Christopher Murphy

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Chippewa Falls.

Mr. MURPHY. Chippewa Falls.

Mr. MURPHY. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. MURPHY. We have a few more colleagues who are going to join us before the top of the hour, but I just wanted you to round this out and ask you the question this way. Often, when we talk about the withdrawal of USAID from the world, the withdrawal of the United States from international bodies like the WHO, the beneficiary is China. But I think you were hinting, as you talked about the African continent, that the threat is much broader than that because USAID is not just doing counter-China programming; it is also doing counter-extremism programming. In Lebanon, for instance, it is doing the primary work to push back against Hezbollah's political influence there. It is doing work to counter Russian influence around its periphery. And so isn't it the case, Senator Booker, that as USAID is pulled off the playing field, for reasons we still don't understand, that it is all of our adversaries--state adversaries and nonstate adversaries--who are, tragically, celebrating at this opening that we have given them to gain additional influence?

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. MURPHY. Senator Booker, it has been a wonder to be with you on the floor these last 24 hours. You indeed did something extraordinary and performed a sympathy filibuster with me 9 years ago where, as I stood at that desk for 15 hours, you stood on the Senate floor. You didn't need to but you did in solidarity. I have been with you for the last 24 hours, but I have sat for most of this. You have done the hard work. You are an extraordinary Senator. You are an extraordinary American. And I think I can say, on behalf of everyone in this Chamber and many people in the Gallery, you are an extraordinary friend. So I think all of us feel privileged to be here with you at this moment--this moment of peril, this moment of danger, this moment of opportunity for the Nation, but also this moment of history. On August 28, 1957, at about 8:45 p.m., Strom Thurmond took this floor, and he took the floor with the intent of trying to block the 1957 civil rights bill. This was the most significant--really, the only--civil rights bill that had been before the U.S. Senate in 90 years. Most famously, about 10 years before, when he was running for President as a Dixiecrat, he had said: There are not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches. He sat on this floor for just over 24 hours, and he made the case for why this Nation should continue to segregate Black and White. He started, in fact, by reading every single State's voting rights laws. Every single State's laws he read into the Record, apparently as proof that every State adequately protected all of its voters and that no additional laws were necessary. He had friends in his cause to preserve segregation that came down to the floor and asked him long questions to give him breathers. At the end of that 24 hours, at around 9 p.m. the following night, he could go no longer. His final words in his 24-hour, recordbreaking filibuster were: I expect to vote against the bill. But within hours, the bill passed. It became law. It established the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Justice. It was not nearly enough, but it broke 90 years of inaction. What you have done here today, Senator Booker, couldn't be more different than what occurred on this floor in 1957. Strom Thurmond was standing in the way of inevitable progress toward equal political and economic rights for Black Americans. It was inevitable only because the people of this Nation were standing up at that moment--the beginning of the civil rights movement--to make clear that progress was inevitable. I say that that moment is so different from this moment because today you are standing in the way not of progress but of retreat. You are standing in the way of retreat from the rule of law, retreat from our commitment to provide care to the most vulnerable, retreat from our common cause--at least what used to be a common cause--that we would have zero tolerance for corruption at the highest levels of government. You have recognized, rightly, that this multifaceted retreat from everything that makes this country so special and the speed of that retreat over the last 71 days--it is an exceptional moment. You have said that word over and over again. It is not normal, what this administration has been doing to rob from us the values that used to unite left and right in this Nation. So you made this bold decision to engage in an exceptional tactic, to declare 24 hours ago that you were going to stand on this floor for as long as you could to try to raise the specter of failure in our fight against this retreat for our colleagues and for the American public. The exceptional nature we have heard so eloquently from you over the course of the last 24 hours--the massive transfer of wealth in this reconciliation bill from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy; the industrial-scale harassment of journalists, of universities, of law firms; the destruction of the independence of the Department of Justice; the destruction of the American knowledge economy and the research economy; the use of the White House in violation of the Constitution to make those in power richer-- you have laid out the case. It is funny--I remember this from 9 years ago--when you are sitting in your spot--you haven't moved in 24 hours--you have no idea what is happening outside of this building. You don't actually know how many people in this country have engaged in the conversation that you started 24 hours ago. On one social media platform alone, there have been 150 million clicks on your live stream. This is a country of 300 million Americans. You have been able to pique a conversation here amongst our colleagues--who we need to stand with us eventually against this retreat--and across this country. And I think we are here, as we reach a pivotal hour, to just say thank you for having the courage, the audacity, to bring us on this journey. So my question is pretty simple. I think you will find when you finally leave this Chamber that you have done something extraordinary, that you didn't solve the problem, that we are still a long way from being able to successfully beat back this retreat, but that you have accomplished something extraordinary. So I guess that is just my question. When you set out with this idea, when this was starting to germinate in your mind, my question for you, Senator Booker, is, What did you hope to accomplish?

