Richard Blumenthal

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, first, my thanks to Senator Graham for his steadfast advocacy and eloquence and his partnership. It has been bipartisan from the start. It involves Senators Britt and Klobuchar, as well as Senator Shaheen, who is with us today, and Senator Coons and so many others. In fact, let the world know, the Senate is united behind the children and parents of Ukraine. There may be some dissent--and we just heard one voice--but it is a small minority. To our European allies, to Ukraine, to the world, and, most importantly, to Vladimir Putin: You should know that America will stand against kidnapping and abducting children. That is the principle that brings us to the floor today. Let me say to my colleague from Kentucky, there is not a scintilla of evidence--not one single bit of fact--that could persuade you that passing this measure will slow down or impede any peace negotiations. That is not what we are hearing from the negotiators. It isn't what we are hearing from Ukraine and its leaders who steadfastly support this measure. It is not what we are hearing from our European allies who also have expressed support for this measure, and it is not what we are hearing from our conscience. We are here today because we see in Vladimir Putin and his policy of abducting children literally the face of evil. There are very few issues where there are black and white sides. You know, most of the issues that come before this body are gray--on one hand, on the other hand. This kind of war crime ought to shock the conscience of America and the world. And, in fact, let's call it what it is. It is genocide. It is genocide because what Vladimir Putin wants to do is to destroy a people. He is abducting the children of Ukraine to deprive that nation of its future--of its children, of its culture, of its race and nationality. It is more than just about tanks and bombs and drones. It is about the future of humanity, who we are and what we will tolerate from a world leader who is bent on destroying a nation and its people. When you destroy its children, you are destroying its future. I have been privileged to visit Ukraine eight times since the beginning of Vladimir Putin's slaughterous invasion, most of them with Senator Graham, who has been such a great partner in this effort. And I have some very searing memories of meeting with the amputees and veterans of Ukraine who have been at the front--not just for months but years--literally fighting because their country's future is at stake. I have memories of meeting with those veterans. I have memories of visiting Bucha where, in the first days of this war, Russians literally lined up women and children and shot them in the back of their heads and then buried them in a mass grave; memories of speaking to President Zelenskyy and hearing about those days when the Russians came within kilometers. We have driven from his bunker to the place where the Russians were stopped--literally, a 5-minute car ride--and his courage in staying there and continuing this fight. I have memories of the bombed schools and hospitals and apartment houses. But the memory that sticks with me most vividly is of children who have been rescued after their abduction and parents whose children have been kidnapped, hearing about those children taken to reeducation camps, to foster families, where they were, in effect, made Russian. They were forbidden to speak Ukrainian. They were forbidden to practice their religion. They were forbidden to try to reunite with their families. It is beyond horror and heartbreak to hear these stories. What we are doing here is very simply recognizing that the world will not tolerate, again, this kind of genocide, that it should shock our conscience, and that designating Russia as a ``state sponsor of terrorism'' puts it in the same category as the other outlaw renegade nations, whether it is Cuba, Iran, North Korea. And by the way, we haven't bombed their ships. We haven't bombed their countries. We haven't bombed their planes. Designating them as state sponsors of terrorism doesn't mean we bomb them. To my colleague from Kentucky, I have my own criticisms of what is happening in the Caribbean today, and I share many of his criticisms, but it is simply a stream of consciousness that brings the two together. There is no logic or fact that makes them the same. We need to stand strong behind Ukraine in those negotiations and insist on Ukraine's security, airtight and approved by the U.S. Congress, an article V-type of guarantee that commits the United States to Ukraine's security. But today we are here about a moral and a practical issue. We are here about 10-month-old Margarita. Russian forces abducted her, changed her name, her citizenship, her birthplace. They changed it from Kherson, Ukraine, to Podolsk, Russia. Artem, a 16-year-old boy taken by Russian soldiers to a remote orphanage, slept on ``sagging metal beds'' without bedding. He was forced to eat crackers every day. Ilya, a 9-year-old from Mariupol, his mother was killed in a Russian missile attack. He was made an orphan by the Russians, who then called him an orphan as though it was something unconnected to what they did. He buried her with his own hands, and then Russians took him to a hospital in Donetsk, operated on him without anesthesia, and told him not to say ``Glory to Ukraine'' anymore. These are war crimes. Children should be safe. They should be protected. They should never become pawns in an imperial war of conquest. This assault on children is a real assault on humanity. It is an attempt to erase Ukraine's identity through the manipulation and torture of the most vulnerable. There are at least 210 facilities across Russia and Russian-occupied territories housing these abducted children. Russia has brazenly obstructed international efforts to rescue them, even to locate and document them. It withholds records. It cuts off communication. It deliberately undermines any effort to remit these children to their homes and families. Congress must act. Now is the time. Let me be clear. These are not just Ukrainian children. They are future scientists, artists, dancers, teachers, and leaders. They are the heart of a free and prosperous Ukraine. The world cannot abandon them. We may talk here about tankers and territories, and we should seize those shadow fleet tankers--no question about it. But this tragedy is deliberate, systematic, evil. It cannot go unanswered. We cannot turn a blind eye to this cruelty. We cannot evade the obligation to fight for every Ukrainian child stolen from a family in that great country. I yield the floor to my great colleague from New Hampshire, Senator Shaheen.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize and celebrate the remarkable career of Dr. James E. Shmerling. Dr. Shmerling has dedicated nearly five decades to serving the needs of children, their families, and their communities across the Nation. Dr. Shmerling's career in children's hospitals began in the Children's Hospital of Alabama in 1979. Over the course of 8 years, he progressed in administrative responsibilities, eventually becoming associate administrator. During this time, he completed a master of science in hospital and health administration at the University of Alabama in 1980. Extraordinarily accomplished in the world of academia, Dr. Shmerling also earned a master of business administration from Samford University in 1984 and a doctorate of health administration from the Medical University of South Carolina in 1999. Dr. Shmerling has set a gold standard for hospital leadership and administration across the Nation. He has held key leadership positions at children's hospitals, including the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University, the Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center in Memphis, the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt University, and the Children's Hospital Colorado. In each position, he brought a high level of expertise, dedication to his patients, and genuine devotion to advancing children's health. Dr. Shmerling first came to Connecticut when he was appointed as president and chief executive officer of Connecticut Children's on November 2, 2015. He has led the organization through a period of extraordinary growth and innovation, upholding an unwavering commitment to improving children's healthcare across the State and region. A visionary leader, he was responsible for leading Connecticut Children's transformation from a standalone medical center to a leading pediatric health system spanning three States, spearheading the largest expansion in the health system's history with the construction of a new eight- story clinical tower, expanding the neonatal care network, and increasing access to specialized pediatric care. Dr. Shmerling has also served in many other leadership roles on national boards and committees related to children's health, including the Children's Hospital Association and the American Hospital Association's Maternal and Child Health Council. He has been widely recognized by his peers, including as a fellow in the American College of Health Care Executives. Dr. Shmerling has also championed other worthwhile causes throughout his career, notably promoting childhood literacy. In Connecticut, he has served as a member of the Hartford Board of Education and is currently a board member of United Way of Central and Northeastern Connecticut. Dr. Shmerling's contributions to the cause of children's healthcare have been historic. Connecticut Children's and the health and well- being of our State's children are stronger than ever thanks to Dr. Shmerling's leadership. I hope my colleagues will join me in recognizing and celebrating the remarkable career and work of Dr. James E. Shmerling.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored and proud to be here today with the Presiding Officer in the Chair, a veteran--albeit of the Navy, not the Marine Corps--and to be accompanied by a fellow marine, Senator Sullivan, to whom I will yield shortly. I am especially honored to pay tribute to one of the Nation's most storied and steadfast institutions in the history--the entire history-- of our Nation, the U.S. Marine Corps, which marks its 250th anniversary on Monday. As legend and history have it, 250 years ago, in the back room of Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, a new fighting force was born, a force of grit, determination, and unshakable loyalty. Since that day in 1775, marines have answered every call, without any exception, with courage and conviction, not because it was easy but because it was right. The motto of the Marine Corps, ``Semper Fidelis''--``Always Faithful''--is more than just a phrase; it is a lifelong commitment. As we know, there are no former marines, and there are no ex-marines. It is a lifelong commitment and identity. ``Semper Fidelis'' speaks to the bond between marines, to the cause they serve, and to the Nation that they protect. That bond by no means ends with Active Duty. It continues in communities across America where marines continue to serve, living out the values of America as teachers, first responders, public servants, and leaders. The Marine Corps has fought in every American conflict from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror. On the beaches of Iwo Jima, in the frozen mountains of Korea, in the jungles of Vietnam, and in the sands of Fallujah, marines have stood their ground. They have led from the front, often at great personal cost, with no expectation of glory. Telling the story of America is impossible without telling the story of the U.S. Marine Corps. Their sacrifices have safeguarded our freedom. Their discipline has inspired generations. Their traditions of toughness, honor, and duty have stood the test of time. Historic battles exemplify the Marine Corps' unyielding commitment to courage, sacrifice, and duty, and they define the very character of our military: Derna, Chapultepec, First Bull Run, Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh, Hue, the liberation of Kuwait, Fallujah, and Helmand Province. Marines have not only fought our wars, they have also responded to humanitarian crises, assisted in natural disasters, and stood sentry in times of peace. They are not just warfighters; they are ambassadors of American resolve and resilience. This milestone of 250 years is an opportunity to reflect, to honor, and to recommit. We honor the thousands of marines who never made it home, who gave their last full measure of devotion, as the saying goes. We honor the Gold Star families who carry their memory every single day. We honor the wounded in body and some in spirit whose lives are forever shaped by their service. We honor every marine, past and present, who has earned the title with sweat, sacrifice, and a fierce sense of purpose. Let me acknowledge, as well, the families who stand behind every marine: spouses, children, parents. They serve quietly, often without any recognition, but always with deep devotion. Their strength sustains the Corps, those families, those friends, those loved ones. Their sacrifices, too, must be honored. The 250th anniversary is not only a celebration; it is a solemn reminder we make to all who wear the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor that we will never forget their service and that we will always fight to give them the support, care, and respect they have earned. This milestone is a chance to educate future generations about what it means to serve and why the Marine Corps' legacy matters not just in history books but in the daily defense of our democracy and our ideals. The world has never been more dangerous and more in need of that service. As we look to the next 250 years of the greatest Nation in the history of the world, let's ensure that our policies, our resources, and our commitments match the trust we place in all of our military, including our U.S. Marines. We need to provide our marines and our military men and women with the tools and the resources they need to fight and win and the care they deserve when they return home. It is not about the rhetoric or just the celebration of birthdays. What really matters is what we do between the birthdays to keep faith with our men and women in uniform and afterward when they return to our great Nation. We can leave no veteran behind in healthcare as well as in education and training and in everything they need to be successful when they come back. Let us rededicate ourselves to the ideals they uphold: freedom, justice, service above self. To every marine, from the youngest recruit on Parris Island or in San Diego to the oldest veteran in our communities, we say thank you. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your sacrifice. Thank you for never wavering as a marine. Happy birthday, U.S. Marine Corps. Semper Fidelis. I am happy now to yield to my colleague and friend from Alaska and fellow marine, U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Alaska for those very powerful words from himself and the Commandant. As he has remarked, this Marine Corps birthday always has enormous personal meaning for all of us who have served in the U.S. Marine Corps, including for my son Matthew, who was in Helmand Province. I am hopeful that he will invite his younger brother to one of the Marine Corps balls. Michael served as a Navy SEAL. This occasion is joined by our colleagues Senators Gallego and Young, also marines, and I am sure is supported by others in this body and in the House of Representatives who have served. So on this great occasion, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 124 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to; the Blumenthal amendment to the preamble, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to; the preamble, as amended, be agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for this unified support for a measure that is eminently reasonable, and I thank the leader of our side, Senator Schumer, for advancing this proposal. It is a compromise. It is simple and plain. And I will be very blunt: It is not everything I would have wanted. Like the Senator from Wisconsin, my friend Senator Baldwin, I would have wanted the healthcare tax credits to be permanently guaranteed. I would have wanted a guarantee as well that there be no rescissions or impoundments of funds, as this President has done repeatedly. I would have wanted a reversal of the firings, the so-called RIFs, the reductions in force that have been eminently unfair and a guarantee of backpay to everybody who has been furloughed. There are other provisions that, for me, were profoundly important. It is a compromise. And ``compromise'' is not a four-letter word; it is the way to get things done. This picture of unity is worth a thousand of my words, but it is also a clear response to a crisis that we face, and we face it today. It is a crisis in healthcare. It is a crisis in hunger. It is a crisis in air transportation. For millions of Americans, it is a crisis of affordability. Nobody in America needed Tuesday's elections to tell them that the cost of rent and electricity and food and all the other necessities in life are spiraling out of control. And, yes, healthcare costs are spiraling out of control. They are at the kitchen table right now across America, looking at the exchanges, and concluding they simply can't afford those spiking premiums, multiples of three and four times--and at least twice--what they were paying. Many of them are taking the risk that they will go without insurance. This measure guarantees an outcome. The majority leader Senator Thune has said he can't guarantee an outcome. All he can promise is a process. And I am unwilling to accept a promise of some vote at an indefinite point on an undefined bill sometime in the future because the urgency of now for American families means they are making choices about whether they can afford insurance at this moment for next year. In fairness to the majority leader, he can't promise anything for either the Speaker of the House or the President. They have been absent without leave. They have been AWOL. They have refused to talk. We are presenting them now with a reasonable compromise that the majority leader can accept and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle should embrace. The problem here is one of trust. What we have seen from the administration is a strategy of maximum pain to magnify political pressure. In just minutes from now, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, this administration will argue that SNAP benefits should be ended after the President himself promised that they would be paid in full in compliance with the district court orders in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. There is no way to trust that SNAP benefits will be provided without a guarantee from the courts. The urgency that we face is also in air transportation. We all want people to be able to reach their destinations safely. It has to come first. And we need to make sure that the TSA and air controllers are paid. They are heroes for having worked for so long without pay. We need to stop the madness of this trend line. It is a through line in the administration's tactics here. It is a through line of cruelty and stupidity that has magnified the costs for the American people not just in blue States but all across the country. We should seek reform and improvement in the ACA, eliminating any kind of fraud and stopping the spiraling increase in healthcare costs. But I should warn my colleagues: We will not sacrifice the ACA. Very revealing yesterday in the hearing of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was the commentary from a number of my Republican colleagues in effect saying that we should kill the ACA--an effort that has been part of their relentless campaign over the last 15 years to decimate this resounding and important law that now is embraced by the vast majority of the American people. We put in the record stories of individuals from Michigan and Pennsylvania and Iowa. Aaron Lehman, a fifth-generation farmer, told us: I grow corn, soybean, oats, and hay with my family. The Affordable Care Act has been one of the best investments in rural healthcare in decades. We cannot afford, as a nation, to go back to the days when preexisting conditions were a pretext for denying healthcare. If someone had a history of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, HIV, asthma, depression, pregnancy--the list goes on--insurers could force patients to pay more or refuse to offer them coverage at all. Standing strong for the ACA very simply means providing healthcare to Americans. Extending the healthcare tax credits for 1 year is a compromise that makes sense. It will put the government back to work fully and capably and fairly. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this reasonable compromise. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator from Louisiana yielding to me, and I am here with Senator Padilla because we are leading a group of colleagues to talk on the floor of the Senate about a right of the American people that was exercised in overwhelming numbers yesterday: the right to vote. And it was an enormously heartening and encouraging and inspiring example to us of good citizenship and interest in the electoral process. But we are here because the right to vote is increasingly under assault by this administration--systematic, strategic, relentless assault by an administration that wants to discourage the exercise of that right to vote and to degrade the protections of it that many Americans take for granted because they are so ingrained in our system. What this administration has done overall in seeking to impound election equipment, collect voter information, intrude on privacy, and discourage election workers by creating fear and intimidation, not to mention dismantling the election protection mechanisms in the CISA and voting rights section of the Department of Justice, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Program--these kinds of measures create a real and present danger to our election process. And it began, literally, with President Trump pardoning the January 6 rioters. Remember, they not only assaulted the Capitol, but their purpose was to stop certification of a lawful transition of power that resulted from the vote. It was an effort to undermine the vote. In the face of many of these actions, we need to rely on the courts. They are the bulwark that, in many instances, will protect us. We are dependent on organizations that are willing to go to court, and we need to support them with resources. One example, on March 25, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive order, 14248. Among other things, it attempted to impose on the States new documentation requirements for mail-in voter registration and voting procedures--just one example of this administration's assault on the right to vote--and it probably went under the radar so far as most public attention was concerned. But it was real. It was potentially destructive and damaging to the right to vote. And, thankfully, Judge Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia knew our laws well enough that she, rightfully, held that this Executive order was so patently illegal, so flagrantly unlawful and a blatant violation of our Constitution's carefully crafted separation of powers that she struck down that Executive order. And she wrote: The States have initial authority to regulate elections. Congress has supervisory authority over those regulations. [But] [t]he President does not feature at all. And that is why Judge Kollar-Kotelly found that Trump's Executive order ``violates the Constitution by usurping power over federal election procedure that is vested in Congress and the States--not in the President.'' Sounds to me like the President of the United States might need a civics lesson or at least a reread of the Constitution. The Framers regulated elections in this manner on purpose, part of a carefully crafted compromise between State and Federal legislative power. They did it in this manner to serve a specific end, which was a balancing of responsibility that accorded States their proper sovereign control over elections cast in their borders. They are sovereign. Our States remain sovereign, as they were then, and their electors are entitled to respect in State and Federal elections under rules that are set by sovereign States. And that compromise is sound public policy, just as it was when our Framers propounded it. It is right that States and communities--not the President--should determine, in the best instance, how best to conduct elections. And it is right that, in situations when uniform national election standards are necessary, those determinations are made deliberately by a large body of elected officials directly representing their local communities in Congress. As the judge said, ``The President does not feature at all.'' More importantly, the Framers' diffusion of power over elections divided both among the States and within the branch of the Federal Government closest to the people--namely, the Congress--is one of our Nation's most powerful safeguards against autocracy. They were wary of an overbearing Executive. They had just fought to be free of a monarchy. They explicitly avoided giving any power to the President in the realm of elections. The framework they created establishes a decentralized structure where it is difficult for any single individual or entity to unduly influence or wield unchecked power over elections. ``No King.'' That was their mantra, literally. They had just overthrown a King. No single authority to control elections and potentially bring to bear another authoritarian ruler. But, now, this President has moved us toward a totalitarian regime, and there is no more salient or significant aspect of his effort than the destructive assault on our election system. A system where one person alone can decide how elections are run is the definition of ``tyranny.'' Russia has a Constitution. Other nations like Russia have constitutions, but elections are rigged. And whether it is China, Russia, Hungary--totalitarian regimes have one ruler. It may not be called a King, but it is a ruler who controls the election process. And lo and behold, 90 percent of the voters in the old Soviet Union, now in Russia, all decide that the guy in power is to be retained. That is no accident. It is the result of totalitarian control over elections, and that is why this judge's ruling is so profoundly momentous. The voters of California, Virginia, New Jersey, and New York made their voices heard yesterday, and they were saying as well, no Kings. They exercised the right to vote in tremendous numbers. In our State of Connecticut, towns where Republican first selectpeople or mayors were in power for decades saw a move from red to blue. What is more important than red to blue is overwhelming numbers of people came to the polls because they were angry and anxious about our democracy and about affordability, about paying