We will hear from senator, harris followed by a critical and timely conversation about russia with senator murphy and congressman adam schiff. First there is a woman who has not given up the fight. A smart and thoughtful leader thepion the vital role women play in our country. And will help to make it happen. Who knows how to get things done. Who helped lead the effort to repeal dont ask dont tell. She hails from my home state, the great state of new york. Please join me in welcoming senator kirsten gillibrand. [applause] thank you, winnie. I want to thank nira for her years of vision and leadership. You have done an extraordinary thing. The amount of people that are here to hear what c. A. P. Has to offer shows how hard you have worked and how important your leadership has been. Thank you, nira. [applause] so this is a terrific opportunity for so Many Democrats to talk about some of the work we need to do. I feel very fortunate to be working with my colleagues and sharing a stage with so many of the men and women that i work in the senate every day. I was originally going to talk a little bit about how President Trump is routinely betraying the working class voters that he pledged to fight for from his harmful budget to his cynical tax plan to his horrific Health Care Plan and more but last nights reporting has taken us to a whole new level of abnormal. This is not business as usual. The president is truly creating chaos and hasnt created a single job or made us safer. Every single week, it is a different thing. According to news reports, and the lacking response by the white house, it appears that the president divulged highly classified information to an adversarial Foreign Government that was provided by an ally with the agreement it would not be shared. If this is true, President Trumps actions are not only irresponsible but have put lives at risk and undermined our National Security. I believe it is incumbent upon all of us regardless of party to stand up and fight back harder than ever. On these ties to russia, we must not stop until we have full transparency and accountability. That means not voting for an fbi director until a special prosecutor is named. We also cannot let donald trump distract us from or everyday work of fighting for working families. Since this is an ideas conference, i brought one idea i would like to challenge the president on to step up. I want to challenge the president to join us in fighting for a national pay leave program. Mr. President , if you are really standing up for working americans, if you are really fighting for them, then there is no excuse not to have america join every industrialized nation in the world that already guarantees National Paid leave. It is not just a womans issue. It is a middle class issue that creates Economic Growth and rewards work. Year after year, we are short changing our workforce and economy. That should not be acceptable to any of us as democrats. This is important. If we are going to pass a paid leave plan, it has to be a real paid leave plan. Let me explain what that is. It has to be gender neutral. It has to allow you to care for not just a newborn infant but a sick, or dying family member. It should be a test of whether or not it is real paid leave. Remember, on the campaign trail, candidate trump broke away from most of his party. He announced he supported paid leave. It made sense, right . Paid leave shouldnt be a democratic or republican idea. It rewards work. It helps us care for our families. Because it gross the economy. Ws the economy. It is something we should all agree on. This was another one of Donald Trumps empty promises. Real paid leave works like this. First, it has to be national. A state like north dakota or nevada doesnt have to worry about not having enough population. We have enough population in new york. Thats why new york was able to pass paid leave. We have 20 million people. Second, paid leave must be gender neutral. It has to cover women and men. It has to cover husbands who want to care for their wives when they are sick. It has to cover son whose want to care for a dying parent. Third, paid leave has to be comprehensive. That means it is not just about maternity leave. It is not just about babies. It is not enough. You have to cover all illnesses. No one should ever have to choose between a paycheck and being able to sit with their dying mother who has been diagnosed with cancer or alzheimers. We have to make sure you can be with a child if they are sick or in a wheelchair or needs the care of their parent. It also has to be 12 weeks long. Thats long enough to be with that infant, be with that sick parent, that dying family member. Four, it has to be sustainable. A National Paid leave plan can only be sustainable if every worker in the entire country is part of it. If it is going to survive, everyone who would benefit needs to chip in. So it actually needs to be a universal earned benefit. Fifth, paid leave has to be affordable and manageable for workers and businesses alike, particularly small businesses. Now, we have great data in from california, a statewide program, up and running for ten years. What we know from california, 90 of businesses said it had no negative impact or a positive impact on its bottom plin. Line. 99 of businesses said it had a positive impact on morale and retention. Small businesses around the country, 70 of them, want a plan for paid leave because they have to level the playing field. How are they going to compete with the googles and facebook of the world