James Lankford

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in accordance with rule XXVI, paragraph 2 of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I ask unanimous consent, for myself as chairman of the Select Committee on Ethics and for Senator Coons, vice chairman of the committee, that the rules of procedure of the Select Committee on Ethics, which were adopted February 23, 1978, and revised November 1999, be printed in the Congressional Record for the 119th Congress.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, for the past 45 minutes or so, my colleagues have come to this floor to be able to talk about a bill that is coming soon that we will actually vote on at the bottom of this hour. It is a bill we have talked about for several years. It has been debated some. It is about what happens if a child survives a botched abortion. Now, I am going to talk about it a little bit. I have got some other colleagues who are going to step in, in a moment. Then I am going to talk a little bit more about this because this seems to be an incredibly misunderstood issue. It is interesting. We most often talk about a botched medical procedure--that if there is a botched medical procedure, someone dies. This is literally the opposite--that there was a botched medical procedure, and someone lives. The whole debate is, that botched medical procedure that was supposed to take the life of a child ends up actually delivering that child, and now you have a living, breathing child crying on the table, fully viable. The question is, What do we do now? Yesterday, my Democratic colleagues spent an hour on the floor saying that child should die. I disagree. In all of our conversations about abortion--and we have various opinions in this room, and, quite frankly, across the country. We have various opinions about when is a child a child. Some people believe a child is a child when they have unique DNA that is different than the mom, different than the dad. Conception has occurred; cell division has happened. That is, quite frankly, how science defines life, as unique, replicating cell division. Some people believe that is a child. Some people say: Well, it is not a child until there is a heartbeat. Some people would say: Well, it is not a child until there is actually a developed nervous system. Some people would say: It is not a child until the Roe standard, that I hear very often--that it is a viable child that could survive outside the womb, which is about 21 weeks of gestation. And I have a lot of my colleagues who will say: Well, I want to go back to the Roe standard. But I have yet to have a colleague come to me and say: I am OK with abortion after delivery. That is what we are talking about in this. Now, it is an incredibly small group that we are discussing here. But if we are talking about a common-ground issue, why wouldn't this be a common-ground issue? Earlier this week, we found a common-ground issue on the issue that is very contentious in this body about immigration. We have had a wide variety of opinions about how we do enforcement for immigration, but we found an area to say: If a person has crossed the border, committed multiple crimes in the United States, they should be detained. We found bipartisan agreement on that. We don't agree on everything, but we, at least, agreed on that one. You realize, that is the first bill like that that we have passed in decades--that has actually passed. It is going to be signed by the President. We are making law on that issue where we found simple common ground on a small, niche issue related to immigration. Well, this is a small, niche issue on a very contentious issue about abortion--what do we do when a child is actually delivered, instead of destroyed in the womb, that is a viable child? Now, some of my Democratic colleagues have said this never happens. Well, I would love to introduce you to a friend of mine named Melissa Ohden. When Melissa Ohden's mom was 19 years old, she was compelled by her family to have an abortion. She had an abortion--her mom did--and delivered that child. The child was delivered, and then, literally, the baby was set aside into the medical waste of that procedure at the hospital. The nurse then, a few minutes later, as she was cleaning up after the procedure, noticed the medical waste was crying and was breathing. So the nurse literally scooped up this child and took the child from that room to the emergency room, where she survived. Folks, early on, said she would be blind or she would have a major heart condition; she would have everything else. I wish you could meet Melissa. She is amazing. She is fully healthy. In fact, it was years later that she learned her adopted mom had adopted her because her birth mom literally didn't know she still existed. Her birth mom was never told that, actually, that abortion ``didn't work.'' That child survived. They have since reconnected, Melissa and her birth mom--her birth mom, with deep regret, thinking about this beautiful child in front of her, that that life was almost destroyed. In fact, it was planned to be destroyed. Listen, this is not just an academic issue. This is real. Again, it is rare, but the question is: What do we do in those rare situations? How do we track this? How do we engage on it? I would ask any American: If there is a child lying on the table in an operating room, crying, what do we do then? I don't know many Americans who would say: Kill it. But here is what happens. In a botched abortion in America right now, when a child is actually delivered rather than destroyed in the womb, when literally there was a medical mistake that didn't take the life of the child but instead delivered that child into life--when that occurs, the current practice is everyone kind of backs away and allows the child to die on the table by exposure because it is against American law in every single State to take the life of a child. But if everybody just steps back and watches the child die, that is OK. My Democratic colleagues came to the floor yesterday and said: This is already illegal. Why are we even discussing this? This is already illegal. You can't have infanticide in America. And I would say that is correct; it is already illegal to do infanticide. But what is still allowed is a tiny, little loophole that if an abortion was botched, everyone can just back away and watch the child die; they do not have to give that child medical care. That is quite a loophole, and it is painful for me to even have to have this conversation in a nation like ours. Of all the things that we could talk about right now, why do we even have to discuss what to do with a child on a table in an operating room, crying? Why is this even a conversation? So we are bringing a bill to the floor today to be able to fix this. This is a bill we talked about multiple times in this body, but it should be the absolute, easiest common-ground piece to face. Which of us, standing in that operating room, would look at a crying child and would say: Ignore it. If we wouldn't say it there, we shouldn't say that here. So I will be back in a few moments, Mr. President. I have other colleagues who want to be able to speak to this issue, but I have some facts and myth that I want to do side by side with some of my Democratic colleagues who came to be able to share their perspective on this, and I want to be able to lay some things side by side to say what this bill actually does, not what the myth is and what is actually being told about it. In the meantime, I would encourage Members of this body to be able to look up my friend Melissa Ohden. Look her up online if you want to, see her beautiful picture, and read her story for yourself, because she is not the only one with that same story. She is just one of many that has that story. Just not many are willing to be able to step out and speak knowing that their life was intended to be taken, though today, they are still smiling and talking about the value of every single life. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in just a few moments, this body will vote on a bill that actually doesn't limit abortion at all. It doesn't slow down one abortion. It doesn't stop one woman from choosing to have an abortion. It doesn't have a nationwide ban on abortion. In fact, this is a bill about what happens after an abortion. What is unique about this bill is it is asking a pretty simple question that seems like it would be a common ground issue for us, if there is, in this case, a medical mistake that didn't take a life, we normally think about a medical mistake that takes a life. But in this case, if there was a medical mistake that actually protected a life, what happens? This doesn't limit one single abortion in America, though many people in this body know me well enough to know I would love to protect more children in America. This bill just asks a simple question: If an abortion is botched and the child is delivered instead of destroyed in the womb and the child is alive and viable on the table, what happens next? Current medical practice is everyone in the room just backs away, and you allow the child to die on the table. I don't think that is what most Americans would want. I think most Americans would say: Hey, I have got boundaries on the issue of abortion and definitely fully born is a boundary. Now, it has been interesting, I have listened to the debate yesterday and today from my Democratic colleagues, many of them friends, we have a real disagreement on this. This is not extreme--as I have heard it described, an extreme, rightwing proposal about abortion. I just don't think if I pulled 100 people off the street and said: Hey, if a child is alive and screaming on the table after birth, what do you think we should do? I bet 100 out of 100 of them would say we should probably give them medical care. I just don't think that is extreme or out of the main thought in America. I think that is just who Americans are. We are compassionate people; that when we see a baby and look in their face, we don't say ignore them; we say let's provide some care. I have heard some of my colleagues say that we should respect the rights of women in this. By the way, I think one of those women should be that little girl that is born who is lying on the table right there crying. I think she should get some compassion and respect as well because a decision is being made at this point about what to do. And it is not a theory. Several of my colleagues yesterday have used terms during this debate like this is ``myth-based fearmongering.'' That was my favorite one. ``Republicans are talking about stories that do not happen'' was also expressed by another one of my colleagues. This one was just a little more blunt. One of my colleagues just came to the floor and said: ``Republicans are lying.'' Well, here is what really happened. Let me give you a status. This doesn't happen very often at all. Thankfully, this is rare, but the CDC does some tracking, and there are, quite frankly, only eight States in America that actually keep track of this; that if there is a botched abortion, the child is actually delivered fully alive. There are only eight States that do it. Most States say don't. In fact, what is interesting is we tried to be able to track which States actually keep track of this and have some kind of instruction of what to do on healthcare on it. A few States do; many States don't. In fact, some States, like Minnesota, literally voted recently: We used to track reporting, but we don't even want to know anymore if this occurs. Don't tell us if it occurs. Of the few States, just 8, that actually track this, over a several- year period, there were 277 cases like this where a child was actually delivered and was alive after a botched abortion. Now, again, that is not many, but we know from eight States in that short time period, that that is occurring. So, again, I go back to the basic question: What do we want to do about that? Do we want to just ignore that or do we have a thought about what should happen to that child? Some of my colleagues have said this only occurs if there is a pregnancy complication and the child was already going to die or there was a fatal medical condition that was actually occurring. Well, actually, that is not true in this bill. This bill is about a viable child that was delivered late term that is now on the table alive. I have also heard that this is going to have this massive overreach for doctors; that they are going to be oppressed, and they are going to be afraid to practice on this. Actually, the bill is pretty clear on this. This still gives the doctor the ability to use his or her professional judgment in the care that would normally be provided to a child that is born. That is it. The doctor may look at it and say: This child is not going to make it. That is still a professional judgment that is there or they may have a professional judgment that the child will make it. And as I have mentioned on this floor before, there are adults walking around today that survived an abortion, like Melissa Ohden and other folks that I know personally. So this is not something that just never occurs. So it doesn't limit abortion. It doesn't restrict doctors. It actually does happen-- contrary to what some of my colleagues have said that this never happens, it actually does happen on this. I have had colleagues that have said: Infanticide is already illegal. This is unnecessary so let's move on. This is unnecessary. Except we have also established the issue that, yes, taking the life of that child on the table, literally once that child is on the table crying, they can't reach down and take the life of that child. That is Kermit Gosnell, horrific stuff. But just allowing them to slowly die, that is still protected. So that is not there. One of my colleagues came to this floor and made this statement: At the center of this debate is whether we believe in the premise from the Declaration of Independence that all are created equal, that freedom belongs to everyone, and that women deserve to be treated as equal citizens. I actually couldn't agree more with my colleague because that same Declaration of Independence, right next to that statement about everyone being created equal, also includes a simple little comment that says: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. And our question on this particular bill is, when that child is born and she is crying on the table, does she have the opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness or not? That is all this bill does. This bill should be a simple process to say this is not who we are as Americans. As Americans, we respect the opportunity for life for that child that is fully delivered, and then we determine what we are going to do. Just because a baby can't defend herself, doesn't mean she is disposable. It means she is vulnerable, and that means we as a nation should determine what we are going to do with the life of the most vulnerable. I encourage a ``yes'' vote on this. This should be a bipartisan conversation where we speak from this body for those who cannot speak for themselves. I yield the floor. Cloture Motion

