Jeff Merkley

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I propose we fund TSA for the rest of the year. My colleague, as I understand it, has refused to agree to that; and, therefore, he has essentially objected. But he has asked for a modification. I am happy to, at this very moment, propose that we go to a request which funds FEMA and the Coast Guard and Cybersecurity and TSA-- essentially everything except ICE and CBP--and the other Agencies are fee funded. I am happy to go to that proposal if my colleague is willing to fund FEMA and Coast Guard and Cybersecurity. But I think he has been well aware that he keeps putting a poison pill in here. He keeps asking for Customs and Border Protection to be funded without modifying how they are behaving across the Nation, and he keeps asking for ICE to be funded without modifying their actions when they are operating like a secret police. That is why negotiations are underway with the White House--over that issue. So let's stop holding FEMA and Coast Guard and Cybersecurity and TSA hostage. And I am happy to put forward a proposal right now that would fund all four of those Agencies for the balance of this year.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I think my colleague can check and see that that is a fee-funded organization.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I think, if my colleague checks, he will find that USCIS is funded through fees. And let me explain what a fee is. A fee is when--

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, my colleague is engaged in a dialogue here that I would be happy to resume at another moment. He has rejected both my proposal to fund TSA--he has rejected my proposal to fund FEMA and Cybersecurity and TSA and the Coast Guard. At this very moment, there is a ceremony going on to honor our police officers who protected this Capitol on January 6, and that is to honor a plaque that has been posted by the Senate, in a bipartisan way, and agreed to have put up when it was being hidden by the Speaker of the House in some closet. And so I understand the points my colleague is making. I think the Senator understands the points I am making. I have countered his proposal with a proposal to fund TSA for the balance of the year. I countered his proposal to fund everything but ICE and CBP. And although the Senator has never said the words ``I object,'' I understand he is objecting through his dialogue. If I misunderstand that, please let the Senator say now that he agrees to my proposals and we will be done with this conversation. But I really think it would be good for both of us, in a bipartisan way, to go down and honor the officers that protected the Capitol.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, my understanding is the second proposal funds everything but ICE and CBP is my understanding of the Murray bill.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, is that a question?

Mr. MERKLEY. I would be happy to answer the question. Twice when I have answered questions, my colleague has reclaimed the floor in the middle of it. Does he intend to actually let me answer the question this time? He is not responding--