and have that cash flow. They just dont. If you dont have National Insurance plan and paid leave, they can never compete. Businesses also have seen the numbers. They know that this is good for the economy. If we had a National Paid leave plan, it would potentially put into the economy 21 billion annually. It makes sense, because a woman in her lifetime loses about 320,000 because we dont have paid leave. A man loses about 280,000, because we dont have paid leave. To do a real paid leave plan, it shouldnt just be a tax cut for the good corporations that are already doing this. This is not about giveaways for successful companies. So we need a bill. We have a bill. Its called the family act. Let me tell you what it does. It is a common sense bill that passes a National Paid leave plan. Its nationwide. It is gender neutral. It is comprehensive, sustainable, affects all businesses alike and it is affordable. Let me explain to you what it costs. It is the cost of a cup of coffee a week. On average, it is 2 a week. Just imagine this, you are asking every employer to say, would you buy one cup of coffee for each employee a week. They overwhelming say yes. I would do that. I do that anyway. For a worker, would you put 2 a week into a savings plan to know that when your mother is dying, you could be by her side. So that when you become pregnant, you can be with your infant. Workers will say yes. It is not a lot of money. It is 2 a week, 104 per year per employee. Thats the amount of money any business can afford. I think this is something that makes sense. I want to talk about how we are actually going to get passed. This is what matters the most for the people in this room. We have been stuck in a madmen era where our policies do not reflect the face of the workforce. 7 out of 10 moms are working, 4 to 10 are primary or sole wage earners. Time has shifted. We need this plan. It will help the economy grow. Some things are happening in america that i have never seen. It is about you. It is about the grassroots, the reason why so many of you showed up today. How many people here marched for the womens march. How many . Nearly all of us. We marched in new york, washington, worldwide. It was a moment in our history where people believed their voice actually mattered. After seeing donald trump get elected, they said, this is not my country. I did not sign up for this. I dont agree with this person. What did they do . People across america made a sign that talked about the issue that they cared most about. They talked about the issue that made them angry and they had passion for. They were not going to stand President Trump unwinding. Whether you were marching for black lives matter or reproductive rights or lgbtq or clean air, clean water, it didnt matter. It was your issue, what you cared about. If we are going to pass a National Paid leave act plan, it is only if every one of you stand up and demand it. It is about us. If we arent willing to fight for it, it will never happen. This is about the mock zation of democracy. It is about each individual having a voice. A 17yearold girl that tweets something that goes viral that makes a difference. The creative person that creates a meme that is really funny that says it like it is. Thats happening today. We will win and defeat donald trump and his horrific policies and do good things like pass a National Paid leave plan. Thank you all. [cheers and applause] host please welcome senator chris murphy, rep adam schiff and david sanger. Thanks, very much. Im david sanger from the New York Times and delighted to be here with senator murphy and congressman shif andchiff and have a discussion about russia and other issues in the news. I wanted to start, though, just with what we had on the front pages today. Somewhat remarkable situation where the president had his meeting with foreign minister lavrov and kislyak last week. We learned about the details in large part from photos that were issued by task, because we didnt actually get in for any of those. That apart we have now red a set of descriptions of the conversation which seems to suggest that the president didnt issue any didnt reveal any sources and methods but described a fairly sensitive intelligence around a program that concerns the isis ability to put laptops on computers that could be loaded up with explosives and seemed to suggest the city in which some of this was learned and so forth. So you sit on intelligence and are familiar with the difference between revealing sources and methods, which nobody is alleged here happened and describing the program in some detail. Tell me what part of this we should be concerned about and what part isnt all that concerning. What we should be concerned about and again i have not yet been briefed on it. I can only go on the basis of whats been alleged publicly. The allegation is that the president discussed a threat to the country from isis with sufficient detail that the russians could determine what the source or method of gathering that intelligence was. The denials by the administration as i read them and i am reading admittedly between the lines are really a form of nondenial denial, that is stating that the president did not discuss war plans is a bit of a nonsec qui nonsequiter. Saying that the president didnt comment on sources an methods is also a bit of a ruse if, in fact, what the president did was reveal sufficient detail that the russians could therefore conclude, reverse engineer in a way, what the actual source was. Whats the implication of that . It