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following interns be granted floor privileges until May 30, 2025: Hinson Peed and Madeline Becker.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I have one request for a committee to meet during today's session of the Senate. It has the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committee is authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, you will see for the next hour a whole group of Republicans coming to the floor to be able to talk about one issue: our need for border security and safer communities. This is something that not just Republicans in the Senate are talking about; this is something that the American people spoke loudly and clearly about during the last election when they elected President Trump, a Republican Senate, and a Republican House. There is not a single Member who is a Republican in this body, in the House, or, clearly, President Trump, who didn't talk about border security and safer communities throughout the entire election. Every single poll showed that this was one of the priority issues that every single American was thinking about. A Gallup poll last year found that more than three-quarters of Americans support increasing the number of Border Patrol agents; that two-thirds of Americans want the President and the Homeland Security Secretary to temporarily halt all asylum requests when the border is overwhelmed; and third, a majority of Americans support expanding border wall construction. People want a secure community. On the floor this week--we started last week and are still debating it this week--is what to do on what is called the Laken Riley Act. Some Americans are familiar with Laken Riley's story; some are not. Laken Riley was a college student in Georgia who was brutally murdered by a Venezuelan who came into the United States illegally, was detained at the border, but then released. He traveled around the country wherever he wanted to under a parole system that was given to him at the border in 2022. He committed a crime, was arrested for that crime, and then was released. He committed another crime--shoplifting. He was arrested for that crime and was then released. The third crime, as far as we know--there might have been many more, but the third crime, as far as we know, was his murder of Laken Riley. He should have never been in the United States. He should have never been paroled at the border. He should have been detained and then deported, but he wasn't. He was paroled into the United States. When he committed a crime in the United States, he should have been deported, but he was not. He was released. When he committed a second crime in the United States, he should have been deported, but he wasn't. He was released--before he ever got to murder. The Laken Riley Act is pretty simple. It says: If someone is here illegally and they commit a crime in the United States of stealing Americans' stuff, like he did, that he is deported. I don't think it is a radical concept to be able to say that Americans don't want someone to come into the country illegally and take their stuff. Why this is even a challenge to be able to pass this, I have no idea. This passed in the House last session, but the Senate never took it up to even discuss it. If I go to any of the great 4 million Oklahomans in my State and I say ``What do you think about someone illegally coming into the country and stealing people's stuff? Do you think that is OK, that they should still be able to stay?'' I don't think I would find anybody of the 4 million Oklahomans who would say ``I am OK with someone illegally coming into the country, stealing people's stuff'' and say ``You can go ahead and stay.'' That is all that this bill does. It says that if someone comes into this country illegally and starts stealing stuff, they are detained; they are held. They are not just allowed to be released to be able to drift around the country to steal other things or to commit a murder later. If they come into our country illegally and start stealing things, they are detained, and they will go through the rest of the legal process. It doesn't mean they are automatically deported the very next day. They still have a legal challenge there. They can have their legal challenge. But they are not going to just wander around the country. That is why we believe this Laken Riley Act is so important. It is because we never, ever, ever, ever want to have another American who is murdered by someone illegally present here, especially someone who had already committed multiple crimes before they ever got to that murder. So let's have the debate. I am willing to be able to talk to any one of my Democratic or Republican colleagues who has a question about this, but at the base of this is, why would we let someone who is already illegally present in the country and who we already know has committed additional crimes just continue to walk our streets just to commit more crimes? Why would we not detain those individuals? On Monday, President Trump will be inaugurated. I am looking forward to working with him and seeing even what happens on day one to be able to secure the border. This is something the American people want. They want a border that is secure; they want communities that are secure; and they want just basic commonsense things done, like if someone breaks into our country and then steals stuff, they are actually detained rather than just released to go do it again. Let's at least do the basics that we can do while we continue to be able to work toward the big projects that still need to be done. Multiple of my colleagues will be coming in the moments ahead to talk through this same issue because we feel like, on this side, it is incredibly important we get this done. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I don't even know how many times I have come to the floor of this Senate to be able to talk about government efficiency. It is not a shock for me to be able to come back here again today and to say: Let's talk about this. I don't know a single one of the great 4 million Oklahomans that if I went to their house today, knocked on their door, and said: Is the Federal Government the most efficient body in the country, that they would say yes. This should not be a partisan issue that government should be more efficient. Every single dollar that is spent was taken from an American in tax dollars or was borrowed so that their children would have to pay for it. This should be a straightforward issue. Every single year I put out a ``Federal Fumble Report,'' and I will put one out in a month or so. And when we release that report, everyone nods their heads and says: Yes, those are areas of inefficiency. And year after year, I highlight things like Federal tax dollars that were spent paying for a drag show in Ecuador. If the nice folks in Ecuador want to have drag shows, why are my folks in Oklahoma being forced to pay for them? I highlighted things like we did a research study in Ghana to be able to determine whether helmets made people on bikes in Ghana safer. By the way, I could go ahead and tell you that today without spending any Federal tax dollars. Yes, they will make it safer, but why were the folks in Oklahoma being forced pay for the study in Ghana to be able to study head injuries on folks on bikes and whether they should wear a helmet. The folks in Oklahoma paid for a study that came out as a book that was analyzing humans and chimpanzees in Sierra Leone and the effects of climate change on them. Again, I am sure there are nice folks in Sierra Leone that are very interested in that. Why are my folks in Oklahoma being forced to pay for that? I could go one after another after another on things that we have studied over the years, but let me tell you what happens. When we highlight these things and a little sunshine hits them, suddenly people start backing up, and Agencies stop funding some of these things that everyone nodded their head and said: Where did that crazy thing come from? So because of the reports that we put out, we are not paying for helmet studies in Ghana anymore. We are not paying for drag shows in Ecuador anymore. We are no longer paying for the study on the Russian wine industry that Americans used to pay for. We are no longer funding the 3D puppets that we once paid for. We have been able to put sunshine on those things, and those things have stopped. The challenge is, how do we actually set this into a process so that we are not having to play Whac-A-Mole all the time to be able to take down one after another after another. The people of my State, they don't want to pay for those things. They want to pay for border security and they want to pay for good schools and they want to have good roads. They want to have lower gas prices. Those are the things that they want. So how do we actually get to that? Well, I could outline right now $170 billion in wasteful spending in the Federal Government just today, simple things that most Americans would agree on. We spend $8 billion a year just for Federal buildings to lease them or to do maintenance for them--$8 billion a year. Currently, most of those buildings, because we have so many Federal employees that are teleworking, most of those buildings are 25 percent full. We are spending $8 billion a year on buildings that are mostly empty. Most businesses in America would say that is a waste of money. I am going to find a way to do that less, except the Federal Government doesn't do that. We just continue to be able to lease empty office space and maintain empty office space. That should not be a partisan issue. That should be an issue everybody in this body looks at and says: There is something that we could do to be able to make this better. Let's be more efficient. Starting with the new Trump administration, they have launched a new initiative that folks have made fun of, DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency. And I am fascinated by the number of people that step out and they make fun of this initiative, to say: This Department of Government Efficiency--and then I ask them the simple question: Do you know a way the government could be more efficient? And people will say: Well, yeah, should we do that? Yes is the answer. So the very simple statement is: If we find duplication in government, why don't we highlight it and then eliminate it? If we find areas where there are tax regulations that actually don't make sense that actually slow the economy down rather than actually encourage economic development in the country, why don't we fix that? If we find areas of permitting, where permitting actually prevents government growth rather than accelerates the growth of our economy, why don't we go after that? Where there is waste in Agencies, where there are empty Federal buildings, where there are Federal projects that really should be done by the State or local government, why don't we make those changes? That is what this whole concept is about--the Department of Government Efficiency--is to actually create a mechanism to say: Let's stop talking about it and highlighting it a little bit at a time. Let's actually work to be able to make this better in the days ahead. I am very pleased that a whole group of colleagues are passionate about this as well. They are coming to the floor today to be able to highlight some of these areas of inefficiency and to say: Yes, absolutely. I see it as well. Because while I do ``Federal Fumbles'' every single year, I continue to also say to all of my colleagues: We should not be the only office doing this, and thankfully we are not. There are multiple offices that their staff are also looking for areas of government efficiency. And for the first time in a long time, we have built enough momentum to say: Let's get these done. Let's not just show them so we embarrass Agencies not to do it next year; let's actually set a process in place. So today I have invited multiple colleagues, including my colleague sitting at the dais today, to be able to find a moment in their very busy schedules to be able to come and highlight areas where the government can be more efficient, where we can be more effective at protecting taxpayer dollars, and where we can stop throwing American's dollars out the door for things that everyone would recognize as wasteful. When we have almost $2 trillion in debt, it is definitely the moment for us to say: Let's work on being even more efficient in the days ahead because we desperately need that. So, with that, I yield the floor to my colleague from West Virginia who has been very outspoken in trying to be able to protect taxpayer dollars in West Virginia and for the Nation and to try to make ways to make this more effective in the days ahead. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. LANKFORD. I am especially grateful for all the work you have done. Mr. President, I would like to introduce a fellow colleague, Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa. She is the founder of the DOGE Caucus and has been the one who has been very passionate about trying to find the waste in government. I ask that she be recognized to speak.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, as this body knows well, for the past hour, we have had multiple colleagues who have come to this floor to be able to talk about how do we make the government more efficient. They have been talking about, out loud, what they are working in their offices on, what their staff are working on, and what we plan to be able to implement. This is a public conversation, but there is a lot of private, behind-the-scenes work because the focus is not just what we talk about. It is what we actually get done. There are a lot of areas of government efficiency that need to get done. This is a target-rich environment. Literally, you can pull out of this building and look in any direction you want to any number of Agencies and get started there. But the focus that we need to have as a body is not what we do to talk about government waste but what are we going to do to get it done. We are looking forward to President Trump's inauguration in a week and a half. We are looking forward to beginning to implement both on the executive branch and through legislative action real changes that can actually get our government toward more efficiency. Now, I have to warn everybody: It is going to take a while because there is a lot to get done. But the good news is, we are not just talking about it; we are actually going to get something started. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I rise today to express my gratitude to the Armed Services Committee and Energy and Natural Resources Committee for working to include an important provision that passed as part of the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (FY25 NDAA). The provision is in section 1706, titled ``Use of royalty gas at McAlester Army Ammunition Plant.'' The Department of Defense has issued a charge to ensure that all U.S. military installations are energy resilient by 2035. Under 10 U.S.C. Sec. 2911, the Secretary of Defense is responsible for ``ensur[ing] the readiness of the armed forces for their military missions by pursuing energy security and energy resilience.'' In implementing this section of the U.S. Code, the Department of Defense has pursued a plan to establish microgrids at all military installations, utilizing a diverse array of energy sources to be energy resilient. In FY 2022, the Department of Defense consumed $4.2 billion in fuel for installation energy. Further, natural gas was the largest nonelectric fuel source, used in almost 75 percent of installation energy consumption. As my colleagues know, the purpose of energy resilience is to ensure our military installations are able to continue operations in the event of a local, gridwide, or national energy supply disruption. In 2021, Senate Report 117-39, which accompanied the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016, requested that the Department of Defense review a 2016 analysis of installations with likely gas and oil reserves to provide a recommendation for a pilot site to initiate use of on-site mineral reserves for energy resilience and security purposes. The program aimed to provide the installation with onsite energy production, light refining, storage, and onsite generation to maintain critical operations during grid outages. The report stated that the Department of Defense had an absence of general statutory authority for the Department of Defense to extract and use minerals at installations. The report also includes a list of nearly 150 military installations that are located within 25 miles of the top 100 most productive natural gas and oil reserves in the United States, of which McAlester is one. In order to clarify the authorities necessary for the deployment of natural gas resources for the use of military energy resilience and security, I worked with the Senate Armed Services Committee and Energy and Natural Resources Committee to include section 1706 of the FY25 NDAA. This provision would provide the appropriate authorities for McAlester Army Ammunition Plant in McAlester, OK, to develop natural gas on the installation for energy resilience purposes. This language would require coordination between the Department of Defense and Department of the Interior to allow McAlester Army Ammunition Plant to produce, treat, manage, and use national gas by contracting with appropriate entities to meet directives from the Department of Defense for energy resiliency. This authority has been years in the making starting from efforts led by Oklahoma's former senior Senator and my friend, the late Jim Inhofe. The language also includes feedback and technical assistance from the Department of Defense, the Bureau of Land Management, multiple committees in the House and Senate, and Senate leadership. There is already precedent for the production and use of natural gas on military installations, as is the case with Fort Knox in Kentucky. The strategic use of energy such as natural gas promotes the readiness of the Armed Forces for their military mission. I urge the Department of Defense to swiftly implement this authority, and I congratulate McAlester on the opportunity to reach energy resiliency and continue the great work they do for our national security.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, several years ago, it was a December like this; there were big bills that were coming through the House and the Senate, one of them being the National Defense Authorization Act, which has passed every single year for the last six decades. Stuck in that multi, multi, multipage bill was a little piece on beneficial ownership. Now, most everyone just didn't even notice what it would be. But in the past couple of years, the Biden administration has released the rules for beneficial ownership and what will be required to be able to deal with ``opportunities for fraud.'' What it has become is a way to be able to get from every single small business in America--I do need to emphasize these were all small business; in fact, smallest of the small businesses--every LLC, every businessowner in America a list of them of this: their name, their date of birth, their address, an I.D. number--that is simple--but then, also, a listing of all the senior officers of the company, someone who has authority over the appointment or removal of a senior officer, and this little jewel--someone who substantially influences important decisions in your company. Every business owner in America is required by January 1--in just a couple of weeks--to turn in that document for every single business that they own. Now, for many folks in real estate or in construction or in many other businesses, they actually start a company and raise it up for that company. And so they may not own one company or have one LLC; they may have 20 or 30. And they have to go through the paperwork for every single one of those and be able to turn in, including answering the question: Who influences your important decisions on your company? No one even knows what that means. Well, you may say: Well, it is no big deal if they don't turn it in. Oh, no, it is, because under the rule that has been put out, if they don't turn this form in, it is a $10,000 fine for each company that they don't turn in or 2 years in jail if they don't submit it. Let that soak in. Every small business owner in America has to turn in who influences their decisions, or they could go to jail for 2 years. Now, listen. All of us around this room would say: That is too much. Why is the Federal Government asking that of every pet owner, of every hair shop, of every builder, of every subcontractor? Why are we asking them who substantially influences them? And what authority do we have to have them do that? Well, it is a good question, actually, because a Federal judge, just a couple of weeks ago, stepped in and did a preliminary injunction, just temporarily stepped in--this, by the way, was a Federal judge who was appointed by President Obama. They stepped in and put a halt on this rule. And they said this rule is--their term--``quasi-Orwellian'' and ``likely unconstitutional.'' Now, this was an Obama judge stepping into this. They put a pause on it. But the problem is, the pause is completely dependent on the judge at this point. They can unpause it at any moment. So the simple thing that I have asked for throughout this entire year is, let's get rid of this rule. This rule should not be there at all. Congress has no right to go to every business owner and hand them a stack of forms and say to fill these out and tell us who helps you make decisions in your company. What in the world? So we have no right to be able to do that. So I have asked all year long: We need to get rid of it entirely. I have not been successful getting that. So we have asked a simple thing: Let's take it out for 1 year. Let's just delay it. Let's get more time to be able to talk about this. This is a big issue that Congress is laying down. Now, I have to tell you, I have not been successful getting that either. But do you know who has been? The House of Representatives. The House of Representatives passed a 1-year delay on this rule--wait for it--420 to 1; 420 to 1. Yeah, the House said: This is a massive overreach; let's pause this for a year, at least, until we figure out what this actually means. What does this mean for small business owners across the country? They could--in the very earliest time of next year under a new administration, any single small business in the country could face a $10,000 fine or 2 years in prison if they haven't turned this in. But they have all turned it in already, right? It was due January 1. Actually, FinCEN has given us the latest numbers of who has turned it in. Let me just give a few States as an example and the percentage. In New York State: 80 percent of the small businesses haven't turned this form in yet--80 percent. In my State in Oklahoma, 77 percent of the small businesses have not turned this form in. In Rhode Island, 72 percent of the small businesses have not turned this form in. In West Virginia, 80 percent of the businesses have not turned this form in. In Wisconsin, 74 percent of the businesses have not turned this form in. That means they could all face--all those businesses could all face a $10,000 fine or 2 years in jail because they haven't submitted a form most of them don't even know exists. Listen: Delaying for a year is not a radical proposal. And 420 to 1 in the House is a pretty good vote, especially considering the votes of the House in the past week. That is broad bipartisan agreement. All I am asking is: Let's pause this for a year. Let's agree with the House and not have 75 to 80 percent of American small businesses suddenly be under the heavy hand of a potential fine or jail time because they don't even know this exists. But it does. It is Federal law. So that is my simple request that I am bringing on this very last moment to be able to deal with this. Madam President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5119 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time, be passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, my friend from Rhode Island and I, we have a lot of great conversations. I think we both agree on the problem here. There is clearly a problem that money could be laundered and hidden in American companies and shell companies. There is no question. I think what we disagree on is the answer to that problem. In this setting, with this set of forms, the assumption is that those who are doing international money laundering would put down their accurate information and would identify themselves as international terrorists and money launderers. In this particular setting, every small business owner who owns a restaurant or a pet store or a bookstore or is a plumber or owns a roofing company--30 million, in fact, small businesses in America--they all have to prove their innocence. The assumption is that a Russian oligarch who is trying to hide money will tell the truth when he fills his form out, and I find that hard to believe. But in the meantime, 30 million small businesses have to go through a form, and within weeks, probably 23 million of those will be in violation of the law, and they will face penalties of $10,000 or 2 years in jail. And most of those small business owners who run that restaurant down the street don't even know this rule exists. It is the kind of stuff that drives Americans crazy, that they woke up one day and found out they may go to jail tomorrow because they didn't fill out a form that someone wanted. That is what we are trying to pause. The problem is real. I just don't think this is the right solution for it in the way it is being implemented. Let's see if we can solve the problem without actually causing, literally, tens of millions of small business owners to be under the sword of Damocles that they could be rounded up and go to jail at any moment because they didn't get a form filled out. That is what we are trying to solve in the days ahead, and I wish we could at least put a pause on this and think it through more before those small business owners find out. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, for over a year, I have worked to get rid of a rule that is driving every one of my small businesses in Oklahoma absolutely crazy. A lot of Americans have no idea what the beneficial ownership rule is, but if you own a small business in America, you definitely know. To set the context for this, next week, we are supposed to take up the national defense authorization. In 2021, a small, little section was stuck in at the end in the large national defense authorization that was called the corporate transparency beneficial ownership act. That little bill was supposed to root out money laundering and fraud. What it has become has been a nightmare for every business owner in my State. If you are a business owner that has a business that is a small business--let's say less than 20 employees, less than $5 million in total revenue in a year--you now have to fill out this enormous set of forms and turn them in to the Federal Government to show your ownership structure to the Federal Government so they can track it. I will tell you, there are quite a few business owners that don't own one business; they may own two or three businesses or they may own several LLCs if they are a builder or they are a property developer, if they do all kinds of property construction for small businesses and building for others. They will own several LLCs, and now they have a stack of forms they have to fill out. They have to fill out forms now that talk about their name, their birth date, their address, an ID number, and all of it. They want to know all the reporting for their legal address, their address, the jurisdiction of their information. They want to know all the senior officers of the reporting company. They want to know someone who has the authority over the appointment or the removal of those senior officers. This is my favorite: They want to know substantial influencers over the decisions in the company. No one even knows what that means. Who is your substantial influence in your small business? All those things all have to be compiled by business owners that literally do their own books, that do their own purchasing, that do their own payroll. They have plenty of other things to do other than the requirement to fill out forms. Now, it wouldn't be such a big deal if it was just a form that dropped into their box, but it is a form dropped into their box, and it had this little note attached to it: If you don't fill this out or you fill it out wrong, it is a $10,000 fine and up to 2 years in prison for not filling this form out--2 years in prison for not filling out this form outlining who influences you in your decisions in your small business. When this was stuck into the national defense authorization in 2021, it was supposed to root out fraud and waste, but it has grown through regulations and is now poured