Mr. MERKLEY.--which means he is reserving the right to object when I get part way into the explanation to his question. But let's be clear. Because of the sequence of events in which I proposed two modifications and he rejected two modifications--he rejected and objected to paying through the end of September the TSA. And then I proposed that we fund everything except for CBP and for ICE because those are the two issues under negotiation with the President, and he has again objected. And he is proposing a 2-week extension and then people don't get paid again. So we are going to bring this to a close because essentially my colleague has asked me to participate in this debate. And it is very clever, and I have willingly done so; but I would think 26 weeks is a whole lot better than 2 weeks. And so since my colleague objected to paying TSA, objected to paying everyone in Homeland Security except for ICE and CBP--because that is under negotiation with the House and with the President--I have objected to his 2-week extension.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I appreciate the information from my colleague from Ohio and my colleague from Utah brought forward. But just minutes ago, another colleague from Alaska was on this floor laying out the enormous difficulties that this very proposal would create, disenfranchising a tremendous number of people across her State. Now, this is part of a larger bill that has the goal of stopping citizens from voting. It is targeted directly to making it very difficult for women to vote. It would proceed to make it very difficult for students to vote. It would make it very difficult for Tribal members to vote. My colleague from Ohio mentioned the phrase: The goal is to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. But, in fact, it is all about making it hard to vote. This broader bill is all about creating a national voter registration database that the administration has the ability to purge. They can then ding people, give them a little ping, if you will, and say: We stripped your name out. Try to go reregister. But, in fact, they can do that right before the election. And it has already been laid out. You can't even register to vote under this broader law with your birth certificate. No, you have to have a birth certificate and something else. They do say you can register to vote with just your passport, but that brings in a very expensive enterprise, and it takes 6 months to do that. But let's focus on this particular piece. This measure before us proceeds to destroy the secret ballot. In 2024, 48 million citizens voted by mail. That includes the State of Utah that my good friend was just speaking from and representing. It includes the State of Oregon. Now, those 48 million folks are told: You have to tell the world how you are voting because you have to put a copy of your birth certificate or your driver's license in with your ballot. So when they open your secret ballot, your name is inside there with the same document of how you voted. Well, that is pretty troubling, this effort to destroy the secrecy of the ballot for 48 million Americans. Now, my colleague from Ohio has a lot of studies and experience that I will acknowledge, and I am not familiar with all of the studies that he has conducted, but I am familiar with the study from the good State of Utah, an examination of 2 million voters. That examination, done by his State government, found that there was 1 person registered who should not have been registered out of those 2 million people, but that person had never voted. So the number for amount of fraud was zero out of 2 million. I am not sure if Ohio could even match that incredible level of integrity that Utah achieved to be able to have an audit that shows that zero people that weren't qualified to vote voted. Oregon had a study that covered 20 years of voting--20 years. That is a long period of time. They found cases that were, if you will, potentially a problem in less than one out of a million. I am not sure Ohio could match that either, because the system of voting by mail has a lot more integrity than the system of voting at the polls. You see, voting at the polls introduces so much opportunity for shenanigans. The people involved who don't want a particular community to vote--well, they move the precinct locations between elections, so people go to the wrong place. They put the precinct election places where there is no place to park--a deliberate effort to disenfranchise individuals. They proceed to put in machines that don't work in order to create long lines. Others have put out false information about the location and false information about the date. This is a whole series of proven strategies to corrupt elections on election day. And that is why President Trump wants to shut down vote- by-mail--because it is easy to manipulate and corrupt the election on election day using these systems that have been well studied and well practiced in many jurisdictions. Well, I value integrity, and Utah and Oregon have shown me that type of integrity. In fact, Utah's Lieutenant Governor--I might mention that he shares the party that is across the aisle from me--he noted that this bill would violate the State election law, which guarantees a secret ballot. An assault on the secret ballot, an effort to be able to manipulate election day in a corrupt manner, an effort to rig the November election--that is what we are talking about right here. This is absolutely wrong because we should be down here defending the high-integrity system of vote-by-mail, not trying to corrupt its secrecy or trying to stop it altogether. Thus, Madam President, I ask that the Senator modify his request and take my amendment at the desk to be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes. Reserving the right to object, I noticed my colleague didn't answer the fact that student IDs are not one of those five, that Tribal IDs are not one of those five, and that nobody in the country can say any system is better than Utah's, which has zero cases out of 2 million. And I would guess a study of Ohio would find that it is probably not as good as Oregon and probably not as good as Utah. The reason why is because our States take so seriously integrity in the voting process. That is why these surveys show that the issue of fraud is either zero or vanishingly small--so vanishingly rare, you have a better chance of being struck by lightning. This bill that they are presenting, this broader bill--it is not to address fraud; it is to make it very hard for targeted groups in America to vote and to make it impossible, in the broader bill, to vote by mail because they want you to have to vote in a system that can be manipulated. I did notice he didn't address a single one of the six ways I noted that voting at the polls is often manipulated. For that reason and because I believe in the integrity of our voting process and will not allow it to be degraded in this horrific fashion, I object.

