During remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) spoke about gun violence and violence prevention programs.
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00:00Mr. President. Democratic Whip. Mr. President, as has been noted by my friend and colleague from Wyoming, this is National Police Week, and I just want to join his chorus in saluting the law enforcement officials from his state who are here in Washington this week, as well as those in law enforcement from across the nation.
00:23Many have traveled to Washington in their annual trip to honor those lost in the line of duty and to share their priorities with members of Congress.
00:34If we want safe communities, we need to support our law enforcement, and we need to work with our nation's children, and that includes addressing our nation's gun violence epidemic.
00:45We know that gun violence is the number one cause of police officer line of duty death.
00:51Currently, the number one cause of death for American kids and teenagers in America is gun violence, not automobile accidents, not cancer.
01:02We need to treat this crisis like the national emergency that it is.
01:06Common sense gun safety measures are overwhelmingly popular with the American people, even with gun owners, including banning high-capacity assault weapons meant for the battlefield,
01:18as well as universal background checks and requiring safe storage of guns.
01:23But we know that making communities safer also requires addressing the root causes of violence.
01:29The police that I work with in Illinois and in the city of Chicago have made it clear to me they can do their job, but we cannot arrest our way out of this situation.
01:40We need to do more.
01:43Next week marks three years since the tragic school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.
01:50On what should have been an ordinary school day, 19 innocent children and two teachers were gunned down in their classrooms by a man armed with an AR-15.
02:01After that horrific day, Congress came together on a bipartisan basis, a rare bipartisan basis, to pass the most significant gun safety reform in generations.
02:13We recognized that too many parents were losing children, and too many communities have been irreparably scarred.
02:20So when Congress passed the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, we agreed we must do more to prevent gun violence from happening in the first place.
02:29One of the most prominent provisions of that legislation was Congress's decision to invest in using trained neighborhood and community leaders to break the cycle of violence.
02:41With $250 million in funding, we supported community violence interrupters from the south side of Chicago to Greensboro, North Carolina, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Houston, Texas, and many other communities.
02:56Unfortunately, the DOGE committee had a different idea when it came to preventing violence.
03:02Last month, the Department of Justice canceled more than $800 million in violence prevention, public safety, and victim service grants.
03:12That includes millions of dollars in community violence intervention funding that was senselessly cut.
03:19What does this mean?
03:21Organizations I'm aware of, like Metropolitan Family Services in Chicago, lost $3.7 million overnight.
03:29These funds had been providing mental health training and job skills to hundreds of individuals who were most likely to perpetrate or be victims of violence.
03:40We went right to the source.
03:42Because of these initiatives, homicides in the city of Chicago have decreased by 50% since 2021.
03:50But now, just a few days before the start of summer months, when gun violence will be at its peak,
03:57neighborhood organizations across the country, including Chicago, have had the rug pulled out from under them.
04:03Does Attorney General Bondi really think that eliminating these grants will stop the violence?
04:10Ignoring reality won't stop the bloodshed that will occur without these funds.
04:15Does President Trump really think that cutting this funding makes America safer?
04:20The next time the President or any of his friends go to Fox News or some other news source and start scapegoating Democrats for gun violence in Chicago,
04:31they should remember that the President and his billionaire cronies eliminated these successful bipartisan grants.
04:38To make matters worse, the Trump administration doubled down on its decision to rescind another billion dollars in school mental health grants,
04:48which were also passed into law in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
04:53Mr. President, there's a detention facility in the city of Chicago for teenagers awaiting trial charged with serious crimes, violent crimes, some of them being charged with murder.
05:06They wait months, sometimes years, for their trial.
05:10I visited that facility.
05:12It, of course, is a detention facility, a correctional institution, but it's also a high school.
05:19These teenagers from all across the city of Chicago waiting for trial go to school in classrooms, eat in cafeterias, and, of course, stay on the premises.
05:29I asked the teachers and counselors at this facility for teenagers who have been involved in violent crime,
05:37who are these kids?
05:39You must get to know them in this facility.
05:42What's their background?
05:43Well, one counselor I remember said,
05:45Senator, virtually every mental health challenge that you can think of we see in these kids.
05:51They came to the earth in the usual way, but something happened in their lives that changed them.
05:57But there's one thing that they virtually all have in common.
06:00They're all victims of trauma, witnessing murders, having someone they love lost to gunfire.
06:08It's the kind of thing which can change a life for the better or for the worse.
06:12And in this case, many of them are being changed for the worse.
06:17And so counseling them and working with them to conquer these haunting experiences in their lives is central to putting them on the right track.
06:27Now we have a decision by this administration to cut back in school mental health grants.
06:34That was part of a bipartisan solution to deal with gun violence.
06:39After any mass shooting, many come are quick to explain away that tragedy is just a mental health issue,
06:46not a result of the fact that America has too many deadly weapons.
06:50Yet barely a hundred days into this administration,
06:53they have dropped any pretense about mental health in dealing with gun violence.
06:58Apparently preventing gun violence by providing treatment to children is just too much for them to take.
07:04At one time, this was part of the bipartisan solution.
07:08In Illinois, tens of million dollars in school mental health services have now been canceled,
07:14forcing students to face the future without this counseling.
07:18One program had brought graduate psychology students to low-income elementary, middle, and high schools
07:24to provide treatment services to students and bolster the mental health workforce.
07:29Another initiative in Lake County, Illinois received nearly six million dollars in federal funds
07:34to recruit and train mental health providers to work in the schools.
07:39In an outrageous and unsubstantiated justification, the Department of Education claimed that these funds,
07:46quote, violated the letter or purpose of federal civil rights law,
07:50or, quote, undermine the well-being of students these programs are intended to help.
07:55There is no evidence of that.
07:58Where is the outrage from those who joined in this bipartisan response several years ago?
08:04It took great pride in it.
08:05Democrats and Republicans finally agreed on something.
08:08Mental health counseling of children who are most vulnerable is a way to reduce gun violence.
08:14I still believe that to this day.
08:16And yes, the Trump administration says no.
08:19We're not going to invest in that.
08:21You know what's going to happen.
08:22There'll be more gun violence.
08:24There'll be terrible, outrageous events like we've seen so often.
08:28Innocent kids will die.
08:30Innocent people will die.
08:32And people will say, well, we just need more mental health counseling.
08:35Keep in mind this administration just eliminated the funds for it.
08:39What are they thinking?
08:41Where is the outrage from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle?
08:44I saw the press releases from my Republican colleagues celebrating the funding when it was originally created.
08:52Now, silence.
08:54That silence is shameful.
08:56I yield the floor.
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09:04So I'm going to take this message back at this point.
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