Sen. Coons: “It’s critical that [Trump] both distance himself from his potential conflicts of interests by explaining to the American people how he is going to come clean, how he is going to release his taxes and how he is going to sever his ties to potentially complicating business interests.”
Sen. Coons: “[Trump] needs to speak directly to his very troubling and now very long pattern of overly positive statements about Putin and his seeming blind spots to Putin’s threat to the united States and, in particular, the cyber-attack that affected the American presidential election.”
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to discuss his role in the confirmation hearing for Rex Tillerson and share his expectations for President-elect Trump in the upcoming press conference.
Sen. Coons on his recent meeting with Tillerson: He gave very strong answers about the importance of NATO, about holding Russia accountable for the massacres in Aleppo, for the invasion and occupation of Crimea in the Ukraine, and I’m hopeful he is as forthcoming in the hearing today. That opens up another problem, which is the yawning gap between his statements and President-Elect Trump.
Sen. Coons on the gap between the nominees and Trump’s expressed views: As we move towards possible confirmation votes we have to dig into the background of these nominees. They are still, in many cases, finishing their ethics disclosures and their financial disclosures and those of us who are Democrats have to make a values judgment. Jeff sessions, just to be clea,r is one of the most conservative senators and he gave a number of answers on civil rights and civil liberties that to me were very troubling. Mr. Tillerson I think is a widely experienced, well-traveled seasoned senior business executive but we have different priorities and values when it comes to issues like climate change and the role of human rights and a free press in our foreign policy.
Sen. Coons on President-elect Trump’s upcoming press conference: I’ll be watching very closely what President-elect Trump says today in his first press conference. It’s critical that he both distance himself from his potential conflicts of interests by explaining to the American people how he is going to come clean, how he is going to release his taxes, how he is going to sever his ties to potentially complicating business interests.
Sen. Coons on President-elect Trump’s associations with Russia: [Trump] needs to speak directly to his very troubling and now very long pattern of overly positive statements about Putin and his seeming blind spots to Putin’s threat to the united States and, in particular, the cyber-attack that affected the American presidential election. I am expecting, hoping, that Rex Tillerson is comparably clear about the importance of the American intelligence communities and his respect for them as independent and non-partisan professionals and his intention to rely on their professional advice
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today questioned Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) at his hearing to be confirmed as U.S. Attorney General in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
Excerpts:
Sen. Coons: “A hitching post was used as a punishment for prisoners…[where prisoners] would be cuffed by both wrists to a pole at chest height, sometimes for seven, eight, or nine hours, unprotected from sun, heat, or rain, without access in some cases to water or even a bathroom. And as the Attorney General, you and the Governor received letters from the U.S. Department of Justice, telling you that Alabama’s use of the hitching post in both men and women’s prisons was unconstitutional and unjustified. But as I understand it, the use of the hitching post continued throughout your term and you did not act to stop it.”
“In my experience here in six years with you, you have steadfastly opposed all of these efforts at bipartisan sentencing reform. Help me understand why you’ve blocked efforts at reducing mandatory minimum sentences, at creating opportunities for the revisitation of sentences that may have been overly harsh when initially imposed.”
“You’ve been one of the few senators to repeatedly and steadfastly vote against congressional attempts to prohibit torture in the military context or the interrogation context, and to repeatedly defend enhanced interrogation practices. Are you clear now that our statutes prohibit torture and if the president were to attempt to override that clear legal authority, what actions would you take?”
Transcript of exchange between Senators Coons and Sessions below:
Senator Coons: Thank you Chairman Grassley, welcome Senator Sessions, congratulations to you and Mary and your whole family on your nomination. The position of Attorney General of the United States is one of the most important positions on which this committee will ever hold hearings. And the next Attorney General of the United States will assume leadership of the Justice Department on the heels of an election in which there were many issues thrown about in the course of the campaign. Some of which have been asked about previously. Calls for a Muslim ban or patrols, issues of a potential Russian cyberattack affecting our democracy, calls for mass deportations and chants at some rallies to “lock her up” for one of the candidates. And given the divisiveness of this election, I think it’s critical that the next Attorney General be well suited for this position and this time. And as such, I think, a successful nominee has to be able to persuade this committee that he will act fairly and impartially administer justice, and advance justice for all Americans.