Mr. MERKLEY. Back in 2022, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking minors as Jeffrey Epstein's coconspirator in their horrific crimes against women and girls. She was a key person in the grooming, the abuse, and the rape of a vast number of young girls. Bureau of Prison policy requires that sex offenders be housed in at least low security prisons. To explain, there are high security, medium security, low security, and then way down at the bottom--you know, think hotels--there is this minimum security. Prison policy requires that minimum security is unacceptable for people who have been sex offenders--people like Ghislaine Maxwell--but then, in July of 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche spent 2 days meeting with her in conversations that are completely opaque to everyone else in America, and suddenly, after these 2 days of conversation in which who knows what was promised, she was transferred to a minimum facility in Bryan, TX--otherwise known as Club Fed. Now, in this minimum security facility, there is an athletic field, there are extracurricular activities, there is vocational training and access to service dogs. I guess that is pretty important to me because I love dogs, and I would love, if ever I was incarcerated, to have access to a dog. Hopefully, I will never be incarcerated. On top of all this was a set of special treatments that she received after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had her transferred to ``Club Fed.'' What kinds of special treatment did she get? Well, her meals were customized and prepared by Federal prison camp staff and then personally delivered to her cell by Federal employees. When she wanted to arrange a private meeting with visitors, the warden personally arranged it for her. The warden, the head of the prison, personally was her personal assistant. And then she provided a special cordoned-off area for the visitors to arrive and an assortment of snacks and refreshments for her guests. Does that sound like prison to you? The special assistant, the head of the prison, arranges snacks and refreshments. It sounds more like a congressional reception. Her guests were permitted to bring computers, an unprecedented action approved by the warden specifically for Ms. Maxwell. When Ms. Maxwell wanted to review and edit documents quickly, she was allowed to use the warden, Tanisha Hall, as her personal secretary and administrative assistant. Ms. Maxwell's correspondents would email documents directly to the warden, who would then provide them and deliver them to Ms. Maxwell, who could then review them and edit them and provide them back to the warden, who would then scan them and provide them back to the original sender. For other inmates, even at this minimum security prison, simple mail can take weeks to arrive and is frequently lost. An inmate who trains puppies to become service dogs was instructed to provide one of these puppies to Ms. Maxwell so she could play with the puppy, even though neither inmates nor staff are ordinarily allowed to play with the dogs in training. And when she wanted to go to the prison exercise area, she was personally escorted there after hours--that is, after normal hours--by prison guards so she could work out all by herself and enjoy recreation time in the staff-only areas. Folks, what happened in those 2 days when Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche went down and had all these private conversations--and, by the way, the type of conversations that are never held in that fashion by a Deputy Attorney General? Only him, with her. And now the head of a prison is her personal assistant, and she gets to use the staff area for her personal recreation. And she gets her puppy time, and she gets her meals prepared and hand delivered. Folks, ``Club Fed,'' for a woman who facilitated the grooming, the abuse, and the rape of untold numbers of young women. This, my friends, is absolutely wrong. It is a slap in the face to every victim. The victims may not even be able to live in the way that she is living in this minimum security prison with the warden as her personal assistant. And so I think we can all agree on that. So I ask for the Sex Offender Security Classification Integrity Act-- that the Senate proceed to immediate consideration of the bill that is at the desk. And it would ensure that a sex offender who under prison policy cannot be put in a minimum security facility could not be put into that minimum security facility the way she has. Madam President, so I ask that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I will just note, once again, the failure to completely address the point that this bill is targeted at stopping students from voting, stopping Tribal members from voting, and that the broader bill from which it is derived is aimed at ending vote- by-mail altogether and taking away the secrecy of the ballot for 48 million people across America. The fact that none of those points were covered speaks for itself.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, my colleagues across the aisle are presenting what they call the SAVE Act and are saying it is about stopping noncitizens from voting, but that is not true. This bill is entirely about stopping citizens from voting, taking away the ballot box from millions and millions of Americans. So let's call this bill what it really is: the ``Stop Citizens From Voting ACT'' or ``Stop Act.'' It is about rigging the next election, and we know so because Donald Trump said it himself. He said: You pass this act, and ``It will guarantee the midterms'' and ``every election for a long time.'' Why did he have such confidence that it would guarantee the November election for his party? The answer is because this bill is about stopping groups from voting who tend to vote for Democrats. This is, again, about rigging the next election. There are repeated investigations by law enforcement, by news organizations, by universities that have found that you are more likely to get struck by lighting than for a noncitizen to vote. It is not just rare for a noncitizen to vote, it is super rare. In Oregon, a review of vote-by-mail by the State over 19--actually 20 years, 2000 through 2019, found less than 1 in a million cases of voter fraud. In Utah--my colleague who is presiding tonight is from Utah. Utah completed a citizenship review of its voter registration list of more than 2 million voters. They identified one noncitizen--one--and zero instances of noncitizen voting. One registered out of 2 million; zero voting. Even Speaker Johnson admitted about noncitizen voting that ``it's not been something . . . provable.'' Well, actually, what he really should have said: It is not provable because it is rarer than rare. That is why we know this bill is not about noncitizens voting; it is about stopping citizens from voting. Let's just take a look at the impact, starting with the impact on married women. The Republican plan: Stop married women from voting. A slightly softer version of that is, make it very difficult for them to vote, because this is what the bill does. It says that each State has to submit its voter registration database to the Trump administration. The Trump administration will go through and identify anyone it suspects might not be a citizen. And it has clarified that that means if your last name is different than the name on your birth certificate, you are suspect. Well, where we are--69 million married women in America changed their names when they got married. That means 69 million American women get pinged by the Trump administration saying: We are not sure you can vote, and you are going to have to start from scratch and reregister. Reregistering is very difficult. You have to have a passport or you have to have a combination of a birth certificate and another form of approved ID in combination--either a passport by itself or two forms of ID, one of which is your birth certificate, and that other piece has to be very specific, meeting the terms of the bill. In Oregon, our estimate is that 700,000 married