could compromise the source of information. That source could dry up or go away. If the source is a sister Intelligence Agency of a friendly country, that country could decide it cant trust the United States with information or worse that it cant trust the president of the United States with information. That obviously has very serious repercussions. Particularly, if we are talking about information about a threat to americans posed by isis. Again, i cant say whether these allegations are accurate but if they are, and certainly the president s tweets suggest that he talked about something of concern here, we immediately have to go into damage mitigation mode, find out what steps can we take to minimize any risk to our sources and if the damages to our allies, what steps we can take to reassure our allies that we treasure the relationship, treasure the information and we are going to work much harder to protect it in the future. I have to hope that someone will counsel the president about just what it means to protect closely held information and why this is so dangerous ultimately to our National Security. Senator murphy, well start with you on this. The president made an argument in his tweet basically he was trying to bring the russians over to be more active against isis. We have certainly seen cases where president s of both parties, president obama, president bush, revealed some intelligence information without the source in order to go motivate another country to help along. You might put it in another context. Tell the chinese more about the north Korean Missile program if you are trying to give some urgency to the sense that they have to back him up on sanctions. Could you argue that this is the kind of thing that president s sometimes just have to do . You could argue that if you were under the belief that this [laughter] this white house was operating in a way that was anything other than Foreign Policy by improvisation. You are right, in previous times, other president s have decided to share classified information with socalled adversaries but they only did so after consulting with the intelligence agencies and having a whole of government approach to declassifying that information. It was strategic. This clearly, as far as we understand, was not strategic. The idea that russia is going to be a responsible partner in the future of syria is belied by years and years of facts on the ground. We have been trying to get them to be a meaningful partner inside of syria. They end up doing more damage than good and conducting themselves in a way that kills, hurts, and maplesmes people on the ground so they are pushed into the counts. There is a reasonable way to use classified information to win new friends or influence adversaries but thats not what happened here. This was a president who was trying to show off how much he knew in the context of that meeting and potentially did serious jeopardy to immediate u. S. National security concerns as we are finding out today that some of our allies are already rethinking whether or not they should share information or rethinking what kind of information to share with the United States. Chris is exactly right. The point he is make is also far broader than this context. If you look at many of the president s statements or tweets that have an impact on Foreign Policy, they all have an improvisational character. Some have an erratic character for them. We try to look for a method in this when there may be none. If you look at some of the comments he has made about north korea and you ask, is this some part of a clever art of the deal strategy of sabre rattling or whatnot . You might conclude it was true if it was done in concert with others in the administration in a cohesive fashion. Too often, it is not. It looks like the president has one Foreign Policy and the secretary of state has another and the u. N. Ambassador has a third. No one is quite sure who to believe. As much as we may try to rationize itration looiz it and explain it, the reality is that we have created not a strategic ambiguity but a very nonstrategic and dangerous ambiguity about where we are, what we stand for, what we want to see happen, what our policy is. We mentioned north korea briefly. I wanted to turn to that before we get back into the russia investigation. The other fascinating intelligence leakage story thats going on right now is that it appears that the day that it has been released by a group that calls itself the shadow brokers, which outside experts widely believe are tools that were developed by the nsa. I realize neither of you can comment on that. Lets take that for a moment as the working assumption of the questions if that turns out to be the case, have leaked out and now may have been exploited by the North Koreans to be used for greater havoc. What should american tax payers think about the fact that cyberweapons that are being developed by the United States are showing up in black markets and being exploited by our adversaries. Ill start with you since i am sure you have heard a bit within the committee. I think what this incident points up, you are right, we cant confirm or comment on what the shadowbrokers disclose did or did not come from the u. S. , we do know that the director of the nsa has said publicly from time to time, we will discover vulnerabilities in software, including that of u. S. Technology companies. That can be ex employed in times for very legitimate foreign gathering purposes. That also poses a great vulnerability and there is