Senator Sessions, we’ve served on this committee together for six years and we’ve worked well together on a few issues, on state and local law enforcement issues, on the reauthorization of the Victims Of Child Abuse Act, and on the restoration of funding for federal-public defenders. And I appreciate that partnership. But there have also been many issues on which we disagreed, issues from immigration to civil liberties, to civil rights to criminal justice, voting rights, and torture. And I am concerned about your views on a number of these issues as we discussed when we met last week. So I am grateful to the chairman and to you that we are going to have a full and fair hearing on all of these issues today.
Let me start with some questions about your time when you were Alabama Attorney General and how you understood some direction you received from the U.S. Department of Justice. At that point, Alabama was the only state in the country that handcuffed prisoners to hitching posts, and we talked about this when we met before, and I said I would ask you about this in this hearing. A hitching post was used as a punishment for prisoners perceived as being unwilling to work or participate in the daily lives of the prison, whether serving on a chain gain, or participating in work, and they would be cuffed by both wrists to a pole at chest height, sometimes for seven, eight, or nine hours, unprotected from sun, heat, or rain, without access in some cases to water or even a bathroom. And as the Attorney General, you and the Governor received letters from the U.S. Department of Justice, telling you that Alabama’s use of the hitching post in both men and women’s prisons was unconstitutional and unjustified. But as I understand it, the use of the hitching post continued throughout your term and you did not act to stop it.
During this same period, the state of Alabama was sued not just about hitching posts but also about chain gains. Prison policies in Alabama said a man could be put on a chain gain if he failed to shave or keep his bed clean, if he disrespected a member of the staff and would end up doing hard labor breaking rocks while being chained together in groups of five, shackled with eight feet of chain between men. And these practices, the case that was brought, demonstrated, were disproportionately affecting African Americans. In later litigation, the practice of using the hitching post was called by an Alabama judge “the most painful, and torturous punishment in Alabama short of electrocution.” And in 2002, the United States Supreme Court said using the hitching post was clearly unconstitutional when it was used in Alabama. Can you please, Senator, tell me your view today of the use of the hitching post and chain gain in Alabama corrections and what your view of what action you would take today if these practices were restored?
Senator Sessions: Thank you very much, Senator. That was an issue about the Governor who campaigned and promised that prisoners should work, and he was determined to make that happen. I believe the litigation occurred after my time as Attorney General according to my records, but we could be wrong, I’ll supplement the records for you. Certainly, the decision by the Supreme Court and the Federal Courts were after I left office, I believe. So working of prisoners is an issue the we’ve dealt with in Congress of the United States and by state legislatures. I think good employment of a prisoner is a healthy thing. I do not favor personally this kind of work. I think it should be more productive work, work that can help an individual develop a discipline that they can use when they go on to private life after they leave prison. After the Supreme Court ruling, I think it’s crystal clear what the law is that was disapproved, and disallowed and found to be unconstitutional, and I would absolutely follow that as Attorney General.
Senator Coons: In your view, did it take a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify that this constituted torture, that it was not just bad corrections policy, it was actually substantively torture of prisoners?
Senator Sessions: Senator Coons, I don’t recall ever personally being engaged in the studying of the constitutional issues at stake. It is perfectly legitimate for prisoners to work, but they should be on decent conditions, and I think it should be the kind of work that is productive, and can actually lead to developing good habits. I’ve heard some evidence on that subject. So I do not have a legal opinion about the case..have not studied it.
Sen. Coons: Just to be clear, what I was pressing you on there was the use of the hitching post, which is a disciplinary measure that had been abandoned by all states but Alabama. It’s really reminiscent more of the stocks, the stockade that were used centuries ago and to me somewhat troubling that it continued without challenge.
Let me ask you more broadly, as you know, both Republicans and Democrats on this committee have worked together to address ways in which our criminal justice system is broken. And to address the disparate racial impact of over incarceration that has resulted in the last thirty years. Senator Tillis and I just yesterday published an oped that we wrote jointly about the importance of responsible, balanced criminal justice reform. And Senators Grassley, Cornyn, Lee, and Graham and Flake, all your fellow Republicans, have supported meaningful reforms to address excessive mandatory sentences and incarceration. And in my experience here in six years with you, you have steadfastly opposed all of these efforts at bipartisan sentencing reform. Help me understand why you’ve blocked efforts at reducing mandatory minimum sentences, at creating opportunities for the revisitation of sentences that may have been overly harsh when initially imposed. And help me understand whether you think it is ever proper for a prosecutor to charge anything less than the most serious offense available and carrying the longest sentence.