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. Listen, come on, this resolution is not about violence or domestic terrorism. It just isn't. This is a resolution that says one thing and one thing only: Elon Musk is in charge. He matters more than anybody else. Musk is subject to a different set of rules than everybody else. The Trump administration serves him, not us. The Republican Party serves him, not us. Elon Musk, right now, is effectively stealing from the American people. He is combing through our government, awarding himself contracts and canceling contracts for his competitors. He is shutting down Agencies that stand in the way of his business, its growth. He is giving himself access to secret information about government enforcement actions against his competitors. He is also, at the same time, currently the largest funder of Republican politics in the Nation. He spent a quarter of a billion dollars backing President Trump's campaign. He recently told the President that he would contribute another $100 million to the President's political arm. And guess what? At that same time, the President stood on the White House lawn to give a taxpayer-funded commercial for Elon Musk's cars. That is corruption at a scale that we have not seen before in this country: the integration of the Trump White House and the Republican Party and the business interests of the richest man in the world. It is wrong. Now, this resolution claims to say something about domestic terrorism, but the only terrorism, the only violence it mentions is violence carried out against--you guessed it--Elon Musk. On an annual basis, there are 11,000 reported incidents of domestic terrorism--11,000. Only a handful of them impact Tesla dealerships, but they are the only acts of violence mentioned in this resolution. And 52 percent of the reported attacks were based on racial or ethnic targeting by radicalized attackers, but they aren't mentioned in this resolution. Only Elon Musk is mentioned in this resolution because a different set of rules applies to him, because he is in charge and he deserves protection that no one else gets. He deserves a White House TV commercial for his cars. He deserves to give himself contracts and steal from his competitors. He deserves to have his own resolution. And people are asking why? Why does the richest man in the country get this special treatment? To most people, it feels pretty fishy. It definitely feels wrong. Now, I hate violence of any kind, whether it is perpetrated against right, left, or center. I have spent my life on this floor fighting violence, but I also hate inconsistency. So I am going to make my colleague a pretty reasonable offer here. At the same time that President Trump is saying that he is going to vigorously pursue people that attack Tesla dealerships, he is giving pardons to the people who beat the hell out of Capitol Police officers. So I don't think that we should consent to a resolution that says we care about violence but only when it is committed against the business interests of the richest man in the world. And I have a way to solve that problem. Senator Murray has a really simple resolution, a resolution that expresses our disapproval of the pardons that were issued for the very specific set of individuals who on January 6 brutally attacked Capitol Police officers. Now, I understand that many of my Republican colleagues think the people who trespassed here shouldn't have been prosecuted. Let's set aside that disagreement. This resolution just says that the specific set of people who viciously attacked police officers--the ones that hit the police officers over the head with metal poles--that those people shouldn't have been given a ``Get Out of Jail Free'' card. And so why don't we just be consistent? Why don't we say that violence matters when it is committed against Elon Musk's dealerships, and it matters when it is committed against the people that protect us? And so my offer is to just pass both resolutions, right now, right now. We could just agree by unanimous consent to your resolution, and we could agree as a body that you shouldn't pardon the people who brutally beat the people who show up every day to protect us. They matter too. Elon Musk isn't the only person that matters. Capitol Police officers matter too.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, there is.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am a big Boston Red Sox fan, and one of the most famous players in Red Sox recent history is Manny Ramirez. Manny Ramirez was a good baseball player, but he had a habit of doing some pretty ridiculous things on the field and off the field that were really detrimental to the team, some really bizarre on-field behavior-- cutting off throws from other outfielders before they got to the infield--and bizarre off-the-field behavior. It disrupted the team. It became so regular that a phrase was adopted amongst the Red Sox fans: ``That is just Manny being Manny.'' And over the years, it just was accepted that every year, Manny Ramirez was going to do a whole bunch of stuff that was really detrimental to the team, and over time, it just kind of became accepted that that was a fact of life, a way of life with Manny Ramirez. As time went on, people reacted with less hostility. It barely got noticed in some cases when he was engaged in these detrimental forms of conduct. I tell that story because it stands for kind of a universal concept. When bad behavior gets normalized, it no longer feels like bad behavior even if that behavior is hurting people. Today, the world is littered with corrupt governments, governments where the leaders and the really rich men who surround the leaders--the oligarchs--they steal from people. That is what they do. The leaders and the leaders' friends just keep a hand constantly in the government treasury, and they steal taxpayer dollars. They rig the rules of the economy in order to make themselves fabulously rich. They hurt the citizens of those countries. Vladimir Putin, for instance, has never had a job outside of government, but he is reportedly worth $200 billion. One of his many houses cost $1.4 billion to build. Supposedly, the landscaping costs on an annual basis for that house are $2 million alone. That $1.4 billion house was paid for by money he stole from the Russian treasury. In other words, he stole it from the Russian people. Putin and his friends have been doing it for so long and doing it so openly and brazenly--Putin, for instance, wears a watch that retails for half a million dollars even though his official salary is only $140,000. They have been doing this so openly and brazenly, they are so public in their corruption in Russia, that it is just accepted; it is just mainstream, the fact that Putin and his cronies steal from the Russian people. That is what is happening in America today. It is heartbreaking for me to say this, but in the first 6 months of the Trump Presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption. It is not fundamentally different than what happens in Russia. These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves. Their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption or, maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works; that government is just corrupt. So the fact that it is happening out in the open instead of happening secretly--well, it is really nothing new. But this is not how government works. The things that have happened over the last 6 weeks are unprecedented. The President and his billionaire friends are not supposed to steal from us. They are not supposed to use their power and their access to power, their access to government levers, to rig the rules to enrich themselves. That has always been wrong, it is still wrong, and we do not have to accept this. So in the next few minutes, I want to try out an exercise. I want to try to lay out for you as quickly as I can just some of the most significant instances of blatantly corrupt activity that have happened in just the first 6 weeks of Trump's Presidency. When you see it all together, there is no way to avoid a simple conclusion: This White House is on its way to being the most corrupt in the history of the country. And just because they are doing it out in the open for everybody to see doesn't mean it is not corrupt. My hope is that if you see it all in one place, the gravity of this moment may hit you. My hope is that my colleagues and the public choose not to normalize a President or his advisers using the Oval Office as a blunt mechanism to make themselves even wealthier. It is our decision--our decision--to have zero tolerance for corruption. It is also our decision to just decide to become a place like Russia where our leaders are allowed to routinely steal from us. So this is a heartbreakingly long list. This is just 20 or so examples of corrupt behavior in the first 6 weeks of the Trump Presidency. Here it goes. We are going to start on January 17. On January 17, Trump launches the meme coin. This is maybe the most corrupt of all of the acts because--what is the meme coin?--the meme coin is essentially a mechanism by which Russian oligarchs or corporate CEOs can literally send money privately directly to Donald Trump. Nobody knows who buys the meme coin, but Trump makes money when people buy it. So it is just an open sewer valve that allows for anybody who is trying to influence the Trump administration to be able to secretly funnel money to Donald Trump. He reserves 80 percent of the coin. He waits to release that coin until the price jumps back up again, which essentially means he is waiting for people who want favors from him to buy a bunch of the coins to inflate the value so that he releases more and makes more money. It is a disgusting kind of corruption because this is essentially Trump just posting his Venmo for anybody secretly to wire him as much money as they want. We have never seen something like this before, where anybody who has anything to gain from the Trump administration, through a manipulation of the value of Trump's meme coin, can funnel money directly to the President, whisper in his ear: That was me. That was me that purchased all that coin that jumped up the value that allowed you to release new coin. Hey, take care of me on the back end. On January 20, when he is sworn in, he institutes his new energy agenda. Now, open reporting suggested that during the campaign, he met with the oil and gas industry, and they cut a deal in which the oil and gas industry would give him a billion dollars of campaign contributions in order to receive favorable treatment when Trump was sworn in. Guess what happens on January 20. Trump unveils his energy strategy. What does it do? It preferences oil and gas, and it punishes oil and gas's competitors. It, for instance, freezes all permits on wind projects, both for the land and the sea. It undercuts permitting processes, not for oil and gas, but for oil and gas's competitors. Oil and gas got exactly what they asked for. They gave a campaign contribution, and they got the favorable treatment. Five days later, Trump fires 17 inspectors