a process within the administration or at least there was within the last admin stwrags to determine whether the importance of that potential access outweighs the risks that those vulnerabilities get out into the wild and can be manipulated by bad actors. According to director rogers, in 90 of the cases, the Intelligence Committee reveals, hey, you need to patch this vulnerability in your operating system or whatever the problem may be. I do think that one of the implications here is if, indeed, this came from the United States, i cant confirm or deny whether it did. That will insurance that process more heavily infavor of disclosing to the Technology Companies a vulnerability because we have seen very graphically the risks of not disclosing the Technology Companies or having a quicker fix. It is possible that it was disclosed to Technology Companies. It was only disclosed to microsoft by their accounting relatively recently before they patched it in march. It does raise the question, do we have the system under control . This is a question i think the committee will need to continue to examine and explore and decide whether there are changes that have to be made. It is difficult to comment on in the abstract without being able to say, this is the case here. It will have a demonstrable impact on one of the debates we have been having in this arena, the whole debate over encryption. One of the arguments the Technology Companies have made against any kind of a mandate that companies have a door of even with legitimate government process in which the government can say, you need to decrypt for us or you need to allow us into a particular device. I think the argument of the Technology Companies is now far greater potentially by saying, look, not even the u. S. Government, let alone our own company can be trusted to protect a door or the keys to that door. This will have implications even beyond the issue of the potential exploitation of vel vulnerabilities. Over the last 15 years, we have a massive scale up in conventional military power, a double of the Defense Budget from the start of the iraq war until 15 years later, a missieve scaleup of our ability to deploy cyberweapons through a similar increase in funding for our intelligence agencies. There is the old saying that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks to you like a nail. That is the reality of american Foreign Policy today. Lets talk about the only means by which we actually took a Nuclear Security threat off the table, at least for the time being. That was with respect to the Iranian Nuclear agreement, an agreement that we achieve not through conventional military power. We certainly used the cybertools along the way. That was not ultimately dispositive. This speaks to the broader imbalance that exists in the National Security tool Kit Available to an american president. If all you have are cyberwarfare and conventional warfare tools, you cant meet the conventional threats presented to the United States. So many of us are worried about the deep cuts to the state department, because we fear this enormous plusup leaves us vulnerable given the reality of cyberwarfare vulnerabilities. But misunderstands the way you solve these complex problems which wont be through internet attacks or conventional military buildup but through capacities that the state department has and can perfect. Let me ask you this. The president clearly has issued at least in the skinny budget what they have called a National Security budget, wanting to increase the Defense Department intelligence agencies considerably. The state gets 30 cut in that i dont think anybody thinks that is likely to go through in that form. What does that tell you about what the president thinks about the role of the state department as an instrument of National Security. I think it is pretty clear he views Foreign Policy through a military lens. Thats not just evidence in the way he has budgeted but through the fact that he has loaded up the National Security cabinet with ex military officers and still has left an entire level of professional service unappointed in the state department. Whether we are here talking about big ideas, when i think about big ideas for the future, i think we should be talking about instead of a 50 million increase in the military budget. With a 50 billion increase for the nonkinetic budget. Virtually all of these new threats are not conventional military threats, whether it be bio terrorism or online terrorist recruiters. Corruption. F petrodictators. None of those threats can be confronted with the stuff that we very proudly make in connecticut, submarines and helicopters and jet engines. Ultimately, those are state department tools. Yes, i this i this president views Foreign Policy through a military lens. Fundamentally, it misunderstanding how all of our adversaries today are confronting us with a symmetric power, not conventional military power. This is a point our military understands even if our president doesnt. Some of the most powerful advocates of the state department have been secretaries of defense like bob gates. In the military, they have an expression, if you are going to cut diplomacy and development, you better buy me more bullets. I think vividly of being in ms. With generalozul petraeus in the early stages of the iraq war. He had something when he was head of the 101st on the chalk board that said essentially money equals ammunition. What he meant by that was the resources that they put into development projects, with the