out with a deadline that is literally a couple of weeks away. I have fought for a year. Senator Tuberville has a bill to be able to end this entirely. We got no traction on that. We couldn't even get a vote in this Senate to be able to stop this nightmare. So I brought a second bill to say let's just delay it so it is not happening this year, and we have worked for months to be able to get that delay in, and we have not been able to get a vote on that in this Senate. While small businesses all over my State are furious about this, we have tried to just say: Somebody needs to show some common sense and to stop asking these questions. Thankfully, in the last 72 hours, a Federal judge has stepped in and has halted this nationwide, has prevented the Biden administration from actually implementing this rule that they created. In fact, this judge called this regulation quasi- Orwellian, also determined this--saying the ``government is unable to provide the court with any tenable theory that [this regulation] falls within Congress's power. [It] appears likely unconstitutional.'' I absolutely agree. I am grateful this judge has stepped in to be able to stop its implementation, but I am going to still ask this Senate to do the same thing we have asked all year; that is, to stop it entirely. We should not be asking these questions of every small business in America. That is not our job, to ask every small business owner in America: Turn in who are the influencers on your decisionmaking or we will put you in prison for 2 years. What in the world? So I am grateful for the stop, but we also will not stop until we actually pull this entire thing out and say this is not our job. We have plenty of things that are our job that we are not doing. For instance, next week--the national defense authorization, passed on a bipartisan basis through committee months ago, has yet to come to the Senate floor. It is time for it to be able to come, long past overdue. This sets our military strategy and what we are going to do for our vets and for the members of Active-Duty Reserves and National Guard. This should have been done a long time ago. Those are the things we should already be doing. Going to business owners and telling them ``Tell us who your influencers are'' are things we should not be doing. Department of Government Efficiency Mr. President, I left a meeting just now dealing with the newly named Department of Government Efficiency, where Members of the House and Senate gathered around Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswarmy and asked questions of each other: What can we do to make government more efficient? This shouldn't be a partisan organization. In fact, there are Democrats that have joined us in this conversation. I find no one in my great State of Oklahoma who says: You know what I really want from my government? I want them to be inefficient. I want them to waste my money. I want my government to spend money on things that really don't matter for the country. Every person that I meet in my State--Republican, Democrat, or Independent--all say the same thing: The government should do its job and not somebody else's job. When you spend my money, spend it wisely. We all know we need roads. We all know we need national defense. We all know we need border security. There are key things we all need to do. But there are some things that continue to be able to pop up where money is being spent that there is great frustration in my State and a great number of people that say: Why are we spending money on that? We spent money 2 years ago, as a Federal tax dollar, and the people in my State of Oklahoma had to spend their hard-earned tax money on paying for drag shows in Ecuador. We have money that was spent on writing the book about humans, chimpanzees, and climate change in Sierra Leone. We spent some of our hard-earned tax dollars on doing a study about seatbelts and helmet usage in Ghana. The folks in Oklahoma asked a very simple question. We want the pot holes fixed. We want efficient government. We want education taken care of. We want good schools. Why are we spending our dollars--that are limited dollars--on doing a helmet study in Ghana? Why aren't we doing that in the United States? Why aren't we taking care of us? It is not that we are selfish; it is just that we all know we are $36 trillion in debt. Every single year, I put out a book called ``Federal Fumbles.'' Every year, I bring it to this body. Every year, we talk about inefficiency and waste in government. I am grateful that there is a bipartisan conversation finally started that is spreading among this body and the House body and now the new incoming executive branch saying: Let's find areas of efficiency where we can be better at this. The basic goal is this: Let's have a prosperous Nation that actually has economic growth and an efficient government that matches the efficiency of you our Nation. That shouldn't be an irrational goal. That should be something we could all agree on. Quite frankly, it is just Oklahomans saying: Don't waste my money. Spend it in the way you are supposed to spend it, and let me keep the dollars that I have earned. And when my tax dollars go away, don't make me be embarrassed how they are used. That shouldn't be irrational. I am going to continue to press on this. Five years ago, we passed a bill called the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act. I worked with the Biden administration for the last several years. It has created something called the Federal Program Inventory. As crazy as it sounds, for the first time ever, we are actually building a list of all the Federal programs we have in the Federal Government. Many people don't know that we literally have so many programs that we don't know how many programs we have in the Federal Government. Just try to do an internet search and ask a simple question of AI: How many programs do we have in the Federal Government? It will give you an estimate because there is no master list of all the programs in the Federal Government. So I passed a law called the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act requiring Agencies to do something crazy: Make a list of all the programs that you do. Where is our money being spent? And that list is in the process of being built right now that will give us the ability to see where we have duplication in government. It will give the ability from one Agency to look at another Agency and say: I didn't realize we did the same thing. That is happening all over our government right now. Again, that is straightforward. But it gives us an opportunity to say: Make a list, prioritize the list, and then draw a line and say these things are not our priorities; these things are. And when you are $36 trillion in debt, we should be talking about doing our priorities and not doing the things that are not a priority. This is what we should do in this body and to be able to have this kind of conversation. So, for me, it is simple. Let's do the things that we should do. Let's don't do the things we shouldn't do because there are plenty of things that still need to get done. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

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

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. This resolution itself and the wording that it has in this resolution says it is the sense of the Senate that every person has the basic right to emergency healthcare, including abortion care. Let me be very, very specific on this. We had a hearing today in the Finance Committee where this same subject was addressed. We had ob-gyns from both perspectives on this, those who perform abortions and those who have a moral objection to it. We had a very good argument to be able to lay some facts out to be able to walk through this, with two sets of attorneys there to be able to walk through the law. Here is what became very clear during that conversation this morning in that open hearing. There is no State in America in which a woman faces persecution or prosecution for having an abortion. No State criminalizes miscarriage. No State criminalizes removing an ectopic pregnancy. No States prohibits lifesaving care for the mother. No State requires a woman to be actively dying in order for her doctor to care for her. We heard story after story about doctors being concerned that they may face this because they are hearing political rhetoric--political rhetoric like Vice President Harris in a speech that she said recently--where she said women were being arrested and facing prosecution for experiencing miscarriages. That is not true. So all of this rhetoric that is being put out there is making doctors afraid, but it was very clear from the conversation in law that none of those things are actually true. Every physician prior to the Dobbs decision--when there were limitations on abortion across the country and post-Dobbs decision, when every single State is making those decisions--allowed physicians in an ER to be able to make lifesaving decisions for the mother and the child. Every doctor has already the ability to be able to make that decision to be able to protect the life of the mother. They have the protections to be able to do that. So this is a false claim that somehow what happened in the Dobbs decision and what is happening in the States is limiting that. It is actually the political rhetoric that is making people afraid. What also came out during the hearing this morning was the very real risk of chemical abortions. We have recently had tragic situations where women used the chemical abortion pills that they are being told are as safe as Tylenol, and that it has life-threatening and in some cases, recently, life-taking consequences. Chemical abortion pills are not Tylenol, yet they are being sold as that. And what we are seeing is more and more cases of the diminishing of ``this is no big deal to be able to end this pregnancy'' when they haven't seen a doctor because the Biden administration is now saying you don't have to see a physician. So the woman doesn't know if she has an ectopic pregnancy or not. If she takes the chemical abortion pill while she has an ectopic pregnancy, she is at risk. But the Biden administration is saying: You don't have to see a doctor. They can just mail it to you. It is just as safe as Tylenol when it is not. We are also not being tested for their blood type to be able to make sure it doesn't affect future pregnancies during this chemical abortion. And they are not also determining by sonogram how far along the mom is in this process because there are limitations to this where it becomes more and more dangerous. All those things are restrictions that used to be there, that the Biden administration has taken away to say: No, we want more people to have access to chemical abortions. But it is making it more dangerous for women. And we have seen this recently. So we want to engage in a conversation about how can we actually put some of those basic humane doctor-requested restrictions in there to make sure we are protecting the lives of all those women. That is a better conversation for us to be able to have. To say: What is it the FDA actually said was appropriate in the past, and what can we do to be able to protect the lives of women? So, yes, I object to this resolution based on the wording and what we are doing. But, yes, we should be able to continue to have this conversation because there is a real concern that more and more doctors are afraid to do basic healthcare in an ER because more and more people are laying rhetoric out there that they are going to be arrested, and that is not true. There has not been a single physician in the country that has been arrested based on actually performing lifesaving care for mom in any ER room in the country. With that, I object.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it is the middle of September. The end of the funding year is actually just over 10 days away. The Senate has brought up exactly zero appropriations bills, although the Committee on Appropriations has worked in a bipartisan way to be able to get those through the Committee on Appropriations. But zero of them have come to the floor for a vote, which means we are facing a continuing resolution in the next week and another one of those hanging deadlines out there. We could have worked on it last week, except last week, there were just judges, and this week, it was some tax judges and other folks on the docket and some political votes that came up. So we didn't work on it last week, and we didn't work on it this week. We didn't work on it 2 months ago or 3 months ago when they had already been out of committee. They just haven't come up at all. So once again, the Nation is whispering about, will we have another government shutdown based on the fact that Congress has not finished its work. Quite frankly, even during this September, we have not even brought up appropriations bills for a vote on the floor at all. I have come to this floor multiple times to say that this is not the way it should run. Quite frankly, a hundred of us would all nod our heads and say it is not the way it should run. I continue to be able to bring to this body a very simple idea that Maggie Hassan and I--my colleague from New Hampshire--have had together for years now that, if it ever came to the floor, would pass. We have plenty of support on both the Republican and Democrat side of the aisle to be able to deal with ending government shutdowns. It is a simple idea that she and I have; that is, if we get to a moment like this that we have not finished our work, the government doesn't have a shutdown; we have, actually, a shut-in where all of us have to stay here and continue our work. Federal employees and the Nation are held harmless, but we have to actually finish the work. We have multitrillion dollars in debt and little to no conversation here about it, and we won't have any in September. Now, it looks like we will punt this for several months. My question is, Will we have it then? Probably not because it may punt to November or December or it may punt into next year. We haven't decided yet. When that is decided, there will be another deadline sitting there, and there will be more things to do during that time period, whether it is the end of this year, because there are so many unaddressed things that have not happened this year that have to be addressed, so they will be crammed into the end of the year, so there will be no serious conversation then; or it will be punted into next year, and there are so many things under a new Presidential term that have to be done, there won't be any serious conversation then. So my simple question is, When do we ever have this conversation on something we