women would have to reregister to vote, including my wife. My wife's name is Mary Sorteberg. That was the name on her birth certificate, except on her birth certificate, her middle name is different because when we got married, she changed her middle name to honor her grandmother Rose. She would have a hard time voting. Millions of American women would have a hard time voting. It is also about stopping Tribal citizens from voting. The ``Stop Act'' makes it impossible to use your Tribal ID to register to vote, and it makes it impossible to use your Tribal ID by itself to actually vote. You can't use it for registration, and you can't use it by itself to actually vote. Tribal citizens are less likely to have a passport in the first place, and we know that many do not have a birth certificate. All across America, there are people who have been born at home who do not have birth certificates--more common in some Tribal communities. Tribal communities are remote. Often, they have to travel a long way to get to a place where you can register to vote because you have to register to vote in person. So all of these things are designed to make it harder for Tribal members to vote, and that is wrong. This bill is also about the less affluent being able to vote. It makes it hard for them. Stop the less affluent from voting or at least make it much more difficult for them. You know that a passport takes 6 months to get and costs about $165. That is a big toll. A couple, if they were trying to get that passport so they could vote, might not get it in time for the election, and they would have to pay $330. Wow. That is a poll tax on the less affluent to be able to vote. If they can locate the county registrar and their specific county in America and if they were born in a hospital and if there was a birth certificate, they might also be able to acquire their birth certificate. That also costs money. We know that the less affluent are much less likely to have a passport in the first place, and therefore it is much more expensive for them to undertake the qualifications of this bill. In fact, only one in five Americans who earn less than $50,000 has a passport. And we know that poorer States are less likely to have passports, including many States in the South--Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana. So we are facing an attack on each of these groups, but those are not the only groups. Let's talk about students. The ``Stop Act'' is designed to make it hard for students to vote. First of all, it says you can't have a voter drive. Why? Because you can't register people at their dorm room with ordinary documents the way it has always been done everywhere. No. They have to go in person to an election center, and who knows where that election center is. And they are going to have to miss class or go to do it, and they are like, well, why can't I upload these documents online to be examined? Well, because they are trying to make it hard for you to vote. Why? Because students tend to vote on the blue side of the aisle. And if you need your birth certificate to register, now, if you are going to school in a different State from where you are registered to vote or where you would register to vote, you would have to travel home. Well, many students don't travel home during holidays because it is expensive, and students often don't have money. Oh, they are rich; they are fine. I am sure they will take a private jet to go get their voter registration. But ordinary students, they are struggling to pay that tuition. That is a big imposition to say you have to travel to another State in order to be able to register to vote. So here we are with yet another attack beyond these groups, and that is an attack on vote-by-mail. Under the amendment that has been filed by the Republicans this evening, it bans vote-by-mail. Now, let's think about how hard it is to hold an election in a State like Oregon or a State like Utah that votes by mail. Oregon hasn't had a vote at a polling booth in 28 years. So here we are. This law goes into effect immediately. Our primary election in Oregon is on May 20. How are you supposed to get all those polling places in place, all that whole new system, in just a few weeks' time? Extremely difficult. And then you submit your voter database to Team Trump. They purge it with a very big bias to make it hard for demographic groups that associate more with Democrats to vote. They ping them and say: You are no longer registered. You have to reregister. And maybe they get that ping. I don't know. The election in Oregon is on May 19. Maybe they get that notice on May 10. You have 9 days to get a passport. It is not going to happen. You have got 9 days to reach out to your county somewhere around the country, where you were born, and get a birth certificate. It is not going to happen. Millions of people are instantly disenfranchised in an impossible-to- set-up system in a few weeks' time. Those groups that I talked about--students, Tribal members, the less affluent, women--this bill is targeted at them with extraordinary precision because this bill is about rigging the November election. And that is exactly what Trump said: You give me this bill; my party will win November and every other election for a long time to come. So, colleagues, this is wrong. Every one of my fellow Senators on both sides of the aisle knows what this is. This is an attack on a partisan basis to rig the November election. Every person here who took an oath to the Constitution to defend the right to vote knows that this is about rigging the election by stopping people from voting. It is really a violation of your oath of office. So let's not let this happen--this egregious assault by an authoritarian President. We have already seen this authoritarian President take away powers from this body--the House and the Senate, Congress--that belong under the Constitution to Congress. Our Founders said the power of taxation, including tariffs, belongs to Congress. This President took it anyway and said: I don't care that I am violating the Constitution. Challenge me in court. It took a year for the courts to act. He proceeded to say: I am going to cancel programs that are both funded and authorized by Congress--which is a violation of law and the Constitution. It is the power of the purse, and he said: I don't care. Challenge me in court. He proceeded to launch a war without authorization, even though the Constitution requires this body to authorize a war. So here we are, three major powers--power of the purse, power of taxation, power of war--all stolen by the President and not confronted by the House or Senate leadership. And now we have House and Senate leadership conspiring with the President to strip the vote from millions of Americans, an extraordinarily unconstitutional act. But this time, it is not the President acting alone. He is acting with the support, the cooperation, the partnership of the majority party. There is probably nothing more sacred in a democratic republic than the ballot box. It is the beating heart of what it means to be a democratic republic. This bill takes a knife and stabs it through that beating heart. Let's not let this happen.