general. What do inspectors general do? They look for corruption inside of these Agencies. What do you do if you are trying to engage in corruption, if you are trying to steal from the American people, you fire the inspectors general. Two days later, on January 27, Trump fires Gwynne Wilcox from the NLRB. This is the National Labor Relations Board. When she is fired, the National Labor Relations Board cannot function any longer. Why does this matter? Because the person that has been put in charge of reviewing the hirings and firings of these Agencies is Elon Musk who, by the way, has lots of cases before the NLRB--so do the people that are standing behind Trump during the inauguration. Almost all of them have active cases before the NLRB. The billionaires supporting Donald Trump now don't have to worry about the NLRB because, on January 27, the NLRB is rendered powerless. Three days later, on January 30, Trump awards more than $800,000 worth of stock to several of the board members of the Trump Media & Technology Group. This is the publicly traded company behind his social media platforms. So now, his Cabinet members, people like Kash Patel and Linda McMahon, are owning equity in Trump's media platform--equity that can be cashed out, sold to people who want to buy them out of their interest at any time. Those people who might want to buy them out-- Cabinet members--could be individuals with issues before the Department of Education, before the FBI--yet another avenue in which people who have influence, who want to gain influence inside the Trump administration have a conduit to be able to move cash from their pocketbooks, from their treasury, from their bank accounts into the bank accounts of Trump Cabinet members. Shortly thereafter, we start to see the weaponization of the DOJ. On February 23, a civil complaint from DOJ that had been pending against SpaceX, Elon Musk's signature company, is dropped. Eight days later, the DOJ drops a case against a Republican Congressman. On February 19, 2 or 3 weeks later, the DOJ opens up something called Operation Whirlwind, which seeks to target anyone who dares to try to obstruct or criticize the work of Elon Musk and DOGE. Over the course of the first few weeks, the DOJ has turned into an entity that drops cases against those who are loyal to Donald Trump and pursues aggressively investigations against those who are trying to criticize Donald Trump. On February 1, Trump fires the Director of the CFPB and announces plans to shut down--to shutter--the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Again, very much like the NLRB, this is an Agency that was, at the moment that it was rendered powerless, investigating Elon Musk and many of the biggest financial backers of Donald Trump. So, once again, those that have access to Donald Trump, the billionaires that are close to him, now don't have to worry about labor violations being investigated by the NLRB. Now, they don't have to worry about consumer actions being taken against them by the CFPB. On February 4, there is the first of two extraordinary meetings in the White House in which Donald Trump convenes his business partners-- his business partners--the Saudi golf league and the PGA, to try to negotiate a solution to the dispute between those two golf leagues. Why? Because Trump has a business interest in that dispute being resolved. The Saudi golf league plays tournaments at Trump's courses in the United States. And so, if the White House, using its official power, can try to negotiate a settlement between those two groups, Trump stands to make money. On February 6, something absolutely stunning happens. Pam Bondi, the AG, issues a memorandum in which she proposes to dull the criminal enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. If you are representing a foreign government before the United States, you have to register so that we know if you are acting on behalf of American interests or you are acting on behalf of foreign interests. In the prior Trump administration, Trump officials got in big trouble for secretly working for and getting paid by foreign governments without registering. Well, what has Trump announced? That they are going to limit the applicability of the enforcement of that statute, making it much easier for Trump's friends, for his MAGA crowd, for the people who show up to Mar-a-Lago to get paid quietly by foreign governments in order to influence Donald Trump. On February 10, maybe aside from the meme coin, the most stunning act of corruption--the Eric Adams quid pro quo, in which Eric Adams, indicted for corruption, is let off the hook. His charges are dismissed in exchange for the mayor's pledge of political loyalty to Donald Trump. They literally went on TV and announced the deal--that they were getting rid of the charges against Eric Adams as long as the mayor pledges political loyalty to the President. That was so corrupt that six or seven DOJ officials resigned because they refused to withdraw those charges. But the deal went through because the seventh or the eighth or the ninth official finally filed the withdrawal. And now, in America, it is 100 percent clear, if you want to get away with corruption, if you want to steal from your constituents and you are an elected official in this country, all you have to do is just sign up for political loyalty to Donald Trump, and he will instruct the Department of Justice to let you get away with it. On February 10, Donald Trump directs the DOJ to pause enforcement of U.S. laws that prohibit companies from paying bribes overseas. Come on--like come on. He instructs the DOJ to pause enforcement of U.S. laws that prohibit companies from paying bribes overseas. Here is an example. Goldman Sachs was engaged in outright bribery. They were paying bribes to Malaysian officials so that they could get a contract to manage the resources of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. American companies should not be overseas bribing foreign governments. That compromises America's reputation and America's national security. But now, you are going to pause enforcement of the laws that stop American companies from bribing foreign governments because corruption is now being normalized. This is what you do if you want to normalize corruption; it is that you make it legal for American companies to engage in corruption overseas. That makes it easier for Trump to get away with corruption here. Two days later, on February 12, the announcement comes out that the State Department is going to buy $400 million in armored Teslas. OK, so now it is getting even more blatant. It is getting even more brazen. The State Department is just going to buy a whole bunch of product from Elon Musk--product that they were not previously scheduled to buy. It is true that the Biden administration had a blueprint that it was going to buy some electric vehicles, but it was around $483,000 worth of vehicles. Trump revises that blueprint of spending so that now the Federal Government is going to spend $400 million on armored Teslas from Elon Musk. Let's see. That is February 12. That same day, Elon Musk's people infiltrate the Department of Labor, and reporting suggests that, during that infiltration, Elon Musk's personal representatives get access to enforcement information at OSHA, not only against Elon Musk's companies--and, by the way, SpaceX has an employee injury rate that is nine times higher than the industry average--but, also, workplace safety violations against Elon Musk's competitors. Here is the message: If you are close to Donald Trump personally, if you support him politically, you can get secret access to enforcement data against your companies and your companies' competitors. That is what happens on February 12. Three days later, there is some suspicious firings at the FDA--again, related to Elon Musk's personal financial interests. Elon Musk owns a medical device company called Neuralink. It is currently being reviewed by the FDA. And guess what. On February 15 and 16, all over a weekend, there are 20 people fired from the FDA's Office of Neurological and Physical Medicine Devices--fired by DOGE, run by Elon Musk. Clear message: You are going to get fired if you aren't on the right side of Elon Musk's application. Now, whether that was explicit or not, if the guy who is firing you has a pending application before your Department, aren't you going to think twice? Aren't you going to think twice about ruling against his interests? This is why this is unprecedented. It feels normal because it has been happening every day. But never before in American history have we allowed someone who has a pending application for approval of a medicine or a medical device to be able to personally decide who gets hired and who gets fired at the regulatory Agency making the decision over that medical device. But, now, this stuff is happening every day because, on February 15, as well, that same weekend, there is an announcement that the FDA cuts are going to be even deeper, perhaps as big as 50 percent. That means that hundreds of drugs and devices won't get approved at the FDA. And you know who benefits from that? The folks that are selling the snake oil products. And guess who is selling the snake oil products? The people who work for Donald Trump selling ``vita gummy scams.'' The Director of FBI is selling vaccine reversal pills. When the FDA gets gutted, it is the people who sell those unregulated products who stand to gain. On February 19, 4 days later, we find out that the IRS is going to be cut by 7,000 people, and the biggest chunk of the folks who are going to be laid off are the people who do the audits of the billionaires and the millionaires and the corporations. So, once again, Elon Musk and the people standing behind Donald Trump on inauguration day are going to get off because the IRS just had its enforcement powers--its audit powers--absolutely gutted. That same day, on February 19, we start to receive word that advertising on Elon Musk's platform is starting to grow again. And the reporting on February 19 indicates that American companies have come to the collective decision that they need to keep advertising on Elon Musk's platform because Elon Musk has so much regulatory power inside the Federal Government that they need to make sure that they are paying Musk through Twitter and through X, so that if they ultimately need something from the Federal Government, they can get it. This, again, is why we have never, ever in the history of this country allowed for the richest man in the world, somebody who controls major companies, to also have an official position inside the government, because, of course--of course--it opens up these clear avenues where people are going to do business with him privately to try to curry favor with him publicly. I am not done. It just keeps going. The next day, on February 20, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices' monthly meeting is canceled and not rescheduled. So we were very worried that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who makes money off of his attacks on vaccines, would continue those