equivalent of buying ammunition. The more they put iraqis to work, the fewer they had to fight. The more support they built among the local population. That i think in microcosm is a good illustration of the fallacy of thinking that you can solve every problem by use of theonly, i think, is the enormous cut in the state Department Budget terribly wrong headed, but a de emphasis on development is equally the wrong direction to move in. Some of the bravest people i met were working in places like afghanistan, and helping to build public trust, Public Confidence in the afghan government, and if theres any core problem in afghanistan, just to use that example, its not the building up of the afghan forces, as important as that is. Its the failure of the government to attack a problem of corruption and to give afghans a sense of hope and confidence that their government is worth fighting and dying for. And you dont build that just through a Defense Budget. You build that through the state department and usaid and the whole range of tools in the tool box, not simply the military tool. Senator, when you hear these arguments and you convey them to secretary tillerson, either through the Committee Process and so forth, what kind of responses are you getting . Whats your impression the way hes dealt with the issue . Hes talking to us as much as hes talking to you. Its not soaking up much of your time. No, i think tillerson has communicated what hes at the state department to do. I dont view tillerson very differently than i view someone like scott pruitt or betsy devos. I think that tillerson is inside the state department to undermine it, and i know that because hes going through a reorganization of the state department with an end goal already decided. He has announced that at the end of that process there will be 2,300 less personnel in the state department, which again, fundamentally misunderstands the threats that are presented to us. You know, bring it back to russia for a moment. Russia does not want a militarily own ukraine. What they want to do is use this build up of separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine as a means to politically and economically destabilize kiev, so eventually you have installed again a pro kremlin leader of the Ukrainian Government such they are brought back into their orbit. Ultimately, you cannot confront that with military power. You have to give the ukrainians the anticorruption tools, the economic revitalization tools, Energy Independence tools to be able to survive what may be a longterm occupation of their eastern front. And yet this administration seems to see ukraine as a military problem, just as they see many of these other problems through that lens, and in the end, that is a recipe for failure. Congressman schiff, lets turn back to the russia investigation for a bit. Your committee is famously got off to a rocky start, if i could put it politely, but now youve got a chairman who seems committed, from at least his public statements to actually conduct a big investigation and that thorough one. As you look at the two big baskets of this investigation, first, what the russians did in the election, how they did it, what parts of it may have been successful, what parts may not have been, how you would prevent it, and secondly, was there any collusion or collaboration with anybody affiliated with any of the president ial campaigns. Give us sort of a rundown of what you think are the Big Questions and what early answers if youve gotten to any yet you think you have on those. Well, i always like to start out in talking about the investigation by answering perhaps the most important question, which is why should people care about this . Is this an effort to simply relitigate the election, as the president wants to suggest, or is there something far more significant here . And as important as the issue of collusion is and the issue of just what active measures did the russians employ to interfere in our election, was there collusion, was there compromise, was there blackmail, was there the use of paid media trolls, was there the use of their propaganda campaign, how many of the tactics that the russians have used elsewhere in the world did they employ here . As important as that is, we have to understand the broader context. The russians hacked into our election not simply because they hated Hillary Clinton and wanted to see donald trump elected, as important as that was, but rather because they wanted to tear down our democracy. And not our democracy alone. They, obviously, want to tear down the democracy in france. Theyd like to see Angela Merkel gone, theyd like to see the disillusion of europe, and what we are engaged in, really, is a new war of ideas. St not communism versus capitalism, but it is authoritarianism versus democracy and government. Thats really whats at stake and having a keen understanding what the russians did here is not only important in terms of whether there are u. S. Persons involved that need to be brought to justice, but also how do we protect ourselves in the future and our allies and how do we protect liberal democracy around the world . What just took place in france, and were still looking to confirm the responsible parties and the tactics that were used, was one of the profound fears that i had of our own election, and that is while the russians hacked and dumped documents in the United States, my biggest worry was not that they were going to hack into voting machines, which would be very difficult, because