Amy Klobuchar

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to urge the Senate to assert its constitutional authority and to demand accountability for the grave costs that servicemembers, their families, and the American people have shouldered because of the President's war in Iran. After more than 6 months--6 months--it is clear that the President had no plan when the war started and has no plan for how to end it. To be clear, Iran is a terrorist state and should never have a nuclear weapon, and the regime's aggression in the region and repression of Iranian citizens must end. That is why I have long supported sanctions against Iran as well as the Iran nuclear agreement negotiated by President Obama and our allies. And I opposed President Trump's decision to take us out of that agreement. Our ultimate goal must be peace in the region. But more than 6 months into this conflict, American servicemembers have been killed, including my constituent MSG Nicole Amor, who was among those killed by an Iranian strike on a United States facility in Kuwait on March 1. Innocent civilians across the region have also been killed, and the costs keep mounting. Beyond the toll on human life, the costs of the war to taxpayers is staggering. The Pentagon recently estimated that it has already spent $42 billion on this unauthorized war so far--$42 billion. This is money that could be used to expand childcare or to restore healthcare premium tax credits to help millions of Americans who have seen their healthcare premiums double or triple this year or how about the 8 million people who, just this last year, have given up coverage entirely? That $40 billion, that could have extended the tax credits to help people afford their insurance premiums for over a year. And now the President is asking for $70 billion more. That is 2 more years of those tax credits. As a result of this war, American families continue to face spiking gas prices, costing consumers more than $800 per family in higher gas and diesel costs. American people, outside of what I just outlined that the Pentagon has spent of its taxpayer money, have spent over $100 billion on this war in higher prices. In Minnesota, gas prices are up more than a $1.50 since the day before the war started. Diesel prices--right as farmers are going to harvest--have doubled across the country. These higher fuel prices also make trucking, in addition to farming and freight, more expensive, hitting families and small businesses over and over again when you add to that the tariffs. That is why Congress must step up and assert our authority under the Constitution. Congress did not authorize this war. And more than 6 months in, Congress still has not authorized this war--6 months in. And our colleagues on the other side of the aisle keep just giving up their authority. Why even come here? Why even take this job if you are going to just let one President run over you and be able to make his own calls and just say: Hey, we are going to a war. It is going to cost the American people over $100 billion. It is going to spike up prices across the country. Innocent people are going to be killed, and then we are going to lose soldiers at the same time. In fact, both Houses of Congress have passed resolutions to stop this unauthorized war. I have voted a dozen times to stop this war, unless Congress passes an authorization, and I will continue to vote that way until Congress restores its role in decisions of war and peace. The American people are asking what this war has accomplished: Are we closer to a strong and strict agreement to curtail Iran's nuclear ambitions? The answer is no. Are we now dealing with Iranian leaders who are less hardline? The answer is no. Have we preserved open shipping routes that are so important for trade? Answer, no. It is time for the President to end this war. It is time for the work to bring costs down for the American people and foster lasting peace in the region. This is our moment. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, on behalf of myself and Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, I rise today to honor Minnesota State Representative Karen Clark, who passed away in June after a lifetime of service to our State. Karen was raised on a farm near Edgerton, MN, where she first developed her love for the land and passion for protecting the earth--a commitment that would come to define her legacy as a legislator and the cofounder of an environmental organization. She earned her degree from the College of Saint Teresa and began working as a public health nurse, providing care to underserved communities. Karen was also known as a powerhouse community organizer fighting for civil rights. In 1980, she turned her focus to the State house and was elected as a State representative. Karen won that first race promising to be a fighter for social justice and economic justice. And for 38 years, she never wavered from that promise. Karen strengthened protections for survivors of domestic violence, got rid of BPA in baby bottles, stood up for the environment and workers, as well as for immigrants and refugees, and wrote the bill legalizing same-sex marriage in Minnesota. She did all of this as a trailblazer, as the first openly lesbian legislator to serve in the Minnesota State House. Karen was committed to doing the right thing, no matter how long it took and no matter the obstacles in her way. After an earlier setback in the fight for marriage equality, Karen did not give up. She did not lose hope. She did not lose sight of the fight, and we remember her words from that moment: ``The Minnesota I know is a place of inclusion, tolerance, and love.'' Thanks to Karen, Minnesota is a more inclusive place and warmer place all the more. There are many words that describe Karen: organizer, environmentalist, legislator, advocate, nurse. But above them all, we think of Karen as the best of Minnesota, as the very ideal of a servant leader. She will be dearly missed by her wife Dr. Jacquelyn Zita and all who benefited from her dedication, compassion, and service.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, in the years since September 11, that obligation has taken many forms. The Congressional Fire Services Caucus has worked to ensure that the needs of America's first responders remain a priority in Washington, DC--advocating for the resources, protections, benefits, and support they need to serve their communities and return home safely. The work of the Fire Services Caucus reflects a responsibility that extends far beyond any single anniversary: to understand the needs and challenges of our local fire and EMS personnel, to stand with those who stand ready to protect us, and to ensure that our Nation does not forget the sacrifices made every day in service to others. Across our cities, towns, and rural communities, first responders answer emergency calls regardless of what awaits them at the scene. They respond to fires, medical emergencies, hazardous material incidents, natural disasters, and much more with the same dedication and sense of duty that defined those who responded on September 11. The work of the fire and emergency services is indispensable to the safety and well-being of every American.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise this evening on behalf of myself and Senator Sheehy and several others, Democrats and Republicans. I represent farmers, small businesses, brewers, and consumers in my State, and I urge my colleagues to table Senator Budd's amendment and give this body 4 more weeks to work toward legislation that supports a thriving hemp industry, ensures proper regulation, and protects kids from dangerous products. As is, the bipartisan continuing resolution that is before us delays a ban on naturally produced hemp products for 4 weeks while taking synthetic hemp derivatives off the market. That is important to note. That is included in this continuing resolution. The original ban, the broad ban, the entire ban--and I know that in my State, we have safety rules in place that have worked very well. The product is taxed. We have not had issues with it since we put those rules in place. The original ban was tucked into a bill to reopen the government last November. Many Members didn't have the chance to learn about it. There had been no hearings. Now they have learned more. Bills have been introduced in the Senate and the House--bipartisan bills--to regulate this market. Back then, that ban moved forward without input from the people who would be impacted. In my State alone, hemp products brought in $16 million of State tax revenue in 2025. Senator Budd has raised concerns about certain hemp products, and I agree with him. That is why bad actors that sell synthetic products will not be allowed to sell them, in this continuing resolution. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting to table this amendment and maintaining the bipartisan agreement included in the continuing resolution. Motion to Table Mr. President, I move to table amendment No. 6747, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, I participated in the Minnesota Farmfest Governor Forum in Redwood County, MN. Had I been present, I would have voted nay on the vote before the Senate to confirm Erica Schwartz, of Florida, to be Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, rollcall vote No. 220, Executive Calendar No. 910.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank Senator Durbin for his leadership in fighting for Dreamers. We will also be joined by the Senator from Nevada, Senator Cortez Masto, who has done the same. Senator Durbin, when your DREAM Act finally becomes law--and it will--it will be because of your enduring commitment for all of these years. Fourteen years ago, the Obama administration acted to protect Dreamers. Since 2012, the DACA action of the Obama administration has helped roughly 835,000 people have legal protection. For most Dreamers, the United States is the only home they have ever known, that they ever remember, and they live as part of their communities in all ways, just like everyone else, except for the certainty of permanent citizenship. In Minnesota, we are proud to be home to nearly 4,000 DACA recipients who have already passed background checks, paid fees, and met educational requirements so they can stay in the United States and continue to pay taxes and contribute to our communities. Dreamers serve in our military. They keep us safe as police officers in our State. They are teachers and nurses. They run small businesses that power our economy. In my State, one DACA recipient is a medical assembler helping build lifesaving devices that reduce the risk of stroke. Another Dreamer came to this country when she was just 3 years old. A few years ago, she got her phlebotomy certification from the Mayo Clinic. Now she is providing critical care to patients as a medical technician, all while serving as her family's primary breadwinner. Another Dreamer is a driver for special needs kids and a mom of five kids, including two with urgent medical needs. Another Dreamer was just 10 years old when she came to Minnesota from Mexico. She applied for DACA in 2012--just days after USCIS began accepting applications. She earned her degree and has worked with residents in nursing schools and elementary school children. As she said, she ``finds purpose in helping others.'' Minnesota is better because of our Dreamers, and thousands like them across our State continue to believe in the promise of this Nation and work every day to contribute to it. Since its establishment, DACA recipients have contributed an estimated $150 billion to the U.S. economy in spending power and $40 billion in combined Federal, payroll, State, and local taxes. In the past, President Trump has talked about working with Senators of both parties to protect Dreamers who were brought here as children. In December 2024, he said: We have to do something about the Dreamers. The last time Donald Trump was President, we actually had a bipartisan bill led by Senator Rounds--I was part of it--that would have invested in border security while providing a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers. In the end, President Trump opposed the bill. More recently, the Trump administration has dramatically delayed DACA processing. My office has heard from Minnesotans who are filing renewals up to 150 days--months--in advance, as recommended by the Federal Government, by USCIS, and they are still losing their protections solely due to delayed processing and the chaos. It is not due to the fact that they have jobs, that they work as nurses, that they are in the military, that they work in public safety--no, nothing about them. Nothing about their backgrounds. Nothing about their jobs that we need them to perform badly in our economy. It is solely because the Trump administration can't get its act together or is messing around with them. Well, when they mess around with them--with those over 800,000 people who are contributing to the United States, with all those people who are part of our economy--they mess around with us; they mess around with our country. The Trump Justice Department, in an immigration court decision, further undermined protections by holding that DACA status does not protect people from removal procedures. During Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, we saw not only multiple, multiple hundreds of constitutional violations but also DHS tearing people who have followed the rules from their loved ones. In January in Minnesota, ICE arrested Jorge Cordoba Hernandez at 4:30 a.m. without a warrant when he was on his way to work for a manufacturer in Eden Prairie, MN. By 10 p.m., he was on a plane to a detention facility in New Mexico, and he was held without bond. Jorge was brought to the United States when he was 8 years old and has been in DACA for 13 years--passed the test; did everything right. When arrested, he had applied to extend his DACA, like so many of my other constituents who have been on DACA for years and are working. Well, he had applied to extend his DACA, and he was scheduled for a biometrics appointment. He is married to an American citizen and has four children--two of whom have disabilities. He has no criminal record. While he awaits his DACA renewal--and by the way, here is a guy, as I said, that was on his way to work, where he is working in a good job, paying taxes. He is married to an American citizen and has four kids-- two with disabilities. Just simply waiting for the Trump administration to do the