Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I want to speak to another matter this afternoon, a matter that as I think about my tenure in the Senate and those initiatives I have been engaged with that have really touched me in a way that make me want to work all that much harder because it is so challenging, it is so difficult, and in many, many ways, it is so dark that anything I can do to shine a light on it, I will do so. I came to the Senate floor 2 years ago, joined by my former colleague from North Dakota, Senator Heidi Heitkamp. Heidi was on the floor speaking about a bill she had introduced, Savanna's Act, but together we were really working to speak to the urgency of addressing this epidemic, if you will, this growing number of missing and murdered Native women across America. The awful truth in this country is that Native women are victims of violence in unprecedented proportions. When I say unprecedented, I will give you some of Alaska's numbers just to kind of put it into perspective. This month, October, is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and so in many of the communities in States across the country, we have been focused on these issues of domestic violence and what more we can do to address these issues of concern and safety. Well, on October 1, the first day of this month where we are raising this awareness, the headlines in the State's largest newspaper stated that the rate of rape in the State of Alaska was up 11 percent between 2017 and 2018--an 11-percent increase in 1 year.…”