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Floor Speech

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Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, nearly 80 years ago, in Central New Mexico's Tularosa Basin, at a place we now call the Trinity Site, the world as we knew it changed.

The Trinity test was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in human history, and the families who lived downwind from the Trinity explosion have lived the consequences of that day for every moment of their lives. These families were never told that the white dust falling around them that day would contaminate their bodies, would contaminate the bodies of the children they had yet to bear, that it would contaminate the crops and the water and the livestock that they had built their communities around. They were never told about the kinds of cancers they would get, the conditions they would suffer through, or the loved ones they would lose.

These families still to this day have not received the recognition or the compensation for what they endured so that our Nation could be victorious in the Second World War. Nearly a century later, 80 years now, these folks deserve better. They deserve justice.

It is long overdue for Congress to finally, finally amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, RECA, to include the Trinity downwinders, to include all Americans who were directly impacted from our nuclear tests and program, and to include the uranium workers who were exposed to radiation in service to our national defense. That is what we are voting on this week in the U.S. Senate. Today, we have a chance to finally deliver justice for the Trinity downwinders and for all Americans who were exposed to radioactive nuclear materials.

I want to thank especially the Presiding Officer as it has been one of the honors of my career to fight alongside him for this expansion of RECA for our entire congressional careers.

I want to urge all of our colleagues to stand with us on the right side of history today and to support this legislation.

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