Sen. Sessions: Well, that was a lot of question there, Senator Coons. So, the sentencing act has one foundational requirement now, and that is the minimum mandatories. The guidelines have either been made voluntary by the sentencing commission and the courts, and the policies of the Attorney General, so the thing that does stand in place are the minimum mandatories. The minimum that can be sentenced for a certain offense. I offered legislation in 2001. It was opposed by the Bush Justice Department that would have reduced the sentencing guidelines, and in fact a number of years later, unfortunately, essentially could have been done in 2001 when I made a speech in favor of it, made a speech saying what you are saying, that it was disproportionately impacting our African-American community and we needed to fix it and eventually that law passed, so I have a record of doing that, number one.
Number two: so, these other things happened in the meantime. The guidelines were reduced, the Justice Department has reduced its requirements. The Justice Department now allows a prosecutor to present a case to the judge that doesn’t fully reflect the evidence that they have in their files about a case. That’s a problematic thing. You shouldn’t charge, I think it’s problematic and difficult, to justify a prosecutor charging five kilos of heroin, when the actual amount was ten, to get a lower sentence. Now there may be circumstances when somehow proof and other issues could justify that, but I would just say as a principle that you gotta be careful about that. Finally, colleagues, sentencing guidelines are within the breast of the Congress. They’re mandated by law. I was concerned about what we’re seeing, beginning to see, is a rise in crime and, at the same time, a decline in sentences. Sentences are down 19 percent already, as based on…and guideline changes. So, that’s a matter interest and I felt we should slow down a bit before we go further andmake sure we’re not making a mistake Senator Coons.
Sen. Coons: It is my hope that if you are confirmed and we do make progress on bipartisan criminal justice reform, that as Attorney General, you will carry out whatever legislative decisions might be made by this body.
Last, let me just say that in my six years here, in addition to not working with us on a number of bipartisan proposals on criminal justice reform, you’ve been one of the few senators to repeatedly and steadfastly vote against congressional attempts to prohibit torture in the military context or the interrogation context, and to repeatedly defend enhanced interrogation practices. Are you clear now that our statutes prohibit torture and if the President were to attempt to override that clear legal authority, what actions would you take?
Sen. Sessions: On your previous question, I would note that Federal prison population has already dropped ten or more percent and will drop another ten thousand this year, so what’s happening now is reducing the Federal…population. This law only dealt with the Federal prison population and that represents the most serious offenders. Our Federal DEA and US Attorneys are prosecuting more serious cases.
With regard to the torture issues, I watched them for some time and have been concerned about what we should do about it. This bill that passed last time was a major step. I thought it was really not the right step. Senator Graham, I know, has been an opponent of torture steadfastly and supported a lot of different things, opposed it. It basically took what I was teaching the young soldiers at the Army Reserve Unit as a lecturer, as a teacher, the Army Field Manual, and it made that the law for the entire government, including the intelligence agencies and other departments. I thought that was an unwise step, to take something that directs even the lowest Private to do, to make that the rule for higher ups. But the law is the law, and it needs to be enforced, absolutely.
Sen. Coons: As we both know, there was a bipartisan effort to review our experience with enhanced interrogation and it was concluded that it was not effective.
Sen. Sessions: Yeah, it was and of course Senator Graham was a JAG officer, and I was for a little bit.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, joined Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” this morning to discuss his role in the upcoming confirmation hearing for Sen. Sessions as Attorney General.
Sen. Coons on Sen. Sessions’ congressional record: “My main concerns, as I’ve dug into his record in researching for today’s long hearing, is some of his previous statements, actions, and positions on issues that were broadly bipartisan. I’ll give you one example. There’s a criminal justice reform effort being championed by conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, senators like John Cornyn and Thom Tillis and Mike Lee, have joined with a number of Democrats to move the bill forward that would address some of the over incarceration in the United States, and that’s something that Senator Sessions has staunchly and fervently opposed. So, I’ll have some questions for him today in the hearing about his views on prison treatment, prison conditions, incarceration, and how we should move forward on criminal justice matters in the United States.”