attacks when he took over HHS because, if faith in vaccines continues to plummet, it is very likely that RFK, Jr., will make money. Why? Because the not-for- profit that he will likely return to--the company that he will return to after he leaves--makes money as vaccine misinformation spreads, and he also continues to collect fees for referring cases to a company that handles claims of personal injury due to vaccines. And so when the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is canceled, it is a clear indication that, yes, this campaign of assault on vaccines is going to continue, which--not surprisingly--is likely to make RFK, Jr., even more money. On February 26, we see Trump's MAGA hats that are for sale on his website displayed in the Oval Office. And it is just a reminder that so many people inside Trump's universe continue to sell merchandise on the side in order to make money. Donald Trump has always done this, and we have just kind of accepted it, even though it is a kind of corruption in and of itself. But Kash Patel, the Director of the FBI, is still selling Kash-branded merchandise, even while he is going to run the FBI. Elon Musk and others are selling DOGE merchandise. So as they trumpet their brand inside the government, they are making money off their brand outside of the government. On February 26, maybe the third most significant brazen corruption happens. News breaks that Elon Musk is just going to have the FAA cancel a contract with Verizon that has been in the works for years and instead just substitute in Starlink for Verizon. Just extraordinary that this is happening in plain view of everybody. Elon Musk takes his private company, uses his access to government to just shove out of the way his competitors and instead insert himself and his company. Again, we have never seen this ever before in American history, and now it is happening on a daily basis. And now we get to this week. This week, Wired reports that guests are paying millions of dollars to dine with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and business leaders are being targeted with advertisements that sell access to a one-on-one meeting with the President of the United States for $5 million. Come on, like seriously, there are advertisements that say if you are a business CEO and you pay $5 million to Donald Trump, you can get a meeting with him. Like, this isn't OK. And yet because it happens every single day, every single day, they are asking for us to pretend that this is normal. This is just 6 weeks. It is just 6 weeks, and the last thing on the list is an offer to meet with the President for a million dollars or $5 million. If any previous President had sent out an advertisement suggesting that you could meet with them for a payment to them of a million to $5 million, in and of itself, we would deem that to be unacceptable. But Donald Trump and Elon Musk believe that because they have arranged this dizzying pace of corruption in which not a day goes by in which something doesn't happen inside our government in which Elon Musk or Donald Trump use their power in order to rig the rules to enrich themselves, that we are all going to feel that it is normal. This is how democracies die. Democracies die when the very powerful people steal from us so regularly, so openly, so unapologetically that we come to believe that it is normal. And listen, I understand that many Americans may think that all of this stuff just used to happen quietly, and the only difference is that Trump and Musk are just putting it all out in the open. And I am not saying that there haven't been instances of corruption. Democrats and Republicans in this body have been accused of and convicted of acts of corruption. It has been a fact of life in American politics for a long time, but never before has the corruption happened this openly or this frequently. And so I lay it all out for you this afternoon in the hopes that it is not too late for us to decide to stand up as a body and as a nation to say that this isn't OK. The Trump meme coin is not OK. It is not OK for people who have interests before the Federal Government to be able to anonymously funnel money to the President of the United States. It is not OK for Elon Musk to have access to the Department of Labor enforcement data against him or his competitors that nobody else gets access to. It is not OK to just cancel contracts that were going to Musk's competitors and substituting his own business just because he has the ability to do it as a friend of Donald Trump. The rule of law matters. Doing things by the rules matter. This level of corruption was not occurring behind the scenes prior. It is not just that the cover got pulled off of it all, and it is our decision as a body and as a country to decide not to normalize this scale of corruption. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, as I understand it, this bill--this resolution seeks to establish an American Girls in Sports Day. Obviously, that sounds like a really good idea until you read the resolution, and you realize that this resolution actually has virtually nothing to do with the history and the current reality of girls playing sports. Instead, it is just another attempt by Republicans to pretend that the biggest threat to this country is transgender kids or gay kids or drag shows. Republicans don't want to talk about rising costs, rising grocery prices, rising gas costs. They don't want to talk about the cratering reputation of America in the world. They don't want to talk about the fact the stock market is crashing because of the disastrous economic policies of this President. No. As usual, it is transgender kids and drag shows that are causing all the problems in America. How do I know that this bill isn't an honest attempt to celebrate girls in sports? Well, first, if you really cared about girls in sports, you would know that we actually already have a national day. It is February 7. It is called National Women and Girls in Sports Day. It was signed into law 40 years ago by President Reagan. The sponsors of this resolution were so eager to shame transgender kids that they didn't even check to see if there was already a day. Now, folks are going to say Democrats objected to an American Girls in Sports Day. That is like bringing a resolution before the floor to declare June 27 Christmas, and when Democrats object, Democrats are anti-Christmas. Second, if this bill were really about girls in sports, it would celebrate girls in sports. But this resolution isn't about that. The resolution, if you read it, is just about this one issue; transgender athletes. Frankly, that is an insult to the thousands of girls who do play sports. Ninety-nine percent of them are never going to compete against a transgender athlete. I am not saying this isn't an issue that is worth spending a little bit of time on, but let's be clear: A female high school athlete in this country is more likely to be killed by a falling object than to lose a competition to a biological male. If this resolution were really about celebrating girls in sports instead of just trying to bully and shame transgender kids, then maybe somewhere in the resolution it might talk about Patsy Mink, who successfully championed the passage of title IX. Maybe it would mention iconic women athletes who broke barriers like Billie Jean King or Althea Gibson or Kathrine Switzer or Pat Summitt. Maybe they would talk about the iconic sports teams that put women in sports on the national stage, like Louisiana Tech or the U.S. Women's Soccer Team. Maybe it would actually tell the story of how over the last 50 years, we have gone from 300,000 girls in high school sports to 3.4 million today, but it doesn't do any of that. The text of this resolution isn't about the history of girls and women entering high school and college sports. It is not a celebration of those iconic teams and athletes. Instead, this resolution is just a tactic, another one, to scare and mislead the public and to bully vulnerable kids. That is the reason that I am on the floor, once again, to object. Therefore, I object.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, the idea that men and women citizens are bound by a common set of laws that are applied consistently and universally, regardless of one's income or political power or political affiliation, is a fairly modern invention because, for thousands of years, laws were simply what rulers used to impose and maintain power, to control people. Laws were applied or crimes were invented for the ruler's critics, and laws were ignored or waived away for those in favor with the regime. Now, early Americans had watched the British Kings apply laws selectively, both in Britain and in the Colonies, and our Founders sought to create a nation where all men were equal in the face of the law and that the law was applied uniformly and justly. That idea, equal justice--the law applies to everybody regardless of whom you support politically or whom you are aligned with politically-- was in many ways the Founders' most vital check against tyranny. That is the difference between a democracy made of equal citizens and an autocracy, where the law is simply whatever the ruler decides. It is a foundational principle of American constitutional democracy. It is not something we can take for granted. Now, I will admit that likely every President has made a decision or decisions that compromised that belief in the rule of law. Often, those decisions were related to one of the maximalist powers that the President possesses; that is, the power of the pardon. I, for instance, did not agree with President Biden's decision to issue pardons to his family members. I thought that was excessive. I thought that compromised the rule of law. But this President's contempt for the rule of law--Donald Trump's contempt for the rule of law--is unprecedented. What we are all watching right now is Donald Trump throw away the idea that laws apply to everyone equally, and it is astonishing to watch so many of my Republican colleagues fall in line. Some of them may be on board for the destruction of the rule of law because they want the Trump family to rule forever, but many of them know that this is wrong, what is happening, and their silence is heartbreaking. Donald Trump issued a statement over the weekend: He who saves [the] Country does not violate any Law. That is a quote attributed to one of the most notorious dictators of the last half-millennium, Napoleon Bonaparte. It is a stunning claim that Trump--not the law or Congress--decides what is legal and illegal. If he had said that in 2017, maybe we could just write it off as Trump being Trump, as just bluster, trolling, but this time, he has actually implemented a methodical campaign to seize control of the law and apply it differently depending on whether you support him or oppose him. Take for example what happened on Friday night. Trump ordered the Department of Justice to cut a deal with the indicted mayor of New York City, Eric Adams. The deal was simple: If Adams pledged loyalty to Trump and agreed specifically to cooperate with Trump's