paperwork. He gets arrested and sent to New Mexico. While he awaits his renewal--now released--which is delayed because of the backlog at DHS, he is only out of detention because a Trump- appointed Federal judge did his job and granted his habeas petition. He is not out of detention because the Trump administration realized that it had made a mistake. He is not out of detention because he never should have been put there in the first place by them. He is out of detention because someone applied the law, and that happened to be a Trump-appointed judge who knew better than the President that appointed him that you follow the rules in America, that you follow the law. It is not just Dreamers and their families and neighbors who will suffer from terminating DACA; it is also our economy. If DACA was ended, it is estimated we would lose roughly 440,000 workers, including 37,000 healthcare professionals. Are you kidding me? When we have such a shortage of people working in healthcare and working in our nursing homes--such a shortage. So you are going to take away people who are legally working because simply you just want to make some political point or you don't want to get the paperwork done? We will lose 17,000 STEM professionals, 17,000 educators. The loss of this talent would cost the U.S. economy an estimated $648 billion. We cannot afford to shut out the world's talent or drive away those who call our country home, because immigrants are truly a major economic driver across our country. Almost half of America's Fortune 500 companies were started by people born in other countries or their kids, and 30 percent of our country's--the United States of America-- Nobel laureates were born abroad. It is time, as Senator Durbin has made clear, for the USCIS to expeditiously process all applications for deferred action for childhood arrivals and provide protections for Dreamers. We are just weeks away from celebrating America's 250th birthday, when a nation was born out of the dream for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--a nation born of immigrants, people like my grandpa, who came in through Ellis Island, and they had a limit on Swiss immigrants, and then he somehow found his way through Canada but then stayed there for about a week and then made his way through Michigan and into Wisconsin. When, during World War II, finally they made everyone register--even though he was married to an American citizen, my grandma, who was also an immigrant--that is when they discovered he had kind of come in twice. They had his hearing, and they looked at him--hard-working guy with two kids, married to a U.S. citizen--and they said: That is fine. And they gave him his citizenship. That is not what this administration is doing. This administration is looking at hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people that they are just holding up--not just holding up their dream; holding up our dreams for anyone who wants to send their mom to a nursing home, to find out if they have enough staff, or to go into an emergency room in the middle of the night and figure out if there is staff there. No. Passing the DREAM Act is the right thing to do, but making sure that in this very moment, we treat these people with the respect they deserve and get these forms processed and make sure they can continue working as functioning members of our economy is most important for now. Immigrant families, including Dreamers, don't diminish America. They define America. They strengthen America. They are America. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today with my colleague from Minnesota Senator Smith on a somber anniversary week for our State and for our country. One year ago, a horrific act of political violence took two Minnesotans from us who represented the best of our State, the best of us, Minnesota State Representative and our former Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman and her dear husband Mark Hortman. This is them with their kids, with Colin and Sophie who have been true to their memories since that date, grieving through the entire time, but always holding up their parents' memories. That same night, State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette were also shot. Despite taking nine bullets, as his wife Yvette took eight, John has courageously returned to the State senate with a tireless dedication to improving the lives of Minnesotans. Melissa and Mark left behind a State in mourning, but their two incredible children Colin and Sophie rose through their grief and best captured their parents' legacy as they said: The best way to honor our parents' memory is to do something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else. And that is exactly what Minnesotans have done. Thousands lined up to pay their respects to the Hortmans at the State capitol where Melissa was the first woman in Minnesota to lie in state. People planted trees to honor Melissa's efforts to strengthen urban and rural forests. Donations poured in to Helping Paws the service dog nonprofit where the Hortmans volunteered and where their beloved Gilbert, who was also shot that night, was trained. The organization established the Hortman Heroes Fund to train service dogs to help first responders and veterans with PTSD. Their dog Gilbert was actually going to be part of that program. And they trained their dog, but in the end, it was decided their dog was just too friendly to be part of the program in the end, and Melissa and Mark were happy to have him back. And he died with them that weekend. Minnesota stood up in their names, for Gilbert, for their family, and mostly for Melissa and Mark, and we remember them. Our State has lost a lot this year. Just weeks after we lost Melissa and Mark, we were once again shaken to our core by a deadly mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and then the winter with 3,000 Federal Agents and the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Our State has been at the center of America's heartbreak, but we have also been at the center of its courage and its hope. No one exemplified our State's courage and hope more than Melissa. I wish everyone in this Chamber knew Melissa. We treasured her in Minnesota. She is the epitome of what you want in a public servant, the epitome of someone who stood up for her neighbors. I first got to know her when we were both running for office around the same time, both with little kids, me for the county attorney's office, her for State legislature. We went door to door together, and even back then it seemed like she knew every story and every family in her district. She left a lasting impact on each of us, and over her 20 years in the Minnesota State House, she left a lasting impact on our State. As minority leader and then speaker, Melissa always guided her caucus with conviction and a sense of humor. She was always there to support her colleagues, but she also wasn't afraid to call out the all-male card game taking place when they should have been on the floor debating. And after being chosen by her colleagues to be their speaker, the first thing she did for the State house was to get rid of the speaker's mute button because Melissa always listened to her colleagues, and she said at the time: I have a gavel . . . and a gavel is good enough for me. And with that gavel, Melissa became one of the most consequential and arguably the best speakers in the history of our State. Because of Melissa, all Minnesota students get a school lunch so hunger doesn't stop them from learning and reaching their potential. Because of Melissa, Minnesota voters can cast a ballot that works best for them, whether that is early voting, mail-in voting, or same- day registration. Because of Melissa, women in Minnesota can access reproductive care and continue to make their own decisions about their futures. And because of Melissa, who created the Minnesota Community Solar Program, which now bears her name, our State is a leader in clean energy and protecting the environment. She was a generational leader. She led with integrity and courage. She consistently reached across the aisle to make life better for Minnesotans. And her husband Mark, he was compassionate, smart, kind. I met so many people who worked with him in his workplace over the years and loved him just as much as the legislators loved Melissa. As we remember Melissa and Mark, we must also continue to address the significant increase in threats and acts of political violence we have seen across the country against people of both parties. I want to extend my gratitude to the local, State, and Federal law enforcement officers who responded that night and who have continued to be there for our State. It was Melissa, who once said that ``in politics, often the easiest thing for anyone to do is run to a microphone, sharpen their dagger, and see who has the best press conference. But what's excruciatingly difficult in all this high emotion is to get people to the table,'' she said, ``and to slog through the work that has to happen.'' She was right then, and her words hold true today. Each of us has a responsibility to bring more people to the table and to take on the hard work. Melissa and Mark met as volunteers, working to help kids in their community, and their dedication to serving others never wavered. In her wallet, in her purse, after she died, they found a prayer that she always carried, by St. Francis of Assisi. It said this. It said: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. May we all be instruments of peace just like Melissa. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to honor my friend Cindy McCain for her incredible work as executive director of the World Food Programme. Cindy assumed leadership of the World Food Programme in 2023 and has since been a clear voice for hungry families around the world. She has done this work during a critical period of time, as hunger and food insecurity reached alarming levels. She has been an advocate for people around the world facing hunger, malnutrition, displacement, and trauma, and she has been a leader in delivering vital assistance. In recent years, we have seen global food insecurity rise around the world, primarily as a result of conflict and the ensuing displacement, continuing climate shocks and droughts that disrupt food supplies, and a world economy characterized by uneven growth and high food prices. As leader of the World Food Programme, Cindy strengthened the ability of the WFP to respond to all of these factors and worked to modernize the agency so that it could sustain and improve its work delivering food assistance. Cindy has been a clear voice for food aid in Ukraine and Gaza. She has been steadfast in her support of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression and worked tirelessly to help Ukraine maintain and build its agricultural sector. She also visited Gaza in August of 2025, pointing out the deepening crisis and calling for a surge of aid to help suffering families. And as this administration worked to dramatically cut out global food assistance programs, Cindy defended them strenuously, meeting with Democrats and Republicans in Congress and urging them to hold strong in supporting global food aid. At a time when too many are walking back from decades of consensus about the value of foreign aid and hunger relief, Cindy has been a true leader, not just in delivering aid abroad, but in reminding us here of our obligations around the world. Cindy's public service, just like that of her husband before her, is a true reminder that targeted and smart foreign assistance is vital not just for hungry people, but for our national interests and American security as well. A month before he passed away, my husband John and I visited John and Cindy at their ranch in Arizona. Even while battling brain cancer, he continued to be engaged in the issues of our time, and he continued to have that signature McCain humor and that grit. My last memory of John was something that happened on that visit. He pointed to a sentence in his book and said, ``That's all that matters.'' The sentence was this: ``Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself.'' Cindy has been dedicated to changing and saving lives--fighting to end world hunger, with horrific conflicts and a changing climate. We are so grateful to her for her strength, inspiration, and dedication.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the life and legacy of the late artist and musician Prince Rogers Nelson. A global legend, a Minnesota icon, Minnesota's Purple North Star, Prince was a once in a generation talent from the moment he stepped on stage for the very first time. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Prince rooted his life and work in Minnesota, building his home and studio Paisley Park just 20 minutes southwest of Minneapolis. Prince filmed various scenes from his iconic film ``Purple Rain'' in the city and pioneered the ``Minneapolis Sound'' in the late 1970s and 1980s that influenced music for decades to come. It was that sound, and Prince's remarkable voice and vision, that propelled him to historic heights. He sold 39 studio albums and 150 million records worldwide. Prince won seven Grammys, an Oscar, and a Golden Globe, and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, the first year he was eligible. Throughout his extraordinary life, Prince always called Minnesota home. He wrote a song about the Minnesota Vikings, appropriately titled ``Purple and Gold.'' In 2015, when the Minnesota Lynx won their third WNBA championship, he held a concert at Paisley Park. And just a few days before his passing, Prince hosted a dance party there and made a brief appearance. Prince envisioned that Paisley Park would be open to the public one day and now, as a museum, recording studio, live music venue, event space, and education organization, Paisley Park is dedicated to fulfilling that dream and keeping Prince's memory alive and connected to his hometown. As we continue to mourn his loss, we also continue to celebrate his life, his legacy, and his music. This year's 10th anniversary celebration in the Twin Cities brings together people from around the world and from all walks of life to celebrate the contributions and impact that Prince had on the community. Like most Minnesotans and Americans, I remember listening to Prince for the very first time. His talent and creativity changed music forever, and he will forever be missed. So today, I rise to honor Prince and his legacy as we mark Minnesota's 10-year celebration.