Sen. Coons regarding Sen. Sessions on racial issues: “I have concerns about the impact of legislation that he’s opposed or that he’s sponsored, and I have some concerns about his record. I do think that we’re going to examine him in great detail today and tomorrow.”
Sen. Coons on Sen. Sessions’ record as AG in Alabama: “I’ve also got some concerns about things he did around free speech, around torture, and some of his positions on the role of the Attorney General, both when he was state Attorney General in Alabama, and the role he would take if confirmed to Attorney General.”
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the following statement about Gambian President Jammeh’s refusal to accept election results and ongoing tensions in the country.
“I am deeply troubled by Gambian President Yahya Jammeh’s refusal to accept the results of the December 1 election and engage in a peaceful transition of power to President-elect Adama Barrow.
“I condemn the seizure by the government and security forces of the Independent Electoral Commission’s headquarters and call upon them to reopen radio stations and free opposition activists. The government should protect, not infringe upon, the right to free expression.
“I commend the steps taken by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to uphold the election results and ensure the will of the Gambian people is respected. As indicated by the support of the African Union and the United Nations, the international community stands with the people of the Gambia.
“As the designated ECOWAS Mediator for the Gambia, I urge President Buhari of Nigeria to continue to pressure President Jammeh to step down on January 19 when his mandate expires.”
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) spoke yesterday on the Senate floor to urge Republicans to work across the aisle to focus on pursuing constructive, bipartisan fixes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), rather than a wholesale repeal of the law.
Excerpts from Senator Coons’ remarks below:
“More than 20 million Americans now have gained access to high-quality health insurance across our whole country, including 38,000 more Delawareans.”
“I’ve sought to address the affordability of health care coverage for all families, co-sponsored bills to increase tax credits to make it more affordable for small businesses. [I’ve] looked for ways to make sure that there is more competition in the marketplace, especially in small states like Delaware. And [I’ve] pursued common sense regulatory reforms and cost containment efforts to further slow the growth in health care costs.”
“The alternative, let’s call it Trumpcare, nothing more than a wholesale repeal with no clear plan to replace [it].”
“Trumpcare, a simple repeal, by one estimate, would kick 26 million Americans, more than 50,000 Delawareans, off their health insurance.”
“Even for those who don’t lose their insurance, those hundreds of thousands of Delawareans who get their health insurance through their employer, it would be much lower quality because it would remove all of the consumer protections that we’ve all come to embrace.”
“It would give a nearly $350 billion tax cut to the wealthiest 1 percent of our country, and a nearly $250 billion tax cut to big corporations. And while tax cuts have their day and their reason, pushing aside all that revenue with no plan for how to replace the Affordable Care Act and how to pay for it, I think will become a desperate and dangerous move.”
“A simple repeal of the Affordable Care Act would cut 3 million jobs and trigger negative economic impacts well beyond the health care sector by creating profound uncertainty. And last, it would burden state and local governments, which would lose nearly 50 billion in tax revenue.”
“That’s the reality. Describing a repeal of the Affordable Care Act as anything other than the injection of wild uncertainty into our daily lives and to the health insurance and health care markets is just not square.”
Washington, D.C. – With Senator Jeff Sessions’s (R-AL) confirmation hearing underway, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have written to Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) requesting that the Committee serve as a bulwark against any politicization of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Trump administration. In their letter, the Senators cite both the targeting of attorneys within the Department based on their previous advocacy and recent actions taken by the Trump transition that raise serious concerns about the administration’s ability to treat personnel fairly. “In light of the recent history of the Department,” the Senators write, “as well as news of a deeply troubling questionnaire demanding that the Department of Energy provide to President-elect Trump transition officials a list of names of employees working on climate change policies, we are concerned about efforts to base personnel decisions on the political affiliations—or perceived political affiliations—of career prosecutors.” Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Al Franken (D-MN), Chris Coons (D-DE), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) signed the letter.
Full text of the letter is included below and a PDF copy is available here.
Dear Chairman Grassley:
In anticipation of the attorney general confirmation hearings scheduled for January 10 and 11, as well as subsequent hearings related to Department of Justice nominees, we write to request your commitment to protecting the integrity and independence of the Department and its career attorneys. Our concerns are not hypothetical. Rather, they are rooted in the pattern of partisan personnel decisions and documented political interference that prevailed during the George W. Bush Administration.
