Tim Kaine

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise together with my colleagues from Maryland and Hawaii to celebrate 50 years of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. I will not speak long because I have a separate matter that I will take up after this. My colleagues did a good job, I think, of shining a spotlight on the challenges that exist with the IDEA at 50--the chronic underfunding of this program, the Federal Government not meeting the commitment that it made in 1975 to fund 40 percent of these extra costs for kids with disabilities, the firing of staff recently. These are serious issues, but I want to spend my time more focused on the celebration of what these 50 years of the IDEA have done. When it was originally passed 50 years ago this month, the bill was called the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the EHA. It was renamed the ``IDEA'' in a reauthorization in 1990. Guess what the vote was in Congress around the passage of this law that was signed by President Ford. In the Senate, the vote to pass this landmark civil rights and education law was 87 to 7, and in the House, the vote was 404 to 7. For a big, landmark civil rights and education law to pass with that kind of a margin is really near miraculous. The reason that it passed so overwhelmingly was because society realized that we had been treating kids with disabilities in a very, very tragic and unforgiveable way. Get this: In 1975, more than a million school-age children in this country were essentially locked out of public education because of the fact that they had a disability--either not being educated at all or being educated in institutions often far away from their homes and families, far away from their friends and neighbors, in a way that was not providing them adequate educational support. So think about that million that has now grown to 7 million--nearly 1 in 7 students in our public school system receives special education services--what the trajectory of their lives was like before the IDEA passed and after the IDEA passed. Students with a designated disability under the IDEA receive an individualized education plan so that their particular disability can be focused in a meaningful way to enable them to be all they can be. Isn't that what we want for all children? Let all children be all they can be. It is not often noted, but it should be noted that many students who receive individualized education plans--the IEPs--only require special education services for a couple of years because even a couple of years of speech therapy or other kinds of special services is enough to get that student completely successful without additional services. I know this from my own family, my own three kids who went through public schools, that sometimes the IEP and the services provided only need to be provided for a short period of time. Students who receive these services early in their educational careers often don't need them for more than a couple of preschool years or early grades, and then they are perfectly successful. The IDEA works. It works. It works to enable these students who had been consigned to the shadows of life for generations to be able to achieve all that they can. You know, one of the measures of success of the IDEA at 50 is this: As a mayor, public education was the biggest part of my city budget. As a Governor, it was the biggest part of my State budget. And, man, did I hear a lot of complaints from people about the IDEA. My educator said that Congress isn't funding it well enough. My educator said that the paperwork to do an IEP and then to assess its compliance is way too complicated. But I never had a single person, an educator or anyone else, say we should undo the IDEA. For all of the challenges about underfunding, for all of the challenges about paperwork, there is uniform recognition in this country that the passage of the IDEA, the 50 years of a commitment by society that every child should be all they can be, is a good thing. Can we make it better? Of course, we can. But that bedrock promise that was made in 1975 is a good thing, and it has worked to enrich the lives now of tens of millions of people, to make them productive adults, just like any of us aspire to be. What a great thing to be able to celebrate. That is why I join my colleagues today to celebrate what the 50 years have meant to the tens of millions of students who benefited from the IDEA and the commitment that we must do better. I am very, very troubled by the underfunding and applaud my colleagues for focusing on that, but I am also very troubled by the actions of this administration to shed the staff who are needed to work with States and work with local governments to make sure that services are being appropriately provided. I remember being on the HELP Committee during President Trump's first term and examining his nominee for Secretary of Education in the first term, Secretary DeVos. She was talking about letting the IDEA just be run by States, with no Federal role. I remember questioning her at the hearing: Well, what about States that decide not to do it? Because it is expensive, there would be some States, without Federal oversight, that would just decide they would rather not provide services, not fund services for students with disabilities. I asked her the question: Do you think a parent of a child with a disability should just have to move to another State that is more compassionate? No. We have a Federal, national commitment that a child born with a disability, whatever ZIP Code in this country they are born in, should be entitled to receive these basic services. That promise is being threatened right now by the firings. That promise has always been threatened by the chronic underfunding. So while I join with my colleagues in committing to continuing to work to improve it, I don't want this moment to be lost without acknowledging the tremendous good that has been done by this most bipartisan law to enrich the lives of tens of millions of children and their families. With that, I yield the floor on this topic and would ask to continue on now a second matter.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise for the closing comments about S.J. Res. 90. My colleague and friend from Idaho talked about strikes on boats. That is not what this is about. This is about the prospect, openly discussed by the President, for a land invasion of the sovereign nation of Venezuela. The President has not asserted a legal rationale for it. The documents that we read in the classified facility talk about a legal rationale for strikes in international waters but, specifically, do not contain a legal rationale for striking a sovereign nation. This is not about President Trump. It is about the Constitution, and it is about Congress. Do we take seriously the most important responsibility in article I, that wars should not be declared without Congress? Venezuela is a nation of 30 million people. They have a very capable military because they purchased weapons from our adversaries, like Russia and Iran. The massing of U.S. forces around Venezuela poses series risk of a miscommunication or a use of those weapons against Americans. I might remind my colleagues that the United States attacked Grenada in 1983. Grenada was an island with a population of less than 100,000. Nineteen American soldiers died in that attack. One hundred fifty-two American soldiers were wounded in that attack. Twenty-four civilians who were at a mental hospital that was bombed by accident were killed in that attack. An attack against a population poorly armed, without weapons, of 113,000 people caused 19 soldiers to lose their lives and 152 to be injured. A Venezuela of 30 million people is a completely different kind of military operation, and we would not expect it to go perfectly because none ever go perfectly. How will you respond to an American family who loses the life of a child or whose child is injured in the event of a war against Venezuela, when they ask you: Why did you not even think it was important enough to have a debate and vote in the U.S. Senate? Why did you let this President--why would you let any President--make that decision on his or her own without you even weighing in? I will close with this. I have stood on this floor and made this same argument when the President is a Democrat. It happened often during President Obama's term, and I made the same argument against unilateral Executive war when the President was a Democrat, as I am now making when the President is a Republican. I believe, as I stand here today, if these same facts were applying strikes on boats, massing of warships, the President saying he has authorized covert action, the President saying he has looked at land targets, and that President was Joe Biden or Barack Obama--I believe I would have many Republicans voting with me on this resolution, not because they don't like President Biden or President Obama but because they would take this responsibility, no war without Congress, that we pledge an oath to because it is in the Constitution we pledge an oath to--they would take it seriously. I urge you to take this as seriously as you would take it if the President were a Democrat. It shouldn't matter. We should not be going to war without a vote of Congress. The lives of our troops are at stake. Respect them and their families, and please vote yes on the resolution. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I will begin I think a few hours of floor speeches on S.J. Res. 90, and I appreciate the work of Leader Thune and Leader Schumer in scheduling this matter for a vote today at 5 o'clock. I view it as a very important one. The act that I just read, the International Security Assistance and Arms Control Export Act, is an act that allows a single Senator to file a privileged motion that can be heard on the floor of the Senate without intervening committee action under a simple majority threshold to address the most serious question that this body ever has to grapple with--the question of war. The War Powers Act was passed in 1974, and it has a set of provisions in it. Those provisions include Presidential notification of Congress when there are military actions undertaken that meet the definition of ``hostilities'' within the act. And the President has notified us. President Trump, like other Presidents, has provided notice of military actions. The particular statute allows this motion to be heard on the floor in a privileged status if two threshold questions are met: first, that there is no congressional authorization covering a proposed military action, and second, that military action is either ongoing or imminent, such that the motion should be heard. The framers, in 1974, of this act clearly intended that Congress should be able to have a vote and debate on this matter even before the initiation of war so that Congress could be in a position to stop it before it begins. So what I am offering, together with my cosponsors Senators Schiff and Paul, is this resolution to try to make plain what the Constitution makes plain, and that is, no war without Congress. We should not be in a war without Congress. I have had the opportunity, as have some of my colleagues, to go into the classified facility here in the Senate and review the legal authorization document that