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, today we mark 40 years since C-SPAN began its coverage of the U.S. Senate, bringing the work of this body directly into people's living rooms. It doesn't seem very radical right now. We are all used to it. But back then, it was revolutionary. C-SPAN's commitment to providing a crucial connection between the U.S. Senate and the people we serve has remained strong ever since that day 40 years ago. That commitment can be seen in the incredible volume of coverage since June 2, 1986, when C-SPAN2 was born. And the presiding officer on that late spring day? Senator Chuck Grassley. Altogether, C-SPAN2 has recorded more than 43,000 hours of Senate sessions, capturing more than 169,000 Senate floor speeches--169,000. These recordings have preserved the voices of 359 different Senators, including 185 Republicans and 167 Democrats and 7 Independents. These hours include memorable moments like that of Senator Bob Dole on that first day of televised coverage, saying, ``No longer will the great debates in this Chamber be lost forever''; of then-Senator Tom Harkin, author of the Americans with Disabilities Act, closing his farewell speech in American sign language; or of the Dalai Lama serving as the Senate guest Chaplain in 2014. All of those moments would have been lost to history, but they were captured by C-SPAN. As we celebrate these last four decades of coverage in the Senate, think back to 1986. Prince, whom we sadly lost 10 years ago, had recently released his eighth album, ``Parade''; the film ``Top Gun'' was released; and, yes, the Bemidji State Beavers of Bemidji, MN, won the Division III men's ice hockey national championship. But back then, Senators were hesitant to embrace C-SPAN2--the lighting wasn't great in those first few years--but they eventually came around to see this great asset to our democracy for what it is: a way to shine the light on the work in the Senate and a way for Americans, whether they agree with us or not, to stay up to date on what is happening. When there are big votes or big debates going on, people tune in or they see the clips and the coverage later. It is not just the people who are able to come to Washington--as exciting as that is--to sit in the Chamber, as some people are doing today, but what this does is extend it to everyone. Last year, on its 39th birthday, Senator Grassley and I passed a resolution celebrating all that C-SPAN2 had accomplished. In our resolution, we urged all television providers, including streamers, to carry C-SPAN because we need to make sure that access to C-SPAN keeps up with changing technologies so that every household in America can see their elected Representatives--the work they do, the positions they take, the votes they make. Since our resolution passed, YouTube TV and Hulu have begun carrying C-SPAN on their platforms. Now we need to extend that beyond. C-SPAN's live coverage across multiple platforms continues to keep the American people informed and keep them engaged with their democracy. Thank you again to Senator Grassley for working with me to highlight C-SPAN's critical role, and thanks to him for presiding over the Senate on that first day of coverage 40 years ago. I am sure he doesn't look one bit different today. And thanks to everyone who has had a hand in C-SPAN's continuing, important role in our democracy over the last 40 years. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in standing up for democracy where every eligible American has a voice and the right to vote. I want to thank Ranking Member Padilla for organizing this floor block today and for his leadership in the fight for our democracy. The freedom to vote is the bedrock of our government, and it is fundamental to all of our freedoms. It is how Americans make their voices heard and hold their elected officials accountable. It has stood the test of wars, economic strife, and a global pandemic. And now, despite continued attacks on access to the ballot box, we must continue the difficult but critical work of protecting and advancing this right. It is on every generation to do that. That work hasn't always been easy. Throughout our country's 250-year history, there have been moments when we have needed to course correct and take action to ensure that our country lives up to its ideals. This is one of those moments. On April 29, in a decision joined by six Supreme Court Justices, the Court in the words of Justice Kagan: Completed the demolition of the Voting Rights Act. In doing so, it undermined fair representation across the country and made it harder for all Americans to have an effective voice in our political process; and it created chaos, including in Louisiana where ballots were already being cast. Congressman John Lewis once said that voting is the most powerful tool we have to create a more perfect Union. It was John Lewis' faith in our country and our democratic ideals that led him to Selma, AL, where he helped lead 600 marchers across the Edmond Pettus Bridge on that dark day that became known as Bloody Sunday. The horrific events of the day shocked the Nation. Soon after, President Lyndon Johnson came to the Capitol and, as he said, with the outrage of Selma still fresh urged Congress to guarantee the freedom to vote. Months later, with the help of former Minnesota Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, whose desk I stand behind right now, whose name is carved into this desk, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law. And historically, protecting meaningful access to the ballot box has brought both sides of the aisle together. The Senate reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 1982 by a vote of 85-8, including 43 Republicans; in 1992, by a vote of 75-20, including 25 Republicans; and in 2006, with a unanimous 98-0 vote, 51 Republicans. But now so much of the progress that Americans have fought and even died for is at stake. In case after case, these Justices have gutted critical statutes that protect Americans' constitutional rights and diminish our voice in democracy. In cases like Citizens United, the Court unleashed a wave of special interest spending in our elections. In the Shelby County and Brnovich decisions they led to a flood of laws that made it harder for eligible Americans to vote. The Court has barred Federal courts from policing partisan gerrymandering as well. And now in Callais, it has allowed States to dilute minority votes. In parts of our country, these actions are already effectively shutting minority voters out of the political process. Six Justices overturned Congress' express purpose and effectively eroded section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court has green-lit racial gerrymanders that undermine fair and equal representation, and in the words of Justice Kagan in dissent ``threatens a half-century's worth of gains in voting equality.'' In her dissent in Brnovich, Justice Kagan noted that the Voting Rights Act reminds us of the best of America because it, in her words ``marries two great ideals: democracy and racial equality''--and the worst of America because it was and remains necessary. That couldn't be clearer today. After the Callais decision came down, Republican legislatures immediately started the process to carve up majority- minority districts. In some cases, like in Louisiana, they did so even though the votes had already been cast. The fact that all these States have rushed to change their maps to dilute the votes of certain communities shows that the Voting Rights Act is needed now more than ever. It shows, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her dissent in Shelby County, the shortsightedness of undermining a law that is serving its purpose, likening the Court striking down at that time section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to ``throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.'' And yet it also demonstrates the power of the vote, the power that the American people hold when they exercise their constitutional rights and hold their leaders to account. In election after election, it is clear the American people are demanding change. This is no surprise. This administration has been hurting people across the country with their costs, chaos, and corruption. The President went into a unilateral war without coming to Congress, and in a significant vote today, Congress said no. Congress should have a say. The Senate should have a say. Americans, why are they so angry? Well, they are seeing rising costs, not just for gas prices from this unauthorized war, but also for food and housing and healthcare costs from these tariffs and refusal to extend the ACA, the Affordable Care Act tax credit, and a refusal to step back and say: Perhaps we should just have targeted tariffs instead of pushing the economy into a tailspin with these across-the-board tariffs. And then trying to do it again and again and again even when the Court says that the IEEPA tariffs were illegal. The President himself has said: I don't think about Americans' financial situation. Americans heard that loud and clear. The fact is our colleagues know that this agenda is not right. They know that they shouldn't be rubberstamping everything the President has done, as a number of our colleagues just showed with this vote on the war powers. Well, now we ask them to join us, to listen to the American families and change these policies. This administration is doing all it can to make it harder for the American people to have a meaningful say in our democracy. You know, Democrats win sometimes; Republicans win sometimes. And when you lose an election, as we have been seeing in these races across the country, then you should listen. You should say: We should maybe change our policies or maybe we should change our candidates or maybe we shouldn't just listen to everything about what the President wants or who the President wants us to vote for. That is how a democracy works. But instead with both the SAVE America Act and with this court ruling, they are trying to change the rules of the election and trying to change the people who can vote instead of changing their policies and candidates, which has historically been how Americans have been able to find agreement and a party is able to win because they actually find policies and ideas that people want to hear about and that they think will change and improve their lives. So the SAVE America Act, legislation that Donald Trump, by his own admission, has said ``will guarantee the midterms,'' that bill would create burdensome hurdles for people to register to vote and result in voters' sensitized data being turned over to the Federal Government, something the Justice Department has already tried to illegally pressure States to do, and that is far from the only attack on elections by this administration. The President has repeatedly threatened to nationalize election administration, replacing the judgment and experience of State and local officials--Democrats and Republicans--going so far as to say: Republicans should say we want to take over. We should take over the voting . . . Now, Minnesota and 18 other States have sued and have won a preliminary injunction because, as the judge wrote, the Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections. Undeterred, the President continues to float illegally ending mail-in voting nationwide and directing the Postal Service to simply refuse to deliver some voters' mail-in ballots. There are also concerns that Federal agents could be deployed to polling locations to intimidate voters--something that is of special concern in my State given what we saw with the overrun of ICE agents doubling the number of Minneapolis-St. Paul police for months. Make no mistake, six Supreme Court Justices have damaged our democracy, but they do not have the last word because, as Justice Ginsburg, whom we miss very much, noted in her Shelby County dissent: Under our constitutional structure, Congress holds the lead rein in making the right to vote equally real for all U.S. citizens. It is long past time for Congress to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and it is long past time for us to pass other commonsense bills, like the effort I worked on alongside the ranking member of the Rules Committee, Senator Padilla, and Senator Schumer, to advance the Freedom to Vote Act--legislation that, instead of creating barriers to the ballot box, expands access to the polls to ensure all eligible Americans can vote regardless of their ZIP Code. Ultimately, the final check on a Supreme Court weakening our democracy and an administration that is doing all it can to rig the rules--that check is the people. Americans are seeing what has happened, and it really makes them mad. They have turned out to vote in municipal elections, in the Mar-a-Lago legislative election, in cities from Omaha to Miami, in places like Texas--all over this country. In Selma, the police brutally attacked the peaceful marchers. John Lewis' skull was fractured, and he bore the scar for the rest of his life. The images were broadcast nationwide and shocked the American people. Every year since, there is a ceremony to commemorate Bloody Sunday. I was there a number of years ago with Congressman Lewis. That weekend, after 48 years, the White police chief of Montgomery handed his police badge to Congressman Lewis and publicly apologized for the police not protecting him and the freedom marchers. Nearly half a century later, that apology came. Mr. President, 48 years is a long time to wait for an apology, and it only happened because people like Congressman Lewis never quit fighting for progress, for civil rights, for economic justice, and to defend the voting rights of every American. So today, less than 1 month after the Callais decision, when the challenges we face are clear, we cannot quit either. Just this past weekend, thousands again protested in Selma and Montgomery for the fundamental freedom to make their voice heard in our democracy because the people of this country will not be silenced. They marched because, in Congressman Lewis' words, ``The right to vote is precious and almost sacred, and one of the most important blessings of our democracy.'' When those marchers did what they did and proved then what we must remember now and what those marching in Selma and across the country remind us today is that although progress may not be without setbacks-- and we are in a major one right now--no obstacle will block the American people from having their voice heard. I yield the floor.