immigration raids in the city, Trump would look the other way regarding Adam's corruption. The charges would be dropped, and Adams could keep stealing money as long as he was politically loyal to Trump. They didn't hide this deal. Adams and a high-ranking Trump official literally went on TV to announce that they had formed an alliance based upon the release of charges in exchange for political loyalty. But when Trump told the highest ranking Justice Department employees in New York City to execute the corrupt deal, they wouldn't. The top official resigned rather than take part in the corruption and so did the next in the chain of command. By the time Trump found someone who would implement the deal, seven DOJ lawyers and four of Adams' deputy mayors had resigned because what was happening in plain view was a fundamental challenge, a fundamental corruption to the rule of law--a rule of law that up until today, Republicans and Democrats had both revered. Meanwhile, other parts of Trump's team are engaging on the other side of the ledger, targeting and harassing--using the law--the President's critics, because that is what happens in a nation without the rule of law. Law enforcement lets loyalists like Adams off the hook and is overzealous in targeting critics. Let me give you just one example of what is happening right now as we speak. Last month, Trump's new FCC Chairman opened an investigation into a single radio station that had the audacity to simply file a news report about an ICE raid that was happening locally. Multiple other sources filed similar reports with similar footage, but only one investigation was opened, and--you guessed it--it was against the radio station that was owned by a high-profile critic of Donald Trump, George Soros. So the game is clear. Like, we can see it. They are not even hiding it. There is not a rule of law anymore; there is one set of law for people or entities who are loyal to Donald Trump, and there is one set of law for people who dare criticize him. That is not democracy. If we don't find a way--Republicans and Democrats--to come together to defend the rule of law, if we don't say that what is happening today--deals being cut with corrupt politicians in exchange for their pledges of loyalty to Donald Trump--if we can't speak with one voice about that kind of corruption, well, then our democracy is cooked.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am down here on the floor this afternoon with my colleague Senator Kaine from Virginia and the ranking member of the Finance Committee, Senator Wyden, to talk about the spending and tax bill that is coming before the Congress, driven by Republicans and the Trump administration. Whether it is one bill or two bills, it doesn't really matter. It is the centerpiece of Donald Trump's economic agenda. It is really important to talk about the impacts that this spending and tax package will have on the American public. Well, there will be some new spending for defense and some new spending on immigration policy. The heart of this spending and tax package will be familiar to many Americans because they remember it from 2017, during the first Trump administration. The heart of this Republican economic proposal is a massive tax cut for the very, very wealthy and for corporations and, this time, not borrowed to be paid back later by middle-class taxpayers. This time, it is paid for by immediate cuts to some of the programs that regular ordinary Americans, many frail seniors, depend on, like the Medicaid Program. Just for a little bit of context, it does appear to a lot of Americans that this whole thing feels a bit like a scam. This is a government that is being handed over to the billionaire class in order to operationalize government to make money for the very, very wealthy and for the rest of us to pay the price. The cost of gas is going up, the cost of groceries continues to go up. Meanwhile, Donald Trump and his billionaire crowd are doing better than ever. Just a couple examples: Since Elon Musk, the richest man in the universe, has taken control of the government with Donald Trump, the value of his business has gone up by 30 percent. Tesla stock has gone up by 30 percent. Of course, it has. Of course, it has, because Elon Musk is now able to get inside the government to arrange things to benefit his companies. For instance, the NLRB is gone. They fired the Democrat on the board. He is unable to muster a quorum. It is not coincidental that the NLRB had several open investigations of Tesla. Our foreign policy has been monetized to support people like Elon Musk. It just broke yesterday that Vietnam is really worried about Trump's tariff policy, and so the way they are going to try to get some help from the Trump administration is to give some help to Elon Musk's businesses; that they are going to get Elon Musk a Starlink contract. And they believe that by doing that, they will be able to get help from the Trump administration on tariffs. So Elon Musk and the billionaires are able to operationalize and monetize our foreign policy. Of course, Elon Musk has access to the data, especially the data inside Treasury that is going to help him gain an advantage on his competitors, whether he is trying to set up a new tax payment system or he is trying to set up a new universal payment capacity on Twitter. So it is not shocking that the value of Musk's business has gone way up because he now controls the Federal Government in a way that could benefit his business. But Trump is doing very well, too. He made $100 million off of a meme coin--a meme coin where we have no idea as Americans who is buying it. It is very likely foreign actors trying to influence the administration who could secretly buy the meme coin and then whisper to Donald Trump that ``we got your back when you needed it.'' Also, $40 million from Amazon for a new documentary of the First Lady. Legal settlements from ABC News, Meta, and X--all, shockingly, settled with cash payments to the Trump family after the election. And the monetization of foreign policy for Donald Trump, just like the monetization of foreign policy for Elon Musk. News this week that the PGA and the Saudis were meeting with the President to try to settle their disputes. It is not coincidental to the fact that Donald Trump is in business with one of those golf leagues. So it just appears to many Americans like this administration puts the billionaires, the corporations, those that are loyal and friendly to Donald Trump first and all the rest of us second. The apex of this effort to turn our government and government policy over to the billionaires is this tax cut. Again, this tax and spending package has a lot of elements to it, but the centerpiece is a tax cut that is 852 times bigger for the top 1 percent of earners in this country than for low-income families. That is a number that is a little hard to get your head wrapped around, so I just wanted to put it on this chart. That is what 852 times looks like. The rates go down for folks who make more than $600,000 a year, but they don't move for folks who make under $600,000 a year. I mean, they are not trying to hide what is going on here. Rates are coming down if you make a whole ton of money. Rates are staying the same if you are middle income or lower income. Another way to tell this story is that if you are in the top 1 percent, your average tax cut is about $70,000. That is a lot of money. That is a lot of money. But if you are making $30,000 a year--and there are a whole bunch of people in this country that are making $30,000 a year, especially when Republicans refuse to support the minimum wage going above $7.25 an hour. If you make $30,000 a year, you are going to get about $130. $70,000 if you are doing really, really well; $130 for everybody else. That doesn't make sense. Why do people making $600,000 a year need $70,000 while only 100 bucks goes to everybody else? The corporations are in the mix here too. They came to Congress in 2017 and said: We need a lower tax rate. And then Trump and his Republican allies gave them a tax rate even lower than they asked. And they made this claim that all this extra money going to the corporations was going to be passed down to workers. They had a specific claim that it was going to result in $4,000 more in income to every American, because that is how trickle-down economics works in the brains of Republicans. You give a whole bunch of money to corporations, and they are going to be generous, and they are going to give that money to workers in extra income. Well, we now have 8 years of experience since that first tax cut that they are looking to reauthorize. We know what happened. The study shows that it wasn't $4,000 of extra income; it wasn't $3,000; it wasn't $2,000; it wasn't $1,000; it wasn't $500; it wasn't $400; it wasn't even $200. It was zero. The tax cut resulted in an increase in salary to those people who worked for those corporations that got the big tax cut. The salary increase was zero. It is a scam. Trickle-down economics is a scam. When you put this much money into the hands of the wealthy, it does not trickle down to everybody else. When you give corporations those enormous tax cuts, it does not trickle down to everybody else. It stays in the pockets of the wealthy. The corporations use it in order to do stock buybacks, in order to inflate CEOs' salaries. It just separates the rich from the poor. It is a scam. It is a scam. The last thing I will say before turning it over to Senator Kaine is that this version of the giant billionaire and corporate tax cut is so much worse than the first version. It is still a tax cut for the wealthy that is 852 times bigger than for folks at the bottom of the income scale, but whereas in 2017, it was all borrowed--and that is bad because that money has to be recouped somehow. That means that everybody eventually is either going to pay higher interest rates or have their taxes raised or their services cut to service all that debt--trillions of dollars' worth of debt. This time, Republicans are contemplating not borrowing the money but instead just taking it from poor people and middle-class people--just take it from them to give it to the billionaires and the corporations. The cut that they are contemplating in the House of Representatives is a cut to Medicaid. Now, they are also thinking about cuts to Medicare, your parents' primary health insurance. They are contemplating cuts to the Affordable Care Act. That is the program that insures 20 million working Americans, but they are really zeroed in on Medicaid. They are contemplating such devastating cuts to Medicaid that it would eviscerate the program. And maybe you can say: Well, I mean, it is Medicaid for poor people, and that is not me. Well, I think we have an obligation to try to make sure that everybody in this country--even poor children--have access to healthcare, but Medicaid also pays for your parents' or your neighbors' nursing home costs. If you cut the amount of money that they are talking about out of the Medicaid Program, you are literally talking about nursing homes shutting down and seniors being out on the street. That is not hyperbole. That is what happens if you make these massive cuts to Medicaid. So what they are talking about this year is not just running up a credit card bill in order to fund the tax cuts for the wealthy, they are literally talking about putting seniors out on the street in order to fund the tax cut for the wealthy. The whole thing feels like a scam: the favors being given to billionaires that are inside the government; the tax cut that benefits the very, very wealthy at the expense of everybody else; the cutting of services that help regular people in order to finance the tax cut. And whether it ends up being one bill or two bills, the centerpiece is still the centerpiece: the transfer of resources and wealth from regular people, from the middle class, from poor people to the very, very wealthy, the millionaire and billionaire class, the corporations. So we are going to tell this story here on the Senate floor, all over the country, while this bill moves its way through the process, either as one bill or two bills, because regardless of the process, the story is still the same: a scam to take money from regular people to make the lives of the rich and powerful even more lavish. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am joining my colleagues on the floor today to raise the alarm about the impact on the people that we serve-- in particular, the most vulnerable people we serve: the frail, elderly, children--with the nomination and soon-confirmation of Robert Kennedy, Jr., to be the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. I don't think it is hyperbole to say that there are very few people in this country that are less qualified to run this Agency than Robert Kennedy, Jr. I say that because there are few people in the country who have been so enthusiastic, so public, and so impactful in their ability to take some of the wildest conspiracy theories that are out there on the internet about our health system or about our kids or about our families, internalize them, and then disseminate them in a way that does great damage. There is obviously a reputation that comes with being a Kennedy. There is an ability to convince and lead people because when a Kennedy speaks--when a Kennedy speaks--there is an assumption that that comes with authority and grounding in fact. So when Robert Kennedy, Jr., even as a private citizen, has adopted and amplified some of the wildest conspiracy theories out there--most notably, his belief that there is not a single safe vaccine in the United States of America--it has consequences because people listen to the Kennedy family. But those consequences pale in comparison to the consequences that will be visited upon this country if a conspiracy theorist, someone who throws science out the window--not just a science skeptic; someone who is outright hostile to science--takes over the preeminent public health Agency in this country. But the danger is even deeper because what is happening throughout our government today is--let's not pull punches--a billionaire takeover. Elon Musk is running the U.S. Government today for all any of us can tell, and Elon Musk is running the government in order to enrich himself. Today, there is news that he is about to get a major contract for armored Teslas from the White House and news that he is going to personally meet with Prime Minister Modi. His agenda will not be the interests of the people of the United States of America. Elon Musk, as a representative of the White House, is going to sit down with Prime Minister Modi and talk about Tesla's business and Elon Musk's business in China. I mean, you couldn't make this up. You couldn't make this up. He is doing press conferences in the White House, and then he is leveraging his access to power, his access to the President, his influence over American policy in order to make money for himself. The same thing is happening at the Department of Health and Human Services. As we speak, Elon Musk and his lieutenants have access to all of your personal data--your Medicare data, your Medicaid data. They are not in there to try to make the government more efficient; they are in there in order to make money. I don't think that is hard to believe given the fact that it is entirely clear that Elon Musk's involvement in our foreign policy is with a design to make money for himself. The same thing is happening and will happen in the Department of Health and Human Services. I want to talk to you for a few minutes tonight about a radical anti- patient, anti-science, and pro-billionaire agenda that will be realized if RFK, Jr., is successfully confirmed by this body. Let me walk you through the RFK policy checklist. The first thing that we are learning about is that he is going to oversee a gutting of NIH funding. This is a big deal because a massive cut in funding for NIH--well, that is life or death. NIH does the basic research that private pharmaceutical companies need in order to cure and treat diseases. If the NIH can't do research, well then our pharmaceutical companies can't build on that research to cure diseases. So what has happened already that RFK, Jr., has pledged to implement is one of the biggest cuts to NIH that we have witnessed in modern history. It is done under the disguise of efficiency because the cut is supposedly about reducing the administrative expenses in research. But anybody that has ever been in a lab will tell you that there is really a distinction with no difference between direct and indirect costs. You can't do the research without the administrative help and the indirect expenditures. For instance, these are the things that would be categorized as indirect expenses. That is what is being limited by the order that RFK, Jr., is going to implement at the Department of Health and Human Services. MRI machines that can measure whether a cancer treatment is working or not--that is an indirect expense, the equipment that determines whether the treatment that is being researched is working or not. Payment for specialized research assistance that analyzes the clinical data that comes out of research, like blood samples--so the human beings that analyze the data. That is an indirect expense, and that is all of a sudden going to be limited by this Executive order. Staff that monitor patients who are in clinical trials for adverse reactions--those people are apparently indirect expenses. You are going to have less people monitoring you for adverse reactions--maybe no people monitoring you for adverse events and reactions because those staff are deemed an indirect expense. Advanced microscopes that are used to examine genetic alterations within, for instance, a tumor tissue--critical to studying cancer development and progression. Those advanced microscopes are, according to the Trump administration, an indirect expense, and thus funding will be limited or eliminated. At the University of Connecticut, the estimate is that they would lose $165 million per year as a result of this new policy that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is going to enthusiastically embrace. The University of Connecticut tells me that it would mean that they would close labs, entire labs; that they would have fewer discoveries; that they would do fewer patient trials; and there would be major delays even on the projects that they would continue, meaning that some people will die unnecessarily, waiting for those cures and therapies to be developed. OK. Well, you could say that you shouldn't hold the incoming Secretary of Health and Human Services to account for a policy, but here is the problem: This isn't just a bad idea; it is illegal. It is illegal. Congress specified very specifically in statute how money would flow to research institutions. In fact, we were very prescriptive in limiting the ability of any President to be able to unilaterally reduce the amount of money that goes for things like indirect expenses. I am not going to vote for any nominee who is willingly going to implement an illegal order. What you are watching is an extraordinary seizure of power from the people by the executive branch. The reason spending power in article I is vested in the legislature is because, here in the legislature, in the Congress, we represent every political party, every political faction, every part of the country. So, when we come to a decision on how the taxpayers' money is spent, we have to, by definition, come to an agreement that spreads that money out amongst people from every part of the country--people represented by both Republicans and Democrats. That means that the money is spent fairly. If the President of the United States gets to have unilateral decision-making authority over where money gets spent, it becomes a fundamental, unconstitutional corruption because the President can then just decide to spend money only on his friends and to hurt his enemies. So I am not going to support any nominee, including RFK, Jr., who is taking jobs with the explicit promise that they are going to implement illegal, unconstitutional orders. And the Executive order to destroy NIH funding is just that. Listen, people rely on this research. People rely on this research. People will die if this research is delayed or if labs at the University of Connecticut or at the University of North Carolina or at the University of Wisconsin close. There is no consensus out there in America to destroy medical research. Nobody voted for Donald Trump to stop cancer research or juvenile diabetes research. So, when I say that there is an anti-patient--a radical anti-patient--agenda, I want to start with this plan to illegally gut NIH funding because that is anti- patient, and it is radical because the American public does not support it. I know my colleagues have spent a lot of time talking about RFK, Jr.'s efforts to undermine vaccines, but I just think it is worth it to, once again, read into the Record some of the things that he has said, because it was stunning to me. I am a member of the HELP Committee. I listened to the testimony of Mr. Kennedy, and he said: I am not anti-vaccine. Yet let's just remind our colleagues of what he has said. He called the COVID vaccine a ``crime against humanity.'' He said that taking the vaccine would ``increase [your] risk of [getting] COVID.'' He said the COVID vaccines ``may have contaminated the country's blood supply.'' He described the HPV vaccine as ``dangerous and defective. . . . With this level of risk, it would seem that no loving parents would [ever] allow their daughter to receive this vaccine.'' He said that the polio vaccine may have led to the increase in cancer. He wrote that the measles vaccine ``instead of protecting children, not only delays onset of disease to later age cohorts but has the potential to cause serious and permanent injury.'' He wrote that the tetanus vaccine ``makes children more susceptible to dying from other causes.'' He stated: I do believe . . . autism does come from vaccines. And, most famously, he stated: There's no vaccine that is safe and effective. Yet he has the gall to come before the HELP Committee and