the Trump administration has presented recently to the Senate concerning the military strikes against boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Now, I reviewed that in the SCIF, so I can't talk about the content of it. I would encourage all of my colleagues to go review it, because I basically believe there are three critical errors in that: one, a mistaken philosophy of Executive war powers that derives from a misquotation of constitutional-era documents that the Framers were using as they grappled with war powers questions; two, a domestic legal rationale for when the President can unilaterally wage war that is completely contrary to the Constitution; and three, an international legal rationale that I think most of the Members of this body would find to be quite a stretch if they review it. But the one thing I can say is something that isn't in the document, and so I am not in any danger of revealing classified information. What is not in the document that is available for Senators to review is any--any--legal rationale that would suggest that U.S. military action against the sovereign nation of Venezuela or any sovereign nation is covered by the legal rationale in that document. Just this morning, there has been public press suggesting that even the President recognizes that there is no legal rationale for such military action, again, absent congressional authorization. Why are we bringing this to the floor? We are bringing it to the floor because of a set of actions. We have already discussed, in a resolution that was filed by my colleague Senator Schiff, a couple of weeks back, where we had a vote, the increased pace of military operations in the Caribbean and the Pacific, near Venezuela, and the justification that the White House has used for those often references to Venezuela. So there is an ongoing and increasing pace of strikes against boats that are killing dozens of individuals. But with respect to additional actions that are specifically focused on Venezuela that enable this resolution to meet the imminence test under the War Powers Resolution, on October 15, 2025, President Trump confirms that he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela. Now, it is highly unusual for a President to publicly announce that he has authorized covert action. It almost immediately makes it noncovert once the President has announced it. But that has been widely, publicly disseminated, that the President has authorized covert action in Venezuela. The next day, October 16, the President says, ``We are certainly looking at land now,'' signifying the land invasion of Venezuela. On October 24, there were multiple public reports--and this is underway--that the Pentagon has sent the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group to U.S. SOUTHCOM to be positioned in and around Venezuela. You don't need a Ford-class carrier to interdict small drug boats. That is not what you use a carrier for. That direction of the Ford, which includes many Virginians who are positioned on the Ford, to SOUTHCOM is specifically to have it there, arrayed nearby Venezuela, in the event the President decides to start a war there. Finally, on October 31, public reporting shows that many Trump administration officials have told the press that a secret list of targets in Venezuela has been drawn up. All of this, together with the increased pace of strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, suggests that we are on the verge of something that should not happen without a debate and vote in Congress before the American people. This is an indication of the current assets that are massed around Venezuela, the U.S. ships and aircraft massing off Venezuela. And this comes from a Washington Post report of November 1, 2025. The Gerald R. Ford, the largest and most modern aircraft carrier in the world, built at the Newport News shipyard in Virginia, is the lead. But the mass of other ships and submarines and special operations vehicles and aircraft platforms, both manned and unmanned, is significant. Currently, about 10 percent of the U.S. Navy is arrayed around Venezuela. They have been pulled from every other theater in the world to array around Venezuela. This poses some significant risks to U.S. sailors. Venezuela has very high-end weaponry that they have acquired from U.S. adversaries, primarily Russia and Iran, that could do significant damage to these U.S. assets and to our sailors and troops that are on these assets, particularly if Venezuela were to misread the impressions or the strategy of the United States or were there to be some kind of miscommunication. It would not at all be outside of historical precedent for Venezuela to use its own weapons if it believed it was subject to imminent attack, and that would pose the U.S. troops connected to these multiple platforms to significant danger. And that is what we should avoid. Mr. President, here is my belief. There may be Members in this body who believe that we should be at war with Venezuela, just as there may be Members in this body who believe we should be at war with narcotraffickers in the Caribbean and the Pacific. And there is a simple solution for that which is consistent with the Constitution, and that solution is for U.S. Senators to draft up an authorization for use of military force and have the backbone to put their own names on it, if they believe a war is a good idea. But the Framers of the Constitution firmly believed that we should not be at war--we should not be risking our troops who are on all these platforms right now, their life and their health--we should not be risking them without a debate and a vote in Congress. The Framers took this position in such an unusual way in 1787. In all the other countries around the world, the ones they were familiar with, the initiation of war was a matter for the Executive. But the Framers of the Constitution--as I said before, even with George Washington as the President, a great military leader whom they revered--they said a decision about war is too important to put in the hands of one person. Thus, the initiation of war should be for the article I legislative branch, not the article II executive branch. That has been consistent constitutional language that is very unique. Most nations still put the decisions about war in the hands of the Executive, not the legislative branch. I have been a stickler about this, whether the President has been a Democrat or Republican. Interestingly enough, this issue came up yesterday, right across the street, in the Supreme Court, as the Court was hearing oral arguments on the case of Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, a case dealing with the question of whether tariffs could be imposed under the IEEPA statute that we spent some time discussing on the floor. The Solicitor General of the United States, Attorney Sauer, is not only the Nation's chief advocate before the Supreme Court; he was Donald Trump's personal lawyer. This is an individual who is very close to the President, both personally and now in a professional capacity. And he was making the argument that Congress had delegated a clear congressional power--the power to post tariffs, the power to tax--to the Executive. One of the Justices, Donald Trump's appointee, Justice Gorsuch, was pressing on the question of whether Congress really can delegate specific congressional powers to the Executive or not. On page 68 of the transcript of the oral argument in the case, Justice Gorsuch was pressing this Solicitor General, Donald Trump's personal attorney: What's the reason to accept the notion that Congress can hand off the power to declare war to the President? The Solicitor General said: Well, we don't contend that. Again, that would be . . . an abdication, not a delegation. I stand here to urge my colleagues--and I have done this often during by 12\1/2\ years in the Senate--not to abdicate. Don't abdicate the power to declare war. Of all the powers given to the article I branch, this is the one that should be most jealously guarded. The reason the Framers put this decision in the hands of Congress was because of a belief that we should not risk the lives of our servicemembers unless there is a clear political consensus, as expressed by a vote in Congress, that the mission is worth it. If Congress is not willing to have a debate and say that the mission is worth it, then it is the height of--I would sort of call it--public immorality to nevertheless require people who are serving to risk their lives and their health. The people who volunteer for the military volunteer knowing that it is going to be dangerous. They do sign up for that. But they ought to know, if they are ordered into a mission that involves military action, that there is a political consensus by the elected leadership of the country that that mission is worth it. And absent a debate and vote in Congress, we are ordering people to potentially risk their lives without having the courage ourselves to sign our name to that mission. So I stand here with my cosponsors, Senator Schiff and Senator Paul, to say we shouldn't be at war without Congress. Even President Trump, by public reporting today, suggests that he may not yet think he has a legal rationale for a war against Venezuela. Let's not abdicate. Let's not abdicate the most important power we have. I would hope that all my colleagues--whatever they think about the virtues or vices of a war against Venezuela--would at least stand strong for the proposition that Congress should have the power and, indeed, the responsibility to have a debate and have a vote on it before we ordered our troops to risk their lives. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, pursuant to section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Control Act, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from the further consideration of S.J. Res. 90, to direct the President to terminate the use of U.S. Armed Forces for hostilities within or against Venezuela, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I appreciate the chance to rise today to talk about a success story in Virginia and the elections last night, but I am going to take a little bit of a different tact than my colleagues, and I am not going to talk about my pride in my friends who won elections; I am instead going to talk about the turnout in the elections. Virginia has Governor's races every 4 years. We do them in an odd- year cycle, where the Governor's race is the year following the Presidential race. This has been our practice for a very, very long time. We can look at the turnout--although the State has grown in population, we can look at the total turnout in the Governor's race and get some sense for what is happening and how engaged our electorate is. Virginia has had a history in the past of significant obstacles to voting. My father-in-law fought in the submarine corps in the Pacific during World War II. He came back to the State, and the first Governor's race after he got back from World War II was in the late 1940s. He noticed that the total turnout in that race represented almost single digits in terms of the eligible voter population. Virtually nobody voted. My father-in-law Lin, who later became Governor of Virginia, said: Wait, I was in the Pacific fighting for a democracy, and I come home to my home State, and virtually no one is even voting for Governor? That led him to start a career in politics that eventually achieved him the distinction of being the first Republican ever popularly elected to be Governor of Virginia in 1969. What was happening in Virginia in those days was poll taxes and literacy tests and other things that restricted people's ability to vote. We have had a remarkable transformation under both Democratic and Republican leaders that has expanded the franchise and expanded participation. What I want to stress very clearly is voting turnout, voting participation--making it easier to participate is not a partisan thing; it helps Republicans, and it helps Democrats. You can tell that by looking at the history of gubernatorial elections and seeing what happens when turnout goes up. Sometimes it is great for Democrats; sometimes it is great for Republicans. I will give you an example. Four years ago, in 2021, we had a race in Virginia, and Republicans swept all three statewide offices. Republicans elected Glenn Youngkin to be our Governor, and he has now served the single 4-year term that Virginia grants to Governors. We are the only State where you can't run for reelection. Virginia elected our first woman Lieutenant Governor, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears. She was also the first woman of color to hold a statewide office. And Virginia elected 4 years ago Jason Miyares--Mr. President, you and I were chatting about him earlier today--who is a Cuban-American, to be our attorney general. Why do I bring up that election from 4 years ago? I bring it up because it was notable in that the Republicans swept, but it was notable for another reason: The turnout in that race in 2021 was 25 percent higher than the turnout 4 years previously. It was the second largest jump in turnout between any Governor's races in Virginia. I will say with a matter of pride that the first biggest jump was between my father-in-law's two Governor's races in 1965 and 1969. He ran for Governor as a Republican in 1965 and lost. He ran for Governor as a Republican in 1969 and won. And the turnout jumped by 68 percent. Why? Because the Supreme Court struck down poll taxes and the Voting Rights Act struck down poll taxes in Federal elections. When poll taxes went away, it brought a huge surge of additional participation. When Governor Youngkin and Winsome Earle-Sears won and Jason Miyares won in 2021, why were they able to get a 25-percent increase in voting participation in Virginia? They did it because Virginia made reforms to guarantee and expand the right to vote. We embraced mail-in voting. We embraced no-excuse absentee voting. We allowed people to vote for 45 days before election day. By doing those three things--some of which President Trump said should be banned at the national level--it helped a Republican ticket sweep all races in Virginia. We went, by most estimates, from being one of the States that made it harder to vote--traditionally, in the 51 States plus DC, we were usually ranked about 45th in the ease of access to the ballot. We went from the bottom to the top 10, and it was good for a Republican ticket. Governor Youngkin, Lieutenant Governor Sears, and Attorney Governor Miyares won a big election with increased turnout. Expanding access to the ballot is not a partisan thing. Last night, Democrats had a sweep. My friend Abigail Spanberger, who served in the House with a number of my Senate colleagues, was elected to be Virginia's first woman Governor. My friend Ghazala Hashmi, a State senator--actually, my State senator. She is the one I write cranky letters to when I have to write a cranky letter to an official. She was elected to be Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. And get this-- this is pretty amazing--she is the first Muslim-American woman ever elected to a statewide office anywhere in the United States. My friend Jay Jones, whom I have known since he was 11 years old, was elected to be Virginia's first African-American attorney general. They also saw a big increase in turnout. The turnout we had last night was about 10 percent higher than the turnout we saw in 2021. The point I just wanted to make by standing here is that my colleagues have talked about the variety of threats there may be to ballot access, whether it is forced redistrictings or whether it is President Trump saying that we should abandon vote-by-mail or make it harder for people to vote. The history of my State shows that if you make it convenient for people to vote, No. 1, more people will vote, and No. 2, that can be good for Republicans or Democrats, depending upon the political dynamic of the time and the strength of the candidates and their campaigns. It used to be that voting and voting rights in this Chamber were pretty bipartisan. When the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 nationally, it wouldn't have passed without Republican votes. Yes, it was a Democratic President, L.B.J., who put it on the table, but it was Republican Senators disproportionately who carried the torch to victory on the voting rights bill in 1965, as many southern Democrats opposed that bill. As the voting rights bill has been reauthorized over time, it was always reauthorized significantly with both Democratic and Republican votes. It has only been in the aftermath of the Shelby decision, which happened right as I came into the Senate, that voting rights have started to seem like a partisan issue, where Democrats have tried to restore some of the voting rights provisions--for example, the preclearance provisions in section 5--but have struggled to find any Republican willing to do it. So the point that I want to make as I conclude is just that I am happy in Virginia because my friends won last night, but I am happy anytime we have elections where people really participate. Where I get really depressed about elections is when turnout is low. Last night, we had big participation; that benefited Democrats. Four years ago, we had big participation; that benefited Republicans. The kinds of things we have done in Virginia to make elections more accessible to all are commonsense and convenient rules that I embrace at the national level and that are good for democracy--sometimes benefiting one party, sometimes benefiting another, but ultimately good for democracy and good for voters. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to speak, and I thank my colleague, the lead Democratic Senator from the Finance Committee, Ron Wyden, for his passionate advocacy. And I join him in this effort to get colleagues in the Senate to vote for the resolution that will be pending before us to eliminate Donald Trump's global tariff regime announced in April. This is a regime that, together with the other tariffs that he has announced, is leading to serious harm in Virginia, as I have laid out the last few days: higher prices, fewer jobs, and slower growth. The IEEPA statute, as I have laid out, allows a President to declare an emergency when there is an extraordinary and unusual event posing a serious threat to American national security, foreign policy, or the economy. What was that extraordinary and unusual event that Donald Trump used as the justification for this unilateral tax increase affecting consumers and businesses? The threat that he declared was the existence of trade deficits with many nations around the world. Let me dig into the nonsensical nature of the President's declaration and the use of trade deficits in the way he has calculated them. First, the President and his team imposed tariffs based upon trade deficits in goods. We don't live in the 19th century anymore. We have an economy that is not just about goods. It is about goods and services. And if you look at the actual trade figures, including both goods and services, the United States looks better positioned in virtually every country when you add in services. Why doesn't the President be honest with the American public about the extent of these trade deficits, if they are, in fact, such an emergency? The President has used these tariffs to impose tariffs on nations where we have trade surpluses, like Brazil. He is imposing tariffs on nations that have no trade barriers to the United States, like Israel and Singapore. And he is measuring trade deficits the wrong way, by only including goods, not services. Second, the President has calculated these trade deficits on goods without calculating the effect of the population of the countries involved. So let me give you an example. The President says: If we have a trade deficit with Vietnam, they are ripping us off because they are not buying as much American stuff as we are buying Vietnamese stuff. That is what the trade deficit in goods basically is. We are buying more of their stuff than they are buying of our stuff. But hold on a second. Vietnam is a third the size of the United States. Vietnam is a country with per capita income much lower than American per capita income. They don't have the purchasing power that the United States does. So why is it a problem that they aren't purchasing as much American goods as we are purchasing Vietnamese goods? They are a smaller country. It is the same with Canada, the same with Japan, the same with so many nations around the world. They are dramatically smaller than us, and so, naturally, they don't have the purchasing power that the American consumer has. Finally, and I will conclude with a word about the House after this, the way that the President has imposed the tariffs is leading to nothing but chaos: announce tariffs on everyone; then announce that they may be suspended or delayed while I work out one-on-one deals with different nations. And I may give an exception to this country or that industry sector or that company. If you come and plead and make nice with me, I will give you an exception. This has led to a chaotic circumstance. When the President announced the tariff rate with Korea, Toyota's stock--get this. There is going to be a tariff on Korean imports. Toyota's stock went up. Why did it go up? Because the rate that he announced was less than the tariff that is being applied to automobiles coming in from Mexico and Canada, which has a lot of the content of American automobiles. It is a strange thing when you are cutting deals with other nations that disadvantage American production. That is what this chaotic tariff regime has done, and that is why my businesses around Virginia are telling me: We want to make investments. We want to grow, but we can't grow until we know what the rules are. And every new announcement of a tariff or a delay or a suspension or an exception or a new deal for some other country that makes our products competitively disadvantaged slows down investment in Virginia. The last thing I will say is this. I hope this passes as the two previous resolutions did. And if it does, it will be up to the House to take this up. The House has done something that should really shock people in the public and in this body. This matter is privileged in the House, as it is in the Senate. If it passes, House statutes and rules suggest that it should be taken up for a vote on the floor of the House. The rule in the House was that it would need to be within the committee for 15 days and then be reported and then pending for 3 days on the floor. Action would be taken on these matters within 18 days in the House. Guess what. The House is so afraid to vote on tariffs, they are so afraid of the effects these tariffs are having on their constituents, but equally afraid of crossing Donald Trump, that they passed a rule that said: For purposes of this and this only--this and this only--the day to day extends through the remainder of Congress. So with the 15 days plus 3 days, it ripens in 18 days. Action must be taken in 18 days. They have defined today as a day that lasts until the end of Congress. So the matter will never ripen and be privileged in the House. If they are that afraid of a vote on tariffs that they would resort to that kind of legislative chicanery, that should tell us something. They need to do a discharge petition in the House, put this matter on the floor, and put every House member on record, as Senators will go on record, as to whether they are for higher prices or lower prices. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to thank my colleague from Minnesota Senator Klobuchar for her hard work on this effort and her work over many years in leading the U.S.-Canada interparliamentary dialogue. That is a dialogue that we have with some nations, nations that are longstanding allies of the United States, and I maintain that the U.S.- Canada relationship is really the model for what a relationship between two neighboring nations should be. I primarily object to the Canada tariffs because I don't think there is an emergency that should trigger the use of this statute, but there are many other reasons I object to them, and the fracturing of this longstanding, powerful relationship is one of them. I spoke yesterday with respect to the Brazil tariffs, and I talked about the wrecking ball that Donald Trump is taking to the American economy. There have been three academic studies of the Virginia economy in recent months, and they were recently summarized by a publication called Cardinal News in Virginia earlier this month. The takeaway line about how Virginia is faring under Donald Trump's economic mismanagement is this: fewer jobs, higher prices, slower growth. The firing of Federal employees, the cancellation of celebrated economic development projects, the imposition of tariffs in a chaotic on-again, off-again, pause-again, give-you-an-exception, we-will- renegotiate regime--all of these things are deeply hurting the Virginia economy, and I know my colleagues around the country are experiencing the same thing. That economic wrecking ball composes many elements beyond the tariffs, but the tariffs are really the central item that is causing damage to our economy right now. The tariffs that have been imposed by President Trump on Canada, like the Brazil tariffs we discussed yesterday or the ``Liberation Day'' tariffs we will talk about tomorrow, are proposed under the statute IEEPA. Yesterday on the floor, as I talked about the Brazilian tariffs, I told everyone what IEEPA was meant to do. It was meant to give the President power to take action in the event of an international emergency. An international emergency is defined in a pretty significant way so as to not be used in minor instances. The definition under IEEPA says that a President may take certain actions when there is an extraordinary and unusual threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States--an extraordinary and unusual threat. Before President Trump, what kind of emergencies have been triggered under IEEPA by Democratic and Republican Presidents? The existence and activities of transnational criminal organizations, malicious cyber- enabled activities that target the United States, human rights violations that affect the United States, corruption that affects the United States, pervasive strategies by foreign nations to evade sanctions imposed by the United States, foreign interference in U.S. elections. These are the kinds of unusual and extraordinary actions originating in whole or substantially in part outside the United States that have been labeled by Presidents an ``international emergency'' under IEEPA to enable a President to take certain action. President Trump has stretched this notion of emergency far beyond the language of the statute and far beyond what anyone contemplated when this statute was written. You have heard me talk about the President declaring an energy emergency when the United States is producing more energy than at any time in our history. You have heard us talk about the President declaring the prosecution of a friend of his in Brazil a national security emergency. If President Trump can define anything as an emergency, then so can any President henceforth. That is why my colleagues should be pretty careful in striking down overuse of emergency power. So what is the emergency with respect to Canada that has inspired the President to impose these tariffs on Canada and then add to the tariffs because he saw a television advertisement he didn't like? The emergency the President has cited is the challenge of fentanyl. Now, fentanyl is an emergency. I am not standing here on the floor of the Senate to deny that it is so. The President has used the fentanyl emergency to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and I haven't challenged those uses of emergency power. I have questions about whether tariffs are the right solution to the declared emergency. But I would not stand here on the floor of the Senate and claim that fentanyl is not an emergency that had significant origin in China and Mexico. But fentanyl is not an emergency from Canada. In the most recent year that we had statistics, the United States seized nearly 40,000 pounds of fentanyl on the southern border of the United States coming from Mexico. That is an emergency. How much fentanyl was seized on or near the Canadian border during the same year? The answer is 21 pounds--21 pounds. Much of that fentanyl was not necessarily seized at the border; it was seized near the border. It may have been coming from Canada, but in all likelihood, it was actually on its way to Canada because more fentanyl goes from the United States into Canada than vice versa. So this claim that Canada is responsible for a fentanyl emergency and thus we need to punish both Canada but more especially American consumers is completely without factual basis, and it is completely illogical. What is the emergency? The emergency apparently got augmented in the past weekend. The President saw an advertisement, as my colleague said, with a direct quote from President Ronald Reagan about why tariffs are bad, and he said: We caught the Canadians redhanded, and so we are going to add another 10-percent tariff on top of what I have already done, and we are going to stop any trade negotiations with Canada because I have such thin skin that an ad on television quoting Ronald Reagan hurts my feelings. How about that as a rationale for trade policy? How about that? There is no emergency in this situation, and that is the reason this resolution should be supported. But while there is no emergency, there are consequences. There are consequences to what President Trump has done with Canada. In the economic space, my colleague talked about visitation. ``Canadian Visitors To U.S. Plummet 33% In June--Sixth Straight Month Of Steep Declines.'' Canadian visitors are the most common foreign visitors to the Commonwealth of Virginia. They tend to love Virginia Beach, and we love Canadians coming to Virginia Beach. But we have seen Canadian visitation drop. All States in the country have seen Canadian visitation drop. There are so many other stories that I hear out on the road. I was with a baker in Virginia who has three pie shops--Mom's Apple Pie. We were talking about this back in the spring after the tariffs had been announced but before they had really bit. She had seen tariffs in Trump's first term, and she said to me on behalf of Mom's Apple Pie--I mean, this is almost too good a story to be true--Mom's Apple Pie, for gosh sake. She said: Senator Kaine, you have got to do something about these tariffs. I said: Tariffs? You have three bakeries--one in Occoquan, one in Purcellville, one in Leesburg. How do tariffs affect you? Pie tins. Pie tins. All pie tins are made of aluminum, and they all come from Canada. If you jack up the cost of aluminum with aluminum tariffs by 25 percent, apple pie gets more expensive. Nobody has to buy apple pie. If it gets more expensive, people will choose not to buy apple pie, and I got to lay people off. I saw it in Trump term 1. I am going to see in Trump term 2. Farmers. Farmers have seen commodities be pretty darn flat. Commodity prices have not been going up. They have been getting a lot more for agricultural commodities, but the inputs aren't stable. They are getting more expensive. One of the most significant inputs for any farmer of an agricultural vegetable or grain product is fertilizer. One of the key ingredients in fertilizer is potash, and about 80 percent of potash that goes into fertilizer used by American farmers comes from Canada. So the initial effect of these tariffs is to raise the cost of these inputs--building supplies, food, fertilizer, pie tins. The input costs go up. And then there is never a one-way trade war, so a nation will say: Well, then, we are going to retaliate against you. We are not going to take this sitting down. So Canada doesn't want to, but after Trump imposed the tariff, Canada retaliates on products in the ag sector, and suddenly it becomes harder for American businesses to sell products in Canada. One of the products that is an important one in Southern States like mine is whiskey. ``The U.S. Alcohol Industry Is Reeling From Canada's Booze Boycott. Trade fight prompts pullback in purchases by the biggest export market for U.S.-made wines, costing American brands tens of millions in sales.'' Virginia is one of the top 10 States in the country in the volume of wine production. We also produce a lot of whiskey and other spirits. And Canadians like to buy American products. But the retaliation and the anger at the United States has caused many to decide to pull all American products off their shelves--all American products off their shelves. And I speak with a number of businesses in Virginia who would face this. So the consequences are very real. My colleague from Minnesota talked about estimates that this could be already costing American families on average between $1,800 and $2,000 a year. But it has consequences bigger than that. Canada is an ally. We are trying to convince Canada to increase their NATO expenditure up to 2 percent of GDP and related expenditures on infrastructure up to 5 percent of GDP. The new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, has gone to the Parliament and gotten their commitment to do so. We are asking Canada to participate with us in one of President Trump's most significant military priorities, called Golden Dome. In Canada, they call it Continental Shield. They have a different name for it, but it is the same thing; it is missile defense for North America. And we are trying to get Canada to heavily invest, as they should, to try to provide missile defense in North America. It is much harder to convince an ally to spend hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars on a joint defense platform when you are punishing their economy and when we are punishing our own citizens. So that is why we need to vote for this resolution. There is a right way to resolve this, and my colleague mentioned it: the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. It was one of the highlights, the stellar achievements of Donald Trump's first term. NAFTA was 20 years old; it needed to be renegotiated. Donald Trump said: We are going to renegotiate it and make it a lot better. Guess what. He did. He and his team did make it better. So when it came to the Senate, my recollection is it came to the Senate, and it passed by about 89 to 10. We can't get that vote on a Mother's Day resolution here. Donald Trump should be proud of USMCA. USMCA had a provision that, in 2026, we would look at the first 5 years of its history and then make it better. Those discussions had just started when I was in Ontario about a month and a half ago. The Canadian Government felt really good about sitting around the table with the United States and Mexico and making this deal better. Donald Trump has stopped the discussions because a TV ad hurt his feelings. The right answer to the U.S.