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, our Nation was founded on extraordinary ideals. Our Declaration of Independence said: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Our Constitution starts out with that vision: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Lofty ideals--the equality of individuals, a nation formed to create tranquility and prosperity, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty. That is an incredible vision. And our Nation has been on an aspirational journey to realize those visions for 250 years that we are celebrating now, this summer, July 4, 250 years since that Declaration of Independence. But that journey-- that journey is a complicated one. Certainly, when the Declaration of Independence was written, it was not true that all men and women were created and treated equally. They were certainly not treated equally. We traveled through the journey of discrimination and prejudice of oppression, but we aspired to a better nation. We struggled with the challenges and the shortcomings. So our history, it is marked by extraordinary achievements, but it is also marred by significant failings. All of it is part of our journey, our collective journey, and no one has the right to erase it. Hands off our history. As the lead Democrat on the Interior spending committee, I know the critical role that our national parks play in telling those stories of our complicated history, and they tell that story to millions of visitors each year. And those visitors go: Wow. So that is what happened, and that is how we responded to it to try to get to a better place or that is what happened, and isn't that something worth celebrating? And let's keep returning to those types of achievements again. So we are often a bit stunned by knowing our own history, a bit inspired, but all of it creates a better foundation for us to go forward. Alan Spears of the National Parks Conservation Association said: As Americans, we deserve national parks that tell stories of our country's triumphs and heartbreaks alike. We can handle the truth. And, yes, we Americans can handle the truth. There are nations all over the world with authoritarian governments that whitewash their history. But we Americans are better than that. We can handle the truth. We can celebrate the achievements; we can regret the mistakes; and we can move forward to build a better nation. The Lewis and Clark Expedition began in Missouri and reached all the way to my State of Oregon. It was a triumph of exploration, but America's westward expansion also brought some tragedies: the destruction of Native Tribes, the slaughter of the American bison. And we owe it to our children and the generations to come to tell the entire story. We have faith in their ability to build a foundation of understanding that will support better decision making and a better celebration of our Nation, knowing it is based on the truth, not on some--well, some version, some fictional version of the past. But President Trump isn't strong enough to handle the history of our Nation. He wants that purged version, that version where all of the kind of missteps are set aside or anything that might trouble the soul about something that happened in the past. Let's not allow Americans to know that. Let's hide it from them. Let's hide it from our children. What a massive mistake to live in a world where citizens can't face the truth and where a President is terrified of the truth and wants to hide it. On March 27 of last year, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14253, directing the National Park Service to review and remove what it considers to be ``improper ideology.'' ``Improper'' means it doesn't celebrate our Nation and mentions some of the challenges that we faced along the way. Following that Executive order, exhibits and information about all kinds of things started getting deleted from our national parks: Tribal history, women's suffrage, climate science, civil rights, the history of slavery, the history of Jim Crow--removed. The Trump administration is literally whitewashing the history of the United States of America. Here are just a few examples of materials the Trump administration has purged from our national parks: At Independence National Historical Park in Pennsylvania, an exhibit about enslaved people who lived and worked in George Washington's home; at Acadia National Park in Maine, factual signs about rising park temperatures; at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, information about the massacre of Native Americans; at Muir Woods National Park in California, an exhibit about the role of women in protecting the park. And not just exhibits but entire sites are in danger, like the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Mississippi. A Black teenager, 14 years old, accused of looking at or whistling at a White woman--he was beaten. He was mutilated. He was shot in the head, and he was thrown into a river. Knowing that history makes one understand our Nation better. Pretending that there never was oppressive tactics inflicted on Black Americans steals the opportunity to understand our history and where we are today and what we aspire to. A park employee warned: ``Without this exhibit to share the difficult [Emmett] Till story . . . '' the monument ``would be almost completely devoid of interpretation. . . . The exhibit emphasizes the `progress of the American' people toward a better future.'' Isn't that part of the understanding of things that go wrong? It helps us understand how we have moved forward, and that is an important piece because it says that we can move forward, that we have overcome some serious challenges of the past and moved forward; and, therefore, we can do so again in the challenges that we are encountering. In addition to these exhibits, the Washington Post reports that parks across the country have flagged exhibits that, in an internal government database, include the Arches National Park, the Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail, the Manzanar National Historic Site, even Ford's Theater National Historic Site, and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial right here in Washington, DC. Trump wants to whitewash all of that history. Censorship is un-American, and it is damaging to all of us. So on February 24, my colleague from New Mexico--and thank you for launching this series of speeches--demanded answers from Interior Secretary Burgum asking: How many exhibits has the Department removed or otherwise altered? You know, in November, when the administration announced that the parks were removing Martin Luther King, Jr., Day and Juneteenth but adding President Trump's birthday as fee-free holidays, I wrote to Secretary Burgum: These alarming changes . . . are instead a thinly veiled attempt to use our nation's most iconic landscapes to further the self-promotion of President Trump. Neither our national parks nor our national holidays should be about a President trying to glorify himself as if he is a King. We certainly should allow no President to whitewash our history. In January, Senator Murkowski and I rejected the Trump administration's proposed fiscal year 2026 spending cuts and, instead, fully funded every single national park. Let's understand that erasing history that doesn't center on those in power is authoritarianism. Erasing science at the request of a President is authoritarianism. Erasing the truth at the request of a President because it upsets him is authoritarianism. And we will not allow this authoritarian President to erase the history of our great Nation. The Trump administration claims to love America, but you cannot truly love our wonderful Nation unless you understand our national journey, our triumphs, and our shortcomings. Loving America means embracing our collective effort to learn from our shortcomings, to embrace the collective aspiration to build a better future, to aspire to the noble values we hold dear, the values that were expressed in our very founding documents of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, the value that we were created equal and that a great nation is one that provides opportunity for every citizen to thrive and that every citizen can fully enjoy the rights guaranteed in our Constitution: freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and freedom of religion and freedom to participate in shaping our shared future through free and fair elections. Our national parks help explain that these freedoms don't exist for everyone in the world, but they exist here because we envisioned the possibility and we secured them. Our Founders secured them for themselves and the generations to come, and we continue to work toward that vision. The freedoms are precious. We have won the birth lottery to be here as citizens of the United States of America. And it is our responsibility, the responsibility of every generation, to protect and pass on these precious freedoms to the next generation. Let's start by saying: Hands off our national parks.