say that he is not anti-vaccine. That is like somebody who sets fire to a building every single day and claims that he is not an arsonist. There is danger--danger--in creating an impression that vaccines are unsafe, that vaccines cause autism. It has been debunked. There is such a thing as truth in this country. There is scientific consensus. I am not saying that we shouldn't question science, but there are questions that have been settled, and it has been settled that vaccines are not just safe but are essential for the preservation of the health of our children. Third, I want to talk about these attacks on the FDA. Mr. Kennedy said: If you work for the FDA and you are a part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: Preserve your records, and pack your bags. Now, listen. I don't think there is a single Senator here who would say that we shouldn't be having a conversation about FDA reform, about making sure the system works better. But there is a draft Executive order out there, apparently, that has been reported on that talks about halving the staff at the FDA, and you are literally about to confirm somebody who says that everybody at the FDA should pack their bags. That sounds like somebody who is going to enthusiastically shut down or, at the very least, neuter the FDA. Now, I talked about what this means at the outset. This is both anti- patient and pro-billionaire. It is anti-patient because--well, I didn't even check ``anti-patient.'' Well, it is absolutely anti-patient. It is anti-patient because, if you halve the staff at the FDA, you are just going to get fewer drugs and therapies approved as quickly. That is clear. So, ultimately, patients are going to be hurt. But it is pro-billionaire because, once you shrink the resources, it is up to the administration as to who gets the access to the regulatory system and who doesn't. So, if you are a billionaire who is friendly to Donald Trump or if you are a pharmaceutical company that is friendly, you might get that access. But here is the other thing that happens when it is harder for science to dictate what drugs and therapies ultimately end up in the hands of consumers: It allows the snake oil salesmen--the people who are peddling the snake oil cures, the unproven cures--it allows them to gain a foothold because there are fewer actual proven drugs and therapies that are moving through the pipeline. So the unproven, unregulated drugs get a leg up. I am just going to show you one other chart here. It is kind of extraordinary how many people who are coming into the administration or who are associated with the administration are peddling these scamming products. A lot of them are these things called vita gummies. This vita gummy scam--the Surgeon General nominee is hawking these vita gummies. Mehmet Oz, who is going to be Director of CMS, is hawking what he calls miracle drugs--unregulated drugs and supplements. Alex Jones, who is a big Trump supporter, is hawking Super Male Vitality serum. The guy in line to be the next FBI Director is making money online by selling something called vaccine reversal pills. Let me say that again. Kash Patel, who is about to be voted on here to run the FBI, is making money online by selling something called vaccine reversal pills. So, when you curtail the ability of the FDA to be able to regulate and to be able to move legitimate drugs through the process, you are benefiting the people who are hawking the unregulated, often charlatan drugs, and I don't know that it is coincidental that a lot of those people are either close to Donald Trump or are getting jobs in the Trump administration. One, two, three, four. The fourth thing I want to talk about is the erasure of public health data. So this is a big deal. Researchers, clinicians, doctors--they rely on data that is posted on the CDC's and FDA's web pages. There is really important data on those web pages, but because of these Executive orders that have mandated that Agencies scrub anything, for instance, that refers to terms like ``sex'' or ``gender,'' the CDC and FDA have taken offline numerous web pages and datasets, including recommendations on how physicians should treat sexually transmitted infections. Why? Because I guess the word ``sex'' is in the word ``sexually'' transmitted infections. So the attack on science and the attack on patients includes the erasure of public health data that our clinicians rely on. RFK, Jr., has made no commitment that he would put that data back online. This crazy, insane assault on what they call DEI means that, if you have done research on anything with the word ``sex'' in it, like in sexually transmitted infections, apparently, your research is no good. That is wild. But RFK, Jr., is, apparently, going to implement the destruction of basic public health data that has anything to do with gender or sex. That is radical. That is anti-patient. Let me talk to you about one particular conspiracy theory because it just matters to me greatly, and this one is both anti-patient and pro- billionaire. So Robert Kennedy has lots of really wild, really dangerous ideas, but one of them is that treating kids for depression--treating kids for depression--is what has caused school shootings in this country. Kids always had access to guns. He said on a talk show. There's no time in American history or human history that kids were going to schools and shooting their classmates. It happened--you know, it [happened] coterminous with the introduction of these drugs, with Prozac and . . . other drugs. So what he is saying is that it is not the number of guns that are out there, and it is not the assault weapons. It is the fact that we are trying to humanely treat children for mental illness. He also says: We have always had an abundance of guns [in the United States]. In the last 20 years, there has been no per capita increase in the number of guns we have. That is totally inaccurate. That is totally inaccurate. So, as somebody who has spent their career working to protect kids from gun violence and who believes that gun violence is a public health issue, it is heartbreaking and unacceptable to me that we are about to nominate a candidate to lead the preeminent public health Agency, not just in the United States but in the world, who believes that guns are not the primary cause of school shootings but that antidepressants are. There is zero evidence of that fact--zero evidence of that fact. That should be offensive to every parent in this country who may not know exactly how we solve the problem of school shootings in this country but who certainly knows that the problem is not that we are treating kids for mental illness. I want to talk about two last important elements on RFK, Jr.'s policy checklist. The first--and I have referred to this throughout my remarks--is this idea that you are going to have to take a loyalty pledge to the President and his political agenda in order to receive funding. This is that DEI Executive order that says that they are going to end radical and wasteful government DEI programs. They say, if your research program has anything to do with environmental justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, sex, or gender, that they are going to cease funding your program. Now, once again, that is illegal. The President cannot--cannot--apply additional conditions to grant programs authorized by Congress beyond those that are explicitly authorized by Congress. Sometimes, the President has some wiggle room, some ability to make decisions that apply extra conditions, but Congress has not given the President the ability to issue an order as wide and as broad and as vague as this. Nobody out there in the medical research field has any idea what this means. They have no idea whether they are running a DEI research program or not. So what it allows for is another fundamental corruption for the Department of Health and Human Services to just decide, inside a closed, walled-off room, what is DEI and what is not. I just speculate that there is probably going to be a whole bunch more DEI research programs in Oregon and Connecticut than there would be in Mississippi or Texas. It is just another way to move money away from people who may not line up with your political ideology or your political agenda as a President and hand it to your loyalists and to the people who are with you. Then, finally, I will just come back to one of the places that I started. Elon Musk and his billionaire crowd--they are inside the Department of Health and Human Services right now. Right now, an unaccountable billionaire who didn't get elected to anything has access to your most intimate personal information--your Medicare records. Whether you have seen a doctor, whether you have had a surgery, whether you have gotten treatment for mental illness or addiction, Elon Musk, an unaccountable billionaire, the richest man in the world, has access to that data. Maybe we aren't certain what Elon Musk is going to do with all of that data--by the way, he apparently has access to your Treasury data, to your tax records, and to your Social Security information as well-- but RFK, Jr., is not going to stop that. He is not going to stop an unaccountable billionaire from having access to some of the most sensitive data that exists--your health records. Elon Musk is interested in having access to this data in part because it gives him a competitive edge over the folks that he is trying to win business against. So any way you cut it, Robert Kennedy's agenda for the Department of Health and Human Services is anti-patient, and it is pro-billionaire. Gutting NIH funding, undermining vaccines, attacking the FDA, erasing public health data, blaming shootings on antidepressants--by the way, that is pro-billionaire because guess who gets helped when guns aren't the problem; it is the wealthy, rich owners of the gun companies--using this vaguely termed notion of DEI to force people to pledge loyalty to Donald Trump in order to receive Federal funds and then giving Elon Musk and his friends access to very sensitive health records. I know a lot of my Republican friends know in their hearts that this is a very dangerous choice, and I am very sad for this body that on this nomination that so clearly implicates one of the most sacred responsibilities of the U.S. Congress--the protection of the health and welfare of our children, of our families--that we weren't able to find a way to tell President Trump: Pick somebody else. Pick somebody else. Find somebody who isn't so enthusiastically going to gut funding for research. Find somebody who doesn't show such affection for conspiracy theories. Find somebody who doesn't blame shootings on treating kids for mental illness. There are a lot of really conservative healthcare leaders out there, a lot of healthcare leaders who supported Donald Trump who won't do as much damage as RFK, Jr., will do. There is still time for my Republican colleagues to join us and send a message that loyalty to the people of this country and a commitment to protecting the healthcare of this country matters more than loyalty to President Trump. I yield the floor.