most are offline and most others set paper trails, but rather that they would hack and dump forgeries among the real, or worse still, real documents with forged paragraphs. And forged paragraphs that suggested illegality by a candidate. We are looking at whether the Intelligence Committee got a right in their assessment and how much of this was about the democracy in general or helping trump or hurting hillary. What was the government response . How soon did we recognize this a for aninly not just gathering but they intended to weaponize the data . What other tactics did the russians at use . Notof this we need to know only in terms of justice considerations but also because at the most fundamental point it is how do we protect our democracy in the future . Of are running out were running out of time here. But looking at the election, coming you argue that the last dump of data, the last 72 hours before the election was pretty transparent effort. By the time we were all done looking at this it did not seem effect any kind of the the perpetrators may have intended. Does that give us a guide Going Forward . May, but for the fact that we had to be the guinea pig that got it wrong. The second you are looks of an attack that very much like the first that you may be able to develop a series of prophylactics against it. But if they propagate a new way and you are the first, then you may not have the flexibility to respond the right way. With respect to the investigation before we leave i think it is important to talk about the subject that will dominate the news for the next few days. I have all the faith in the world in the adam schiff. [applause] i do not, ultimately, in the and have faith in the republicans that are members of both committees and the house and the senate. I worry as most of my colleagues only a special prosecutor can get to the underlying facts here. In part because the Intelligence Committees in the house and the senate are not by nature and investigative bodies. And i think at this point we understand that no matter who was put into the fbi, that they have been sent a pretty clear signal by the white house that if they actually pursue the they lead, they are likely to get fired or at the very least, neutered. Perfect way to do the investigation. There is a flaw in every single avenues avenues to the truth. But i think you will see mounting pressure this week to move towards special prosecutors in part because many of us worry about a political process inside the congress being ultimately stymied by a republicans and those who do not have faith that will ever get the necessary green light. No matter how good the Civil Servants inside the fbi are. So this will be a dominant narrative this we can ultimately i hope it will be positive in the end. Unfortunately were out of time. I want to thank you both for taking the time doing this. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all so much. There is so much to digest and take in today from so many progressive and movement leaders. The progressive movement, our movement, is not defined by one face or experience as we will see in this clip brought to us by the emerson collective. Entitledocumentary, the dream is now, face and voice are given to the undocumented children of americas immigrants, who are desperate to earn their citizenship and give back to the only country theyve called home. Here it is. Take any moment in history. And you will find dreamers. People striving to enrich the american experience. They have always been a part of us. They make us smarter. More prosperous. More prized. And stronger. They are part of a Great American tradition. Dreamers wanting to help build our country. The question is, will we do our part and let them . [applause] i am delighted to introduce to you a woman who has been a lifelong advocate for californias most vulnerable. As the first africanamerican and first woman to serve as the states attorney general, she has aggressively defended consumers, protected children and students, and understood that incarceration isnt the solution to every criminal justice issue. Only the second africanamerican woman to be elected to the United States senate, author of smart on crime a career prosecutors plan to make us safer, everyone please join me in welcoming senator Kamala Harris from the great state of california. [applause] well, good morning, everyone. Good morning. We have an embarrassment of riches when i was watching chris and adam here, and i know everyone who has come before. So we have a lot to celebrate in spite of these very and extremely challenging times, but i want to thank cap for your leadership and the work you do every day. Before i get started, i just want to address the news that broke last night. We all know that it is deeply disturbing. The president revealed highly classified information to a foreign adversary, russia. And as a member of the senate Intelligence Committee, i know that the men and women of our Intelligence Community put their lives on the line every day, and they do very dangerous work to keep our country safe. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago i traveled to iraq and jordan and saw firsthand many of the people who are serving at great peril to defend what we believe to be Democratic Values and to work for our country. And they should not have to worry that anyone, much less the commander in chief, might carelessly put their lives in danger by divulging the intelligence that theyve risked so much to collect or damage essential relationships with our intelligencesharing partners. I believe it is time for my republican colleagues to put country ahead of party and join us and hold this president accountable. And it is far past time that a special prosecutor be appointed to oversee the fbis investigation into russia. [applause] and so, with everything going on, we also know that we must multitask. Weve got to keep our eye on whats happening with russia and north korea. We cannot lose sight of domestic policy either. Health care, immigration, climate change, and the rolling back of reforms in our criminal justice system. So ive decided this morning with everything going on that i would talk a little bit about whats going on in terms of our criminal justice system. And specifically because of this, our system of justice, i think, was shaken last tuesday when the president being aided and abetted by Jeff Sessions fired fbi director jim comey. What got less attention, guys, and also threatens our system of justice, was a memo that the attorney general issued the following day to federal prosecutors across the country. The United States department of justice memo was entitled department charging and sentencing policy. A subject line that seems pretty tame. However, what it effectively did was to declare the reviving of the war on drugs, the failed war on drugs. And so lets take a look at what Jeff Sessions outdated and out of touch views are doing that are going to be harmful to our country. Now, many of you know my background on the subject, and it was part of the introduction. I will tell you, as a young prosecutor right out of law school at the Alameda County d. A. s office that earl warren once led, i started my work. And i saw the war on drugs up close. Close. And let me tell you, the war on drugs was an abject failure. It offered taxpayers a bad return on investment, it was bad for public safety, it was bad for budgets and our economy, and it was bad for people of color and those struggling to make ends meet. Police officers and prosecutors dedicated extraordinary resources to nonviolent drug offenses, which could otherwise have been devoted to unsolved homicides and violent crime. There were so many of these nonviolent drug cases that we would do handoffs in a courthouse. We called them handoffs. So that meant that these young baby prosecutors, as we were called, would be handed a file of a possession case, simple possession, and wed have about five minutes to review it before we went to court. And then we would go in and argue for some sentence, and that this person would be jailed. During that time, and still, instead of focusing on prevention, we spent 80 billion a year in reaction, locking people up. Thats money that, obviously, could have gone to schools, to roads, or health care. Instead of treating everyone the same, we created a system where latinos are two times more likely than white men to be incarcerated for drug offenses. Where africanamericans are 12 of the population, but about 60 of the drug offenders who are in our state prisons. Where when inmates get out, their criminal record makes it almost impossible for them to get a job, which, of course, traps them and their families in neverending cycles of poverty. The fact is, the war on drugs did not work. All these years after president reagan created mandatory minimums and nancy reagan told us to just say no, and president clinton signed the three strikes law, Illegal Drugs is higher than it was at the height on the war on drugs. As San Francisco d. A. And then attorney general of california, i was proud to be a part of a different approach. Its what we called the smart on crime approach. And the Obama Administration similarly adopt and championed reforms at the federal level, which included directing prosecutors to avoid harsh sentences for lowlevel, nonviolent offenders. Which included reducing the disparity and penalties for possession of crack versus powder cocaine. Which included creating a task force that they called the task force on 21st century policing, the emphasis being on being 21st century. But now this administration and Jeff Sessions want to take us back to the dark ages. Sessions has threatened that the United States department of justice may renew its focus on marijuana use, even in states like california where it is legal. Well, let me tell you, what california needs, Jeff Sessions, we need support in dealing with transnational criminal organizations, dealing with issues like human trafficking, not going after grandmas medicinal marijuana. [applause] [laughter] sen. Harris leave her alone and sessions has overturned an Obama Administration directive to phase out the use of private prisons. So now lets be clear about private prisons. The Business Model is that you reap profit from incarcerating people. Lets be clear about this. And lets be clear, we should not be creating incentives to house people in prison. We should be creating incentives instead to shut the revolving door into prison. [applause] sen. Harris and with last weeks memo, sessions advocated that prosecutors seek the harshest sentence available, including an increased use of mandatory minimums. So instead of going after violent crime, drug cartels, and major traffickers, were worried about the neighborhood streetlevel dealer. Lets be clear about that, instead of going after drug cartels and major crime and traffickers, he is focusing on a renewed focus on what is essentially the neighborhood streetlevel drug dealer. Instead of addressing the core issues of addiction and