As you know, a joint Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility report issued in July, 2009 found that Bradley Schlozman, first as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General and subsequently as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Acting Assistant Attorney General, broke federal law and Department policy by “consider[ing] political and ideological affiliations in hiring career attorneys and in other personnel actions affecting career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division.” The report also found that Schlozman inappropriately considered political and ideological affiliations both in hiring new attorneys and in transferring and assigning cases among career attorneys in the sections he supervised. Schlozman was found to have expressed his intent in an e-mail to “gerrymander those crazy libs out of the [Voting Rights] section” and to replace them with “real Americans” and “right-thinking Americans.”
While Schlozman no longer works at the Department of Justice, some of his colleagues from that era have been sending clear messages to President-elect Trump’s transition team. One of those former officials, Hans Von Spakovsy, now with the Heritage Foundation, has said that [c]leaning. . .up [the Department of Justice] will be as difficult as cleaning out the Augean stables. Hercules had to divert two rivers to wash out the filth, and it will take a similarly massive effort at Justice to wash out the politics and progressive liberal activism that infests the agency from top to bottom.” J. Christopher Adams, who resigned from the Department in 2010, has laid out on his blog a three-step proposal for “draining the swamp” based on lessons learned from the Bush Administration’s “failure to take swift remedial action” against career attorneys. To get around civil service protections, Adams has gone as far as calling on Congress to pass a Reduction in Force aimed at “dislodging” career staff.
In light of the recent history of the Department, as well as news of a deeply troubling questionnaire demanding that the Department of Energy provide to President-elect Trump transition officials a list of names of employees working on climate change policies, we are concerned about efforts to base personnel decisions on the political affiliations—or perceived political affiliations—of career prosecutors. The American Bar Association Model Code of Professional Responsibility states clearly that the “duty of a lawyer, both to his client and to the legal system, is to represent his client zealously within the bounds of the law.” No attorney should be targeted merely on the basis of his or her prior zealous advocacy on behalf of a different Administration’s priorities.
During the last Bush administration, our Committee documented unprecedented interference in prosecutorial decisions by political appointees in the White House. You will recall we found that over four hundred individuals were authorized to engage in discussions with the Department about matters under investigation or prosecution, compared with four during the Clinton years. Senator Hatch viewed this as a substantial concern when he was Chairman of this Committee and Senator Sessions raised it as a concern during the confirmation hearings for Attorney General Loretta Lynch, where he stated that “you need to make it a central part of what you do, to reverse that trend and restore confidence that this attorney general’s office serves the law and the people objectively, and not a political agenda.” That same principle should apply to a Department run by Senator Sessions, should he be confirmed.
We must not return to those dark days when political interference in personnel and prosecutorial decisions undermined the public’s faith in the Department. Given your longstanding efforts to keep the Department free of politicization, we hope you will join our call that all nominees commit to maintaining policies and procedures that guard against this improper interference. For example, in response to the scandals of the Bush-era Department of Justice, the Civil Rights Division instituted an “Experienced Attorney and Attorney Manager Hiring Policy” that outlines a detailed and transparent process that minimizes undue political interference when new attorneys are hired. Thanks partly to this Committee’s efforts, as documented, for instance, in correspondence between the Reno Department of Justice and former Chairman Hatch, we know that protections can be put in place to reduce the risk that prosecutorial decisions are improperly influenced by those outside the Department. Policies like these are the cornerstone of a Department that has the trust of the American people.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) today joined his Democratic colleagues to introduce the Presidential Conflicts of Interest Act of 2017 in the United States Senate and House that would require the President and Vice President to disclose and divest assets to avoid any potential financial conflicts of interest. It also would require presidential appointees to recuse themselves from any specific matters involving the President’s interests that come before their agencies.
Original co-sponsors of this legislation in the Senate included Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.).
The original co-sponsors of this legislation in the House included Representatives Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), Richard Neal (D-Mass.), Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and David Cicilline (D-R.I.).
The members have consistently asked for more transparency and accountability from President-elect Trump. In November, Democratic senators filed a Resolution stating the Senate’s expectation that President-elect Trump needs to decisively and transparently divest all of his business interests and holdings and completely sever his affiliation with the Trump Organization to avoid any actual or perceived conflicts with the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits the president from accepting gifts or benefits from foreign governmental actors.