the rent, affording groceries, paying for electricity, and, yes, health insurance. They were looking at the open enrollment exchanges for whether they could afford health insurance. They saw premiums doubling and tripling. They were hit by that sticker shock, and it made them fearful and outraged about what was happening to healthcare, as well as everything else they were paying to afford. And they couldn't afford healthcare and everything else that they needed for their families, and that was a factor as well. So this outpouring of anger and anxiety that we saw on the issue of affordability was an exercise of the franchise that this administration wants to undermine and undercut and, eventually, eviscerate. So we need to elevate the judges. Let's name this one--Judge Kollar- Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Judge Kollar-Kotelly is a hero in sustaining and protecting the rule of law, in preserving free and open elections, by striking down an Executive order that very simply egregiously overrides State sovereign authority. Now, I will say States' rights used to be the province of Members of this body who sought to protect segregation. Maybe they were endeavoring to stop Federal law enforcement and the use of States' rights as a sword or a shield had limits and the courts limited them. But in this instance, there is no excuse and no precedent that permits the President of the United States to take over our election system, and I call on my colleagues in this body to stop rubberstamping his usurpation of our authority. We are the ones, along with States, that have that responsibility. Congress was specifically chosen to protect our election system when it came to Federal supervision because we are closest to the people, and we should zealously guard that authority because it is essential to our constitutional structure. I know that a lot of this may seem abstract or opaque, but it goes to the core of our constitutional system, and I call on my colleagues to protect our authority and State officials to safeguard theirs because it is a matter of our democracy, our freedom, and our right to vote. I note that my colleague Senator Padilla is here. I started this floor bloc, but I am proud that he and I have worked together on enlisting our colleagues. He is a major champion of election rights. He is one of the leaders in our body that has worked zealously to protect that right, and I am proud to be standing here with him in this cause. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am proud to begin a series of speakers and to be leading off this bloc of colleagues who are going to talk about an issue that is so much on our minds these days, and actually healthcare is always on our minds. There is a saying: If you don't have your health, you don't have anything. And we are all touched at one point or another in our lives by a healthcare challenge, which is a euphemism for some kind of sickness or illness or condition-- whether it is ourselves or someone in our family--and, inevitably, at some point in our lives, ourselves as the victims of a healthcare crisis. It is only a question of when. So the reason we have healthcare insurance is because it is only a question of when. We or someone in our family will be struck by an illness that is catastrophic. It is catastrophic in the pain and suffering, the emotional turmoil it can cause. And it is also catastrophic for so many people in the financial impact and sometimes ruin it portends. That is the reason that healthcare costs are the major cause, the predominant cause, of bankruptcy in this country. Crushing medical debt is not only crippling to those individuals financially whom it impacts but to our entire economy. It is a vulnerability to all of us. That is also why we have insurance because we know that at one point or another--it is only a question of when in life's great healthcare roulette--we will be impacted, and we will have to pay for treatment that may be lifesaving, with technology now so advanced, the chances are better than ever of survival and eventually of productivity. But all of it depends on being able to afford it, to pay for it. That is why we have healthcare insurance. We also have healthcare insurance because we know that it is only a matter of time, but it is also a matter of emotional fortitude and stability. People can go to bed and sleep at night because they know they have an insurance that will safeguard their nest eggs as well as their health. We have made advances in this great country. The Affordable Care Act was a major historic step in the direction of making healthcare insurance more affordable and, obviously, Medicare and Medicaid. We still have a long way to go in reducing healthcare costs. Pharmaceutical drugs are still too costly in this country, and the technological advances, as lifesaving as they may be, also create costs that seem to be spiraling upward. But for millions and millions of Americans, healthcare insurance is now affordable. Even if their employer doesn't provide it, even if they are not old enough to qualify for Medicare, even if they are not, incomewise, qualifying for Medicaid, they can buy insurance in a way that makes it affordable. In fact, this weekend, open enrollment began for 2026, and countless families who have health insurance for 2025 are going to the website for Access Health CT, or it may be for Utah or Indiana or countless other States across the country, most States, in fact, where this designated time of year, Americans can sign up, adjust, or cancel their health insurance coverage. As of this Saturday, in Connecticut, families saw firsthand, literally, the disastrous impact of Republican policies on healthcare insurance costs. It wasn't pretty. What they saw were prices doubling and tripling and maybe even more in what they had to pay. A lot of them said to me--a lot, meaning more than 10 or 20--``I have decided I can't afford it.'' Literally, they told me over this past weekend--we are talking Saturday and Sunday--``I just can't afford health insurance.'' What I said to them is: Wait. Don't walk away from it yet. We may still succeed in making it affordable if we can extend the healthcare tax credits beyond the end of the year. And you will know that it will be affordable and the insurance companies will adjust those rates so that it is affordable. So don't close the door. Don't make an irrevocable decision. These kind of premium increases should have been a wake-up call. Yet, unfortunately, this administration continues to callously ignore the needs and interests of the American people. Let's make no mistake--let me be very blunt--Republicans control the U.S. Senate; they control the House of Representatives; they control the White House; and, in fact, the Supreme Court. This healthcare crisis is happening on their watch. It is on them because they refuse to end needless suffering. In fact, the President recklessly and cruelly is weaponizing hunger by stopping SNAP benefits, despite court orders that the administration must use the emergency contingency fund and other revenues, for example, from tariffs, to fund the SNAP benefits. He said, no, he won't. Even after saying--and I think I am quoting almost exactly--that he will be honored to follow the court's directive. Magnifying pain to maximize political pressure, that is what he is doing. But we are standing firm because Americans need healthcare insurance not at some distant point in the future. They can't afford to get sick on Donald Trump's timetable. They need to deal with sickness in the real world--now--real people suffering. Americans are being buried by the cost not only of that healthcare insurance but what they tell me are the costs of groceries, energy, healthcare, generally, and student loans, grants--so much more. Instead of working with Democrats, President Trump and Republicans have wasted valuable time blocking every single Democratic effort to lower costs for families. And it includes healthcare insurance, unfortunately. We don't need to imagine the costs anymore. We don't need to hypothesize. They are no longer abstract. Trump's version of healthcare is here and now and it is impacting everyone. Let me just give you some real-life examples that I have been hearing over the last week or so. A 27-year-old living in Hartford making $65,000 a year will have healthcare premiums increase from $375 a month to $558 a month. You may think, well, that doesn't sound like a lot. But it is a lot if you are that 27-year-old living in Hartford, CT, and you are making just $65,000 a year in the capital of our State. And he is 27 years old. You believe you are invincible. You have to make that decision, and you kind of figure: You know what? I run 5 miles a day. I stay out until 2 o'clock in the morning. I feel good. Sickness can't happen to me--until it does. That is a decision, a choice, that 27-year-olds are making to not buy that health insurance. That will increase the cost of healthcare insurance for everyone because when that person gets sick, has to go to the emergency room, doesn't have healthcare insurance, can't cover the debt, it impacts many others as well. That extra $200 a month is $2,400 every year. It makes a world of difference for that young professional who is contending with the rising costs of living in Hartford or elsewhere, potentially working to pay off student debt, and maybe even considering starting a family. I will give you another really catastrophic, even preposterous, example, but it is real life. A couple in their sixties living in Fairfield, CT, making $100,000 a year will go from paying $258--get this--to over $3,000 for the same plan. These are all, by the way, same coverage, same plan. You just pay more. They are not paying more for additional coverage; no, they are paying over $2,500 more every month because of the Republican healthcare tax. That is every month. They are at the other end of the spectrum. They have lived a lot of life. They know people get sick. Nobody is invincible. That 27-year-old is in their rearview mirror. They have seen relatives, friends, neighbors, loved ones. What do they do? Can they afford more than $3,000 a month for the same plan, $2,500 more every month? And chances are, they are looking at the end of their earnings period. I could go on about the impacts. I have plenty of other real-life examples. If you are interested, just give me a call. These cuts will also impact other States. My colleagues in red States have constituents in those red States where people are going to be hit hard. I will give you an example from Indiana. There are 350,000 Hoosiers in Indiana enrolled in the ACA Marketplace, and over 260,000 families depend on the enhanced premium tax credit to afford their monthly premiums. Without these credits, a family of four living in Indianapolis making $129,000 a year will go from paying $725 a month for the least expensive option to a staggering $1,347 a month. That is $600 a month more for healthcare insurance that could be spent on the needs of children, put food on the table, pay for electricity or rent or a mortgage or education--$600 more every month. It is staggering for a family of four making $129,000 a year. They may well make a decision to take the risk, but that risk will come home to roost at some point for some of those families that may decide to go without it. And if they buy it, they will have to make searing, heart- rending sacrifices to afford it. In North Carolina, over 975,000 people are enrolled in the ACA Marketplace, and 96 percent of them benefit from the enhanced premium tax credit, which is not unusual for there to be more than 90 percent of everybody enrolled in the ACA Marketplace to depend on these tax credit subsidies. In Connecticut, it is 90 percent. The reason is quite simply that healthcare insurance is made affordable by the tax credits, but without these credits, 888,000 people will see their out-of-pocket premiums double in North Carolina, which is typical of the United States--in red States and blue States. You know, the one thing about sickness and illness is that it doesn't really discriminate based on your political beliefs or your partisan affiliation or the color of your State, a red State or a blue State; it is everyone, and it hits everyone hard. A 60-year-old couple living in Raleigh and making $85,000 a year currently pays $89 for the least expensive plan. Without these credits, they are going to be paying $1,893. That is per month--$1,893. That is nearly $2,000. Again, it is the same plan, the same coverage, nothing better--just more money that is charged to people. Republicans know that these increases are going to crush hard-working Americans. It is ludicrous to expect any American enrolled in one of these plans to have the disposable income to keep their coverage. This is not a partisan issue. I can't say it often enough. This is about ensuring that every American, regardless of their ZIP Code or their income level or their partisan affiliation, has access to the health insurance coverage they need to guarantee they can live healthy and productive lives. Medicine now can save lives and put people back to work in a way that would have been unimaginable just 5 or 10 years ago, but it is costly, and American families need the insurance and the assurance that healthcare will be affordable for every one of them. Republicans are choosing to make Connecticut families, Indiana families, North Carolina families, and families across the country pay more for their healthcare. It is cruel. It is stupid. It is unnecessary. Open enrollment has begun, but it is not too late to enable people to afford health insurance in the way that we as Americans know they need and deserve to be productive and healthy. So I implore my Republican colleagues to listen to their own constituents, who are telling them: We can't afford these unconscionable, exorbitant health insurance increases. Give us the means to live with the assurance that we will have healthcare insurance to take care of our kids and our families. Do the right thing for the American people. Come to the table and reinstate these credits, because we are going to stand strong and stand firm on this side of the aisle. We are the bulwark against a wave of premium increases that will surely deluge America economically and morally. We will do everything we can to stop it. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, thank you to all of my colleagues, most recently the Senator from Wisconsin, but also Senators Durbin, Murphy, Klobuchar, Whitehouse. And, yes, we are here to stand up for working families, as my colleague from Wisconsin has so powerfully said, and others of our colleagues who have told the stories. We are here about real people and real pain. Sickness that they will endure, hands that won't be held, pocketbooks that will go empty, children who will go hungry, and yet not a single Republican is on the floor--not a single one. You know, we have been here to tell stories, and we have told a lot of stories with a lot of numbers, and they all add up to people having to pay double or triple what they do now, but most of them unable to pay and still put food on the table--pay their rent or mortgages or electricity bills and survive financially, people who will see crushing medical debt that will drive many of them into bankruptcy. These stories are about farmers, about small business people, about contractors, the self-employed people who don't have a big corporation to pay for their health insurance. It is about entrepreneurs and everyday Americans who otherwise will fall through the cracks. They are too old for Medicare. They make too much for Medicaid. They are not employed by a corporation. John F. Kennedy said ``life is unfair,'' but we have an obligation to make it fairer. And it really is in all of our interests to make healthcare available because that makes the economy not only fair but more effective. I don't believe my Republican colleagues share the abhorrent values of this President. I don't believe my Republican colleagues want to shut SNAP down for 42 million families with children, to weaponize hunger, to play politics with the lives of Americans who can't afford to put food on the table, and to break promises, as this President has done, to exploit the shutdown. My colleague from Rhode Island has said he thinks the President likes the shutdown. If the President wanted to end the shutdown, he could do it this afternoon. And it wouldn't take a week; it would take a few hours. All it would take is a commitment to extend the healthcare subsidies beyond the end of the year and give people the assurance that they can afford health insurance. They are making these decisions right now about whether to buy it or not. And they cannot in Connecticut or anywhere around the country make those decisions responsibly if they are living with the uncertainty of whether these healthcare tax credits will continue. When I was a prosecutor, we used to say ``follow the money.'' Follow the money. Let's follow the money. Pretty simple, cuts in Medicaid, prospective cuts in Medicare, elimination of the healthcare tax credit subsidies, money that has gone to tax cuts for the billionaires--that is a threat to our democracy. That is a threat to our economy. The country lost a very well-known Republican in the last 24 hours, Dick Cheney, whom I came to know personally and admired in the last stage of his life for standing up on principle to an anti-democratic President who was running again. He stood up with his daughter Liz. He was criticized and disliked by many for many things, but he stood on principle for democracy. I have thought often about our friend John McCain. Senator Durbin referred to him, and I can't put out of my mind and I have been haunted by that moment when John McCain stood next to the table in that corner and lifted his still broken arm to give a thumbs down to a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. He stood on principle. Today, we are asking our Republican colleagues to stand on principle. Stand up to the President who can be ruthless and retributive and just plain cruel. But Republicans have an obligation to something larger than this President, larger than the seats that they occupy here, as do we as well, which is to do the right thing for the American people. So I hope they will channel their inner John McCain and recognize that this shutdown has been forced on all of us by an administration unwilling to come to the table and simply compromise. It is not a four- letter word. It is what the American people expect us to do. It is what has always worked in the United States of America to enable us to overcome our divisions and our differences and to bring the country together. This is our moment to do it, and I hope we will. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, the Trump administration is making history today but not in a good way--in fact, in a reprehensible and irresponsible way. In one sentence, for the first time in history in the United States of America, SNAP benefits have been stopped. There are disasters and catastrophes that occur in the United States just as in any other part of the world, whether it is Katrina or Superstorm Sandy or the Hurricane Melissa that we just had in Jamaica abroad. There are natural disasters that are beyond our control. Rarely does humanity choose inhumanity. That is a choice that, fortunately, mankind tries to spare. But today, Donald Trump is stopping SNAP benefits for millions of Americans across the country. In fact, one-eighth of all Americans depend on SNAP benefits. One out of every 10 people in Connecticut receives SNAP benefits. In New Mexico, the proportion is even higher-- about one out of five. This stopping of SNAP benefits is a national disaster that is not a natural disaster; it is manmade, purposeful, and intentional. Its purpose is really just to inflict pain. It is the result of an effort by the Trump administration to inflict maximum pain to magnify political pressure. Kids are pawns in this political game for Donald Trump. Millions of Americans depend on this program, including 360,000 people in Connecticut. Republicans are saying it is the inevitable consequence of a government shutdown. False. There is money--the emergency contingency fund and revenues from other sources, like tariffs, that are more than adequate to fund the $8 to $9 billion for this program in November. There is an emergency contingency fund that exists for this purpose--an emergency--at least $5 billion, perhaps as much as $6 billion, and more than adequate resources from other accounts. In fact, the Department of Agriculture has used those other accounts in situations like this one in shutdowns where administrations have said: We are going to feed the hungry. We are not letting Americans starve. I have been to the food pantries and the shelters and the soup kitchens around Connecticut. What I have heard and have seen are lines of people who are going to be going hungry when the private contributions of food are exhausted, and soon they will be. That is what I am hearing from the folks who run Connecticut Foodshare, the St. Vincent de Paul pantry in Middletown. All across Connecticut, in towns as well as cities, we face a food insecurity crisis. The term ``food insecurity'' is a brilliant euphemism for hunger, and the gnawing effect of hunger--we all know it prevents kids from learning or playing sports. It is debilitating--not just in the short run, it affects people in the long run nutritionally. So this idea of ``Make America Healthy Again'' is really the height of hypocrisy for an administration that is making Americans hungry again. Donald Trump just days ago said--and I am quoting almost exactly-- said he would be honored to obey a court order that provided direction. Well, there is direction. Two courts have ordered it, and now he is defying those courts. He has reversed himself in just a matter of days. Now he is saying that he refuses to provide the funding for SNAP benefits. These court orders are not suggestions or invitations; they are mandatory directives--two courts, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and lawsuits brought by States' attorneys general in Massachusetts and by cities, towns, and private organizations in Rhode Island. We have been clear again and again and again as Democrats: Americans should never have to choose between food and health, between food and rent, between food and mortgage payments, between food and electricity. There should be no need for families to choose because there should be no choice by our public officials to make them choose, but that is what we are seeing right now. We can be sure of one thing here: Kids will go to bed hungry. I have talked to their moms and dads. Kids will go to bed hungry or they will be unable to go to a doctor because Republicans say: Well, reopen the government, and then we will talk about healthcare insurance coverage. We should be talking about it right now because families are making decisions about whether they can afford health insurance right now on the open markets that are ongoing right now, and they can't afford to get sick on Donald Trump's timetable. Nobody can. As of Saturday, the regularly appropriated funding for SNAP ended, which left families across the country wondering how they are going to put food on the table. That was when the courts stepped into this crisis. To state the obvious, there is no reason for anyone to go hungry, not just because the courts have ordered that SNAP benefits be provided but because there is a moral imperative in America. Starvation occurred systematically and ruthlessly as a result of Stalin saying about Ukraine that he was going to take their harvest, kill their livestock, and uproot their gardens in their backyards. He starved millions of people. It was the result of a totalitarian edict. Now, I am not comparing Donald Trump to Stalin, but starvation is not some abstract concept--it is real--and there is a legal obligation in America, as well as a moral obligation, to provide this program. We do not live in Stalin's Soviet Union, but we do live in a country that is threatened with the specter of totalitarianism because these kinds of decisions involve defying courts. Donald Trump is defying courts. He is defying laws passed by the Congress and signed by Presidents that provide a legal obligation to use that available money. This march toward totalitarianism is not theoretical or abstract. Again, I am not drawing any comparison--none--with Stalin's Soviet Union, but hunger should not be something that we regard as a realistic threat in America. It may exist in other parts of the world, and we try to provide food to those parts of the world where kids are in danger of going hungry. We ought to do at least the same here for the children of this country. Democrats have been clear that we will come to the table, negotiate, and reach a solution. It could be done this afternoon if Speaker Johnson would bring the House back to town from its paid vacation, if Donald Trump would show leadership and seek a solution, and if Leader Thune would be a part of that constructive process. It is not an inevitable consequence that SNAP be shut down. It is a choice. It is a failure. It is a purposeful and conscious failure, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has a moral and a legal obligation to use the vast produce and output of our agricultural system so that we in America can sleep at night with a clear conscience, knowing our country puts feeding hungry children above politics and refuses to use them as pawns. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, what has always separated America from other nations around the world is the right to vote. It is a right that everybody in this body cherishes, as do the American people. Every person who approaches the ballot box generally has confidence that their votes are going to be counted and their voice will be heard. But, as we stand here, this cherished right is coming under attack because, in 2026, we can expect a continuation of what is happening in these last 9 months: that the Trump administration is doing everything it can to undermine the confidence in elections and sow distrust in the election process. It is like a spider weaving a web. The Trump administration has crafted multiple strands that, when combined together, attack and change the voting landscape in a way that America will not recognize. Trump is attempting to strip power from the States, consolidate it for himself, and subvert the will of the people. It is systematic, it is strategic, and it is deeply and urgently serious. Today, I am beginning an extended effort to elevate this issue and sound the alarm--because voters will go to the polls this Tuesday, and my fear is that it could be the last free and fair election, unless we rise up and we act. And this fear is not mine alone. I have heard it all around Connecticut and from my colleagues all around the country, and it is well founded. President Trump's crusade of voter suppression and election subversion started on day one of the administration, when he pardoned the individuals who participated in the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6. That January 6 attack was not a protest or even just a riot. It was an assault on the very heart of our democracy. In attempting to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election, the January 6 insurrectionists sought to nullify the votes and shatter the peaceful transfer of power that has characterized our democracy for nearly 250 years. President Trump provided a blanket pardon to the January 6 attackers and thereby endorsed and placed the Presidential seal of approval on their actions and their direction and goal of seeking to overturn the will of the people. So it was no accident that these pardons were one of President Trump's very first acts in office. It was an unmistakable signal that his administration would be obsessed with suppressing votes and undermining free and fair elections. And since that very first day in office, President Trump and his administration have been praising and hiring into leadership positions the very people who attempted to subvert our democracy. In fact, just this past month, the White House reportedly hired Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who attempted to overturn the 2020 election results, and he is working officially as a ``special government employee'' tasked with looking into the 2020 election and current voting machines. But rewriting the history of January 6 was only the beginning of a relentless, purposeful campaign to stoke fear among voters and sow seeds of distrust in American elections. They have employed Federal Agencies to help do some of the dirty work. In fact, President Trump has weaponized several Federal Agencies against you, the voters. He is using these Agencies as instruments to suppress your vote. The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice have both taken alarming actions in recent months targeting the vote. At DHS, a senior Department leader, Heather Honey, an election denier and conspiracy theorist in her own right, reportedly told State and local election officials that the administration could declare a ``national emergency'' based on the claim that the 2020 election was stolen to obtain ``additional powers that don't exist right now'' and act ``without Congress'' to ``mandate that States'' adopt her preferred, radical election rules. In addition, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, a critical Agency within DHS that works with State and local officials to protect the security of our elections, has been gutted. CISA has been instrumental in protecting our elections from cyber attacks and threats by foreign and domestic actors. These attacks are growing, not diminishing. I don't have to reveal any classified information for the American people to know that attacks by our adversaries on our election system are an increasing threat, but instead of bolstering CISA, President Trump has placed on administrative leave or reassigned nearly all of its election experts. In their place, President Trump has installed inexperienced political activists who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Marci McCarthy, named director of public affairs at CISA, was responsible for spreading false claims about faulty voting machines in Georgia. This past July, Sean Plankey, the nominee to head CISA, refused to answer me when I asked him in a hearing if he believed that the 2020 election was stolen. President Trump has also chosen to attack CISA officials. In April, President Trump issued an Executive order directing the Department of Justice and DHS to investigate Chris Krebs, the former head of CISA, calling him a ``bad-faith actor'' who ``weaponized and abused'' his authority--all because Krebs refused to lie and say Trump's 2020 election was rigged. And because Krebs said there was no evidence in 2020 that ``any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,'' he was attacked, and that Executive order asked DHS to target him. At the same time, President Trump has dismantled CISA's election security programs, including by terminating initiatives that monitor foreign disinformation and cutting the funding of systems that detect, deter, and alert States and localities about cyber and physical attacks on election infrastructure. This dismantling of CISA is fundamental and deeply alarming, but at the Department of Justice, things are no better. President Trump took an ax to the Department of Justice's Voting Section within the Civil Rights Division, that historic section established to protect and uplift the vote. First, he decimated the Voting Section staff. In January, it was estimated that the section had 30 attorneys on staff to enforce voting rights laws. Today, it is three. Then he decimated its mission, transforming the section from a bulwark against voting suppression into its opposite: a mechanism to suppress voters and stoke fears of voter fraud. So instead of lifting up the work of voting rights and serving as a staunch defender of voters in the courts, the section has withdrawn its engagement in seven active voting cases. Where it does remain involved, in redistricting cases such as Louisiana v. Callais, it has taken a sudden and staunch anti-voter stance. The Department of Justice has decided to make a mockery of poll monitoring as well. The Trump DOJ will now use poll monitoring--which began as an effort to secure minorities' votes when they were denied it following passage of the Voting Rights Act--to potentially intimidate and surveil voters and officials alike at polling sites in California and New Jersey. He is doing it at the request of the Republican Party officials in those States, ahead of the November 4 election. Those anti-voter campaigns are coupled with efforts to distort the electoral maps. Since President Trump took office, he has pressured Republican State legislators to ignore the will of their voters and effectively elect representatives through extreme and unabashedly partisan gerrymandering. This flagrantly abusive redistricting occurred in States like Texas, representing a top-down campaign directed by President Trump to eradicate as many congressional districts as possible that could conceivably elect a Democrat. For example, the new Texas redistricting seeks to gift Republicans 80 percent of its House seats in a State where Democrats routinely receive between 40 and 50 percent of the vote in congressional districts. It is plainly a move designed to target minority voters. The same playbook follows in Missouri and North Carolina. These are the actions of desperate politicians--desperate because they know how deeply unpopular their policies are with voters, policies of stripping people of their healthcare, cutting taxes for the rich, and sending the military into American streets. Instead of changing those policies to win over voters, the Trump administration is seeking to disenfranchise the voters, suppress votes, and rig these elections by shamelessly moving voters to new districts. President Trump and Republicans have started a tit-for-tat redistricting arms race where Democrats are forced to fight fire with fire and play catchup to undo Republicans' damage and restore balanced representation. And the ones who suffer are the voters. Their voices are ignored and often silenced by frightened partisan politicians. But it isn't just the voters who are undermined; it is our States as well. Under the Constitution, it is the States that have the power to oversee the time, place, and manner of their elections, subject only to legislation enacted by Congress. The President is given no role--zero-- in that process. States are not agents for the Federal Government, hamstrung to Presidential orders when it comes to elections. In this space of elections, they have their own independent, sovereign authority. Yet President Trump believes he can dictate the rules over our elections and seize power from the States for himself, and he has sought to do it in a number of important ways that ought to concern this body, especially because we represent our States. Foremost among his tactics, he wants to supplant States in determining the means, methods, and mechanisms for placing our votes. Those mechanisms vary. For example, some States use more mail-in voting than others, and States don't always have the same approach to early voting. Rather than the States making those calls, he wants to be Big Brother himself, watching how elections must be run, dictating how it is done. The DOJ has already unsuccessfully sought access to voting machines in Missouri, sending a request to ``access, physically inspect and perhaps take physical custody of election equipment used in the 2020 November general election.'' In March 2025, President Trump issued an Executive order--another Executive order--that attempted to mandate that the independent, bipartisan Election Assistance Commission rescind all previous certifications of voting equipment and recertify systems under amended guidelines. That order is currently being challenged in court. It is plainly unlawful, it is reckless, it is unfair to the States, and it is a false solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist. President Trump has called voting machines ``highly inaccurate, very expensive, and seriously controversial.'' There is zero evidence-- zero--to support these claims. It is all just a pretext to insert Federal control over States' rights. States do have rights, and President Trump is trying to override them roughshod. His tactics are similar with mail-in ballots. In the 2024 election, nearly one-third of Americans voted by mail. Mail-in voting is instrumental in helping our troops and making sure that every voice is heard, even when they are overseas. President Trump has stated that he wants to ``lead a movement'' to get rid of mail-in voting, and he posted this past week on social media: ``No mail-in or `Early' Voting.'' He has assigned lawyers to craft another Executive order to stop it. The irony is not lost on anyone that President Trump himself voted by mail in the 2020 election when he cast his ballot in Florida. In some States, such as Oregon and Washington, mail-in ballots are the primary mechanism used by voters. Attempting to illegally strip States of this right will decimate the way our citizens are heard and the foundational principle of States' rights. By law, by tradition, by history, and sound public policy, States make this call, not the President, and attempting to strip States of these rights is flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional. President Trump's lackeys have attempted to bully States into handing over sensitive and personal information contained within State voter rolls. DOJ has requested information or meetings about election administration from States and has demanded 40 States--40 States-- provide their full voter registration lists. In a private meeting, Michael Gates, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, disclosed that all 50 States will eventually receive these requests. The eight States that so far have refused to turn over that data are now being sued by the Department of Justice. Trump is attempting to compile the largest list of voter roll data ever in our history in order to bolster unsubstantiated and false claims of illegal voting by noncitizens, despite the fact that noncitizen voting is essentially nonexistent. This type of national voter roll collection is totally unprecedented in our history. Nothing like it has ever been done before. Nothing like this invasion of privacy and promises to voters would have been imaginable before January of this year. The information he is requesting includes your driver's license number, your Social Security number, your name, your address, your political party, and your voting history. He wants to know who you are and potentially use that information however he pleases. He wants to use that information against States as well--more broadly, to be the judge and jury of whether States are effectively running their own elections, despite the fact that States--and I apologize for repeating it--States are tasked with administering elections under the Constitution. In case Trump's DOJ can't dismantle elections using all of these maligned tactics, the administration is also targeting election officials who seek to run efficient, fair, honest elections and to calculate and certify election results in a nonpartisan way. They are at work in every election. Everybody in this body knows what they do and knows how important they are to free and fair elections. President Trump's DOJ has a new weaponization working group with a focus on targeting election officials as a result of supposedly widespread voter fraud. It is the product of fever imagination. The Department of Justice is also exploring whether they can bring criminal charges against State and local officials if they believe that those officials have not adequately safeguarded their computer systems from harm, despite gutting CISA--the very Agency tasked with assisting them in safeguarding their computers and software. To instill fear in election workers, the administration is doing everything it can to signal that it will punish anyone who doesn't bow to them. Since 2020, Trump has been posting on social media and publicly calling for prosecution against election officials he accuses of working against him. Prosecuting election officials won't make elections any safer or fairer; it is simply about creating fear and anxiety. It will lead to an exodus of individuals--it already has begun--that we need