all acknowledge is a problem? But instead of working on what we all know is the big issue, we are instead voting on judges and chitchatting and pretending it is not a problem when it is. We are not voting on the national defense authorization either. That has come out of committee already on wide bipartisan support months ago, but it has yet to come to the floor of the Senate. My understanding now of the latest rumor is that there is no plan to actually bring it to the floor of the Senate, that there seems to be an intent to say: We will just not ever bring it to the Senate and just kind of pretend we did and then move to a conference report at the end of year. One of the single most important bills that we do during the course of the year is our funding for Americans' tax dollars in our National Defense Act. So far, we have not done any of the 12 bills dealing with our funding, and apparently, we are not going to do the National Defense Act this month, next month; maybe November, December if they can form an agreement with Members of the House behind the scenes. So the first time we may ever see the bill may be after some deal has already been struck, and we will have no amendments, no conversation; just the single biggest thing that we work on during the course of the year--national defense--landing on the floor of the Senate, saying: Vote up or down. Does anyone think that is the way it should operate? Anyone at all? In this bill, I fought for things like Tinker Air Force Base. It is the largest sustainment base in all of the Air Force, and it happens to be in Oklahoma. There are serious things that are there. We are in the transition between two different airplanes, the E-3 to the E-7. The E-7 has not come on fast enough, and the E-3 was already fading away, not being sustained. So in this bill, it actually says: Hold on, Air Force. The other platform is delayed. We can't give up this one until that one is on board. So it is a literal national defense issue to say: We have to be able to resolve this. It is Congress speaking into what we should speak into in a very practical area to say these are things that need to be solved. We have personnel issues, like pay raises for our military. We have issues for spouses and their work. We have all kinds of things that are built into this bill dealing with our different installations around the world and the fight that is happening in Europe and the Middle East and our preparation all around the world to be able to secure the United States. But we are not talking about that. We are having votes on judges instead. And apparently, from what I am hearing rumor of, we may not have any talk about it at all on the floor of the Senate. There is a bill that has been moving through committee dealing with energy permitting--it seems to have bipartisan support--saying we have to fix the process of how we are doing energy transmission for transmission lines and also for pipelines and basic energy needs. It is interesting. Ten years ago, I would have people catch me and say: We really want to be able to get renewable energy. We want renewable energy. We need that for our manufacturing. That is what we want to do. Do you know what I hear now from manufacturers? We just need energy, period, because our electric grid is being strained across the entire country because we have more data centers, because we have AI coming on board, which uses a tremendous amount of electricity. We have electric vehicles that are coming on board, which use a tremendous amount of electricity. In the process, we have more and more regulations slowing down the production of more and more energy. We are not keeping up, and we all know it. Yet a bill to deal with energy permitting languishes. I have no idea, after it comes out of committee, if we will ever even discuss it on the floor of the Senate, although it has been worked on. We have healthcare issues. We all talk about the importance of healthcare and trying to be able to bring down the cost for consumers. Well, guess what, the Finance Committee did protracted, multiyear work on a bipartisan basis to be able to move a bill dealing with pharmacy benefit managers to bring down the cost not of 10 drugs but of all drugs and to be able to make it more available--and not just available by mail, available at pharmacies, especially rural pharmacies that are struggling under the oppression of the pharmacy benefit managers. Just this year, this calendar year--middle of September to January-- just this year, 2,275 pharmacies in America have closed. Do you know why? That pharmacy benefit manager bill that we have that has been out of committee on a wide bipartisan vote is still sitting there not even debated on this floor while 2,275 pharmacies closed because, apparently, we needed to do other things. So we have ignored more than 2,000 pharmacies closing, many of them in rural areas, because we wouldn't even debate the policy here. If we brought it to this floor, it would pass tomorrow with overwhelming support on both sides of the aisle, but it has not been brought up. There is a farm bill that is out there that was due last year, so there was an extension into this year. Well, guess what, that farm bill expires now within the month, and there is no debate still about the farm bill that was extended from last year into this year on where it is going to go. Farmers that are dealing with reference prices right now and inflation and what they are facing for the cost of fuel, the cost of fertilizer, the cost of equipment--as that continues to accelerate, Congress continues to ignore bringing up the farm bill, as if our food is just going to appear at the grocery store. These are big issues. The reason we all were elected was to work on these big issues, but so far this year, these issues won't even come to the floor of the Senate for debate. It is not that they have been brought up and voted down; they are not even brought up. My simple challenge is: It is the middle of September. Why aren't we working on the budget? Why aren't we working on the national defense authorization? Why aren't we working on energy and the cost of permitting for energy? Why aren't we working on lower-priced prescription drugs? Why aren't we working on the farm bill? All of those had wide bipartisan support coming out of committee--all of them--but none of them have been brought up here on this floor. Maybe it is so everything can just get crammed into the end of the year and get past ``the election.'' But maybe we need to reset our priorities. Let's get the things done that the American people expect us to work on, the hard things, the things that are important, whether it is healthcare, energy, ag policy, the budget, the national defense. Let's address the things that should be addressed, and let's get started. I would be OK with starting today, but let's at least address them next week. But from my understanding of next week's schedule, they are not coming up then either. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I come to the floor today to be able to talk about an issue that, apparently, there is a large belief among some that doesn't exist. So I wanted to be able to pull the veil back and to say this is actually an issue. And I can't believe I even have to have this conversation. And, in many ways, it is an incredibly difficult conversation to be able to have. During the Presidential debate that happened just a few weeks ago now, there was a debate, ostensibly, between Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump. It ended up being a debate between Vice President Harris, David Muir, Linsey Davis, all against Donald Trump. There were multiple moments where the ABC moderators decided they were going to debate or correct Donald Trump when he spoke, and it became this very odd interchange that all America watched and thought: Well, that doesn't seem like a debate in that sense. One of those moments was a really odd moment. There was a question about abortion to President Trump. That is a fair conversation for the moderators to bring up a question and to be able to talk about it. He has openly talked a lot about abortion. And, obviously, the vote that happened in the Supreme Court with the Dobbs decision has highlighted a lot of that conversation nationally since his Presidency. President Trump, during that debate, talked about children who are aborted away the eighth or ninth month and then some even after. He mentioned that, to which the ABC News moderator, Linsey Davis, responded: ``There is no State in the country where it's legal to kill a baby after it's born'' and then immediately turned to Vice President Harris, where, literally, she jumped in to be able to debate the President and to try to ``correct'' him. The problem is, there was no one to be able to moderate her in that debate and to make the simple statement, there are not only States in America where that can happen, there are States in America where that does happen. In this simple map of the United States, this lists out the States where there are strong protections for a child after birth. Now, this is not an abortion; this is a botched abortion that has occurred. This is a woman who went in with the intent of having an abortion, late term. The child was fully delivered, and in medical practice in many of these States that are listed here, the child is fully delivered during the abortion. And if the child cries, breathes, the practice is to back away and to allow the child to slowly die on the table because the intent was an abortion. So everyone just steps back in the facility and watches the child die on the table, however long that takes. Now, before people say that doesn't occur, eight States have a requirement--eight States have a requirement--that, in an abortion, if it is botched and the child is actually fully delivered, and they are still alive, they have to report it. And in eight States--only those States that actually do that--there were 277 cases of that. Let me give you an example. This was several years ago. She is now a beautiful young woman, a young woman named Melissa Ohden. She actually didn't know until she was an adult that she was actually the product of a botched abortion. Her mom, who was a teenager, had been compelled to have an abortion by some family members around her. She didn't want to do it, but she did. It was a late-term abortion. She went in to have the abortion, had the abortion, and after the abortion was over, one of the nurses looking through the ``medical waste'' that was there on the table, saw the young girl crying. She scooped up the infant, took the infant on her own to an emergency room. The emergency room personnel said: There is no way she will have a full, meaningful life. But they took care of her because she was in the emergency room. I know Melissa Ohden. She is a remarkable lady--no disabilities, no other challenges other than the knowledge that she was supposed to ``have been aborted.'' But there she is alive. There are a lot of women who are scattered around the country who are all finding each other online telling the story that they are a product of a botched abortion; that they were born alive, and they were given medical care when ``they weren't supposed to be there at all.'' They are now, through one rare benefit of social media, finding each other and connecting in conversation. Not only is this happening, it is happening all over the country. I am fully aware that the ABC News moderator thinks this doesn't happen anywhere, but not only is it happening, it has happened before; it is happening probably today. The question that this body has not resolved is, What are we going to do about it? This is not about reducing abortion. Quite frankly, the bill that I am bringing and I want to bring for unanimous consent today won't reduce abortions at all in America. I would tell you, it would be my preference to be able to stand for the value of every single child in America and to say there is not a child in America that is disposable; that children in America are all valuable--not some disposable, some valuable--all valuable. This is not a question of are we going to legalize or not legalize abortion. This is about a fully delivered child crying on a table, if they will get medical care or if we will back up and watch them die. That is the question before us--and what we are going to do about that. There has been a lot of conversation about this of late, in the last several years. Let me give you an example of several of these States. New York State recently passed a law that not only allows abortion all the way until the ninth month, but they protect--if a child is fully delivered and is breathing on the table, and it was a botched abortion, that they would be protected, quote-unquote, to be able to die there. When this bill was passed, just a couple of years ago, in New York, the New York Legislature cheered--cheered--at protecting the rights of a child to lie on the table and die after a delivery. They lit up the Freedom Tower in New York City to celebrate the passage of that bill. That is in New York. In Minnesota, 9 years ago, in a wide bipartisan vote, they determined that they should actually track how many of these botched abortions happen; that they should actually keep track of how many occur like this, that a child is actually born alive. It is rare, but they wanted just to be able to keep track of it with basic records. So in a bipartisan vote in the Minnesota Legislature, signed by the Governor, they passed a law, 9 years ago, to track how often this occurs. In the State of Minnesota, they determined, over the next several years, that there were 24 children that were born alive during a botched abortion. Now, again, that is not many, but I bet it matters to those 24. But for those 24 children that Minnesota discovered, this is not really a myth. This is really occurring. They tracked it. The Governor of Minnesota, the current Vice Presidential candidate on the Democratic side, worked to get a repeal of that law, and the simple repeal was: We don't want reporting anymore. Literally, it was: We are finding out this is happening; so in Minnesota, we have declared we don't want to know that this is happening anymore. That is unbelievable. That is old-school, put your hands over your ears and scream ``la, la, la, la'' kind of stuff. That is not what we should do as a nation. We should actually know about it and then determine, through debate in this body, what we are going to do about it. Madam President, I am getting close to a conclusion here. May I ask unanimous consent to be permitted to speak just 3 more minutes, until we can wrap this up, and then prior to the scheduled rollcall vote, for Senator Britt to have 1 minute just to be able to conclude.