“Our President-elect has significantly greater risk of business and financial conflicts of interest than any other president, yet has so far refused to follow the precedent set by previous presidents. To this day, President-elect Trump has refused to address his conflicts of interest,” said Senator Coons. “His continued delay in taking such steps is deeply troubling and calls into question his commitment to two fundamental responsibilities: running an open, transparent White House and fully severing his business ties before taking office. That’s why Congress must act promptly to pass this legislation that will require the President to divest their financial interests and place the proceeds in a blind trust. The presidency is a full-time job with only one client: the American people.”
“The American people deserve to know that the President of the United States is working to do what’s best for the country – not using his office to do what’s best for himself and his businesses,” said Senator Warren. “The only way for President-elect Trump to truly eliminate conflicts-of-interest is to divest his financial interests by placing them in a blind trust. This has been the standard for previous presidents, and our bill makes clear the continuing expectation that President-elect Trump do the same.
The text of the bill is available here, and a fact sheet is available here.
WASHINGTON – In case you missed it, U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, authored an oped on CNN.com about the urgent need for bipartisan criminal justice reform.
As a Democrat from Delaware and a Republican from North Carolina, we disagree on plenty of policy issues. You might think that would be especially true of an issue as historically divisive and politically challenging as crime and punishment.
That’s not the case. We share a strong belief that America’s criminal justice system is broken, focusing far too much on criminalization and incarceration and far too little on rehabilitation.
A compelling example of the urgent need for reform is how our system treats juvenile offenders. We know that young people’s relationship with the criminal justice apparatus has powerful, lasting consequences for them, their families, and their communities. It is therefore vitally important we make sure that all children who come into contact with the criminal justice system are treated fairly and appropriately, are not forgotten, and are afforded an opportunity to rehabilitate and become productive, contributing members of society.
Our agreement on this issue was on display late last year at a juvenile justice summit, where we shared the stage for a discussion on a key challenge facing our country: a criminal justice system that over-emphasizes incarceration and is woefully inadequate when it comes to rehabilitation, even for our nation’s youth.
Men and women in law enforcement work hard to protect our communities across the country. As legislators, we must be committed to developing a criminal justice system that effectively promotes public safety, fairness, and rehabilitation. We believe Congress has both a moral and a fiscal imperative to ensure that our criminal justice system appropriately calibrates sentences to offenses. That is being smart on crime, not soft on crime.
Despite political disagreements in Congress on a broader criminal justice reform package — disagreements we hope to move past next year — Democrats and Republicans surely can agree that children shouldn’t be locked in a solitary confinement cell for 23 hours a day, or housed with other prisoners twice their age and size, or unnecessarily restrained and shackled for minor infractions, or harshly punished for low-level, nonviolent offenses.
Surely we can agree that juveniles’ interactions with the judicial system shouldn’t be just about punishment, but instead must also focus on understanding the impacts of what they have done and why it was wrong. A system that focuses on rehabilitation, not punishment, doesn’t excuse bad behavior. Rather, it helps all parties heal and move forward, and it keeps all of us safer by breaking cycles of recidivism.
We both recognize that this system is in desperate need of reform. We share a frustration that some politicians in both parties have been too willing to put politics before policy. We also share a belief that our home states offer a road map forward.
In North Carolina, several reforms have been made in recent years, including allowing a juvenile’s criminal record to be expunged of non-violent offenses, limiting detention for certain offenses, and requiring a parent, guardian, or attorney to be present during police interrogations of any child under the age of 16.
In Delaware, this year alone, the state legislature passed laws to expand the use of civil citations instead of criminal charges, to end shackling of youth except where it’s necessary for safety, to provide free legal representation to all children charged with a crime, and to make it easier for juveniles to expunge their records.
We’ve seen some progress at the national level. President Barack Obama rightly acted to end solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons. The Supreme Court ruled that it is cruel and unusual to sentence juveniles to the death penalty or to a mandatory sentence of death in prison.
Here in Congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which we both serve, passed the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act on a bipartisan 15-5 vote. Among its many provisions, the bill would limit solitary confinement for juveniles in federal custody. More broadly, it would begin to address the imbalance between incarceration and rehabilitation to reconstitute families, save taxpayer dollars, and restore fairness to our criminal justice system. It achieves this without harming the integrity of public safety as prison sentences would only be recalibrated for certain nonviolent offenders and would require careful judicial oversight.
In Leviticus 19, the Lord urges Moses, “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.” We do a great disservice to our nation’s future when we do not judge children fairly or treat them justly.