to rely on to run our elections. The fearmongering seems to be having its effect ever since Trump began espousing false claims of stolen elections in 2020 and putting this kind of pressure on the dedicated men and women who show up for elections to help run them. Election officials have reported harassment, threats, and abuse locally. Election officials with institutional knowledge of how local systems run and who are imperative to registering voters and maintaining voter processes are leaving their roles at an alarming rate. The turnover was especially pronounced in large jurisdictions where the Trump campaign focused its misinformation campaign around 2020 elections. Now, each of these individual actions of anti-election assault is serious and significant, but each action needs to be seen together as something deeper and broader. It is the sum and substance of totalitarianism--not at some distant point in the future, not a vague storm cloud on the horizon, but the destruction of democracy here and now. As we approach our democracy's 250th anniversary, we can't afford the luxury of defeatism or despair or complacency. We need to join together and sound the alarm across differences of political party, geography, financial interests, personal background, and all the rest. Join in this body--come together because we have a common interest in making sure that elections are free and fair. More than words, we need action--your action as voters registering to vote and enabling others to do so, volunteering to work at the polls and supporting election officials and administrators, contributing to organizations that defend voting rights in court, demanding that public officials unite against the sabotage of our democracy, and uniting at rallies, townhalls, and every other forum available to make your voice known. I will be reaching out to colleagues on both sides of the aisle and coming to the floor and reaching out to the American people. Just as we threw off the yoke of monarchy 2\1/2\ centuries ago, the American people still have the power to determine their own future. They still have the courage to make ``good trouble,'' as John Lewis, the historic voting champion, famously said. Most of all, the American people have the will and fortitude to stand up to this assault. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize and celebrate the 350th anniversary of Derby, CT. It may be our State's smallest city by square mileage, but Derby's role in our Nation's history is truly larger than life. The city was first established as a trading post in 1642 and was officially named Derby in 1675. Derby was incorporated as a city on May 13, 1775. The city is home to many significant moments in our Nation's history and played a vital role in our foundational years. Derby was integral in defending our Nation during the War of 1812, helping to repel British invaders along the coast of Connecticut and the Thames River. In addition, during this conflict, Derby native Isaac Hull distinguished himself for his command of the USS Constitution and to this day is renowned for his naval excellence and fearlessness. Derby has made notable contributions to Connecticut, New England, and our country. The city had the first electric trolley system in New England--only the second in the United States--and is also home to the first electric locomotive in our history to be built and successfully used for commercial freight hauling. This locomotive, built in 1888, is kept in running condition to this day by the Shore Line Trolley Museum. Derby is also the hometown of such notable figures as Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett, the first African-American diplomat; Harry Haugh, who invented the ``electromatic traffic signal'' in 1928 and revolutionized traffic control; Clara Louise Kellogg, who was recognized as the Nation's first prima donna opera singer; and Mary Portis, who became the first female executive of Scouting America in 1990. Today, Derby is known for several annual events, including parades and farmers' markets, as well as a collection of museums and a vibrant restaurant culture--especially for chicken wings, New Haven-style pizza, and craft breweries. It is a lively small city with a thriving commercial district. The residents of Derby have kept their history incredibly well- preserved; in fact, there are currently six locations in Derby that are on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Birmingham Green, the Derby Public Library, and the Howe House. The city officially celebrated their 350th anniversary on May 13, 2025, and held a gala on October 17, 2025. I hope my colleagues will join me in celebrating the city of Derby and all of its residents and community leaders, as well as its remarkable place in our Nation's history.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, as everyone in this Chamber knows and everyone in our great Nation knows, we are in the midst of a healthcare crisis. Now, the word ``crisis'' probably is the most overused term in the political lexicon, but the American people know that this crisis is real and urgent because they know, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. That old saying epitomizes the importance of healthcare when it affects our children, who can't get healthcare for themselves; our seniors, who also depend on others; and everyday Americans across the country, who are at their kitchen tables tonight or at their workplaces or are with their families, wondering: When will it happen? When will I get sick, not just with a virus or the common cold? When will there be a healthcare crisis for me? And it happens to everybody. Nobody is invincible. Everybody needs healthcare, and it should be regarded as a human right. We face an imminent and real and present crisis right now for millions of Americans who will no longer be able to afford healthcare insurance, beginning in days or weeks, because premiums are skyrocketing. They will rise by double or triple what they are now. Insurance companies are already raising premium rates. Americans are beginning a period of open enrollment. In Connecticut, it begins on November 1, when they will have to make choices--literally, in effect, writing checks to insurance companies and saying: I am going to afford this plan. But many Americans will find no plan affordable if we fail to provide for them an extension of the healthcare tax credit that has enabled them to afford health insurance up to now under a measure that we passed and the President signed. My Republican colleagues continue to ignore the needs and interests of the American people by blocking our efforts to fix this imminent, immediate crisis. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is out of town, the President is out of touch in Asia, and we are left with the clock ticking. Time is not on our side. Let's be very clear. Republicans control the House of Representatives, which hasn't shown up to work in over a month, but they continue to be paid; Republicans control the Senate; and maybe most importantly, the Republicans control the White House. This government shutdown is happening on President Trump's watch. It is on him. These skyrocketing healthcare costs are happening on his watch too. Instead of fighting for the American people, President Trump and Republicans have spent the past year seeking to strip millions of Americans of healthcare, food assistance, student loan support, and much more that is vital to their quality of life and, for many of them, their very survival. Democrats have been sounding the alarm over the ongoing threats to healthcare and the impact it will have on every American, but Republicans seemingly--I say ``seemingly''--refuse to listen. I think they are listening but are in denial because instead of working with Democrats to prevent Americans from being crushed by impending medical debt, Republicans have wasted valuable time blocking every single Democratic effort to lower costs for families. To be clear, if Republicans refuse to join Democrats in protecting the American people from massive increases in their healthcare costs, millions of people will suffer, and healthcare premiums will rise to incomprehensible levels. Just this week, Connecticut launched a window-shopping tool that allows residents to preview their healthcare options for next year. It allows consumers to see how costs compare to next year's costs. Very frankly, the options are preposterous. For example, a couple in their sixties living in Hartford, CT--our capital--making $100,000 a year will go from paying $260.38 to $2,614.60. That is for the same plan. It is an Anthem plan. They are going from the cost this year of $260.83 to, next year, $2,614.60. By the way, they are getting nothing more. It is the same plan. There is no additional coverage, and they are paying over $2,500 more each month. It is, in effect, a Republican healthcare tax on a family in their sixties making $100,000 a year--that is a middle-class family--in Hartford, CT. Let me give you another example. A family of four living in Hartford and making $159,767, roughly $160,000 a year--the average salary for a family of four in our State--would be forced to pay $1,159.52 more. They go from $796.65 this year to $1,956.17 next year. I don't know how they can afford it. The simple answer is, probably they can't. And that family will be at risk of financial catastrophe without healthcare insurance coverage. Already--let me just emphasize, already--healthcare debt is the major cause of bankruptcy in this country. It hurts our whole economy. So even if you don't care about a family of four living in Hartford or a couple in their sixties, even if the humanitarian impacts are impervious to you, think about the economic consequences. Think about your pocketbook, not theirs. Bankruptcy will increase along with the suffering. These price hikes, the taxes on healthcare, are absolutely absurd and abhorrent. It is incomprehensible to expect any American enrolled in one of these plans to have the disposable income necessary to keep their coverage. This added cost is money that could be used to cover weeks' worth of groceries, heat, rent, or mortgage. This added cost is money that many individuals and families simply don't have. They won't pay these prices because they simply cannot. Instead, many will be forced to go without health insurance, which raises the costs for everyone. Very bluntly, these rates will not just impact people enrolled in the ACA marketplace. If Republicans have their way, the entire healthcare system will feel the effects, and every individual trying to receive care, regardless of what kind of insurance they have, will be impacted. The ripple effect is coming to you. Even if you don't have an ACA plan, even if you are paying some part of your employer's insurance cost, this rising tide will truly lift everybody's boat in terms of costs. Republicans are making Connecticut families and Americans across the country choose between affordable healthcare or putting food on the table or heating their homes this winter or buying clothes for their kid. It is cruel. It is unnecessary. It will undoubtedly cost people their health and their lives. Open enrollment is less than 5 days away now in Connecticut. Time is not on our side. We have no time to waste. If you don't feel this sense of urgency, listen to your constituents. I choose to stand with them--with small business owners, with working families, with everyday Americans who will be crushed by these costs, and their futures will be crippled--at least financially. It is paramount in my mind that Republican colleagues listen to those constituents, to those small business owners, to those families and millions of Americans and healthcare professionals who have been speaking truth to power. This government shutdown can end tonight if we choose the path forward to guarantee an extension of the healthcare tax credits and add it to the government funding measure that is now before this body. The House of Representatives needs to come back to do its job. President Trump will come back from Asia. The American people deserve a real solution that preserves Americans' healthcare. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, Americans are watching members of the military patrolling the streets of major cities in the United States of America. I never thought I would utter those words anywhere, let alone on the floor of the U.S. Senate--members of the military in our neighborhoods, on our streets, patrolling under authority. What authority? That is the question. That authority has been challenged, and it will continue under challenge because the courts are continuing to decide whether Donald Trump has turned the National Guard into an illegal police force, in effect, to serve his political ends and personal whims. But there is no question as to the fact that members of the military are in major cities despite clear and consistent objections from Governors, from mayors, from police chiefs, from community groups, from citizens across the United States, and, yes, from Members of the U.S. Senate. Today, in DC, California, Oregon, and Illinois, these National Guardsmen are not only patrolling the streets, they are aiding and supporting ICE crackdowns--again, despite challenges to their legality. Now, three district courts in California, Oregon, and Illinois have said it is illegal. One court of appeals has allowed it to go partially forward, but there remains a court order stopping it in Illinois, and the litigation will go forward. But here is the threat, the really dire and dangerous threat: President Trump has said that if those challenges prevail, he will invoke the Insurrection Act. He has said that if courts or Governors delay the deployment, he will invoke an act that is 217 years old, which was written after the Whiskey Rebellion and the Battle of the Wabash, when local police simply didn't exist in most places or were overrun in those areas by the farmers who were objecting to Federal taxes. That original Insurrection Act was written at a time when police forces were limited and poorly equipped. The Insurrection Act provided for a Federal force when a genuine insurrection, rebellion, or armed violence was occurring beyond the control of local or State officials, and that is the point here. The Founders found abhorrent the idea that there be a standing military force that could somehow act as a policing mechanism. In fact, they objected--many of them--to a standing army at all. But the concept of a military force defending the United States was that it be aimed at foreign adversaries and enemies. The threats from abroad were its target, not internal policing, not problems of law enforcement within the homeland. That is precisely what President Trump is using the military now to do--a violation of the Constitution, of the spirit and purpose of the Insurrection Act, and the modern-day realities of law enforcement. Those realities are that police forces are the ones equipped and trained to contain the kinds of potential threats in cities or towns or States that purportedly Donald Trump wants to use the military to quell. Well, the simple fact is, on the streets in those neighborhoods, there is no threat of violence that justifies these kinds of police state tactics. The court in Oregon specifically found that in the last weeks and couple of months, there has been no violence on any widespread scale. The same findings more or less have been done by courts in other jurisdictions. But even if there were, police forces there have state-of-the-art weapons, equipment, analysis tools, communication platforms, and training--all that is necessary to do the job of addressing the kind of threat or violence that President Trump seems to feel exists there. There was no such professional force, locally or statewide, when the Ninth Congress passed the original Insurrection Act. Today, in the 119th Congress, the problems that law enforcement was designed to address simply are no longer commensurate with the dangers it is creating now. And I will note that I introduced the Insurrection Act of 2024 before the current administration took office. In fact, a Democrat was President at the time. But after the President's decision to deploy Active-Duty marines along with the National Guard in Los Angeles, I reintroduced this legislation with my colleagues from California and 16 other States. The danger of the President invoking the Insurrection Act is no longer hypothetical or abstract; it is real. It is happening now. The President shows no signs of stopping these deployments. They are becoming more widespread, not less. The President's threat to invoke the Insurrection Act is real. It has to be taken as real. And I believe the courts will continue to rule against him and that he may well use the Insurrection Act as a weapon to expand his deployments and turn these cities and States into armed camps and police states. He will, in short, circumvent both Congress and the judicial system because of the current breadth and expansive powers under the Insurrection Act. When it was written, there was no danger of abuse. Now, there is. When 600 armed rebels attacked government troops during the Whiskey Rebellion, there was a need for Federal troops there. Nearly 1,000 Federal troops, in fact, died at the Battle of Wabash. We are not seeing armed rebels organized to resist Federal taxes coming against local police. We are not seeing the troops in a pitched battle with organized rebels here in DC or in Portland or Chicago. What we are seeing are members of the military going through streets in armed vehicles, enabling ICE to crack down. Now, let's be clear, this issue is unrelated to enforcement of our immigration laws. We can advocate strongly that immigration laws be vigorously pursued and prosecuted. It just shouldn't be done by the U.S. military. We have ICE to do it. And we can be critical of ICE for the kind of masked raids in unmarked cars that occurred just recently at an apartment building in Chicago, taking citizens as well as immigrants out of their apartment. We are here because of the need to specify in the Insurrection Act when it can be invoked, and this measure that I have reintroduced would very simply create checks and balances and limit the Executive's authority to deploy troops domestically. It wouldn't interfere at all or relate to his use of troops abroad, outside the boundaries and borders of the United States. It allows Congress to support the President's decision to extend the deployment through a joint resolution of approval, but it requires that he come to Congress for approval after a certain period of time. It requires the Attorney General to certify that alternatives are insufficient and for the Joint Chiefs of Staff to detail the size, the scope, and the expected duration of deployment and certify that the forces to be deployed can execute the mission. And it provides for judicial review. It ensures that courts can prohibit flagrant abuse--not substituting their judgment for the President's but review whether there is a coverable basis for this kind of action. And finally, it clarifies that the original Insurrection Act does not allow the President to suspend habeas corpus and impose martial law or deputize private citizens. The President should have that power to use our military to quell a genuine rebellion, organized and armed, creating violence that cannot be contained by local and State police. It should not enable him to deploy our military willy-nilly because of his unbridled authority under the current law. I have the utmost respect for our National Guard, our Connecticut National Guard. As I say, when you call out the National Guard, you call out America, and they should not be abused to police their fellow citizens, to act as local police in missions that they are not trained or equipped to handle. I fear for the future of our National Guard and the future of our military if the President is emboldened or enabled to use them for partisan political purposes. He has already, I fear, damaged the credibility and trust in our military by deploying them in the way that he has done already. Our National Guard is there when disaster strikes. They help to clear the roads and enable people to go back to their homes. I have seen them, in the wake of natural catastrophes, be lifesavers, literally, for the people of Connecticut and, I am sure, for others all around America. They are vital to our defense when they are deployed abroad under the President's authority to use them abroad against our enemies, as they are now deployed from Connecticut and elsewhere all around the globe. But we need to stem the tide of Executive overreach. We can protect our civil liberties, our communities, and our military by imposing these checks and balances in the Insurrection Act that I have submitted. It well serves the interests of our States--indeed, our States' rights--our military, and the traditions and ethos of our great National Guard and Active-Duty military, and it serves the American people in preserving rights and liberties that our Founders were zealous to protect. And so, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be discharged from further consideration of S. 2070 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, before I turn to my distinguished colleague Senator Welch from Vermont I have a few quick points in response. First, I would note that my friend from Texas has not mentioned at all the Insurrection Act. My problem is not only with the use of the National Guard as a police force but, even more alarmingly, the potential use of virtually unchecked power under the Insurrection Act. The measure that I seek unanimous consent on is the Insurrection Act that I have offered to provide limits on the President's power, if the court should tell him that he can't use the National Guard in the way that he has done, and he makes good on his threat to invoke the Insurrection Act. Second point, the Senator from Texas and I have worked together on a number of measures. I am proud of the work that we have done. One area where we agree is that there ought to be law enforcement rigorously and vigorously to stop crime, to deter it, to punish it, and to make sure that our neighborhoods and streets are safer. In fact, he and I both served as attorneys general of our States, and we are both on the Judiciary Committee. The question here is, really, fighting crime and how best to do it. My feeling is that the best way to fight crime--local and State offenses--is to bolster local and State police forces, not to cut them and the resources supporting them, as President Trump has done. He has, in effect, cut the Byrne grants from the Department of Justice. He has stopped training programs. He has reduced the provisions and programs for equipment. So the restrictions that are imposed on resources going to the Federal Government for local and State police were contrary to the goals of fighting crime. Using the National Guard as a substitute for local and State police is not only contrary to law. It is also contradictory to the practical demands of policing, which require a different kind of equipment and training than our National Guard have. Local and State police ought to be supported as enthusiastically and fully as we can do, and not, in effect, use the National Guard as a quick fix. They won't stay in the District of Columbia for months or years. They are here very temporarily. And if they have accomplished a reduction in crime, the same could have been done by simply providing more resources, more cops on the streets with the equipment that they need to accomplish the same thing. We are not talking about securing our borders. We are not talking about nullification of Federal law. We are talking about overreach and possible overuse, contrary to the spirit of our Federal system of a National Guard force that should be fighting our adversaries abroad or taking care of natural disasters or catastrophes, not employed as local police, which they are not equipped or trained to do as readily as civilian police. With that, I will turn to my colleague from Vermont.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont for being here. We will be followed by others who have not yet come to the floor. I expect them momentarily. I want to thank my colleague from Vermont for being here today and for his very powerful remarks. Despite the objection, we are committed to pursue this issue, to seek a change in the law that will assure Americans that our military is used properly for the purpose that the Founders and all of us want them to do. I am pleased to be followed now by my colleague from California Senator Schiff.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I am very grateful for the opportunity to ask a question and for the Senator from Oregon yielding to me.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. First of all, I want to thank him for his leadership, his fortitude, and his determination exhibited so eloquently over these last 24 hours. He is really providing a model for all of us in standing up and speaking out. Let me say that after listening to the eloquent words of my colleague from Massachusetts, that the destruction Donald Trump is doing to the White House is emblematic of the wrecking ball he is taking to our democracy. Put aside the waste of money that could be used to improve our education system, to solve food insecurity, to guarantee the election integrity of this Nation, the damage that he is doing to this iconic symbol of America is so costly to our image and esteem around the world. The White House is a symbol of America, and he is destroying a part of it. What he intends to build as a replacement to the East Wing is a gargantuan insult to America, and it is unfortunately emblematic of a lot of the other destruction he is doing in so many other areas as we watch the norms and laws that protect our great experiment in democracy erode under his destructive action. In some ways, it is a little bit like the frog in the pot. The water begins to heat without our noticing it. The acts seem benign when taken individually, but cumulatively, they will boil and destroy our democracy. The President has turned the Oval Office into an auction house. He has put a ``for sale'' sign on the White House lawn. Influence and power are the way to a quick profit, whether it is crypto or pardons or many of the other perks of office. He is using it for his own personal ends and weaponizing the Department of Justice against his personal opponents, his political adversaries--a violation of basic norms of the Department of Justice and of our democracy. He is prosecuting political enemies in courts that he has filled with MAGA zealots and has a Department of Justice that is run by his personal lawyers. He is punishing constituents of Democrats by canceling billions in Federal programs and firing dedicated public servants during a government shutdown when he simply fails to find them worthy. Last week, he announced that the administration is sending $20 billion in bailout money to Argentina and perhaps another $20 billion in private funding. What