Mr. MURPHY

Mr. MURPHY. I think it is two or three times the amount of caffeine that a Red Bull has. There is a reason why the conversion is happening--not that I have an intimate understanding of which beverages have which amounts of caffeine. But I am motivated to get up at this point because I think you hit on something really, really important. There are a number of different lanes that the policy we are talking about and the agenda of Russ Vought occupy, but I thought you just talked about a really important one, which is the effort to take anything left in the common space and shift it off to the private sector to become a commodity. Much of what we are discussing today is an effort to raid services that help poor people and kids and middle-class families and just bank that money so that they can afford this giant tax cut that is going to go primarily to the very, very wealthy and the corporations. Because Mr. Vought and the other folks who wrote Project 2025 and the other people that are populating the administration still believe in this long-discredited theory of trickle-down economics--which is that if you just give a ton of money to the very, very richest, then eventually that money will trickle its way down to everybody else. That is not how economics work. It was a fraud from the beginning. It is just intellectual window dressing for the rich and the powerful to get more rich and powerful. But there is this other lane you were talking about, which is finding the last remaining elements of public services that we decide to do together not for profit and turn it into a source of profit. TSA is one of those targets. So Project 2025, written in part by Russ Vought, says TSA--this is the Transportation Security Administration; this is the Agency responsible for the security at our airports--should just be outsourced to the private sector; that some private equity firm should be running security at our airports. To a lot of Americans, that idea is frightening--the idea that we would just turn security at the airports over to an entity that is doing it only for profit. It seems like we should have a public mission at the heart of airport protection. But you were reading this letter from, it sounded like, a student who may not see what is coming for our school system. This is--I was going to talk about this later, but I will bring it up now. This is a pretty long article on a massive play being made by private equity into education and, in particular, into elementary education. It is kind of hard to think about this--but it may be coming--and that is a private equity firm or a hedge fund or an investment firm owning your child's elementary school. Right now, private equity investors are lining up to put money in funds because they believe they are going to have a chance to bid on your child's elementary school or to bid on your child's middle school. We are literally going to outsource the education of our kids to investment firms. If you read this article, it is absolutely chilling because the folks who cover the private equity industry are kind of, you know, used to being unapologetic about the fact that the only thing that matters is money, right? So, if you read this article, there is not a single word in here about quality or about making sure that, you know, there aren't 50 kids in a classroom. It is just about the private equity industry realizing that ``Oh, my gosh, there is a ton of money that we can pull out of our elementary schools and our middle schools. This is a wonderful source of profit for us.'' They are not mission-oriented; they are profit-oriented. So in addition to this agenda about stripping bare services in order to create the illusion that you are saving money so that you can pass along a tax cut to the very wealthy, this is also just a simple play to take every element of public services that haven't been commoditized and turn them into a commodity so that somebody can get rich. I don't know. I just--I get sick at the idea of my kid's middle school becoming a source of profit. I am a capitalist. I believe this country is great because we allow people to get fabulously rich off of entrepreneurship and great ideas--but man, I just think there should be, like, a couple of things that we don't do for profit. I just think there should be a few things that we do because it is just the right thing to do, whether it is police protection or fire protection or building a road or educating our kids or protecting our airports. Like, not everything has to be for profit. So I just wanted to pick up on this really important element of the 2025 plan and the Trump administration's agenda.

Mr. MURPHY. Just for the record, Senator Schatz, it is Diet Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew is disgusting. Diet Mountain Dew is acceptable.

Mr. MURPHY. Yes. And, to your point, when profit is the only motive, somebody loses out as in your example about, you know, a health clinic in a rural area. It is true also of education, right? I mean, it is pretty costly. It is not monetizable to have a school in a very rural area where teachers have to drive long distances; where there, you know, isn't a high volume of kids. So, if you live in a world in which the private sector gets to run our schools, then you are just going to have the haves and have-nots. You might have in-person education in the cities or in the suburbs, but those private equity firms will figure out pretty fast that it just doesn't make a lot of sense to run a bricks- and-mortar school in a rural area, and those kids will just be constantly telelearning. Those kids will just be staring at their screens all day long.

Mr. MURPHY. If there is any internet. So there are places, when it comes to government and government services, for which there is a proper role for the private sector. We have long had public-private partnerships. Inside the Department of Defense, I think we have very well married together a fundamental public mission, right? We don't privatize the Army--right?--with the private sector mission. The technology for the Army gets developed a little bit faster if the private sector has a role to play; but what we have realized is that there are limits to the degree to which the private sector wants to own unprofitable services. One of the grants that got turned off before the court injunction was issued was a grant to community health centers. Community health centers, which are not-for-profit healthcare centers that are primarily funded by the Federal Government, often exist in the places where there is not a profit motivation to run healthcare, either in rural areas or in very low-income areas of cities. They run on very, very thin profit--excuse me--on very thin margins at all. They don't make profit. They are on very thin margins. So when they miss one payment from the Federal Government, they are talking about immediately laying off workers.

Mr. MURPHY. Listen, if not for lawyers who brought lawsuits, if not for judges who issued injunctions, we would be in a different kind of crisis today. So we are talking about public outrage at an executive action--that was midwived, in part, by the nominee--that only existed for about a day before it was enjoined, before it was stayed. But if that Executive order had actually been fully implemented, there literally would be, today, rural health clinics that would be shut down. There would be hundreds of thousands of children who would not be in preschool tomorrow morning. There would be a national catastrophe. Whether or not these billionaires don't need many government services unless their houses catch on fire and even though they don't understand that people actually rely on government-funded services sometimes, this would have been an absolute nightmare and disaster. (Mr. SHEEHY assumed the Chair.) So we need to remember that while we feel like we are in a constitutional crisis right now, that crisis would be fundamentally different if not for the court's stepping in at this moment. Let me just raise another issue because I think you started by talking about the assumption that the young men in these cubicles made when they were writing Project 2025, when they were implementing these orders. I mean, there is this wild assumption about people who do public jobs. The contempt that this administration, these billionaires, and the authors of Project 2025 have for public employees is just extraordinary. Who are public employees? OK, you can envision somebody sitting in a cubicle at a desk in Washington, DC, pushing papers. That is a public employee. But so are teachers, so are police officers, and so are firefighters. Here is what Russ Vought said about the Federal workforce, he said: When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want to put them in trauma. He is talking about researchers at NIH who are trying to cure cancer. He is talking about people who are trying to just get special education funds to our schools to make sure that our kids get a fair shot at learning. He is talking about the people at NOAA who are just showing up to work every day, trying to make sure we are prepared for natural disasters. The contempt they have for people that get up every day and don't go to work for a bank or a hedge fund or private equity company but instead go to work because they just want to make the world better or their community better or their country better is absolutely extraordinary. It is as if these folks have never actually spent any time with a teacher or a firefighter or an NIH researcher.

Mr. MURPHY. ``We want to put them in trauma.'' What CEO says that about their workers?

Mr. MURPHY. Their board of directors would get rid of them.

Mr. MURPHY. Yes.

Mr. MURPHY. And they dressed that up for, like, 2 days, suggesting that they were reviewing USAID for efficiencies. For 1 day, they said they were folding it into the State Department because it would be more efficiently run inside the State Department. That was never the plan. I mean, I would just sort of have to call out the fabrication. The plan clearly from the start was to eliminate USAID, and they willfully pretended for a handful of days that the agenda was efficiency when the agenda was, in fact, the wholesale elimination of the Agency. The stated on-the-record reason for the elimination of the Agency is bananas--bananas. They are calling USAID a ``criminal organization.'' I mean, it is extraordinary. I was on a radio program the other day, and the interviewer wanted to talk to me about the constitutional crisis and whether legally the President can dismantle USAID. The answer is no, he cannot. But the interviewer was like: You know, they say it is a criminal organization, and let's just set that aside for a minute. I was like: No, no, wait a second. Don't let them get away with the idea that USAID has to be shuttered because it is a criminal organization. Apparently, the conclusion that they have come to--the allegation that they are making is that because many of the USAID employees in their free time may support Democratic candidates for office, that it is a criminal enterprise, because you are apparently not allowed to have any political views. There are certainly many other Agencies and Departments and public functions in which the majority of employees support Republicans. Public services are staffed by people who have a variety of views. But the rationale on its face for getting rid of the Agency is just absolutely--

Mr. MURPHY.--is absolutely absurd, that there are too many Democrats. So I guess we are going to shut down any Agencies that have 50 percent plus 1 Democratic affiliation, and we are going to hold on to Agencies in which the employees are 50 percent plus 1 Republican. It shouldn't matter. I don't care whether a Republican or a Democrat is teaching my kid. I don't care whether a Republican or Democrat is staffing the domestic violence shelter or putting out the fire at my neighbor's home. And most Americans don't care. But this war that has been waged--I mean, that is what ``woke'' means, right? ``Woke'' really just means that a service is being provided by somebody who has views or a lifestyle that I don't agree with. We have never approached public service like that. We have decided as a country that we are going to have these people called civil servants who get up every day to serve the country no matter what their background is, their ethnicity, their race, or their political views, or their religion; that their reason for getting up in the morning and going to work is to just serve everybody--to serve everybody. We are now retreating to this world in which, no, the only legitimate people to work for the Federal Government are people who share the political views of the President. The purge is happening in so many different ways.

Mr. MURPHY. And all the Federal employees who have been furloughed from the USAID employees to all the folks who are doing DEI to the FBI agents, they are still getting paid right now, right? So for the last week, all those USAID employees were sent home, they were doing nothing to protect America, and they were still getting paychecks.

Mr. MURPHY. All sorts of integration.