getting folks into treatment, were going to overcrowd and build more prisons. That is not justice, that is not smart on crime, and i believe we have to stop this. [applause] sen. Harris and when i say we, guys, i dont just mean cap. I dont mean just progressives. I mean everyone. Everyone has to be a part of stopping this. Because drug addiction, by the way, is color blind. It doesnt see red or blue. So heres what im talking about. I started my career as a prosecutor in the 1990s at the height of the crack epidemic. And im now starting my career as a United States senator at the height of an Opioid Crisis. And, folks, let me tell you, these crises have so much more in common than what separates them. To illustrate this point i pulled a bunch of headlines over the years, which ill read, and im going to wonder and i do wonder if youll be able to distinguish which of these headlines is from the 1990s and which is from today. Which is about crack cocaine and which is about prescription drugs. Which is about an urban city and which is from appalachia. Here they go. Surge of addicts strains criminal justice system. Addict jailed for endangering her daughter. Addicted parents get their fix even with their children watching. How a mother and daughter who traded sex for drugs are beating addiction together. Ill give you guys the answers later. But you cant tell the difference. And as you can see, this is not a black and brown issue, this is not an urban and blue state issue, it has always been an american issue. And heres the deal. Our nation has had a longstanding and insatiable appetite for drugs. And we need to deal with that. In 2015, opioids like heroin, fentanyl, and oxycontin killed 33,000 americans, in that one year. From new hampshire, to utah, to kentucky. There was a heartbreaking headline many of you saw earlier this year, amid opioid doses, ohios Coroners Office runs out of room for bodies. Opioids have taken the lives of coal miners struggling with back pain in West Virginia and the son of a former republican congressman in pennsylvania, and a mom who got addicted to painkillers after a csection in San Francisco. Drug addiction touches every community and every family in our country, and it is unfortunately a universal experience. And to fight Jeff Sessions and his oldfashioned, discredited, and dangerous approach to drugs, i believe we must embrace what all regions have in common and build coalitions. And i believe we have opportunities in front of us. Conservatives like senator rand paul has advocated for a better approach to drug addiction, and eight in ten americans who voted for trump, according to polls, eight in ten americans who voted for trump say criminal Justice Reform is important or very important to them. So i believe theres a real opportunity, and the opportunity here is to break people out of the demographic boxes we have put them in. The real opportunity is to make progress on a critical policy issue. And theres a real opportunity to reach parts of america that feel overlooked and dont realize how much they have in common with people who might look very different. So heres what i think we need to fight for specifically. We need a National Drug policy that finally treats Substance Abuse not as a crime to be punished, but as a disease to be treated. We need thank you. [applause] harris we need to build on reforms instead of reviving mandatory minimums or boosting bottom lines for private prisons. We need to build on the reforms. And we need to fund, not defund, the office of National Drug control policy. And we need this administration to understand that if they care about the Opioid Crisis in rural america, as they say they do, they have also got to care about the drug addicted young man in chicago or east l. A. [applause] sen. Harris and, while i dont believe in legalizing all drugs, as a career prosecutor i just dont, but i will tell you this, we need to do the smart thing and the right thing and finally decriminalize marijuana. [applause] harris and finally, i believe we need to look locally and elect progressive prosecutors. Because the vast majority of prosecutions occur at the state and local level. There are leaders among us, like kim fox from cooke county, who grew up in Public Housing and knows we need a more balanced approach to criminal justice. There are leaders like john chisham in the milwaukees d. A. s office. Working to reduce prison population while increasing public safety. There are leaders like kim ogg, the d. A. In harris county, texas, who is saving taxpayers 10 million a year by sending people caught with a small amount of marijuana to a decisionmaking class instead of jail. Right. So even as we fight Jeff Sessions every step of the way here in d. C. , we should see these reformers and support them as innovators who are showing us what is possible, and i believe this is the time that we look in the mirror and ask who we are as a country on this issue of drug addiction. And the time is now to fight for the values we believe in and the time is to fight not a war on drugs, but a war on drug addiction. And to make more effective and humane approaches to our fellow americans who are suffering. And i look forward to working with all of you on this. Thank you. [applause] thank you so much, senator harris, thank you. Please, if you stay in your seats, servers are coming around to set lunch. Stay in your seats so you are assured to get lunch. We will be back to you in just a moment with senator warren. So please, stay in your seats as lunch is being served