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I so much appreciate the studied and thoughtful words of my colleague from Virginia, and I appreciate his leadership on the War Powers Resolution that we will be voting on, as he put it, within the next 48 hours. My question is: Is the United States still a republic? Do we still have a Constitution that means anything? That Constitution assigns taxation authority to Congress, but this body sat idle while President Trump stole the taxation authority through his tariffs for a year. No other President even considered the possibility of stealing the power of taxation. They always came--including for tariffs--they always came to Congress because that is what the Constitution says. The responsibility is here. The power of the purse is assigned to Congress in the Constitution. That is the defining difference between an authoritarian strongman government and a democratic republic. It is the representatives of every corner of the land coming together and designing the programs and deciding how much those programs should be funded, and it is the responsibility of the President to carry out those programs. But this President decided not to. He canceled program after program that was authorized and funded by Congress--by law--with the words: I am canceling this program because it doesn't align with the priorities of this administration. Under our Constitution, the President doesn't get to do that, but this body sat idle allowing the President to steal the power of the purse, and yet we took an oath to the Constitution and did nothing to defend it when the President violated it. And now the power of war. The Constitution assigns that power directly to Congress. Madison noted: [T]he Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. [The Constitution] has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question . . . in the legislature. And yet President Trump just launched a war. He didn't call it a strike or a limited strike. He launched a war. He called it a war. It is a war. It was a surprise attack. I was thinking about how we felt when Japan launched a surprise attack on Hawaii. Now, we have done that to Iran. Consider that parallel. And we did it while we were in the middle of negotiations. We did it while we were saying negotiations were going very well, and yet we launched a surprise, devastating attack that the President says he will pursue for week after week until the job is done. But what is the job? There was no imminent threat to the United States of America. Now, on the way walking over here from my office, a reporter said: Marco Rubio has clarified there was an imminent threat and that the imminent threat was that Israel was going to strike Iran and Iran would retaliate against bases in the region so we had to go to war. Are we now such an enfeebled Nation that Israel decides when we go to war? And we couldn't just say to Netanyahu: Hell no, you are not going to strike Iran. Are we, like, on the leash--we are the puppy dog on the leash held by Binyamin Netanyahu? Is that what has become of the great United States of America? And yet, if the information that I was told on the way here, that the argument now is the imminent threat that we had to respond to was that Netanyahu was going to strike Iran and thus the risk of retaliation and thus we needed to strike Iran first, well, what about the option of telling Binyamin: Hell no, you are not going to do that. We are in the middle of negotiations that are going quite well to end the threat that Iran poses in developing nuclear weapons. And by the way, they aren't developing nuclear weapons. And by the way, we had a diplomatic path that was pretty phenomenal. Shouldn't it always be diplomacy before war? And we had diplomacy. Diplomacy--setting out an agreement in which Iran dismantled its plutonium reactor and filled it with concrete, in which they exported all of their more highly enriched uranium outside of Iran, an agreement in which so much was removed and so many inspectors were present to make sure that there was no nuclear weapon program. But who tore up that treaty? The same man who just launched a war in violation of the Constitution of the United States. When Madison spoke and said ``the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war,'' he prefaced it by saying, ``The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war.'' What was he talking about? He was talking about the fact that a head of state may want to write their name in history by conquering land, a head of state may want to write their name in history by eliminating some foreign leader they don't like, and that, so often, those justifications are not in the interest of the country as a whole, and, therefore, there has to be a debate of the representatives of the country as a whole as to whether to engage in such a war. That was the wisdom, with studied care, the Founders vested in this Chamber. I powerfully disagreed with President George W. Bush's war on Iraq. It was justified by an argument that there were weapons of mass destruction. And the inspectors in Iraq said: We will go anywhere and look at anything that you--the United States--think that there is a depot of weapons of mass destruction. And the Bush administration said: Well, you are not looking in the right places. And the inspectors said: We will go anywhere you want. And the United States said: They are sneaking them out the back gate when you come in the front gate. And the inspectors said: We will cover the back gate. It seemed like the argument was terribly flimsy and yet possibly true, but at least George W. Bush came to Congress in the preceding year, in 2002, and said: I want an authorization for the use of military force because I am concerned about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And there was a significant debate here, and eventually it passed in October of 2002. And that debate carried the Senate to a favorable outcome of creating an AUMF by a 77-to-23 vote. I do not think Congress reached the right decision on that day, but at least, as the Founders intended, it was debated here in this Chamber so that one person who might want to write his name in history by conquering some other foreign leaders, changing the dynamic in the world, conquering new lands--at least such an authoritarian leader must have their ambitions tempered by this Chamber. But there was no tempering here. There has been no debate on an authorization for use of military force, as there should have been and as the President should have requested. And I hope, had we had such a debate, we would have come to a better, wiser conclusion than our predecessors did back in 2002. This is an extraordinarily dangerous moment for America because we have a President who has repeatedly shredded the Constitution. He shredded it on taxation powers allocated to Congress by the Constitution. He shredded it by canceling the power of the purse, assigned programs developed by Congress under the power of the purse and ending them without authorization. And now he has shredded it by going to war in Iran without an authorization for the use of military force. So we will use the one tool we have, the War Powers Resolution, to say: Mr. President, hell, no. And we should say ``hell, no'' at a minimum to say: Mr. President, if you want that power, come and put before us a proposal for the authorization for military force so that it will be properly debated in advance. Presidents who squander the blood of our children and the wealth of our Nation should never ever be allowed to do so without the studied consent of Congress to address an extraordinarily dangerous situation. Think about how many people died in Afghanistan and Iraq. Think about the 8,000 who died. How about the 50,000 who were so seriously injured. How about the $8 trillion--blood and purse. We must vote for the War Powers Resolution to say: Hell, no, Mr. President; end this war. Cloture Motion