For the many Americans disillusioned by Washington, consider that support for smart and sensible reforms to our juvenile justice and criminal justice systems is slowly but surely gaining traction across party lines. In the year ahead, we will both remain committed to casting partisan politics aside in order to get these commonsense proposals passed through Congress and signed into law.
WILMINGTON, DE – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) today applauded the Department of Energy’s second Quadrennial Energy Review (QER) that provides a strategic review of the U.S. energy sector. Currently, QER’s are not mandated by law. Senator Coons plans to reintroduce legislation requiring periodic comprehensive reviews of current domestic capabilities and future energy needs, as well as the resources, technologies, and policy recommendation to meet them.
“America’s economy relies on clean, affordable, reliable energy. Our energy sector is also a critical part of our national security. To meet our energy goals, we need a periodic strategic review of our energy sector. These comprehensive, balanced federal blueprints enable us to strengthen our economy, protect our nation, and continue leading the world in energy innovation,” Senator Coons said. “I welcome this latest quadrennial energy review (QER) from the Department of Energy which provides a thoughtful analysis of the electricity sector. A QER like this should include a baseline assessment of our technological, economic and national security capabilities. We should put federal resources to work in conjunction with the private sector, academia and state and local leaders to address these important issues. However, this is not required by law. I plan to reintroduce bipartisan legislation in the near future that would require periodic QERs, similar to those required for the Departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security.”
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology first called for a QER in a 2010 report. This legislation follows through on that recommendation. The Bipartisan Policy Center’s American Energy Innovation Council supports the development of the QER. The proposal is modeled after similar statutory reports such as the highly-regarded Quadrennial Defense Review, a legislatively-mandated review of defense strategy and priorities.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning to discuss his meeting yesterday with Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson. He also discussed President–elect Trump’s views on Julian Assange and the U.S. intelligence community.
Excerpts from the interview:
Sen. Coons on Rex Tillerson’s relationship with Vladimir Putin: “He suggested that it was just a business relationship. That while he enjoyed his time in Russia, he and his wife had a good experience when they lived and worked in Russia, that he understands the difference between being the CEO of the world’s largest oil company and the role of Secretary of State. That is a question I intend to continue pressing him on, because fighting for America’s values is a very different thing than fighting for share-holder value.”
Sen. Coons on Rex Tillerson’s opinion of foreign and domestic policy: “A core concern for me was his view of sanctions, because he’s been critical of sanctions very sharply. We talked at some length about whether he was willing to embrace the use of sanctions if they’re strong, if they’re multilateral, if they’re enforced effectively for the advancement of human rights and American interests. He was generally positive in his response on that. He was generally positive in his response on the importance of NATO. But there is a real tension between his expressed views in our conversation yesterday and the views of President-elect Trump, so I look forward to exploring that tension further in the upcoming confirmation hearings.”
Sen. Coons on President-elect Trump’s policy tweets: “…I’m gravely concerned that we have a president-elect who is conducting both domestic policy and foreign policy by tweet. As you just said a few moments ago, President-elect Trump is ridiculing the minority leader of the senate Chuck Schumer and trying to lay the groundwork for his fight repealing Obamacare with a series of tweets. One of the first things he did as President-elect was to wander into a fight with China over Taiwan, something I think was ill-advised and unprecedented. So, I raised with Mr. Tillerson my grave concerns that if President Trump doesn’t rely on his Secretary of State [and] Secretary of Defense, and conducts his own foreign policy in 3am twitter wars, that we may end up in a real war.”
On Trump’s attitude towards Julian Assange and his continued tweets on the subject: “I’m gravely concerned that we have a President-elect who is disrespecting the entire American intelligence community. All seventeen agencies, every single element of the American intelligence community unanimously reached, with high confidence, a conclusion that the senior leadership of Russia including obviously Vladimir Putin, intentionally tried to undermine our democracy in the last election. And for him to take the side of Julian Assange over our own intelligence community, and now be apparently planning a restructuring of the senior roles within the intelligence community is really troubling. There is going to be a hearing on Armed Services, I believe later today. I look forward to a hearing on the Foreign Relations committee, on which I serve, and I think we need to be standing up in a bipartisan way and taking on this challenge of how we make America safe and strong against cyber-attacks, not just by Russia, but by our adversaries around the world.”