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

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, it is time to lead with diplomacy and negotiate an end to the war in Iran. This war has cost the lives of U.S. servicemembers, worsened the economic strains facing Americans, and spread instability across the Middle East. At the same time, we need to focus on diplomacy to end the conflict in Lebanon and to preserve the possibility for Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate a two-state solution, which I have long supported. At this time, I do not believe that providing bulldozer equipment and additional offensive weapons will help to achieve these objectives, not when destruction in the West Bank is undermining prospects for an eventual Palestinian state, civilian casualties are mounting in Lebanon, and the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire. My support for these joint resolutions is consistent with my votes last July. I have consistently supported Israel's right and capacity to protect its people, including through air defense systems to intercept missiles and drones. I strongly believe Iran must not obtain a nuclear weapon. Today, the United States should prioritize diplomacy to secure this goal.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, we have a vote before us today, and this vote is involving an unprecedented use of a procedural mechanism that would have far-reaching consequences, not just for the beautiful Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota, but for public lands across our country. And I want to thank my colleagues, including, of course, Senator Smith who you are about to hear from, Senators Heinrich and Baldwin for speaking out against this resolution on the floor last night. I have especially been careful when you look at a project like the one proposed here that is so close to the cherished Boundary Waters Canoe Area, and I continue to have concerns about this administration's intention and their disregard of science across the board in every Agency in the government, but especially when you are looking at something like this. So, as many of my colleagues know, I am the granddaughter of an iron ore miner. My grandpa loved that life, but he mostly also loved the time he had in the outdoors. He would go down in a cage 1,500 feet every single day with the lunch bucket that my grandma would pack for him, that black lunch bucket. I always thought, what did he think when he was going down every day, when he was saving money in a coffee can to send his two sons to college when he never even got to graduate from high school? Well, he would think of the outdoors because he loved to hunt, he loved to fish, and he loved to pick blueberries. In his later years, he became a foreman of the mine. I would meet people when I was first running for the U.S. Senate up in Northern Minnesota, where my relatives live, and they would say to me: You know, my dad worked with your grandpa. They said: A lot of times, the foremen would never go down when they found a new part of the mine. They would always stay up at the top and radio down. But your grandpa always went with the guys, and he always went first. That was my grandpa. So the joy he had was the outdoors. That mining life is so important in Northern Minnesota. And I have stood with our miners. I have stood with them when steel was dumped from China. I have brought the former President's Chief of Staff up to Northern Minnesota, where we met with steelworkers, where we met with mine owners, and we have made the case for changes. We have made the case for their benefit. We have made the case for them. And that is why we are getting a new mine, Mesabi Metallics, which is a taconite mine that I just visited last week. It is incredible. Hundreds and hundreds of new jobs are about to open, construction jobs. That permitting process has been fair, and it has been fast. But what we have today is something else. It has always been a balance of the working life and mining and the outdoors. My family values the outdoors. My mom and dad met in the Twin Cities Hiking Club, and generations of Minnesotans have found the same joy up north. So let's talk about H.J. Res. 140. It would threaten public lands across the country. So many of our colleagues know this. Senator Smith has made this case ardently and repeatedly. Secretaries of the Interior have long had the ability to issue public land orders to reserve Federal land for specific uses, setting it aside for things like infrastructure, certain military purposes, training, border security protection, and, yes, conservation. But now, for the first time, the Congressional Review Act is being used to rescind the public land order that bans mining in the Boundary Waters for 20 years. Senator Heinrich, the ranking member on the Interior Committee, will soon tell you that this is unprecedented. Public land orders have never been considered rules under the CRA and have never been submitted to Congress' rules. The Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service conducted a public input process. Today, the CRA before the Senate is being used simply as a way of revoking the land withdrawal without having to conduct the level of public engagement that is expected. The unprecedented use of the CRA will have broader disruptive impacts on the ability of land management agencies to oversee public lands all across the country. Yes, this is focused on Northern Minnesota today, but where will it be next time? What part of your State will it be focused on? What will happen to your public lands? If this CRA resolution were approved, public access to some of the Nation's most treasured landscapes could be lost and the careful management of their lands and waters eliminated. There are hundreds of public land orders that have been issued to protect our public lands that would be put at risk. Twenty-five military withdrawals would no longer be considered final. The CRA could even threaten the protected status of the Grand Canyon. So I will close with this, as I did last night. Sigurd Olson, the great Ely, MN, author and conservationist who went from that small, hardscrabble mining town to great national prominence, someone who loved the land and was a beautiful author--he wrote: Joys come from simple and natural things: mists over meadows, sunlight on leaves, the path of the moon over water. That is the Boundary Waters to me. That is the Boundary Waters to so many people in Minnesota and across our country. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed into law Hubert Humphrey's bill to protect this area by creating the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. This was a special, special place to my dad and to our family. My dad actually went to Ely Junior College when Sigurd Olson was the dean, and that launched a lifelong friendship. I found books of Sigurd Olson's in my dad's belongings after we lost him, with notes of my dad of their meetings together and their time together. As my dad said, the Boundary Waters is a million acres of waterways and forests unlike any in the United States. So we should be preserving and treating these public lands as treasures, not messing around like is happening today.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, this bill is an unprecedented use of a procedural mechanism that would have far-reaching consequences, not just for the Boundary Waters, as Senator Smith has explained, but for public lands across our country. I have always supported science-based review, especially a project so close to this cherished Boundary Waters canoe area, and I continue to have concerns about this administration's disregard for science. So as many of my colleagues know, I am the granddaughter of an iron ore miner. My great-grandparents came from Slovenia, and that was the job that my great-grandpa came to do. He died very young from his work, and then my grandpa took it up. He started very, very young in underground mines with a number of brothers and sisters that he took care of when his parents died, married my grandma, and this was his life. And he loved that life. But he mostly also loved the time he had in the outdoors. He loved to hunt. He loved to fish. Every day he would go down 1,500 feet in that cage in that mine and always thought about what he thought about with that black lunch bucket that my grandma packed for him every single day in that little house that they had taken when a mine closed down in Babbitt. They put it on the back of a flatbed truck and they blew a hole with dynamite in the ground and put that house on top of it. That was their life. My grandpa worked most of his life in the mines as did so many friends. He became, in his later years, the foreman of the mine, and I would meet people when I was first running for U.S. Senate up in Northern Minnesota that would say to me: You know, my dad worked with your grandpa. And whenever they explored a dangerous part of the mine, the other foreman wouldn't go. They radioed down from above. But your grandpa, he went first. He went with the guys, and he went down in the mine. Such a big part of my life. That is why I have stood with our miners. I have stood with them when we had steel dumping from China and brought President Obama's chief of staff up to Northern Minnesota, met with our steel workers and our unions. I have stood with our workers through good times and bad and will continue to do that. We have, as Senator Smith explained, some exciting new projects up there like Mesabi Metallics which is going to be a big taconite mine, a modern mine with some of the biggest equipment in the country. And we will have more. But what this is about today is something else because my grandpa always got that balance. It was a balance of the working life that we must continue up in Northern Minnesota and a balance of the world around him, that world where he loved to hunt and he loved to fish. I was 18 years old before I took a vacation that didn't involve a tent or a camper in one way or the other. I grew up in a family that valued the outdoors. My mom and dad met in the Twin Cities Hiking Club and generations of Minnesotans have found this same joy: hiking, paddling, camping in the Boundary Waters, and our beautiful parks. But I don't think they would have ever expected this. H.J. Res. 140, as I noted, is an unprecedented use of a procedural mechanism that would have far-reaching consequences, not just for the BWCA but for other public lands. Secretaries of the Interior have long had the ability to issue public land orders to reserve Federal land for specific uses, setting it aside for things like infrastructure, certain military purposes, training and border security, or protection and conservation. And public land orders are carefully made. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management gather public input. They hold townhalls. They analyze inputs. But now for the first time, the Congressional Review Act is being used to rescind a public land order. Public land orders have never been considered rules under the CRA and have never been submitted to Congress as rules. Today, the CRA before the Senate is being used simply as a way of revoking the land withdrawal without having to conduct that public engagement. And this unprecedented use of the CRA will have broader disruptive impacts on land management agencies' ability to oversee public lands all across the country. This process is focused on Northern Minnesota today, but this new precedent could lead to Congress overturning public land orders elsewhere. The Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service have long been trusted with working with landowners, nearby towns, and counties, and others to develop plans for managing public lands. This is often a give-and-take process built on trust. But this Congress, for the first time, has disrupted decades of work by the Bureau of Land Management and has stepped in the way of locally led land management. These CRA resolutions disregard extensive public input. If this CRA resolution were approved, public access to some of the Nation's most treasured landscapes could be lost and the careful management of their lands and waters eliminated. There are hundreds of public land orders that have been issued to protect our public land that could be put at risk: The Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in Montana, considered a sportsman's paradise for its elk and bighorn sheep hunting; the 355,000 acres of Federal land near the Chaco Canyon National Historical Park in New Mexico. The precedent potentially being established today could pave over the comprehensive process undermining these landowners. The CRA even threatens the protected status of the Grand Canyon, which happens to sit on significant mineral deposits. This precedent could lead to CRA resolutions beyond the BLM's work. Forest Service plans might be the next Land Management Agencies Congress attempts to disrupt using this process. This ultimately could lead to Washington micromanaging public lands rather than letting the people and experts that live near the forest, grasslands, and waterways have a say. So look at who is concerned about what is happening in the Senate today, the groups that are supportive of what I have been talking about here and are against this effort: American Fisheries Society, American Fly Fishing Trade Association, American Hunters & Anglers, Angler Action Foundation, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, Bass Anglers Sportsman Society, Fly Fishers International, the Izaak Walton League of America, Minnesota Trout Unlimited, Minnesota Wildlife Federation, National Deer Association, National Wildlife Federation, North American Falconers Association, North American Grouse Partnership, Pheasants Forever, Quail Forever, Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Trout Unlimited, Whitetails Unlimited, Wildlife Management Institute, the American Canoe Association, the Outdoor Alliance, Outdoor Life, Outdoor Realm. So maybe some time should be taken to listen to what some of these national groups are saying that care about what my grandpa and my dad cared about, and that is public lands that can be used for recreation, for canoeing, for hunting, and for fishing. So I will end with this: Sigurd Olson, the great Ely, MN, author and conservationist, wrote that ``joys come from simple and natural things, mists over meadows, sunlight on leaves, the path of the moon over water.'' This is the Boundary Waters. So Sigurd Olson just happened to be the dean of Ely Junior College and yet he rose to this national fame and that is when my dad met him because my dad went to a 2-year college, Ely Junior College, because my grandma believed that somehow that would launch his career in journalism. She happened to be right, but no one would have believed it then. But Sigurd Olson was then the college dean. My dad and Sigurd Olson maintained a friendship for many years, powered by their shared love for the written word, for the Boundary Waters, and for their efforts to preserve Minnesota's forests and parks. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed into law Hubert Humphrey's bill, and this is the desk that I stand at today--Hubert Humphrey's desk--to protect this area by creating the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. And the Boundary Waters are now the most visited wilderness area in the country, welcoming 150,000 people each year. Over the course of my dad's career, he wrote 8,400 columns, more than a few of which were dispatches from the Boundary Waters. Speaking to the complexity of this national wonder, my dad wrote about the Boundary Waters: This is a place of woods and lakes and repose most of the time where a person can roam or drift or watch and listen. And that is not so much different in winter than in summer. He called it a million acres of waterway and forest unlike any in the United States. And my grandpa who loved that area, loved the forest, understood that you can make both things work but not when you are messing around with rules, not when you are not even taking the time to look at what is happening here to our public lands, and instead are just making this decision at night and going home for the day. I thank Senator Smith for her work, and I ask my colleagues to vote with us and listen to us about what is going on here. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, on Friday, March 20, 2026, I attended the funeral service of MSG Nicole Amor, of White Bear Lake, MN, who was killed in action while serving in Kuwait. I would have voted against the DHS appropriations bill that was before the Senate, (rollcall vote No. 59), as I had on rollcall vote Nos. 38, 39, 47, and 54. As I have stated in the past, I support proposals that will immediately fund the Department of Homeland Security's critical national security functions such as cyber defense, airport safety, and the Coast Guard. But, following DHS's actions in Minnesota which resulted in the deaths of two American citizens, as well as repeated violations of the Constitution and defiance of court orders, I will not vote to support continued funding for ICE, which already has $75 billion in guaranteed funding from the bill that was passed last summer, until critical reforms to rein in unlawful behavior and restore accountability are secured.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, last December, Congress passed into law the Honoring Our Fallen Heroes Act as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026. This important law was passed to expand access to Federal support for the families of firefighters and other first responders who pass away from service related cancers, through the Public Safety Officers' Benefits--PSOB--Program. Firefighters put their lives on the line everyday to keep us safe, and the law we passed honors the commitment we make to first responders who make the ultimate sacrifice. Included in the law is a confidentiality of information provision, ensuring that when families of these heroes apply for the benefits they deserve, the sensitive medical information required as part of their PSOB application remains confidential. Because some parts of the PSOB program, such as benefits arising from the September 11 terrorist attacks, were covered under different statutory frameworks, we drafted the confidentiality of information provision to ensure that a uniform set of rules apply to all PSOB claims. I understand that the Justice Department has argued that the law passed to help firefighters and first responders somehow prohibits the disclosure of Deaths in Custody Reporting Act data made pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request. That was not our intent.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to join many of my colleagues in standing up to protect American citizens' constitutional right to vote and fighting back against this administration's most recent attack on access to the ballot box. What are Americans really talking about right now? What do they really wish we were focused on in this great Chamber? Not the SAVE America Act. They would like us to focus on the ``Save America Money Act,'' because Americans see rising costs because of these across-the- board tariffs that I oppose, the gas prices that are surging, the healthcare costs doubling and tripling, because the White House and congressional Republicans decided not to extend the tax credits for their health plans--doubling and tripling of people's premiums, particularly in rural areas where they tend to rely on these plans more. So instead of simply making their case to the voters of this country, the American citizens, or maybe taking a look at their policies in case there is a way to work with us on the Affordable Care Act tax credits and compromise, or trying to add more energy to the grid instead of taking wind projects off the grid, they are trying to pass legislation to pick the voters with this bill. And it is by President Trump's own admission. This is not me saying it. He is the one--an exact quote that says of this bill: It will guarantee the midterms. As my friend and colleague Senator Raphael Warnock has said: Some people don't want some people to vote. That is why so many of us have come to the floor this week. We don't think eligible American citizens should be kicked off voter rolls or there should be burdensome hurdles for people to register to vote. Nothing is more fundamental to our democracy than our fair and free elections and rights of Americans to make their voices heard at the ballot box, whether they are Democrats, Republicans, Independents, whatever political beliefs they have. Throughout even the most difficult times, Americans have stood in ballot lines because a right to vote is what secures our freedoms. But right now, we are seeing unprecedented attacks on the foundation of democracy from this administration, and we all know it is not for the first time. There was the insurrection on January 6, right here, right in this Chamber. Someone came up, sat there on the Presiding Officer's desk, a violent mob, for the purpose of trying to stop us from certifying the results of the 2020 election. I know Senator Blunt and I were the only two Senators left at 4 in the morning with Vice President Pence, who made that walk with the last of those ballots, by officers whose faces were scratched, over broken glass, over to the House. That happened, but democracy in the end prevailed. And now, the President has threatened to nationalize election administration, replacing the judgment and experience of State and local officials, going so far as to say: Republicans should say, `We want to take over.' We should take over the voting . . . Exact quote. He also issued an unlawful Executive order to overhaul our Nation's elections and assert Federal control over State-run elections. Minnesota and 18 other States sued and have won a preliminary injunction because as the judge wrote: The Constitution does not grant a President any specific powers over elections. Undeterred, the President continues to float illegally ending mail-in voting nationwide, which is incredibly popular in red States and blue, incredibly popular in Utah and Colorado, in Minnesota; and he continues to double down on his repeatedly disproven conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The FBI seized election ballots from 2020 in Georgia, as well as election records in Arizona. There are also concerns that Federal agents could be deployed to polling locations. When asked at her oversight hearing about ICE being sent to polling locations, Secretary Noem did not rule out the Agency deploying officers in the future. And the Justice Department, under this administration, has turned away from its mission of enforcing the Voting Rights Act and has experienced a mass exodus of attorneys. It has also illegally pressured States to provide voters' sensitive and personally identifiable information to the administration which, by the way, is highly relevant to the bill before us now. In fact, Attorney General Bondi on the same day that Alex Pretti was killed by Federal agents--shot in the back--that same day, that same few hours, she sent a letter to Minnesota saying the administration would remove ICE from our streets if Minnesota violated the privacy of its citizens by turning over their personal voter data. So she said: OK, we will get ICE out of there if you guys will give us your data on your voters. That happened. In a court hearing, a Federal judge in Minnesota asked the Justice Department: Is the Executive trying to achieve through force what it cannot achieve through the courts? That is a pretty good question when you read that letter, but it is not just Minnesota that is standing up against the Justice Department's pressure. State election officials in 24 States, including Republican officials in Georgia, Republican secretary of state of New Hampshire, Republican officials in Kentucky, and Republican officials in West Virginia have refused to comply with the voter file demands. And four Federal judges, including judges appointed by President Trump, have ruled that the Justice Department's effort to obtain this data is illegal. Now, President Trump and congressional Republicans are trying to force through this bill. That would result mandatory in voters' data being turned over to the Federal Government and would empower the Department of Homeland Security to kick American citizens off State voter rolls. Under this bill, the Department of Homeland Security would run voters' personal data through a tool, a DOGE tool, and tell States who they have to purge from their voter rolls. So, remember, 24 States, including several Republican officials, including in conservative States like West Virginia, have said no to this. They don't want to give over those data rolls, of the voter data rolls. But now, this would mandate it that it go to the Department of Homeland Security, the same Agency that gave us ICE in Minnesota. This will result in these American citizens--when you go back and you are supposed to run this through this tool, this system, these algorithms, and we are supposed to believe that that will all work great, given what we have seen from Homeland Security in the last few months. No way. At least 24 States, as I noted, already have agreements to share voter data with DHS, and already the Department's tool has misidentified hundreds of American citizens as ineligible to vote. So I already have a proof point. The SAVE America Act isn't about what they are saying it is. In the 64 election lawsuits brought by President Trump and his allies contesting the 2020 election, no judge, including judges appointed by President Trump himself, found evidence of widespread fraud. His own Attorney General said there wasn't evidence of widespread fraud. And according to a bipartisan policy center analysis of the Heritage Foundation's database of noncitizen voting across 25 years, there were only 77 cases out of nearly 2 billion votes cast of noncitizens voting. In each of these cases, they faced an investigation. I know when I was the county attorney in my State, way before any of this technology existed, we would get cases referred to us from the Minnesota secretary of state, and I actually put an investigator on this and looked at every single case to make sure there wasn't a problem. And the vast majority of them, with the exception of one where the school board line went through someone's house and they voted twice, which was illegal, and another one where a guy decided he was going to vote twice. This is in our biggest county. They were all fathers and sons with the same names. We looked diligently at every single case. We had a Republican secretary of state. She sent them over. We looked at them. We explained it back. That is what I did as county attorney. So I had some experience with this. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said: [We need to make sure that] we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country . . . And President Trump himself said that, with this bill, Republicans will ``never lose a race'' in 50 years. So you wonder why we are concerned about this. I believe in free and fair elections. I like the fact that my State has the highest voter turnout. I like the fact, like a number of States, including some red States, we have same day registration. I like the fact that we make it easier for people to vote by mail. Our State actually was not nearly on the bandwagon with vote-by-mail like Utah was, the Presiding Officer's State, or Colorado. Some States recently changed the rules to be consistent with some of these other States to make it easier for people to vote-by-mail. But this idea that we are suddenly going to turn over all of our voter data to what is now Kristi Noem's Department, despite her soon departure, is just--I don't think most people in America would think this is a good idea. The Department of Homeland Security has already violated Federal law by repurposing its SAVE program to verify voters and only issuing their prior notice after being sued by the League of Women Voters. And the Department of Justice even admitted in court--and this was bad--that Elon Musk's DOGE employees shared Americans' personal Social Security data with partisan organizations that worked to purge voter rolls. Let me say that again. They have already admitted, so you wonder why whenever these secretaries of state, including Republican secretaries of state, don't want to give up this voter data, well, the Department of Justice admitted in court that Elon Musk's DOGE employees shared Americans' personal Social Security data with partisan organizations that worked to purge voter rolls. So what else happens? There are costly and burdensome hurdles that are designed to make it harder for eligible U.S. citizens to register and cast their ballot. Many common sources of identification that people have come to rely on--driver's license, military ID--would not be enough under this bill. So people would either have to present a birth certificate or a passport or, as my colleague from Utah pointed out, some kind of affidavit through a State process that may or may not be set up as an alternative. And if someone's current name doesn't match the name on their birth certificate, the barriers are even higher. So 69 million married women who changed their name, they have to provide some kind of additional documentation that they may not have in order to register. Maybe their State won't set up some process, and maybe they won't want to drive in rural areas hours to go in and submit some affidavit, or maybe they won't have someone that can help them do this affidavit. In most cases, these women will need to dig up their birth certificates, and I think many of us for one thing or another have had that experience. It is not always easy to get that birth certificate. You try to hide it somewhere, and then you don't remember, and then you have to go and you have to get another copy of the birth certificate. That is what is going to happen here. Marriage licenses, maybe mine is in my wedding book, don't know. That is what people are going to be thinking right now. So what happens if people don't have these documents on hand? In fact, more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to the documents necessary to register under this bill, and more than half of Americans--146 million--don't have a passport. So as Americans are already facing rising costs for necessities like healthcare and housing and energy, now they have to figure out this paperwork--when they are trying to call Social Security and no one answers, when they are trying to call the VA and no one answers, when they are trying to get a loan and USDA is down 20 percent of employees and they can't get anyone to answer or help them, now they have this. Marriage license, $10; birth certificate, I don't know, in my State it is $24; passport, $165. Maybe your State gets you an affidavit, but where are you supposed to go? How are you supposed to get that done? But it is not just about the documentation. The SAVE America Act also makes it harder to vote by effectively ending some of the most popular methods of voter registration. Right now, voters in 45 States, including my State, can register to vote online. And in 2024, more than 14.4 million voters did that. Americans in 46 States and the District of Columbia can register by mail using the Federal form, while two other States use a State absentee voter mail-in registration form. And in 2024, more than half of all voters registered through automatic voter registration--what a smart way to do it. When they get their driver's license renewed at the DMV or when they interact with another State agency, like their State department of health. But under the SAVE America Act, Americans wouldn't have these options; instead they would have to provide necessary documentation in person. As a result, mail registration, no; online voter registration, no; motor voter is severely limited; and nonpartisan voter registration drives are gone too. Altogether, the SAVE America Act's in-person voter registration requirements would clearly be a significant barrier, especially for new voters and people who get registered when they get their driver's licenses. For rural Americans driving 4\1/2\ hours roundtrip or people in Alaska and Hawaii actually having to get on a plane just to register to vote or Tribal voters in remote areas or people who lack reliable transportation and then those in Minnesota and in 22 other States who exercise their rights, under State law, to register in person on election day, as more than 2.6 million Americans, particularly young voters, did--uh-uh. It undermines it. It is by design. It makes it harder. It is kind of hard to see through all of those pages, but it makes it harder and undermines mail-in voting by requiring Americans to provide copies of ``this'' and ``this'' when they submit their mail-in ballots. President Trump's message on mail-in voting has been inconsistent. He actually voted by mail multiple times, and in 2024, he urged his supporters to do the same. It was good enough for him and his supporters. It should be good enough for all Americans now. You know, voting by mail is nothing new. It dates back to the Civil War. Now 36 States allow voters to cast their votes by mail, and nearly one-third of voters do. That is a good thing, and it is why I lead legislation that would make sure Americans in every State can request a mail-in ballot. In Minnesota, as I said, we have made it easier for people to vote. There is no excuse vote-by-mail--a lot of States have that--and 46 days of early voting and same-day registration. By the way, with some of the best voting laws and the highest voter turnout, we have elected Republican Governors like Tim Pawlenty. We have elected Independent Governors like Jesse Ventura, and we have elected Democratic Governors. We had in the legislature, with this voting system, one House Republican and one House Democratic last year. We have had statewide officials from both parties with an election system that makes it easier for people to vote. But as Steve Simon--Minnesota's respected secretary of state--has testified, the bill would cost States, counties, and cities untold millions of dollars to implement, and it would require implementation within 60 days of becoming law. As Steve put it, it is a recipe for chaos in our election system. I think we should be making it easier for people to vote. That is why I worked with my colleagues on the Freedom to Vote Act. That is why I support the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Instead of talking about this right now, we should be doing something about Americans' expenses, and why don't we also talk about how AI is being used to deceive voters? Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, no one wants to see fake ads or robocalls where you cannot even tell if it is a candidate you don't like or the candidate you love. While a number of States--red and blue--have enacted laws to address these threats to our elections, we cannot rely on a patchwork of State laws. Congress must act. That is why I lead legislation to ban content that falsely depicts Federal candidates in political ads to influence Federal elections. I have worked with Senator Josh Hawley--not exactly a flaming liberal. There is another bill to require disclaimers on political ads with images--audio or video--that are substantially generated by AI. That is for the ones, of course, that are constitutional and that allow for parity in certain uses. You could at least put a disclaimer on those to show that it is created by AI so you know if it is real or not. Then, on the ones that falsely depict people, you could actually ban those. That is what they have done in other countries. While we are talking about protecting our elections, we also need to talk about the need to support our State and local election offices as they work to maintain their election infrastructure to keep pace with new technology and combat cyber security. But instead of strengthening our election security and making sure that, in our campaigns, AI is not being used in a way that is going to mislead people and that voters are given knowledge of what they are seeing, which is something that is coming right at us in this next election--instead of talking about how to get rid of these across-the- board tariffs that cost households $1,700 last year or the small farm bankruptcies that are at a 5-year high, which has nearly doubled over the last year--as one farmer put it, a perfect, perfect storm of ugly-- or instead of working together to extend the healthcare tax credits or doing something about electricity prices that went up an average of $110 or doing something with this war that they unilaterally started and did not allow Congress to have a say in--and now we have seen an increase of $30 to $40 a barrel. Every $10 increase in a barrel of oil is a $450-a-year increase in gas prices for the average American family. But instead of doing all that when we have seen jobs down in January alone 108,000, and then in February, we lost 92,000 more jobs-- instead of dealing with this and not rubberstamping this President's policies, we are here, talking about a bill that makes it harder for people to vote. So I urge our Republican colleagues to change course and to work with us on where people really are, which is doing something about how much it costs for them to go on with their daily lives; to work with us on everything from permitting reform to doing something about getting more energy on the grid, to doing something about bringing grocery prices down. We are messing around here. Protecting the freedom to vote has never been easy, and we have had to course-correct many times to ensure that our democracy is there for people. Americans have fought and died to protect our freedom to vote. They have done so on the battlefield, and they have done it in marches and the civil rights movement; and 61 years after the Voting Rights Act was passed by this Chamber and signed into law, that fight continues today. This bill is not the right bill for this country. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Just finish.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in standing up to protect Americans' constitutional right to vote and to fight back against this administration's most recent attack on access to the ballot box. Instead of making the case to Americans about policies and what you want to do and why you think it is important to have say--the tariffs that in my State are wreaking havoc for our farmers with more yet to come--this legislation would actually be an end-around of the voting process. This legislation would make it hard for a whole bunch of American citizens to vote, which appears to be the endgame, given what the President has said about it. By his own admission, he said that passing this bill ``will guarantee the midterms.'' That is not my quote. It is an exact quote by the President of the United States. The SAVE America Act will kick American citizens off State voter rolls. And how is this happening? Well, this is a complete invasion of the privacy of voters. It makes secretaries of state give the voter rolls--the voter information, the voter data--to the Department of Homeland Security, as in the same Agency that brought us ICE, and then run that information through some kind of DOGE-like system that is somehow going to spit back out to the States which voters they should kick off the voter rolls. Then the bill also creates the bureaucratic hurdles that make it complicated and costly for American citizens to register to vote or change their registration, particularly for the 69 million women who have chosen to change their name when they got married. Why should they be penalized? And millions of American citizens don't have the specific document required by this bill to prove citizenship because this bill won't allow for driver's licenses anymore. You have got to produce other documents like a passport or a birth certificate. More than half of Americans don't have passports, and they cost at least $165 to get. Birth certificates can cost $30. In my State they are $24. And they can take tons of in-person time to obtain. For anyone that has ever had that experience, maybe for some other purpose that you have to get your birth certificate, it is not always as easy as people think. And this bill also requires