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, so here is the issue. We have brought this bill to the floor several times before. In fact, we have had some bipartisan support for this bill several times before. The bill is very, very simple. The bill says: When the doctor performs an abortion but the child is born alive, instead of actually born dead, that care would be provided to that child the same as any other child that is born. Now, we are fully aware that many abortion clinics do not have a full hospital that is also attached to them. But we are also very aware that if there is a problem with the mom in an abortion clinic, they take her to a hospital. This is a simple statement to say: If a child is born alive, which we know 100 percent this has happened--even in States like Minnesota, that this is happening--what is America going to do with a fully delivered, crying baby on the table? Will they get healthcare or will they not get healthcare? That is all this bill does. It doesn't reduce abortions, unfortunately. It doesn't do that. It doesn't change abortion processes across the country. It doesn't do that. It just says: When the abortion is unsuccessful and the child is actually delivered instead, we are going to get medical care to that child. That is what I bring in this, and it is absolutely, to me, the simplest of all possible statements to make. So, Madam President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 204 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I ended up being a topic of conversation for the past month and a half or so in a lot of political conversations about immigration and the border. So I want to be able to come to this body and to say the immigration issues are still unresolved, but there has been a lot of rewriting of what actually has happened in the past year and all the negotiations. Vice President Harris made a comment publicly just a few weeks ago, when she said: Let me be clear. After decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades. I mean no disrespect to the Vice President, but we had 4 months of negotiations. She neither initiated those negotiations nor participated in a single second of those negotiations--not one second. The Vice President's staff was never involved in any of the negotiations. The negotiations took 4 months because the people that sat down at the table all determined: We are in a very bad place. We need to resolve the chaos that is happening at our southern border. For the first 6 weeks of those negotiations, the White House refused to participate at all in the negotiation--either from the President's staff, the President, or the Vice President or Vice President's staff. So for the first 6 weeks of the 4 months of negotiations, the White House didn't want to discuss it. After 6 weeks, the White House then got involved in the negotiations. So it was three Senators and the White House to be able to walk through that. Then, again for the next 3 months of our negotiations, it was a constant fight to get anything agreed to to secure our southern border. What we came up with and was the final agreement wasn't everything that I wanted, but it was enough to, at least, begin to make a change in what was happening at our southern border. It was a pretty straightforward process. Asylum is very difficult to achieve. Only about 3 percent of the people that actually go through the hearings actually achieve asylum, but you don't find out that until usually 6 or 8 years after you have already been and have already gone through this long process. So now we have thousands of people crossing our border asking for asylum, not because they believe they qualify but because they know they will stay here somewhere between 6 and 10 years while they wait for the hearing. And they, at least, get a decade in America, and then many of them then disappear. So what we could get to agreement was, when you cross the border, you would cross the border--first person each day, they would have a much faster screening than would take hours or days, and they would be screened at the standard that was at the end. So instead of waiting 6 or 8 years or 10 years to get that final decision, you would get it rapidly. So the first person that would cross each day would cross, would be quickly screened under a brandnew process, and then 97 percent of them would be deported immediately because they don't qualify for asylum, and everyone knows the joke. So first day, first person: You cross, quickly screened under a new process, deported immediately. But if we got 5,000 people crossing, we don't have enough staff to screen that many people, so we created a border emergency authority that if you cross the border and you have got 5,000 people flooding the border and we don't have the staffing to do it, no one gets screened; you just get arrested and deported. So first person: cross, screened, deported. If we are overwhelmed by the cartels with high numbers, you just are deported immediately, and no one is screened. That is what we could finally come up with as an agreement. Now, I have to tell you, I felt like that would dramatically slow the flow at our southern border and it would deal with the core issue that is the abuse of asylum. But there were a lot of issues I couldn't get agreement on that, quite frankly, many of my colleagues on the Republican side were very frustrated that we couldn't make progress on, some of those very commonsense things; for instance, if you are going to request asylum, you have to request asylum at a port of entry. You can't come across the border between the ports of entry in the open desert or swim the river and then say when you get caught: Oh, I want asylum. It was obvious you were trying to sneak into the country. And we were saying: If you are a true asylum seeker and you believe you are requesting asylum, come to a port of entry. We thought that was a pretty commonsense thing to say: We will expedite your process to asylum if you come to a port, not if we have to chase you in the desert. I couldn't get that agreement. My Democratic colleagues would not agree to that. That was a great frustration on the Republican side. We wanted to be able to require the ``Remain in Mexico'' program. The Supreme Court had already spoken and said that had to be done. It was not being done. So that if we were flooded with people, they are not waiting for 8 or 10 years here; they are actually waiting in another country to be able to come through the process. They would still get their appointment. My Democratic colleagues would have none of that. We also wanted an end to the two big parole programs that the Biden administration has created. One of them is called CBP ONE. That is, if you come to a port of entry and tell DHS ahead of time ``I'm coming,'' then DHS, when you arrive at the port of entry, will quickly give you paperwork, will give you a work permit that day, and will release you into the country for a decade as you await your hearing. It was a fast-track process into the country that was actually inviting more people to illegally cross into the country. We now have 1,500 people a day that are coming through that process. We have no idea if they qualify for asylum because they are not being screened for asylum. We wanted an end to that process because we felt like it is actually inviting more illegal immigration rather than trying to deter it. And it is not just us saying that. The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security made this statement. They felt that CBP did not gather intelligence or conduct sufficient analysis of data generated by CBP ONE appointments to protect against fraudulent applications and misuse and public safety threats. That is not us saying that; that is the inspector general saying that. We wanted an end to that program. Through the negotiations that were long and hard, I got agreement that that program would end, that we would put a stop to that program. But there was a second program called the CHNV program. This is 30,000 people a month that are coming in. These are folks from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela--30,000 a month. This was another program that was wholly created out of the Biden administration that has never existed in any other administration. It was a parole authority to say: If you will contact us before you come from one of these countries and someone here in the United States will ``sponsor'' you or at least say ``I know them,'' then you can get into the country and be paroled into the country. This is not even an asylum request. This is just you are just released into the country. We wanted to have a stop to that program as well because there are all kinds of issues with that program. But that one, my Democratic colleagues would not agree to and said: No. We will stop the CBP ONE parole program. We won't stop the slowdown of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans coming in, in very high numbers. By the way, the deal was supposedly that we would take in 30,000 of those folks and Mexico would take in 30,000 of those folks. The problem is, we have asked for the numbers that Mexico has taken in; and, so far, the State Department won't give us an answer, and DHS won't give us an answer. As far as we can tell, the Mexican side has been zero while we have been 30,000. Now, we felt there was a problem with the way the program was being run. And by the way, again, we are not the only ones that think that. DHS itself shut down that program for part of this summer because they found what they called egregious fraud problems; that is, some sponsors sponsoring dozens of people to be able to come in and an overflow of individuals not being properly screened. There are major problems with the program. Unfortunately, the program has restarted again. Now, why do I walk through this? I keep hearing this rewrite of history that it was President Trump himself that told all Republicans: It is a great deal, but don't do it. Now, there is no doubt President Trump made a statement that it is not enough. He wanted everything in it, and he said: Don't do it. No question that statement was made, but no question that belief was already shared by several folks on my side of the aisle saying we wanted an end to all these parole programs. We also want to stop applying between ports of entry and, if you are going to apply, only at ports of entry. And several of my colleagues said the House bill--that was H.R. 2--it was that or nothing. They wanted everything or nothing. And suddenly, this whole system falls apart. I stood here at this exact same spot saying to my colleagues on my side of the aisle: We should do as much as we can do. This is as much as we can get right now with a Democratic Senate, with a Democratic White House. Let's do all we can to be able to stop it. Obviously, I didn't win that part of the debate, but I also don't want people rewriting history and what actually occurred in the debate because there were serious issues that were unresolved in the bill that are still out there. My frustration is, all of it is still out there. We still have the same issue with asylum that this bill would have fixed. We still have the same issue between ports of entry. That is still unfixed. And we still have not one of those parole programs but both of those parole programs happening. Interestingly enough, in the last couple of months, the numbers at the border have started slowing down. It has been very interesting. I don't know if you noticed even during the Presidential debate that happened earlier this week, ABC News asked Vice President Harris: The number of border crossings for illegal immigration was very high during your first 3 years, but they seem to have slowed down the closer we are getting to the election. Why? She actually didn't answer that question at all. She totally skipped it. And ABC News didn't follow up with her, shockingly, to be able to do a followup question to say: You didn't answer the initial question. You said everything else but why. Well, I can give you a couple of things on that. Two things have occurred in the past few months: Mexico has had their elections, and we are having ours. So suddenly, Mexico is starting to enforce their border a little better, and this administration is enforcing the border a little better with the authorities they already have. Now, when I say ``a little better,'' it has gone from 5,000 people illegally crossing a day to about 3,400 people illegally crossing a day. That number is still five times what were crossing during the Obama administration. My request has been the same for President Biden all along: If you won't enforce the border the same way President Trump enforced it, at least enforce it the same way President Obama enforced it. Under President Obama, we had half a million people illegally crossing a year. Now, we have 2\1/2\ million people illegally crossing in a year. Same law--same exact law, enforced completely differently. Why is this an issue? It is not just an issue in our economy. It is not just an issue in our schools. It is not just an issue in crime in our communities. It is also a national security issue. In June, the FBI picked up eight ISIS-affiliated individuals that were in our country, that had come across our southern border and had asked for asylum. They were from Tajikistan. And they had gotten the quick review at the border and had been released, like hundreds of thousands of others had that same month. But these eight were different. They are ISIS-affiliated. And they scattered around the country to Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles and began their flight. Thankfully, our FBI picked them up. But of the 2\1/2\ million people that have crossed just last year, how many did we miss? I have been very outspoken on this issue. We moved from the border issue being just an issue about how do we manage our own border and illegal immigration to a national security issue. Madam President, 3,400 people a day illegally crossing our border is still an epic high number. And while the media has looked away because now it is no longer 5,000 a day, 3,400 a day is still way too high. Our system is still overwhelmed, and we still have tens of thousands of people coming in of what this administration calls special-interest aliens. That is folks that, by their own definition, are considered a national security threat. But there are so many, we don't have the opportunity to be able to follow all of them. That was those eight that were picked up that were ISIS-affiliated. They had been designated as special-interest aliens. Thankfully, we were later able to find them and pick them up, but there are thousands of them currently in the country. Hopefully, they mean us no harm, but currently we have no idea. That is something that needs to change. National security should not be a partisan issue. I understand it is an election year. This should not be a partisan issue. This should be a how-do-we-fix-this issue; this should be a how-do-we-resolve-this issue. And if the numbers are going down after I was told that the numbers were sky-high because of climate change--that was really what I was told by DHS. In fact, the White House, in 2021, put out a report on climate change and migration, saying that we have dramatically increased numbers because of climate change, not because of lack of border enforcement. My response to them now is: Well, if the numbers are going down at the border, apparently the climate is getting better worldwide because the numbers are coming down. It is not an issue of climate migration; it is an issue of enforcement at our southern border. If that occurs, the numbers go down. If