bodies of Ghana, of Burma, and of Poland--fighting for democracy in their countries, not because they look to the United States as the perfect example but because they know the profound human hunger for freedom--the legislator from Burma now serving in exile; the legislators from Ghana and from Poland having worked hard to resist corruption, oppression, state power, looking, yes, to America's example but, frankly, charting their own course because they know that the future for their children and their families and their nations lies on a better path when liberty and justice for all is at the core of their cause and their purpose.
As I travel to Munich again, I will be joining a bipartisan group under the name ``Codel McCain'' because even after he has passed, we continue to honor our former colleague, who spent so much of his time in a prison in Vietnam, knowing that at any day, he could raise his hand and be released but refusing to dishonor the code under which he served.
Senator McCain said in one of his last speeches that the current President seems to be trading away the ideals that have held together our Nation ``for the sake of some half-baked spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.''
Well, we can't let that happen for all of those like Senator McCain and Senator Kerry and Senator Carper, veterans of that war. And now we are joined by veterans of our most recent wars. For all of those who have served at home and abroad--first responders, law enforcement, teachers, community leaders, doctors--all those who put their heart and time and effort into making America the democracy worthy of the regard of the world, we need to be clear that the hour is late, that the skies are darkening, that the steady advance of the grip of state power should alarm all of us.
Lincoln concluded his remarks at Gettysburg saying:
We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.
We have to do that again today: Call out the alarm, call out these actions, renew our commitment to the ideals that have made our Nation great, refuse to give up on our alliances rooted in values and ask the world not to give up on us, and keep fighting back against those who would strip us of our liberties and our freedoms.
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