people to register to vote in person at their election offices, effectively ending proven and popular methods of registration used by millions of Americans in Democratic- and Republican-led States all across the country, like online and mail-in registration. This would be a significant barrier for registration for millions of voters, especially for people in rural areas who have to drive hours to get that registration completed now. Rural Americans in many places would be forced to travel an average of about 4 hours round trip, and some voters in Alaska and Hawaii would be forced to take a flight just to register in person. This bill creates chaos. Maybe that is not the motivation of some of my colleagues, but I do believe it is the motivation of the President, who basically said: It will guarantee the midterms. It is designed to make it harder for American citizens--certain American citizens--to vote. It is designed to undermine mail-in voting and lay the groundwork for this obsession that the President seems to have with banning mail-in voting, while in some States, it is actually the prevailing way that people vote, including a number of red States, as the Presiding Officer is aware. Because the administration can read the polls, they see that there is major concern in America with high costs. So instead of maybe passing a different bill, which we could call the Save Americans Money Act, which would be doing something about these gas prices when we know it has happened--now gas prices are up $30 or $40 a barrel, $30 to $40 a barrel, and every $10 in increase for a barrel of oil is a $450-a-year increase for the average American family. For the second time ever, the average price of diesel has reached $5 per gallon. Look at what is happening with groceries. Electricity prices were up an average of $110 last year on Americans' bills. Healthcare costs continue to skyrocket. There are things we can do. We have a bipartisan housing bill we just passed in the Senate that needs to get passed in the House. We have some permitting bills. I was long a supporter of Senator Manchin's proposal on permitting. We could get that done. We should be adding energy to the grid. This idea that somehow we are going to think that North Dakota wind is bad in a pretty red State and then ban grants that would have brought that wind, which was good for North Dakota and Minnesota, to Minnesota with a power company in northern Minnesota--that is one of the grants that had gotten singled out and I think has just recently gotten released. All that stuff are things that we could do to help Americans with their costs. So we should be working on the Save Americans Money Act instead of this. So I urge my Republican colleagues to change course and stand with us and stand up for the fundamental right to vote. That always used to be bipartisan. The idea that you are going to make all these people reregister or register with an expensive passport or birth certificate, that they can no longer use their driver's license, that their private voter data is sent to Homeland Security to go through some Elon Musk-designed computer system, is not what people want in this country right now. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today as our country is in the middle of a war to urge my Republican colleagues to support Senator Murray's proposal that would immediately fund the Department of Homeland Security's critical national security functions--cyber defense, airport safety, the Coast Guard--while negotiations continue on critical reforms on ICE and Border Patrol. We must restore accountability. No one knows that better than the people of Minnesota with these Agencies, but there is absolutely no reason that we can't do two things at once, and that is fund the bulk of this Department while we are working on the reforms to these two Agencies, both of which have ample funding. We all saw what happened in Minnesota where the surge of ICE agents-- as local law enforcement in our State made it repeatedly clear--it sadly made our State less safe. Two of my constituents were killed, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. In fact, in the month of January, two out of three of shooting fatalities--two out of three--in the city of Minneapolis were committed by Federal agents in the entire month. ICE wrongly arrested a Hmong elder, dragged him out in his underwear as he is trying to show his ID and they didn't see it, drove him around in a car for an hour only to discover they had the wrong guy. The guy they were looking for had been in prison for years. They targeted kids. We saw 5-year-old Liam in his blue rabbit hat with floppy ears and his Spider-Man backpack. They stopped a number of off-duty police officers. One of our suburban police chiefs told the story of a police officer where the ICE agents literally took out their guns--every one of those police officers were people of color--and they repeatedly violated the Constitution and defied court orders. So many people trying to show their IDs shoved into cars, dropped off four blocks later, maybe for the bounties, or taken to the Whipple center and released. Beyond the human cost, Operation Metro Surge cost taxpayers in Minnesota $18 million a week and Minnesota's economy $80 million a week, and we are still recovering. But our State stood up together, bringing food, protesting, making sure that people got their kids to school, people bringing strangers' kids to school, and we got an announcement finally of a drawdown to the original footprint. I just talked to Director Homan about this last week, and he promised to me that they would keep to that plan of the original footprint. They announced some reforms for how those remaining ICE agents and Border Patrol would do their jobs. But, of course, we want to make that permanent. And then last week at the oversight hearing, I pressed Secretary Noem, and what we got through not just my questioning but my colleagues', including my Republican colleagues, was a refusal to admit her mistakes or take responsibility for her actions. So her overdue removal from the Department of Homeland Security is also a good step toward accountability. This is a start. And the reason that we want to get these reforms put into law is obvious. We are talking about basic police conduct that you see in red and blue States across our country. That is what we are asking for, those standards of conduct. But as those negotiations continue, what makes the most sense, especially right now, is to make sure that we fund those other Agencies. It is not written in law that you can't negotiate on part of an Agency--and in this case, ICE, and the activities of these Border Patrol agents--that you can't negotiate on that while you are funding the rest of the Agency. I would hope that our Republican colleagues would actually welcome that because that is a way to make sure that we are getting funding and paychecks are getting delivered, while at the same time, we are doing these negotiations. And while I did not agree in any way with that major funding increase to ICE--that money could have been used to local police or to pay down the debt, $75 million--but that is what that money went toward, and so they have that money now. So why don't we focus on getting the rest of the Agency funded? That is why we put this forward, and that way, we could fund disaster relief, cyber security defense, airport security, and the Coast Guard. So when people vote against that to fund those important functions, they are blocking pay for TSA agents who keep us safe, and that is, unfortunately, by not taking this agreement, what we are seeing; funds for FEMA; Coast Guard protects our ports and our shorelines; funding for Cybersecurity, which among many things secures our elections, protects our information technology. So I ask our colleagues: Why--instead of just doing this compromise-- I think they could have proposed the same thing, and we would have definitely supported it. Why would they want so badly to keep ICE with no reforms that they won't fund the rest of this Agency? It doesn't make any sense, especially since we are proposing commonsense reforms, especially when we are acknowledging, OK, you are not going to agree to it today, but we think it is important to fund the rest of this Agency today so we can keep negotiating with you to fund ICE in the future, but only with these reforms. I ask my Senate Republican colleagues to join us in this pragmatic proposal. I urge them to listen to the American people who do want to see reforms to ICE and Border Patrol. I think they know that, but the American people also want to fund the important work of FEMA and the Coast Guard and TSA and Cybersecurity. I yield the floor.

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

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I join many of my colleagues today in mourning the loss of our servicemembers who have been killed in action in the Mideast, and I am thinking of those who have been wounded. Their sacrifice is a tragic reminder of the gravity of war and why the consequential decision of declaring war requires debate and authorization from Congress. We must pass Senator Kaine's resolution, which we will be considering tomorrow, to rein in the President because, under the U.S. Constitution, it is Congress, not the President, who has the power to declare war. The President unilaterally, with no authorization from Congress and without a clear justification of any imminent need for war, has gone to war with Iran, and he has done so without laying out a strategic plan or a path forward. This military campaign has put American troops at serious risk. We have publicly learned--in addition to the classified briefing that I attended today with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War and the Director of the CIA, we have learned publicly that this is escalating, and we have seen the results even so far. American servicemembers and innocent civilians have been killed. U.S. military bases have been hit. Our Embassies and allies have been attacked. To be clear, Iran is a terrorist state, and it should never have a nuclear weapon, and the regime's aggression in the region and its oppression of Iranian citizens must end. That is why I have long supported serious sanctions against Iran, why I voted for funding for the Defense Department, and why I supported the Iran nuclear agreement. It wasn't perfect--far from perfect--but I supported that agreement because of our goal--our major foreign policy goal--to assure that Iran did not have a nuclear weapon. I opposed President Trump's decision a few years back to take us out of that agreement. Even some of my colleagues who had not voted for the agreement to begin with, which I had, did not support the decision of taking us out of the agreement. Our ultimate goal must be peace in the region--and we know all too well that wars for regime change can lead to unintended consequences for years and decades to come. As we see what is happening, we believe--many of us--that Congress should have this ultimate authorization. Not having a plan is not only dangerous for the United States, it is dangerous for our partners and our allies abroad. This military campaign has introduced increased chaos and danger throughout the region. Military action of this size and scope must be paired with a plan that takes into account the long-term impacts of war and sets achievable goals that do not unnecessarily endanger our troops and innocents. That is not what has happened here. The President has acknowledged that they do not have a clear plan of who will be taking over this nation of tens of millions of people. That is why I am on the Senate floor today. The American people don't want another war--an endless war--that puts our troops at great risk. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this resolution and stand up for the institution in which we serve and stand up for the people we represent. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, last month, I came to the floor after the tragic killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and talked about what had happened in my State. Renee Good left behind three kids, including a 6-year-old. When she was shot and killed by an ICE agent, her final words to the officer who shot her were, ``I am not mad at you.'' Alex Pretti was a VA intensive care nurse and guardian angel who did one of the most selfless jobs one could think of, caring for our veterans, often in their final hours. Last Saturday, I met with the workers who were on the shift that, only 2 weeks before, was that same shift of workers that were on when they found out that their coworker Alex had been killed. His last words were to a woman who had been pushed down by Border Patrol, and his last words were, ``Are you OK?'' His fellow workers at the VA recounted to me what a kindhearted person he was, how every patient felt like they were the only patient. Other family members of patients had remarked about that too. The coworkers told me how he was the kind of guy who would fill in on the shifts when someone had a family emergency or just needed time off, and he would fill in for them on their shift, including that Saturday morning shift. Both Renee and Alex should be alive today, and as we honor their memories, I am on the floor again today following the administration's announcement of its plan to finally end Operation Metro Surge and drawn down the thousands of federalized agents that aren't just in Minneapolis or St. Paul--that, actually, I don't think people quite understand. They are all over our State. They are in the suburbs. They are in small towns. The number of calls that we get--my office is handling hundreds and hundreds of cases right now, but the cases of just someone who is in the store and gets stopped because they are someone of color or the videos of two White friends with one Latino friend, and it is the Latino they would go up to and say, ``Are you legal?'' And the Latino says, ``Yes, I am,'' and they still throw them in the car, maybe because they could get a bounty. The number of people that were stopped multiple times, the Somali police officers who are off duty that were taken out of their car. The stories go on and on. You can't have 3,000 ICE agents in a metro area. And, again, they also went rural in a big, big way, but in a metro area, where they outnumber the number of sworn police officers in our 10 biggest police departments, which includes Minneapolis and St. Paul, they were triple the number of sworn police officers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. But for more than 2 months, Minnesotans stood together. They stared down ICE, and they never blinked. They marched--and I was there, 50,000 strong in 10 below zero weather--peacefully. And what I will never forget is 50,000 people marching peacefully, filling up the entire streets of Minneapolis peacefully, and then less than 12 hours, 24 hours later, 6 Border Patrol guys shot a guy with a cell phone in his hand in the back. They couldn't handle that. So ICE is withdrawing from Minnesota. It is good. We are glad they are leaving our State, let me be clear. And when I talked to Director Homan about 10 days ago, he said this was the timetable, and they must follow through. He said they would first push out the Border Patrol agents and send them home. And they did that in the number of a couple hundred. And now they are bringing home the remaining Metro Surge ICE agents to get to the original footprint. But ICE withdrawing from Minnesota is just the beginning. We need accountability for the lives lost and the extraordinary abuse of power in the hands of these agents. And we, of course, must see a complete overhaul of the Agency. And I do not know how anyone can justify $75 billion extra dollars for this Agency, making them bigger than the FBI, when that money could still--the remaining money--go to local law enforcement. It could go to help people pay for their healthcare premiums. For months, ICE has made my State less safe. It is not just a horrific shooting; we have also seen repeated violations of the constitutional rights of the people of Minnesota. I do say to our colleagues, if you believe in the First Amendment, in the right to assemble, then show it. If you believe in the Second Amendment and that Alex Pretti had a right to be a lawful gun owner--and it was the Border Patrol agents that took his gun out of his holster, all he was holding was a cell phone--then show it. If you believe in the Fourth Amendment and the right against search and seizure and that you can't have armed agents ramming through an elder Hmong man's door, pulling him out in his underwear and throwing him in a car, only to find out, after they drove him around for an hour, that they had the wrong guy and that, in fact, the guy they were going after had been in prison for years and that this Hmong man had done nothing wrong and was the son of a beloved nurse that treated American soldiers in Vietnam. Those are the stories that people are never going to forget in my State: a fourth grader from Columbia Heights and her mom detained by ICE on the way to school; the little 5-year-old, little Liam, standing there scared in his blue hat with floppy ears and his Spider-Man backpack. Those two kids, the fourth grader and Liam sent to Texas, and the judge--they sent him to Texas without even waiting to see what the court said. And then the court said: No, can't do that. And then they had to bring him back from Texas in his little blue hat with the little floppy ears. This administration also sent a 2-year-old to Texas. My staff and many other local lawmakers worked through the night on that case--came back from Texas. It should never have come to this. A court case was pending, and they put a 2-year-old on a plane when her mom was waiting for her in Minnesota. These are just a few of the stories. As our local police have repeatedly made clear in the cities and in the suburbs and in the rural areas, ICE's actions have not made us safer. They have made us so much less safe. They have taken taxpayer money--at some estimates, $18 million a week--and spent it on hotel rooms that should have been used for families visiting from Wisconsin and Iowa and Canada that like to go to the Mall of America in the middle of the winter. Those hotel rooms should have been used by people in Greater Minnesota that want to come in and go ice fishing or enjoy skiing in our State. But instead we had 3,000 ICE agents in Bloomington, MN, alone, our biggest suburb--1,000 ICE agents in their hotel rooms. Think of how much money that is and all the overtime for the police officers that could have been following up on child cases and could have been helping on burglary cases and could have been helping citizens with the trust that they have built over the years. And that trust, so much on the line now, but kept intact because of how those local police officers throughout our State and local sheriff deputies have handled this travesty. This goes way beyond welcoming help for violent offenders, which we would, or a fraud investigation-- way beyond all of that. In fact, the opposite has happened because some highly experienced prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota, who have been there through Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys and Democratic- appointed U.S. attorneys, who lead and have led the cases on fraud, the important cases to go after the stealing of taxpayer money, and brought 80-some cases already and won major convictions in court, those prosecutors who are so well-respected in our State were asked to investigate Renee Good's wife after she was gunned down. And they said: No, we will not do that, and they stepped down. It reminded me of the decorated war veteran in New York in their U.S. Attorney's Office when asked to dismiss a case that had been rightfully brought against then-Mayor Eric Adams. That prosecutor, who had clerked for conservative Justices, a member of the Federalist Society, he said in a letter to the Justice Department: You may find a fool or a coward to file your motion, but it will never be me. That is what those assistant U.S. attorneys, including the former acting head of the U.S. Attorney's Office that had been installed by the Trump administration on my recommendation who did an incredible job through the horrific assassination of former Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and also was there at the side for the families when those little children were gunned down through stained glass windows at Annunciation Church--those are the people that they messed with and asked them to do something they felt were unethical, and as a result, all of the prosecutors that were heading up the righteous fraud investigations and prosecutions are no longer in that office. So you tell me how these actions have made our State more safe. It is the opposite: School attendance down; families living in fear; people staying home; restaurants and businesses feeling the impact; Operation Metro Surge costing our Minnesota economy an estimated $80 million per week, all for the shock and awe, where such a small percentage of the people that they apprehended were involved in violent crime. At its peak, one study showed that the surge cost Federal, State, and local governments at least $18 million every single week. The fact is, Operation Metro Surge put our State at the center of America's heartbreak, but it also put us at the center of America's courage and America's hope. Every day across our State, people did extraordinary things. Ordinary people did extraordinary things. They drove other kids to school. They brought food to their neighbors. They showed up for small businesses. Teachers and other school leaders stood up and protected their students, organized food drives and computer drives. Attorneys across our State at private law firms took ICE to court to enforce people's constitutional rights. And judges appointed by Presidents of both parties, including our conservative chief judge of the Federal District Court of Minnesota issued opinions, and strongly worded opinions, demanding that people come into court unless their orders were followed. Today, the administration's top border official Tom Homan announced the end of Operation Surge and the drawdown of the 3,000 ICE agents-- again, triple the amount of sworn police officers in the combined cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul--leaving only what he has called ``a small footprint.'' He has been straightforward with me since he arrived on the ground in Minnesota, straightforward with our chiefs, and we appreciate that. But we must be vigilant in making sure there is a real and thorough drawdown. We need transparent, objective investigations and justice for Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the many others who had their rights violated by this administration. There must--must--be new leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, and Kristi Noem must resign. That is what you do with $75 billion? You put bounties on legal citizens? You break out windows of people with disabilities who are born in this country and drag them to a detention center? That is what you do with $75 billion of taxpayer money? You take Hmong elders and throw them out of their house in their underwear with their Crocs on their feet in below-zero weather and throw them into a car? You stop off-duty police officers just because they are not White? That is what you do with $75 billion? So that is why she must step down. And there must be major reforms to immigration enforcement, including a complete overhaul of this Agency. Americans want Federal agents to abide by the same code of conduct as local law enforcement and be held accountable when they don't. Americans want transparency. Federal agents shouldn't be masked. They should be required to use body cameras. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. We must end roving patrols. Federal agents should not enter private property without a judicial warrant. We must end the bounty system that incentivizes arrest without cause and has taken down numerous people, multiple people, hundreds of people in our State that were legal, born in our State, have passports. They wouldn't even listen to them when they told them as they threw them into a car. We must protect sensitive locations, and the racial profiling must end. Today, a number of our colleagues, including myself, voted against continuing to fund ICE. Budget shows our values. That extra $75 billion, as I explained, triples the Agency's funding, giving it more money than the FBI. That was wrong. That money could have gone to local enforcement, Affordable Care Act tax credits for 3 years, and $75 billion would have paid for everyone in the country to get their tax credit extended to help them pay for their premiums under the Affordable Care Act. An occupying force was in our State. They tried to sow chaos and fear, but Minnesota didn't take the bait. As Bruce Springsteen sings in his new song ``The Streets of Minneapolis'': Against smoke and rubber bullets In the dawn's early light Citizens stood for justice Their voices ringin' through the night. We have shown the world how to protect democracy and take care of our neighbors, and we are going to continue to stand up for accountability, for justice, for change. And when people ask me: What can we do? Well, you do that. You continue to stand up. When people outside our State say: What can we do to help Minnesota? Well, now, with ICE agents leaving--maybe you want to wait until the weather warms up just a little--you can come and visit our great State. You can fill up those hotel rooms that were taken over by ICE agents and go visit incredible places in our State, where Prince got his start. You can go to First Avenue. You can go to the Mall of America. You can go up north or down south in Minnesota and see the incredible bike trails and beautiful places and Lake Superior, the most superior lake of them all. So that is what we want you to do. We want you to come to our State and visit. We want you to invest in our State. We want you to start businesses in our State. We want you to send your kids to school in our State. We want people to come and work in our State because we have shown the country and the world what we are all about. I yield the floor.

Ms. KLOBUCHAR

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I was unable to cast a vote on rollcall vote No. 623, passage of H.J. Res. 130, disapproving the Bureau of Land Management resource management plan that made certain land managed by the Buffalo Field Office unavailable for new coal leases. Had I been present, I would have voted against the measure as I had voted against the identical Senate companion, S. 89, the day before, rollcall vote No. 621. The Congressional Review Act is not the appropriate tool for reversing Bureau of Land Management decisions that are developed with years of analysis and public engagement.