-Canada relationship on trade is to go back to the table on USMCA, find anything that hasn't worked, anything that can be made better, negotiate it, and make it better. Tariffs are hurting our economy, hurting our citizens, hurting our businesses. Let's terminate this bogus emergency and let our households and businesses save some money. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the Brazilian tariff resolution that is before the body, and I will speak briefly since I spoke about 4:30 about it. The first point to mention is, this is a Presidential invocation of a very rare emergency power. The IEEPA statute says that it has to be an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security foreign policy or economy of the United States, and the President has to find the existence of such a threat. What has the President said about the threat posed by Brazil? What is that threat posed to the economy, national security, or foreign policy of the United States? The President has said it is Brazil's decision to prosecute its former President. If you surveyed the American public and asked them about the Brazilian prosecution of former President Bolsonaro, 99 percent of the American public wouldn't even know about it. How can this be a national emergency allowing the President to unilaterally impose a 50-percent tariff on goods from Brazil? We have a trade surplus with Brazil; $7 billion a year in goods; $23 billion in services. We have a trade surplus from Brazil. This President has said that their prosecution of a disgraced former politician is a national emergency for the United States. How could that be? If this is a national emergency for the United States, any President of any party could say that anything is a national emergency for the United States. So the first reason that I asked my colleagues to support this resolution is to not allow the President to end-run Congress and create a bogus emergency to unilaterally claim powers--in this case, trade powers--that are given to Congress in the Constitution. And the second reason that I ask my colleagues to support this is that people are suffering--people are suffering. They are paying more for ground beef. A lot of ground beef comes from Brazil. They are paying more for coffee. Americans are the biggest coffee drinkers in the world. Coffee is the biggest imported product--agricultural--that we bring into this Nation. Coffee prices have gone up by 40 percent in 1 year from the end of September of 2024 to the end of September of 2025 because of President Trump's tariffs. Thirty-five percent of our coffee comes from Brazil. Twenty-seven percent of our coffee comes from Colombia, being heavily tariffed right now. The third nation that grows coffee that comes to the United States is Vietnam, heavily affected by U.S. tariffs. People are suffering. They are paying more for food, more for clothes, more for healthcare, more for energy, more for building supplies because of President Trump's tariff policy. Trade is a power given to Congress in the Constitution that can be delegated to the President, but in statutes like IEEPA, we have retained the right when a President is going the wrong direction and our constituents need someone to stand up for them so they don't pay more than they should for their morning cup of coffee or the hamburger that they are having. Congress has the power to roll that back and end these tariffs. So for those two reasons--the fact that this is not an emergency that would have ever been within the contemplation of those who drafted this statute and the second, to save Americans some money, to save them a few bucks when they buy their cup of coffee every day--I ask for support for this resolution. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to speak about a vote that we will cast in a few hours with respect to President Trump's imposition of a 50-percent tariff on all goods coming from Brazil. President Trump's tariff regime--global tariffs, Brazilian tariffs, Canadian tariffs, tariff deals announced then paused, tariff deals negotiated, exceptions granted and, in some cases, not granted--has created huge chaos in the national economy. Three universities looked at the Virginia economy in the last month, and a summary of those three universities' reports was published in a Virginia publication last week titled ``Virginia's GDP Growth Drops 6.2% to 1.7%.'' And the analysis of this precipitous decline--a 75-percent decline, nearly--in the Virginia GDP in the first year of Donald Trump's Presidency cited a number of factors: mass layoffs of Federal employees and contractors, cancelation of highly valued economic development projects, clawback of research funding and other programmatic funding. But, importantly, a key component affecting the Virginia economy and the national economy right now is the President's chaotic tariff regime. Tariffs are attacks on American consumers; tariffs are attacks on American businesses; and they are attacks that are imposed by a single person: Donald J. Trump. In Virginia, we are seeing it nationally. We are seeing the effects of the Trump economy, and it is well-summarized in the reports I referenced: fewer jobs, jobs declining; higher prices, whether it is food, building supplies, energy, healthcare higher prices; and slower growth. I want to talk about one aspect of this economic malpractice, the imposition of tariffs, and, in particular, the imposition of tariffs on Brazil. The President has imposed a tariff on Brazil of 50 percent on all the products that the United States imports from Brazil. I want to get to Brazil and the tariffs and the effect it is having on American consumers in a minute, but first, what is the power that the President cites enabling him to put such a sizable tariff on Brazilian products? What he cites is a statute called IEEPA dealing with international economic emergencies. And that is a statute that was passed by Congress, signed into law decades ago, allowing the President, under some circumstances, to take actions following the declaration of an international emergency. What is an international emergency? The IEEPA statute 50 U.S.C. section 1701 says that the emergency that a President must declare is ``any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States''--the threat being to the ``national security foreign policy or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.'' So the 50-percent tariff on all products from Brazil is justified by President Trump declaring that Brazil represents a national security threat. The 50-percent tariff was imposed in two actions: The President imposed global tariffs on most nations in the world in April and imposed a 10-percent tariff on Brazil in that action, but then added an additional 40 percent in a ruling from the White House at the end of July, combining to be a 50-percent tariff. Now, Mr. President, you have followed President Trump's logic on tariffs. The global tariffs that were imposed were imposed because he claims other nations are ripping America off in trade--other nations are ripping America off in trade. They are selling us more of their stuff and not buying enough of our stuff, and the President says that is a rip-off. I disagree with him on whether or not that is a rip-off, but you would have a hard time making a case that Brazil is ripping off the United States in trade. We have a trade surplus with Brazil. Many of the other nations that the President has imposed tariffs on, there is a trade deficit as measured by goods. The President usually doesn't look at the deficit in goods and services. If you look at both, the picture actually looks much better for the United States. But Brazil, we have a trade surplus with Brazil of nearly $7 billion in goods and nearly $23 billion in services annually. Last year, the trade surplus we had with Brazil was $30 billion. They buy 30 billion more of our stuff than we buy of their stuff. So that makes Brazil a very unusual--a very unusual--subject or target of a tariff regime designed to stop other nations from ripping us off. So if that is not the emergency--if we are in trade surplus with Brazil, if that is not the emergency--why is the President declaring that there is an emergency with Brazil that warrants taxing American consumers by raising the price of any goods brought in from Brazil by 50 percent? This has got to be the most unusual use of IEEPA in American history. It is the most extreme and illogical declaration of an emergency in American history, and that is saying a lot because President Trump declared an energy emergency on day one of his tenure, even though America was producing more energy than at any time in the history of the United States. Oil, gas, wind, solar, battery storage, we are the leaders in the world in energy production, but President Trump declared an energy emergency so he could get an E-ZPass lane around environmental regulations to oil, gas, and coal projects. So I thought that emergency declaration was pretty extreme, but I have a more extreme one: President Trump is unhappy that Brazil is prosecuting a friend of his. The former President of Brazil, on his way out the door, inspired a lot of people to try to protest and even overturn the peaceful transfer of power when he lost an election. So Brazil is prosecuting him under Brazilian laws. When the President heard that former President Bolsonaro was being prosecuted, he threatened 50-percent tariffs if you don't stop the Bolsonaro ``witch hunt'' trial. How is that trial an emergency for the United States? How is that trial a threat to American national security or our economy? The President is mad that a friend of his is being prosecuted. How is that an emergency? We went on. As the trial got underway in the middle of July, FOX News: ``Trump calls for immediate end to `unjust' trial of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.'' ``Unjust trial.'' I don't think President Trump is a lawyer, and I know he is not a Brazilian lawyer. I doubt he has an expertise in Brazilian law. By what right would he call that trial unjust? By what right would he claim that the trial of this President for trying to inspire the overturn of power--by what right would he claim that that is an emergency for the