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I compliment the minority leader for coming forth and saying what the Senate has agreed to do, which is to force the Epstein files to be released, which must be backed up by the force of law because we know that the administration failed to release half of the paperwork--some 3 million pages. We know that they blocked out whole pages in order to disguise, apparently, the protection of powerful men they don't want drawn into this discussion. Then they proceeded to not redact the names of victims, as the law required. Let us not forget what this entire Epstein scandal is about. It is about powerful, wealthy men grooming, abusing, and raping young women and men. That is what it is about. I cannot understand for the life of me why the Republican leadership just objected for us to seek enforcement of the law that we passed unanimously here. Why is the Republican leadership protecting powerful men? Why are they protecting the administration allowing 3 million pages to be held on to? Why are they allowing page, after page, after page to be blacked out to protect those powerful men? Why will they not respond to the fact that when these files were released, they did exactly the opposite of the law and failed to redact information about the victims, revictimizing so many? This is 1,000 percent unacceptable, and it is unacceptable to our values as a nation, our values which talk about equal justice under law. That is why, by unanimous consent, we said those files must be released. But it is meaningless if the administration simply chooses not to comply and then my Republican leadership colleagues proceed to block the ability to enforce what the Senate agreed to pursue: accountability, justice for the victims, transparency over this horrific scandal. Mr. President, I hope my Republican colleagues will reconsider their objection because what they have just done is wrong, morally wrong and wrong under the values of equal justice under law, wrong under the values of justice for those who have been victimized, wrong under the value of accountability for the perpetrators.