it doesn't, the numbers skyrocket because we are the United States of America, and people want to be able to be in the greatest country in the world. And I don't blame them. We, as Americans, though, also have the right to be able to know we live in security and the people that are coming into our country, we know who they are, we know where they are from, and we verified any kind of criminal background that may or may not be there. That is not an unfair request to be able to make. One last thing. Currently, the House has passed what they call the SAVE Act, and there is an ongoing debate in the House right now how this will fit. The SAVE Act is a pretty simple thing. The SAVE Act just says if you are not legally present in the United States, you can't vote. Now, it is already Federal law that no one who is a noncitizen can vote in Federal elections. That is already the law. That is the trust part though. There is no verify portion of this. One of the basic principles of trust is verify. Right now, we are all trust. It is against the law, but there is no verification. The SAVE Act just says we are not going to just trust that people that are not legally present here don't vote; we are going to verify that. You can't register to vote until you can show that you are actually a citizen of the United States. That shouldn't be a radical concept. It should be straightforward. I have been one of the folks that have asked the current Attorney General: Can you show us any prosecutions or even any attempts to be able to prosecute individuals that were not legally present in the United States that attempted to vote? Because we know some stories. There are some newspaper stories scattered around the country of a few of those stories. We just asked a simple question: Can you tell us any prosecutions? In Oklahoma, we have about 40 people every election across our State--about 40 people vote twice. They will do absentee voting and then they will show up and vote again. Do you know what they get? They get a knock on the door from law enforcement a couple of months later saying you violated State law; you voted twice. We actually enforce our law that discourages people in the future from then coming and trying that again because they know they are being enforced. We thought it is a reasonable question to ask the Attorney General: How are you enforcing Federal law in this area? It is not that we are asking for something new. It is how are we enforcing what is existing. So far, the Attorney General, after months of asking the question, has given us no answer. I look forward to the day that this body can sit down with each other and say: Let's solve the national security issues because we all know they are there. We all see it. We all go through the same briefings. Let's solve those, and let's have an immigration system where we honor legal immigration and deter illegal immigration. That is what most countries do. But for some reason, our politics have gotten in the way of us solving this. Let's find a way to be able to solve this in the days ahead. I have no delusions that it is going to get solved in the next 2 weeks, but we do need to sit down and resolve this in the days ahead. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we all had the opportunity yesterday to be able to hear Binyamin Netanyahu speak to a joint session of Congress. It is the fourth time Binyamin Netanyahu has spoken in Congress. This particular invitation was different, though. During a time of war, it is much more heightened than it has been for a long time. He came in a very serious tone to be able to tell America and Americans: Thank you for standing with us as Israel. And the second thing we heard from him over and over again is: Don't forget why we are in this war. He introduced hostages that have been released. He introduced families whose loved ones are still hostages. He introduced members of the IDF who lost limbs or fought against terrorism. And he reminded Americans that more than 1,200 people died on October 7 of last year, and 253 people were taken hostage at that time. This war would be over right now if Hamas would release their hostages. This is not a war that Israel started. There is a barrier and a fence between Israel and Gaza. Gaza was there; Israel was there. But thousands of terrorists from Hamas crossed through that barrier early on Saturday morning on October 7, on a Jewish holiday, and slaughtered children in their beds, killed moms and dads, and carried out the worst act of terrorism that Israel has ever seen. So Israel is responding. Prime Minister Netanyahu committed again that they will continue to fight until they bring every single one of those hostages home, even as they continue the negotiations to try to stop the war. Currently, Israel is literally surrounded by enemies coming at them. It is something we lose track of in the United States. Israel now faces Hamas actively attacking them through terrorist actions and continuing to threaten, as Hamas leaders, even in the past month, have said that if given the opportunity, they would come back and do an October 7 all over again. They never relented. And they continue to put civilians between them and harm to try to protect the lives of the militants by using civilians as shields. But many Americans forget that Hezbollah from the north in Lebanon continues to launch rockets consistently into Israel every day. And 80,000 Israelis currently are internally displaced inside Israel, fleeing from their own homes; and they have been away from their homes now for 10 months because 10 or more rockets a day are coming into northern Israel as they continue to launch at them over and over. While American media has ignored that, the people of Israel cannot, because they live under that threat every single day. From the West Bank, there continues to be attacks that are happening on a weekly basis. From Syria, there continues to be attacks from Iranian-backed militants there. The same with Iraq. And just in the past 2 weeks, Yemen has landed one of their attack drones inside a neighborhood in Tel Aviv. Now, they have launched hundreds at Israel, but this was the first time they actually struck one of their targets. And Houthi leaders inside Yemen celebrated by saying: We have finally killed some Israelis. Israel is literally surrounded every single day. All of those militant groups are all funded by the Iranian regime--all of them. We as Americans sometimes point at Iran and say: They are the problem. And we lose track of the simple fact it is not the Iranian people. The people of Iran live under the oppression of the Iranian regime that they would like to be free from as well. But the entire region is destabilized by the actions and the terrorist activities of just that Iranian leadership and that regime. They are funding Hezbollah. They are funding Hamas. They are funding the militants in Syria and in Iraq. They are funding and providing all the trajectory for the Houthis and attacking ships in the Red Sea, as well as launching at Israel on a regular basis. It is Iran that is doing that. And we as the United States should do whatever we can to apply the maximum amount of pressure on Iran and on that regime to be able to shut off the flow of money and shut off their ability to be able to sell oil worldwide so we can continue to be able to put pressure on them so they are not flowing money to terrorist organizations that are attacking Israel on a regular basis. Now, I understand that what I have just stated is controversial to some people in the United States. As Binyamin Netanyahu was speaking yesterday, at Union Station, just four blocks from where I am standing right now, there were people that were waving Palestinian flags, climbing on the statue of Christopher Columbus with spray paint, painting on Christopher Columbus's statue--four blocks from here on Union Station--``Hamas is coming,'' while they burned American flags and burned Israeli flags. Four blocks from here. I am keenly aware that not every American is supportive of what is happening in Israel. But we are the United States of America. Israel is our ally. She is a functioning democracy in the chaos of the Middle East, and we should continue to stand with Israel because she is facing terrorism, just as we have faced terrorism. As Binyamin Netanyahu reminded all Americans yesterday, Iran really wants to destroy America. Just Israel is between Iran and America, so they go after Israel first. There is something growing in America though. And it is a growing anti-Semitism that is occurring, something Senator Rosen and I have talked about for years. We talked about what is happening on college campuses. After October 7, the anti-Semitism on our university campuses nationwide has now exploded into full view. What has been trained into students by faculty that are anti-Israel is now bearing fruit in public demonstrations. It is funded by we don't know who yet, but definitely organized and funded and well-equipped. Today, Senator Rosen and I held an anti-Semitism hearing with college students from six different college campuses. They came and told their story of what it is like to be a Jewish student on an American college campus. And I think this body needs to be able to hear their story, because not everyone was able to be in that hearing today. Let me just share the stories, because for some people, they just set it aside and say: There are a few places and there are minor things that are happening, but it is no big deal. Let me share what Jewish students on six different college campuses are saying to us in the U.S. Senate today. There is a student that is from Columbia University. I will leave the names out to be able to protect them. She gave us testimony today saying this: In the fall semester alone, I endured harassment in the middle of the night and repeated vandalism of my property and resident-assistant bulletin boards, resulting in eventual removal due to constant damage. I also experienced both traditional and cyber bullying. Within the first week of the October 7th attacks, people began to glare at me, or ignore me entirely, turning away from me even if I greeted them by name. By the end of school year, friends of mine who are now-- As she said-- former friends did not even want to be seen with me. But while my experience was harsh, others endured much graver conditions. I have friends who were spat on and physically attacked; I know people who did not leave their dorm rooms for days [at a time] because they were too afraid of what might happen to them. This is, of course, not even to mention the encampment nor the demonstrations at individual Columbia school graduations that--while I hate to admit it--really did spoil the entire ceremony . . . And throughout it all, these students have waved the Palestinian flag. But this has never been about Palestine; it has not even truly concerned [about] the war in the Gaza Strip. It has always been a protest against the existence of a Jewish State. At Columbia, people chant that zionists are not welcome, calling on ``death to the Jewish State.'' One student leader said that ``zionists don't deserve to live.'' Another student from Rutgers University said: We tracked [and] endured [and] experienced more than 200 incidents of bias/antisemitism since October 7. This represents the supermajority of all bias incidents on campus. This has created an environment where Jewish students feel unsafe, especially since the attack October 7th, with almost 300 days passing without a sense of security on campus or in their classrooms at Rutgers. Throughout the last week of the semester and during finals in the spring, there was an encampment in solidarity with Hamas, a U.S.-recognized terror organization, on [Vorhees] Mall in the heart of the College Avenue campus that disrupted classes, student learning, and threatened the safety of Jewish students on campus. That is at the second campus. The third campus, George Washington University, a student there said to us: On the night of April 29, encampment participants staged a riot, ripping down the fences that were put up by the university around the yard. They stood on the pile of fences while chanting euphemisms for mass murder and desecrating a statue of George Washington. Signs in the encampment bore the words ``final solution'' and swastikas. Another read, ``Israelis go back to Europe, [your real homes]. Protesters claimed to be fighting for peace yet [they] preached the opposite, chanting: We don't want no 2 states,'' ``Globalize the intifada,'' and ``Hamas are freedom fighters.'' One student said, ``when we say we don't want Zionists here, we really mean it.'' At Ohio State University: On my campus, Jewish sorority girls were spat on while selling bracelets with the words ``I stand with Israel.'' Two assailants vandalized our Hillel building, our center for Jewish life while screaming anti-Israel and anti-Semitic obscenities. Two Jewish students were assaulted and spent the night in the hospital after being physically stopped on the street. A group of Jewish girls had pennies thrown at them. Early one morning, several men approached the Jewish Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, screaming-- I am not going to say it-- and throwing bottles at the house. Students for Justice in Palestine entered our main library and chanted antisemitic slogans for over an hour without facing any consequences. Interestingly enough, in my home State, we had a student that was there that had transferred from another university to the University of Oklahoma. He had said he wanted to be able to find ``a legal education, free of fear of having to bite my tongue; forced to hide my identity and [my] thoughts'' all the time. He thought his best chance would be to attend a law school on a campus like the University of Oklahoma. He said he came there and he openly discussed his faith to see what the climate would be like. He said: The spirit of Dr. Ada remains strong. I will have to tell you that story another time. It is a great story on Dr. Ada. He said: I . . . have . . . been warmly received by everyone there, and am receiving the educational experience I wish [I could have received at Indiana University]. Then I have to tell you this story. A student from Oregon University--she came and said: Flyers were handed out glorifying the Palestinian resistance and celebrating the ``Al Aqsa flood''-- That is the October 7 attack-- as an act of ``decolonization.'' Signs called for the abolition of the state of Israel, saying: ``from the river to the sea.'' One graffiti on campus asked, ``How many children did you eat today?'' When we brought these concerns directly to the University President, we were blamed for not properly reporting these incidents--even though it was entirely unclear where hate bias incidents of this nature were to be reported. It felt degrading. It felt like [it was] victim blaming. She asked this question and made this statement. She was very kind. She said: I want to thank Senators Rosen and Lankford for introducing the bipartisan Countering Antisemitism Act--which takes tangible action to address some of the issues I have talked about today. She said this: I hope you will work together to get this legislation to the finish line and to deliver for Jewish students who are nervously anticipating entering another challenging academic year this fall. What was she asking for? She made it very specific. She wants this body to act, to speak out for Jewish students that in a few weeks are going to be headed back to their campus, wondering if their campus will be the same as it was when they left it, because when they left at graduation, there were pro-Hamas rallies