United States? President Trump wasn't done. By making these demands and threatening tariffs, he had his administration take another step--highly unusual: ``US sanctions Brazilian judge for prosecuting Trump ally Bolsonaro'' until the end of July. I am threatening tariffs; I am claiming that the prosecution is unjust. The United States even used sanctions power that Donald Trump has the unilateral ability to use to sanction the judge presiding over the case. Go back to the definition that I read you earlier. How is a prosecution of a potential Brazilian lawbreaker an ``unusual [or] extraordinary threat . . . to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States''? I would assert, if we allow President Trump to declare this prosecution an emergency, we will have given any President a completely blank check to invent an emergency and do whatever they want and bypass Congress for doing so. This is not an emergency, and that is why I have filed, with other Senators, a resolution to terminate President Trump's emergency. But this isn't just about a misuse of Executive power. It has real- life consequences. Let me just bring up one that, I have to admit, I am really biased about, which is coffee. Like a lot of people in this Chamber, I drink too much coffee. Americans drink just about more coffee per capita than any country in the world, and coffee imports are the most significant agricultural import we bring into the United States. I lived in a great coffee-producing country when I was a missionary, in Honduras. They produce a lot of coffee. The United States doesn't produce so much. I think the President knows that in the United States the only places where coffee is grown are Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Nowhere else in the United States are there conditions that allow for the growth of coffee. Sometimes, we put tariffs on products coming in from other nations to grow and inspire a domestic industry. If we make Brazilian steel more expensive, maybe we will make more steel in the United States. I am here to tell you there is no amount of tariff that would turn the United States into a nation that could produce a lot of coffee. And if every bit of coffee that could be produced in Puerto Rico and Hawaii were produced, it would meet precisely 1 percent of the coffee that Americans drink. So we bring in coffee, and our single largest source of coffee is Brazil. And 35 percent of American coffee comes from Brazil. The next source is Colombia, at 27 percent, and then other nations. Vietnam produces a good bit of coffee, and other nations in Central America produce a good bit of coffee. But the real powerhouse--and I can be sure that in my office's supply of ground coffee that we use to make coffee every morning, there is a lot of Brazilian coffee in there. The real powerhouse is Brazil. After the President announced that he was going to do these tariffs, the news started up right away. The prediction: U.S. coffee drinkers and businesses will pay the price for Trump's Brazil tariffs. Sometimes, the President likes to say that other nations pay them. No, this is a sales tax directly on those that consume the product, and that was the prediction. And the prediction turned out to be true. The tariffs went into effect at the end of July. By September 12, 6 weeks later, CNN Business reported: Coffee prices haven't surged this much in decades. ``Haven't surged this much in decades''--and the surging is very, very noticeable. By the end of July, coffee prices kept surging, and it is likely to get worse. By the end of July--remember, at the end of July, there was only the 10 percent imposed on Brazil in April. The extra 40 percent didn't kick in until the end of July. But coffee had already surged 14 percent at the end of July, from July a year before. I don't have the chart to show you today. The statistics just came out about September. The price of coffee, a staple in virtually every American household, has increased by 40 percent between September 2024 and September 2025. And every American experiences it at the grocery store when they are buying coffee, and every American experiences it when they are in coffee shops purchasing coffee. I held a roundtable with small businesses in Northern Virginia, two Fridays ago, at a tea shop out near Reston called Eldon Street Tea Shop. And I had tea shops--they are getting hit by tariffs because tea comes from nations like India, China, and Vietnam. And I had coffee shops, and I had chocolate shops. All of these are products that are being imported, and they are all being dramatically affected. And these small businesses said: If you have a chance, Senator, please do something. Please do something to stop this tariff madness. And so that is why I am on the floor today. I have used coffee as an example because I didn't want to bring a side of beef in and put it on the desk. We get a lot of beef from Brazil. Fifty percent tariffs have dramatically driven up the price of ground beef in supermarkets all over this country. People are paying more for coffee. They are paying more for beef. They are paying more for fruits and vegetables that come from nations that have been socked by Trump tariffs. People are paying more for building supplies. People are paying more for energy. People are paying more for healthcare. That is why the economist who looked at the Virginia economy said the Trump economy is one of higher prices, fewer jobs, and slower growth. It is my hope that my colleagues will stand up for their constituents and say: Enough is enough. No President, Democrat or Republican, should be able to declare a national emergency, justifying the imposition of 50 percent tariffs, because a friend of theirs is being prosecuted for breaking the law in another country. If this body allows that, this body will be opening the door for untold mischief committed by future Presidents who will decide: I can declare anything an emergency, and the Senate will just lay down and let me walk over them and not speak out against it. And it also is important for us to acknowledge that this isn't just about an abuse of Presidential power. It is about abuse of Presidential power that people are feeling every time they walk down a grocery store aisle to buy coffee for their families, to buy ground beef for their families. I hope my colleagues will join me in an effort to reverse the declaration of a national emergency and save everyday people and businesses some money. I yield the floor.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask permission to display on my colleague's desk my office supply of ground coffee.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. You know what a metaphor is. A metaphor is something that not only stands for itself but it stands for something else. As you look at that picture of the White House being demolished today, at the very time as you were standing on this floor talking about authoritarianism hurting the institutions that were put in place 250 years ago, what is your feeling about the true significance of this demolition project going on at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue?

Mr. KAINE. I would love to ask a followup question, if the Senator would allow.

Mr. KAINE. Thank you. And I will tell a quick story. In fact, I am going to hand you this picture now because my question is going to be for you to describe it. But I will tell a quick story on the authoritarianism front, and this is a very Virginia story, and then I am going to ask my colleague to describe the picture that I just handed him. So Virginia is an unusual State. Fifty States have mottos; all States have mottos. Almost all States have mottos that are positive: ``Excelsior,'' ``Onward to the Stars Through Adversity.'' My favorite-- because it is so random--positive motto is Michigan's. It is Latin, but the translation is: If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you. How random. I wasn't looking for a peninsula, but I would rather it be pleasant than unpleasant. Virginia's is the only motto that is not positive. The Virginia motto was designed by the framers of the Virginia Constitution, who were meeting in Williamsburg when the Framers of the American Constitution-- not the Framers. The Declaration of Independence was being drafted and voted on in Philadelphia. The Declaration voted on in Philadelphia, July 4, 1776. July 5, 1776, in Williamsburg, the Virginia ``B team'' that weren't in Philadelphia, they did four really cool things: They passed the first Virginia Constitution. They enacted the first Virginia bill of rights, which became a model for the national Bill of Rights. They elected Patrick Henry the first Governor. But the fourth thing they did was they had a four-member committee appointed that spent 4 days in the library of William and Mary to design a state seal. And the State seal, which I am wearing. I wear this all the time. It is an unusual one. It is a woman amazon, representing virtue, standing atop a deposed Monarch whose crown has fallen off. And the State motto, the only one that isn't a positive, the Virginia motto is a warning. It is a rebuke. It is Latin: ``Sic Semper Tyrannis''; thus be it always to tyrants. And the framers picked the future verb tense. They didn't say: Down with tyrants. We don't like tyrants. We have defeated tyrants. They used the future verb tense because they believed that tyranny wasn't a form of government; it was a fact of human of nature. It was a fact of human nature that would not go away, and we would always need virtue to be able to defeat tyranny. And so as you are talking about authoritarianism and where we are, I am just reminded of the fact that Virginians predicted in 1776 that the Nation would need to always be on guard against tyranny. And in the formation of the Constitution--and my colleague has done a great job of looking at provisions of the Constitution--we invested a lot of power in the hands of an Executive, but then we put checks-- Congress, the courts, a free press. You shouldn't go to war without a vote of Congress. The appropriations power was for Congress, not the President. We put all these checks in place to stop the reality of tyranny. And as we round the corner into 250 years of American democracy, we are a nation looking in the mirror and asking ourselves the question of whether we still believe in democracy over tyranny. Do we still believe it? In 1776, 30 percent of Americans were for monarchy. When we tell the story of the Revolution, it wasn't that 100 percent of Americans believed in democracy. Thirty percent were for tyranny and monarchy. It was what they knew or they had a financial tie or a family tie to England or maybe they were worried that democracy would be too messy. It wasn't a foregone conclusion that democracy would be the choice. Every generation has to answer the question for itself: Do we still prefer democracy over tyranny? And as we face the 250th anniversary of the Nation's birth, we are confronted with that. I have handed my colleague a photo. I had hoped to have it on a poster, but the photo was taken today, and I didn't have time to turn it into a poster. But I want to ask my colleague from Oregon to describe what it is you see in that photograph.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, might the Senator from Oregon yield for another question?