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 4287 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, article I, section 9 of our Constitution puts the power of the purse here in Congress. Our Founders considered this the difference between a democratic republic where the people's representatives design and choose the programs and fund them and an authoritarian state where a King decides what the programs are. The Supreme Court has reaffirmed that vision multiple times, including in 1975 when it said a President could not impound funds and in 1996 where it said Congress could not delegate the power of the purse because it is given to us. But an aberration has occurred--an aberration in which a President can slow up funds, ask for Congress to undo the law that funded a program at the end of a fiscal year, utilize a grace period, and then the program reaches the end of the year and poof, like Cinderella's carriage, it turns into a pumpkin, and the work we passed by law and authorized by law is undone with no vote of Congress.

Mr. MERKLEY. That is a violation of the Constitution. We have the responsibility to defend the power of the purse. Let's honor our oath to a democratic republic.

Mr. MERKLEY. We are not an authoritarian state as long as we hold onto the responsibilities assigned to us by the Constitution.

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and the waiver provisions of the applicable budget resolution, I move to waive applicable sections of the act and applicable budget points of order for the purposes of the pending measure because it is our responsibility to defend Congress and the Constitution and preserve a democratic republic. Vote on Motion

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

Mr. MERKLEY

Mr. MERKLEY. Will the Senator pause for a question?

Mr. MERKLEY. I asked my colleague from across the aisle if he would pause for a question not to address all the lists of particulars he threw out to all 47 of his colleagues on this side of the aisle but to simply make one point. That is, he said, that Democrats want to shut down the government. Did he forget that Republicans are in charge of this Chamber? Did he forget that all 47 of us here said that we are willing to vote today on the five spending bills? Did he miss that somehow? Republicans are in charge of the Oval Office. They are in charge of the House of Representatives, and Republicans are in charge of the Senate.

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes. When I complete my remarks, I will be happy to address the question. We are ready to vote now on those five bills. So, if there is a shutdown, it is clear where it is coming from. It is coming from the Republican leadership and the President of the United States of America. I have been profoundly disturbed by what I have seen in the way that the agents from Customs and Border Protection and ICE have acted across this country. I held 17 townhalls in very conservative, Republican counties, in super red counties, in blue counties, in purple counties. People came out from across my State to say they are shocked and that they are disturbed by what they are seeing happening across our entire Nation. They came to my townhalls to say one simple thing: No more must this conduct occur. So I have come to the floor now to say: No more. No more rogue patrols of Federal agents accosting people based on the color of their skin or their accents. No more intrusions and violations in the sensitive places like churches, mosques, synagogues, schools, daycare centers, hospitals, courthouses, and polling places. No more secret police tactics in which agents hide their personal identities, hide their Agency identity, cover their faces, use unmarked vans so people don't even know if they are being confronted by someone who has legitimate authority. No more Federal agents arresting people and, in fact, knocking down doors without warrants. May I remind my colleagues that there is a Constitution of the United States of America and that it says you cannot knock down doors without a warrant? It is shocking to see a memo from this President saying the executive branch can tell other parts of the executive branch they can violate the Fourth Amendment and knock down doors--violating a fundamental premise of the privacy and security and freedom of the people of the United States of America. No more blatant lies from Kristi Noem when citizen victims have been assaulted. She is quick to immediately say they are terrorists or they are would-be assassins when she has absolutely no evidence to support that, and immediately you know there will be nothing close to an independent or fair investigation. Immediately you know she is making it up because she hasn't collected the information. Then the videos come out, and they show that she lied to the American people not once, not twice, not three times, but time and time and time again. The American people have witnessed the truth with their own eyes thanks to the citizens who were responsibly videotaping the interactions. No more corrupt Federal investigations that blame ordinary citizens for ICE thuggery. No more blocking Members of Congress from touring immigration facilities or stonewalling congressional oversight. No more abducting children off the street, including a 5-year-old in a hat with little puppy ears on it. No more terrorizing our community. No more executions of our citizens like Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Colleagues, ICE has failed to follow the law. They have failed to honor the Constitution. They have destroyed their own legitimacy and integrity. Democrats have said: We are ready to vote on all five of the spending bills that do not involve ICE. Do it right now. Republican leadership says: Hell no. We want to shut down the government. Wow. Then they want to blame Democrats. Let's have an honest conversation about who is responsible if there is a government shutdown, and that lays across the aisle to the right. The DHS bill must be separated because these issues must be debated and addressed. If the goal of my Republican colleagues is to avoid a debate over the misconduct of Customs and Border Protection and ICE, then they are not fulfilling their responsibilities as representatives of the citizens of the United States of America, who value their freedom, who value their privacy, who never want to see the Federal Government knocking down their doors without a warrant. Kristi Noem has so failed in her honesty with America. She must go. As the Senate eventually considers the Department of Homeland Security bill, they must enact serious, meaningful reforms, including ending the roaming patrols with all the violations they have been involved in, unmasking the secret police, ensuring accountability and fair investigations. Let me remind you that in Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill--you remember the one. That was the bill that cut nutrition, that cut healthcare, making it far more expensive for mega millions of Americans in order to give $75 billion to ICE, kind of advanced funding it for, like, 5 years into the future. And they want additional money for ICE now with no debate on the floor of the Senate? They want to suppress a legitimate conversation about defending the privacy and rights of all Americans and about defending our Constitution? No, absolutely not. So, to every Senator, in recognizing they already have--ICE that is-- mega millions in their pocket or, actually, billions--$75 billion--not one more dollar for ICE thuggery.