he is doing in tariffs has been eclipsed by all the other stuff, but it hits Americans in their pocketbooks. Groceries are skyrocketing in price. Americans are finding it more difficult to put food on the table. Farmers are being crushed by these tariffs as well. Healthcare. The tax credits that make healthcare insurance affordable to millions of Americans will end at the conclusion of this year because he has failed to provide leadership in extending them, and that is why the government has been shut down by Republicans--because they have refused to agree to extend those healthcare tax credits. But maybe most alarmingly--most alarmingly--as is visible in the streets of Oregon, California, Chicago, Los Angeles, is the deployment of our military, our National Guard. The Senator from Oregon has spoken so powerfully and eloquently to bring a critical lens to this desecration of democracy and the impact on our military itself, because they are being used for a purpose that goes against the fundamental purpose of our military in this country. The Founding Fathers were deeply worried about the use of a standing army, potentially, within the homeland, and many were opposed to a standing army because of that concern. So we have laws--Posse Comitatus--that forbid the use of the military against American citizens on American soil. The health of our Republic depends on the proper use of our military against foreign adversaries and threats from abroad. But the President of the United States, in effect, has decided that he will use our National Guard as a police force, supplanting local and State police. And the damage is done not only to institutions--which should be supported and we should be providing more resources to local and State Police, more training and equipment to them so they can do the job of keeping order and maintaining our democracy--but, also, to the military itself, which is demoralized and potentially degraded by the misuse of these resources that are designed to support them in countering adversaries abroad, and, of course, to the faith and trust of Americans in the military, as they see it misused. So I want to ask my colleague from Oregon about perhaps his personal experience as he watches this deployment of the National Guard in his State. How are the people of Oregon reacting to the misuse of our National Guard? Is there faith and trust in the military affected by the President's deployment of the National Guard in a circumstance that a Federal judge has found is unnecessary because whatever protests have happened in the past weeks and months have been peaceful and without the necessity for this kind of military intervention?

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. If my colleague would yield for one more quick question.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I think he is absolutely right to call attention to the extraordinary professionalism of the National Guard, which, hopefully, will avoid the provoked violence that President Trump, unfortunately, would welcome, apparently, here. But we know that the President has said that if the courts deny him the opportunity to deploy the National Guard, he will consider using the military under the Insurrection Act. Yesterday, I came to the floor in support of reforms that I have proposed to the Insurrection Act that would reduce the unbridled and unchecked powers that he has right now. The Insurrection Act makes modifications to the Posse Comitatus law in ways that potentially provide him with unbridled authority. My reform bill would require accountability. It would enable use of the military in the event of a claimed rebellion or insurrection for a limited amount of time, require the President then to come to Congress and make the case, and Congress to approve a set of reforms that would protect the American people against misuse of the military in the event that he could not deploy the National Guard in this way. I want to ask my friend from Oregon--and I believe I know the answer because he has supported reforms in the past--whether these kinds of reforms to the Insurrection Act are important and necessary to protect the American people and the military itself against the kinds of misuse of powers that could occur.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I thank the Senator from Oregon. I yield the floor to my other colleague from Oregon.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, last year, I was privileged to lead a bipartisan delegation of 20 of our colleagues to Normandy, celebrating the 80th anniversary of the historic landing there, where American boys-- and they were boys, 17 and 18 years old--stormed the beaches of France to liberate Europe. It was one of the most moving experiences of my lifetime. I believe the Presiding Officer was there. We were part of a bipartisan group, evenly divided--10 Republicans and 10 Democrats. What we heard and saw I think will stay with us for a lifetime, particularly from the veterans who remembered that day. They are in their hundred- year-old ages of their lives. After speaking to them, we heard speeches from the President of the United States, of France, and leaders of Europe. But what stuck with me was what I heard from the veterans. One of them said to me, ``This was our moment.'' ``This was our moment.'' We walked through the American cemetery, those silent rows of white grave markers, down to the beach, Omaha Beach, where I thought of those 18- and 20-year-old boys jumping out of landing craft with 80 pounds on their backs, into 8 feet of water, under a hail of machine gun bullets and mortar fire, onto a beach three football fields long--three football fields long--without any cover. There were no trees, there were no dunes, and the hail of gunfire and mortars kept coming. I think 90 percent died in the first wave, maybe 80 percent in the second. They kept going--a third and a fourth wave, storming the cliffs, taking back Europe, and saving democracy. I kept thinking, as I walked on that bleak beach, windswept, waves crashing, ``That was our moment.'' I kept thinking about the veteran who said that to me. It was an American moment, and our reason for going to Normandy was to honor those young men who saved democracy. This is our moment. This is our moment to save democracy. I know it sounds like an exaggeration to say that our democracy is now under attack, but it is from adversaries and enemies abroad--China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. But we also have to make sure that we safeguard our liberties at home against attack and efforts to undermine them, even if some may feel they are well-meaning. One of them and only one of them is the illegal and unconstitutional use of our military and the deployment of National Guard into American cities to do what local law enforcement--our police and others, State and local law enforcement--are supposed to do under our scheme of government, where our military protects us from adversaries abroad, and the FBI, the DEA, and our State and local police make sure we are safe at home. For 250 years, the military has defended our great Republic without fail. It is the bulwark of freedom for this Nation. It is the hope for millions and millions around the world who yearn for freedom. It is nonpolitical. It remains one of the few institutions the American people still revere. Americans have faith in the military because it is nonpolitical. So what the President is risking by using our military, whether it is the National Guard or Active-Duty marines or another branch of service, is not only a threat to the individual liberties of people in those cities but also the credibility and reverence that the American people have for this venerable institution that has protected us from aggression and threats abroad. By pursuing political goals with our young men and women in uniform, he risks recruitment for the military; he risks the respect that our constituents have that enables us to work for full funding and support for our military, embodied by the National Defense Authorization Act that we will consider hopefully just within a few hours. When the Armed Services Committee considers the National Defense Authorization Act, the votes at the end are almost always near unanimous. In fact, in my 15 years on that committee, they have been nearly unanimous every year. And we vote on it in a timely way to make sure that we show support for this necessary institution. The risk to our military as well as to our individual rights and liberties is what prompted me to introduce the Insurrection Act of 2024. We all know that the Insurrection Act has a long history. It was written over 200 years ago, in the aftermath of the Whiskey Rebellion and the Battle of Wabash--in those instances, probably not at the tip of the tongue of most of us. The forces of law enforcement were limited and poorly equipped. They were barely existent. Local police. Virtually no State had its own police. So there was a need for potential use of the military in those instances. But even then, use of military was limited under the original Insurrection Act because Americans feared a permanent standing police doing local law enforcement. I drafted this legislation in an effort to amend that outdated law, which gives the President enormous, unchecked powers to deploy the military to quell domestic rebellion. Now, the lack of defining terms, the absence of real accountability, and the vagueness of that statute are the reasons we now need reform. Limits were imposed, but the limits are filled with loopholes, practical gaps that fail to check the President's power. The problems the act was designed to address are no longer commensurate with the dangers it is now creating. I reintroduced this legislation for this Congress, and I thank my colleagues for supporting this effort. The President's actions over the last 8 months demonstrate the need for this urgent reform and increased congressional oversight. Earlier this week, the President suggested that he would invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy more guardsmen in major cities if the courts or Governors delayed deployment. So I stand here with my colleagues from Oregon, Illinois, and California, whose constituents are living through this threat. It is now a reality as much as a threat. I warned this body 2 years ago of this reality--unchecked power deployed unconsciously. I should say that this kind of use of the military poses a tremendous threat to all of our civil liberties even if we are not from California or Oregon or Illinois. It could happen in Connecticut. And the lack of a factual basis for it is well documented in the district court decision issued by a Federal judge days ago citing the absence of any real need on the ground in real time, with evidence before her court-- statements from ICE officers that there was no need. Her findings, which are airtight and persuasive, are the reason why I am here to say the National Guard should not be deployed there. Reliance should be placed on local and State police. There should be challenges to any deployment in Illinois or California to test whether it is actually needed to preserve order. The National Guard has always been a symbol of hope for communities. We have seen it in Connecticut when disaster struck. When there are weather catastrophes, the National Guard is in our neighborhoods to help remove downed trees or provide access to homes and to preserve order when local police can't do it. But now, they are being used to turn the military into the President's personal army. The Founders warned of threats to liberty that a standing army would create. It was one of their biggest fears because they had lived through a time when the British had a standing army in their neighborhoods--in fact, went into their homes and, without permission, used their homes and shelters and food. Through the years, through great force of effort at times, the military has remained politically independent. It is under the Commander in Chief, but it is nonpolitical. My bill would protect not only American citizens from Executive overreach but also the military from becoming pawns in any kind of political game. This legislation would create checks and balances, limit the scope of these deployments, authorize extensions via joint resolution, and create a judicial review process. These commonsense solutions would amend an outdated law that no longer fully serves the interests of this Nation. For the sake of our military and the constituents we represent, I hope my colleagues will support this effort because this use of the military is part of a larger effort to shift the focus of our national defense to policing the homeland rather than protecting us from threats abroad. We need to provide strong, vibrant, vigorous law enforcement and support local and State or Federal policing funds, and that is why I have been so upset and angry that this administration has cut funding--hundreds of millions of dollars that aid and train local police, that increase their numbers and provide aid for victims. The programs have been decimated in the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. We need to put our money where our mouth is. This administration needs to support our State and local police not just in rhetoric but in reality. The reality is that there must be reform in the Insurrection Act, not just to protect our citizens and our liberties at this moment--this is our moment--but also the well-being and strength of the American military. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.