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am going to ask two questions. I am going to tell a story about something that happened recently in Virginia and ask my colleague from Oregon what he thinks about it, and then I am going to hand my colleague from Oregon a picture and ask my colleague what he thinks about it. To begin with the story--and the story deals with a topic that may not seem that sexy or something but that I think is pretty important: U.S. attorneys and the rule of law. Virginia has two U.S. attorneys, Western District of Virginia and the Eastern District of Virginia. And those two U.S. attorneys who were put in office by President Trump have both recently been forced out of office--forced out of office because they wouldn't engage in political persecution of Donald Trump's enemies. Let me describe the situation to my colleague from Oregon. When the Trump administration began, the two U.S. attorneys who had been recommended by President Biden and voted on, confirmed by the Senate, both stepped down, as is the norm. The Trump administration then elevated in the Eastern District of Virginia an individual by the name of Erik Siebert. First, the Department of Justice appointed him for 120 days, and then that was followed by an appointment by the judges of the court. But his initial appointment into the role was by the Trump administration. Mr. Siebert began his career as a DC police officer and then served for 15 years as a prosecutor in one of the most important positions in the U.S. Attorney's Offices nationally. Senator Warner and I interviewed candidates, and we recommended Erik Siebert to the Trump administration. So they had put him in as the interim, and then he had been confirmed as the acting. We recommended him to the Trump administration. The Trump administration nominated him, and the Judiciary Committee--in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote--reported him to the floor of the Senate. But before the Senate could act on that bipartisan vote by the Judiciary Committee, Erik Siebert was forced out of office, and he was forced out of office because he refused to prosecute, to indict, former FBI Director Jim Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James. He said there was no evidence to support an indictment in the case, and so this individual who had been put in office by the Trump administration was forced out. In the Western District of Virginia--which covers more of Virginia's land mass but a smaller portion of the Virginia population--Senator Merkley, we had a process like you do in Oregon, and Senator Warner and I recommended two candidates to the White House, and one was a gentleman named Todd Gilbert. Todd Gilbert was a Republican member of our House of Delegates from Shenandoah County, VA, who was the leader of our Republican caucus in our House of Delegates, a strong supporter of President Trump, and he had even been speaker of the house when the Republicans held the majority of the Virginia General Assembly. A very solid individual, very much with Republican bone fides, and supporting President Trump. But he applied to be the U.S. attorney. He had been a local prosecutor but also a local defense attorney. President Trump installed him as the interim and nominated him for the position. Before the Senate Judiciary Committee could take him up, the Trump Department of Justice pressured Todd Gilbert to fire the chief deputy who had been the deputy in that office leading criminal prosecutions during multiple Presidential terms. Todd Gilbert refused to do it, and Todd Gilbert was forced to resign as a result. Subsequent reporting by the New York Times laid out the facts that we believe to be true; that the Trump administration wanted to push out the assistant because the assistant was unwilling to issue indictments that were political in nature against Trump's political enemies and, for that reason, they pressured Todd Gilbert to fire his assistant. Todd Gilbert, who had given up his position in the Virginia General Assembly to take this position, within a month, walked out of the U.S. Attorney's Office rather than succumb to a politically motivated firing of a long-time, dedicated prosecutor. In two instances, the chief Federal law enforcement officials in Virginia, installed in their positions by the Trump administration, were forced to leave because they wouldn't agree to bend the knee and genuflect to a politically motivated persecution campaign. And so my question to my colleague is, You are talking about creeping authoritarianism. What does it say when the Executive makes moves on law enforcement officials, Republican law enforcement officials, because they won't bend the knee and politically persecute people against whom there is no actionable claim?

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, will the Senator from Oregon yield for a question?

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I want to thank my colleague. Senator Young and I have worked on this for a number of years. As he mentioned, the first Gulf war started in 1991, the second Gulf war in 2002, and it was over in 2011--14 years ago. Last week, the Pentagon issued a statement about the drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq, and this was the statement from the Pentagon: This reduction reflects our combined success in fighting ISIS and marks an effort to transition to a lasting U.S.-Iraq security partnership. An adversary to a partner beating a sword into a plowshare. Both Houses have voted to repeal this war, and it is time that we take this action. This will be the first congressional repeal of a war authorization since the Gulf of Tonkin in 1971. I ask for a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I would like to ask unanimous consent to just speak for a minute.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Shane Reader, who is a legislative fellow in my office, to be granted floor privileges for the duration of his fellowship.