at graduations and people shouting down Jewish students on campus, belittling them and attacking them. They are wondering: If I go back to school at all this fall, what will I face? That is not an unrealistic question. So the students that spoke to us asked for some very specific things. One is that administrators on university campuses should actually enforce the code of conduct on their university campuses--what a radical idea. If you have a code of conduct, actually enforce it. Don't enforce it on some groups and not on others. Some of these students said that on their campus, the protesters that were shutting down the library and shutting down graduation got meetings with the administration to negotiate what to do and Jewish students did not. If you have a code of conduct on a university campus--and all of them do--don't allow hateful speech and actions to occur on your campus, to shut down the education. Don't tell--some of these students faced from the administration ``I would encourage you not to go to the library today'' when their tuition helped pay for that library the same as everyone else's. But to say to one group of protesters ``They have taken it over. They really have the occupation. I wouldn't go there. It is not safe for you''--why don't you do something crazy, administrators? Why don't you make your campus safe for everyone? That is one request they have. The second request they had was--Congress passed the IHRA definition of ``anti-Semitism.'' The House has already passed it. The State Department right now uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance--the IHRA--definition for ``anti-Semitism'' and has used it for more than three decades. It is not controversial for our State Department, but we have never required the Department of Education to also have that same definition. What is happening on university campuses right now is that all these statements are being made, as some of the students said today, that sound a lot like what Nazi Brownshirts said in Germany years ago to Jewish students, being said on American college campuses now, but university officials are saying: We don't have a good definition of ``anti-Semitism,'' so we can't really say that it is anti-Semitic hatred. We all know it is. This body should take the same definition that our State Department has used for decades and require the Department of Education to also use that same definition of ``anti-Semitism.'' That shouldn't be a radical jump for us. The House passed it. We should pass it. That was the second request they had. The third request they had was to pass the act that Senator Rosen and I have already passed through committee to bring it to this body. It is noncontroversial, but this body of the Senate has not taken it up. I would ask the majority leader to bring up that legislation dealing with anti-Semitism before students return to campus this fall to give a clear message to those students that the United States stands for everyone having the opportunity to be able to speak out their point of view, live their faith, and live without fear--especially in an educational environment. If students want to be pro-Hamas on a university campus, I think it is foolish, I think it is a terrible thing to do, but you have the right to do it. But you do not have the right to be able to silence and intimidate Jewish students on campus at the same time. You do not have the right to do that. They have the right to live their faith in safety and to be able to go to the school of their choice. It is the United States of America. Right now, we have pro-Hamas demonstrators trying to frighten Jewish students away from campuses of their choice. That needs to stop. This body needs to take up the act that Senator Rosen and I have brought--that should not be a controversial issue--and to speak out on behalf of all those students that are just looking for someone to stand with them. So why don't we do that? I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in honor of Jim Inhofe, I would like to ask unanimous consent to speak as long as I so desire.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I am standing today at not my desk location; I am standing at my senior Senator's desk location. This was the location for Jim Inhofe's desk 2 years ago when he retired from the Senate. And as you have heard from multiple different Members today, he will be deeply missed. I still have a moment every time someone says ``the senior Senator from Oklahoma''--and they are speaking to me--that I turn around and look for Jim. He will be sorely missed. Jim was my friend. He was my colleague. He was a mentor. He was a person to be able to work side by side with. Our staffs worked very well together because we chose to work well together and to be able to get things done for our State of Oklahoma. My task today is to tell a little bit of his story. I can't do that in a few minutes, but I am going to try to give as much as I can. James Mountain Inhofe--and everyone loved that middle name of his. James Mountain Inhofe was actually born in Iowa in 1934. His parents: Perry Dyson Inhofe and his mom, Blanche Phoebe Mountain. That is where the ``Mountain'' came from. Most folks don't even know. But the Nation and our State was forever changed when, at 8 years old, their family moved from Iowa to Tulsa, OK. They stayed, and he graduated from Central High School in 1953, later graduating from the University of Tulsa but actually attending classes all over the place to be able to get to that graduation. He served in the U.S. Army from 1957 to 1958, stationed in Fort Lee, VA. He became a licensed pilot in 1958, and that was one of the loves of his life. But the real love of his life was his relationship with Jesus and his beautiful wife Kay, whom he married in 1959. He was first elected to public office in Oklahoma at 32 years old, actually. He served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, sat on multiple committees, and then was elected to be the mayor of Tulsa in 1978. He loved Tulsa, OK. He later served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1987 to 1994, and then was elected, in a special election, into this body in 1994. He was sworn in on November 17, actually, 1994, on his 60th birthday. He then served five terms after that, serving the U.S. Senate, serving as chairman of Environment and Public Works; serving as chairman of Armed Services; serving on multiple different committees, including the Intelligence Committee, Indian Affairs Committee, Committee on Foreign Relations, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Committee on Small Business. He was engaged in this body and worked to be able to find ways to be able to make a difference for our State of Oklahoma and for the Nation. He loved flying and had over 11,000 flight hours. In fact, he did a crazy thing. He did multiple crazy things, but he did a crazy thing in that he replicated--I should say recreated--Oklahoman Wiley Post's historic flight around the world when he got in a twin-engine Cessna and flew from DC to Iceland to Berlin to Moscow, all the way back around to Alaska so he could circumnavigate the globe, following after Wiley Post, the famous Oklahoman's circumnavigation of the globe as well. He was passionate about infrastructure, which has been mentioned often. He would often say, as a conservative, he was passionate about national defense and about infrastructure, and those were constitutional responsibilities. And he fulfilled that well. He was passionate about trying to find ways to be able to help veterans and those who were serving in our military and to be able to maintain energy. There is a great story of a debate that he held about energy taxes on the floor of the Senate here, and it was a full-on debate, which rarely occurs in this body very often. But it was led by Senator Inhofe on this side of the aisle and by Senator Bernie Sanders on the other side. And they had an hourslong debate between the two of them about energy taxation. And at the end of that, there was a vote, and Senator Inhofe won that vote 2 to 1. At the end of it, Senator Sanders came to him and said: We don't do that often enough. We should do that more. Senator Inhofe never hesitated to be able to talk about the hard issues with the people he disagreed with and to be able to say: Let's figure it out. When I attended Dianne Feinstein's funeral not that long ago, Senator Barbara Boxer from California immediately found me at the funeral and said: How is my friend Jim? A very conservative Oklahoman had a longstanding friendship with a very liberal Californian, and they found ways to be able to work together. As Jack Reed mentioned earlier, a Democrat from Rhode Island and a Republican from Oklahoma worked very hard on national defense and found their common ground together. Though there are many things that Jim Inhofe will be recognized for, he will be remembered for his work in Africa. Jim Inhofe conducted 172 African country visits in the time he served in the Senate, more than any other Senator in the history of the Senate, he spent in Africa. He visited leaders over and over and over again in Africa, developing deep relationships and friendships. Every time I meet an African leader here in Washington, DC, and they hear that I am from Oklahoma, either the first or second thing that they will say to me is: Do you know my friend Jim Inhofe? And I will proudly say: Yes. And that African leader will say: He has been my friend for years--because Jim Inhofe intentionally went to Africa, developing relationships. The reason we have an AFRICOM military focus in that area is because of Jim Inhofe. There are relationships that he built across the years there that brought down violence in Africa--because when violence began to erupt in some countries, Jim would get on a plane and would fly and would get the two leaders who were in conflict--because he knew them both--together and say: We are going to pray together, and we are going to resolve this right now. And he did. And while most of the world doesn't know what Jim Inhofe did in Africa, he will be long remembered for his faith, his love for his family, and for what he did over and over again for the people of Oklahoma and for Africa. He was the longest serving Senator for the State of Oklahoma, and he will be long remembered and appreciated in my great State. He will be appreciated by many of the staff members who worked alongside of him, I can assure you of that. He had 34 staff members who worked for him for more than 10 years. Now, for anyone in this body, we know how rare that is because staff members tend to come and go. But for Jim, he wanted to be able to build camaraderie among his team. He wanted to be able to do serious, hard things, but he often did it among his staff in a nonserious way. He was notorious for the way, quite frankly, he tormented his staff, bugged them, hazed them, and challenged them to be able to step up and to be able to do hard things and figure out how to be able to get things done. Ryan Jackson--who was his future chief of staff--on his first day on the job as a young campaign staffer, Jim Inhofe picked him up in Oklahoma City. They drove out for a campaign event in Western Oklahoma for that event, and then Jim went back to Tulsa not through Oklahoma City and told Ryan: Figure out how to get home--which he did to multiple staff members over the years because he wanted to be able to push them and to say: Figure it out. That was always his challenge to his staff: Figure it out. By the way, that didn't scare Ryan off. He stayed with him 18 years, and that young campaign staff member later became his chief of staff. He had many rules, but the top rule that he had was, on his airplane, no one touch the door of his airplane but him. That was a fireable offense for any staff member that wanted to be able to touch the airplane door except for him. He also had a book that he would pass out to his staff all the time called ``Message to Garcia.'' Many of us know that book. That book is a story about a young soldier who was given a task by a general and was basically told he has to be able to figure things out. So he would hand that book to staff members and would say: Read this. You need to be able to know this. And a staff member on his team, when he turned a memo in to Jim Inhofe and it wasn't sufficient, would get just the message ``MTG'' written on it; in other words, ``Message to Garcia,'' go figure this out, and come back and tell me what needs to be done. He was also, as has been mentioned by multiple of my colleagues, an extremely hard worker. His staff often said they only worked half a day for Jim; that is, from 7:30 in the morning until 7:30 in the evening; that they would just work half-days. In Jim Inhofe's office, if you arrived at 8:30, he would greet you with a ``good afternoon'' statement to you to be able to welcome you in. He had, as I mentioned, many opportunities to be able to do ministry and challenges to people in Africa, and there was a deep love for him in multiple countries, but probably no more so than in Western Sahara, where he fought tenaciously for the independence of those individuals in Western Sahara with Morocco--in fact, so much so that Western Sahara officials gave him a camel, which, obviously, he couldn't accept nor bring home; and so he told them: Just hang onto it; I can't actually accept this camel and take it home. So when he visited Western Sahara, every time, they would bring the camel back to the airport to show him they are still hanging onto his camel; they still have it. I have to say, there are a million stories about his leadership and his interaction, but his staff tells great stories about their friendships and relationships. I have been to many a place where Jim would turn and look into the crowd and would identify what he called the ``has-beens'' that were in the crowd. Those were the staff that were his former staff that showed up at just about every event he would go to because of their deep love for him, even though they had left the staff. Wendi Price, when she first got her job as scheduler, was put on probation because Jim felt she was too young. She stayed on probation for 20 years and would still be working with him today if he hadn't retired. I have to tell you, there are a lot of caricatures about Jim Inhofe, and I have read some of the stories in the newspaper of things that some of the press writes about him. I can only read those stories and shake my head and say: Jim would have loved that--because he didn't allow liberal press to be able to define him. He worked across the aisle. He worked to get things done. And he spent time doing the things that needed to be done for the future of the country, including at a moment when President Trump was elected and many of Jim Inhofe's staff were actually put into the EPA. And it drove the Washington Post crazy that many of Jim Inhofe's staff with the EPW went to the EPA. And the Washington Post wrote a blistering story about it. Jim Inhofe bought a ton of the copies of that Washington Post and then just started handing it out to people so that they would all read and would know he is fully aware of what people say but he is going to work to get stuff done for the country. I will miss my friend. And I will continue to pray for Kay and for his family as they grieve. And I say to them, Psalm 34:18: The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and He saves those who are crushed in spirit. They grieve for their husband, their dad, their grandfather. Many of us grieve for our friend. But this Senate will miss Jim Inhofe. So will our Nation. With that, I yield the floor. Vote on Willoughby Nomination