Mr. KAINE

Mr. KAINE. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, my colleague from Idaho's emotional speech notwithstanding, this is not about hating a President; it is about loving a Constitution. It is about loving a Constitution. The resolution that my colleague Senator Schiff has filed, which I gladly cosponsored, does not say there cannot be military action against terrorists or cartels or drug traffickers. It just says that the United States should not be at war without a vote of Congress, the United States should not be at war against groups on a secret list prepared by one individual who is unwilling to share it with Congress and with the American public. My colleague said that we should put a resolution on the floor thanking the President. I have an idea for my Republican colleagues: put a resolution on the floor declaring war against narcotraffickers. Why haven't they done that? That is what the Constitution says they should do. They are so strong in their belief that we should be at war with narcotraffickers, why haven't they put a resolution before this body to say we should be at war with cartels and narcotraffickers? There are two reasons: They know it would fail, even in a Republican Senate. And second, they are afraid to vote on that resolution because they know their constituents are tired of wars and don't want Congress declaring more wars and treating serious law enforcement problems as challenges for the U.S. military. I strongly support the resolution my colleague has filed. When President Trump announced in August that he might undertake this action, Senator Schiff and I conferred with other Senators. And when the first strike was taken on the 4th of September, we wrote a letter to the President, as the article I branch charged with the power of declaring war, asking him a basic series of questions: Give us the evidence that these boats were actually carrying narcotics. Give us the legal rationale for striking them without coming to Congress. If you knew where they were enough to strike them, you could have interdicted them. Why did you choose to strike them and not interdict them? We hear that drugs are now at the bottom of the sea. If you interdict a ship and you seize drugs, you get evidence, you get individuals that you interrogate, and you build cases against the higher-ups in the narcotrafficking ring. When you destroy a boat, you don't get the evidence; you can't build the case. And we asked: Why not interdict? Why strike rather than interdict? These were questions that Congress has a right to know the answer and the American public has a right to know the answer. And we asked the President: Give us answers to these questions in 7 days--not unreasonable. We have yet to get answers to these questions. The administration believes it does not have to justify these actions to Congress, it does not have to tell us the evidence about the narcotics content of these boats, it does not have to give us a clear legal rationale, it does not have to explain the decision to strike rather than to interdict. When you ask the basic questions and you are not given answers, you get suspicious that the answers are not forthcoming because there aren't good answers to the questions that we asked. We did have a followup hearing, the Armed Services Committee, in the secure facility last week. And I can't really talk about what was said there, but I can sure talk about what wasn't said there. No answer to the question of ``Why not interdict?'' It was asked over and over and over again, and aside from asserting that ``we have the ability to do what we did,'' they could not provide an answer about interdiction. They could not provide clear evidence that all of those boats actually had narcotics on them, even though they knew we would be asking that question. And so, to the legal rationale, all they said was ``the President has an article II ability to undertake these actions.'' Saying ``I can do whatever I want under article II'' is not an answer, and that is no legal rationale, but it is essentially what the President is saying: I can put groups on a list--and we understand it is many groups and their affiliates--and not tell Congress and not tell the American public, and I get to make the decision about whether the Nation goes to war. That is not what our Constitution says. My colleague Senator Schiff is talking about the Constitution, so I won't belabor it. But there are a couple of points that I do want to stress because there is nothing more important in the Constitution than the power to declare war. The Founders who wrote the Constitution in 1787 debated this topic extensively, and they recognized the reality in the world at the time: Decisions about war were made by the Executive, King, Monarch, Emperor, Czar, Pope. It was made by the Executive. The Framers of the Constitution in 1787 were dealing with leadership that included the first President of the United States, George Washington, the greatest general that has ever been President of the United States. They revered George Washington. But when they had to make a decision about who declared war, they said: Even George Washington--even George Washington--is not smart enough to carry that sole decision on his shoulders to make war. So they decided to do something almost completely contrary to the whole flow of human history, and they invested the power to declare war in the legislative branch, in Congress. And my colleague read Madison's exchange as the principal drafter of the provision with Jefferson, many years later, about why they had done it. They wanted, with studied care, to vest the question of war in the legislative branch. It is not only in the Constitution, it is in the Constitution for a reason. And here is the reason: A decision about war puts troops in harm's way, puts troops in a position where they may be injured or killed; they may see their best friends injured or killed; they could come home with physical injuries or mental injuries that could affect the remainder of their lives. The Constitution of the United States, in a somewhat unique way, requires congressional approval for war so that there is a consensus of the Nation, after a full debate in view of the American public and a vote, that the war is in the national interest. If a President goes off unilaterally without getting Congress on board, then we are asking people to risk their lives with no national consensus that the mission is worth it. Could there be a grosser example of public immorality than to order troops into harm's way where they could be killed and their lives and their families affected for the rest of their lives without a national consensus that this is a mission worth you risking your life? That is why that provision is so sacred in the article I branch, and that is why even George Washington was not entrusted by the Framers of the Constitution to make a decision like this on his own. I will finish where I started. This is not about dissatisfaction with President Trump. I filed similar resolutions, as my colleague from Idaho knows, when President Obama was President. I came into the Senate in 2013 with an absolute obsession because of the military nature of my State, because one of my kids is a marine--with an absolute obsession that the Nation should never go to war--never--without a debate in Congress that the American people can see, can learn from, and a political consensus that the war is worth it. Yes, there is an exception for defense or imminent attack. That has been understood as part of the Presidential power of Commander in Chief since the very first days of this Republic. But even in that instance, it was foreseen that Congress would come in and have a debate and agree or not with whether they blessed the mission or not. Letting a single individual take us to war based on a secret list that he won't even reveal to the public and to Congress sets such a dangerous precedent. And if my colleagues, as they have stated, believe we should be at war in the Caribbean or at war with nations in the Americas or with the narcotraffickers, they have had the ability the entire time to bring a resolution before us and have that debate in front of the American public. I have a feeling that debate would produce some positive votes if it were limited enough, but to allow a President to do it by secret without Congress having the guts to have the debate and vote about whether the war is worthwhile is contrary to everything this country stands for, to the oath we take. I would urge folks to support my colleague's resolution. Mr. President, I ask consent that we yield back all remaining time.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to begin a discussion that we will have over the course of the next couple of hours about this Senate joint resolution--a privileged motion pending before the Senate that I filed, together with Senator Heinrich, to terminate a Presidential declaration of an energy emergency that he issued on his first day in office. The President took a number of actions on his first day in office, and obviously the one that got the most attention was the fact of his inauguration and the celebrations about that. There were other actions that were taken--the pardon of the January 6 criminal convicts and other pardons of individuals, including one notorious drug trafficker. But there was also an action that was taken that did not get attention immediately, but I started to pay attention to it a few days after the inauguration. That was President Trump's use of the National Emergencies Act and a related statute known as IEEPA to declare national emergencies in the United States. The IEEPA statute is broadly worded. It allows a President to declare an emergency when there is a significant and unusual challenge to the United States that stems primarily from a source outside the United States' shores. The President has used the NEA to declare an energy emergency. He has used IEEPA to declare tariffs on virtually every nation in the world. And he has also used the statute in other ways. I was puzzled by the President's determination that America, in January of 2025, was in an energy emergency because I went back and checked and found that the United States, at the beginning of the Trump administration, was producing more energy than at any time in the history of the United States. Where is the emergency? We were producing more oil, gas, and coal than at any time in the history of the United States. Where is the emergency? Even more exciting to me because of its tremendous acceleration, we were producing more alternative energy--low-carbon energy, geothermal, wind, solar--than at any time in the history of the United States. We have seen this in Virginia. To give you an example, when I came into the Senate, Virginia was deep in the bottom half in this country in solar deployment. Now we are in the top 10. Offshore wind was nowhere in the United States. Now we are nearing completion of an offshore wind farm off the shores of Virginia Beach, VA, and we will be the leaders in the Nation and begin producing components that can help us lead in the world when it comes offshore wind. So where is the emergency? I look through the President's declaration and can see nothing suggesting that the United States was in an energy emergency. But you declare an emergency for a reason, and the emergency was declared not because there was an emergency but because there was something the President wanted to do. As you read down in the emergency declaration, you found what the President wanted to do was allow a bypass of environmental regulations for energy projects. That is what he wanted to do, and he declared a sham emergency in order to do that. I found it further interesting as I read--well, what is the definition of energy projects that are getting a bypass around environmental regulations? It was not all energy projects. It was oil and gas and coal but not wind, not solar, not hydropower, not geothermal. Sometimes, I hear folks say they are for an all-of-the-above energy policy. President Trump is embracing an all-of-the-below energy policy. If it is not a fossil fuel under the Earth, it will not be prioritized by this administration. That was the President's action on day one. There is an energy emergency, and we need an easy-pass lane for fossil fuel projects, but we are going to make it hard for alternative energy projects. So I dusted off the statute, IEEPA, and found that a single Senator, even in the minority party, can challenge a Presidential declaration of emergency and be guaranteed a privileged vote on the Senate floor within a set period of time, a prompt vote on a simple majority that cannot be filibustered, and that is what we are doing today. In fact, you can challenge a Presidential emergency every 6 months. I challenged the President's energy emergency with Senator Heinrich in March, and it was a partisan vote. Democrats said: There is no such emergency; it is a sham. Republicans said: We are sticking with President Trump. Senator Heinrich and I issued a warning on the floor in March. We said: You are going to see higher energy costs because of what President Trump is doing, and you are going to see jobs lost because of what President Trump is doing. Energy costs will go up because the cancelation of clean energy projects will constrict the supply of energy at a time when the demand is increasing, and the natural economic reaction when you constrict supply at a time of increasing demand is that people are going to pay more for household energy. We were not convincing then. Maybe people didn't believe that our prediction would come to pass, but 6 months later, we are renewing the challenge. We are here to say that what we said on the floor last spring has happened, and we are seeing dramatic increases in the price of energy for American consumers and businesses and the slashing of American jobs so that Donald Trump can give an easy pass to the fossil fuel industry. It took a while for these effects to come to pass, but by the time we got to the debate over the reconciliation bill here in this body in late June and early July, it was pretty clear that the only energy emergency was our President. President Trump is the energy emergency. We were debating the spending law, the reconciliation bill, and I am just going to go through some of the headlines.

Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I ask the Chair to execute the order of September 17, 2025, with respect to S.J. Res. 71.