Adam Schiff

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I am proud to join my colleagues Senator Kaine and Senator Paul in introducing this War Powers Resolution that provides that we have not authorized the use of force against Venezuela. We meet at a precarious moment, when we might be on the precipice of war with that country. Today, in the Caribbean or on its way to the region, are the following military assets: Three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, the USS Gravely, Jason Dunham, and Sampson; the USS Lake Erie, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser; the USS Newport News, a nuclear attack submarine with torpedoes and Tomahawks; the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious assault ship equipped with a flight deck for F-35s, Ospreys, and attack helicopters; the MV Ocean Trader, a floating base designed for special operations; reaper drones, Harriet jets, and fifth generation fighters--incredibly lethal aircraft. But this is not all. The largest aircraft carrier ever built, the USS Gerald R. Ford is on its way right now from the Mediterranean. This means we will see upward of an additional two dozen Super Hornets and two dozen additional F-35s. This warship will be accompanied by three additional destroyers, bringing at least 10 of America's best naval warships within striking distance of Caracas. All told, there will be more than 400 missiles and vertical launch systems on Nicolas Maduro's doorstep--115 Tomahawks alone, with an additional 70 coming with the Ford. Are we supposed to believe that this is only about striking speed boats? If so, why would there be 10,000 American servicemembers in the vicinity? Why fly three B-52s from the United States to the region? Why have B-1 supersonic bombers flown off the coast of Venezuela in just the last few weeks for a so-called ``bomber attack demonstration''? That is not my definition of the mission. That is what the Pentagon called it. Bomber attack demonstrations for what--to blow up fishing vessels? We all need to see that this has quickly become so much bigger and so much more dangerous. And maybe that was the point, to focus the narrative on drug trafficking so we don't recoil from what may be right around the corner with Venezuela, and that is the use of force to achieve the goal of regime change. I understand the President, this weekend, said he was not ``inclined'' along those lines. But I urge my colleagues to look at the administration's actions and not merely its words, because if it walks like a military buildup and talks like a military buildup, it might just very well be a military buildup. Two weeks ago, the President said: We are certainly looking at land now, because we've got the sea very well under control. And now we have the buildup I just described. People may be putting a lot of stock into the President's most recent words saying he would not strike Venezuela when he was on ``60 Minutes,'' on Sunday. When asked if the leader of Venezuela's days were numbered, he also answered: Yes, ``I think so.'' That is what our Commander in Chief said, with the largest warship the U.S. has sailing close to Venezuela. If any other world leader moved this kind of firepower to another country's doorstep, we know what we would believe was taking place. The bottom line is this: Americans do not want another war. They don't want American servicemembers put into harm's way, either flying missions or with boots on the ground, for a war not authorized by Congress. Mothers and fathers of American sailors, marines, soldiers, and pilots do not want to lie awake at night wondering if their kids will be the ones who have to be deployed to yet another armed conflict, this time in South America. Last month, we came to this body with a resolution to end the unlawful strikes that this administration had been taking against boats in international waters. We came up a few votes short. But while we remain concerned about those ongoing strikes, this debate is about a different resolution. This resolution is tailor- written to stop one thing: a war with the nation of Venezuela. The Trump administration has not asked Congress to authorize such a war, but the administration appears to be laying the groundwork for one anyway. If they believe a war is necessary, let them come to Congress to make the case for one. Maduro is a murderous dictator. He is an illegitimate leader in having overturned the last election by the use of military force. He is a bad actor. But I do not believe the American people want to go to war to topple this regime in the hopes that something better might follow. If the administration feels differently, let them come to the Congress and make the case. Let them come before the American people and make the case. Let them seek an authorization to use force to get rid of Maduro. But let us not abdicate our responsibility. Let us vote to say no to war without our approval. We don't have to wait, nor should we wait for that war to begin before we vote. The War Powers Resolution very clearly and intentionally gives Congress the ability to prevent a President from going to war in the first place. The legislative history of the War Powers Act makes that abundantly clear. My colleagues might object: Well, these aren't yet hostilities. Yet people are already dying. They might object: Well, this is not yet imminent. Yet with the kind of military force being brought to the region, there is a danger to our sailors, our marines, and our soldiers, as Senator Kaine outlined, because if Venezuela believes we are on the precipice of war, they have the capability to take action against our ships. That clearly meets the definition of ``imminent.'' Our predecessors in Congress designed this law precisely to respond to the very type of military buildup that we see here and act in advance of the U.S. being dragged into another war without Congress's authorization. We in this body serve our constituents, who have told us for years-- now for decades--no more war, no more use of military force for regime change. We must reassert our constitutional power, our duty to have the sole decision when American lives could be on the line, when war is on the line. I share my colleague Senator Kaine's concerns in having read the opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel. Regardless of what people view of the merits of that opinion, what we are talking about here is a wholly other matter. What we are talking about here is potential war with Venezuela. What we are talking about here is a massive military and naval buildup in the region, where hostilities may be imminent under circumstances clearly contemplated by Congress when it passed the War Powers Resolution. I have debated Senator Kaine whether this is our most important power--that is, the power to declare war or to refuse to declare war-- or whether it is the power of the purse. It may indeed be a bit of both in the sense that one way of cutting off a military campaign is by cutting off support for that military campaign. We have already abdicated our power of the purse in this institution. Should we also abdicate our responsibility to declare war and allow the administration or any administration or any President to usurp that authority? It would be antithetical to what the Founders intended and what they wrote. As the Founders wrote, the power was given to the legislative branch to declare war because the power to make war was something that an Executive might grow too fond of. So the power was given to Congress, to this legislative body. Let's use that power. Let's reassert our authority. Let's say through this resolution that if the President or the administration wants to go to war for the purpose of regime change or any other purpose, that it must come to Congress and make the case to us and to the American people. I urge an ``aye'' vote on the resolution. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I rise today in support of Senator Warren's resolution condemning President Trump's decision to pardon Changpeng Zhao. Last week, President Trump once again put his wealthy allies, family members, and business partners ahead of the public trust when he granted a pardon to the founder of Binance. In 2023, Mr. Zhao was sentenced to prison after his company pleaded guilty to serious crimes, including failing to prevent money laundering and letting billions of dollars flow through Binance to sanctioned regimes and criminals, to facilitate child sex abuse, drug trafficking, and terrorism. At the time, the Treasury Department estimated that Binance had allowed over 1\1/2\ million currency trades that violated American sanctions, including hundreds of millions of dollars that shirked sanctions against Iran, against Syria, against Cuba, and against Russia. For these crimes, Binance paid one of the largest fines in U.S. history: $4.3 billion in fines. Yet, after serving only a fraction of his sentence, President Trump stepped in to grant Zhao a pardon and wiped his slate clean. Why? Why do such a thing? Because Mr. Zhao is part of a wide web of financial interests tied to the President and his allies--that is why-- including a crypto venture that poured billions into Binance. The President's pardon came after a stablecoin from World Liberty Financial--the Trump family crypto venture--was used to purchase a $2 billion stake in Binance, marking the most significant use to date of that Trump Binance stablecoin and once again increasing the value of the Trump family holdings. That is not the use of a pardon to correct an injustice; that is the use of a pardon to commit an injustice. That is corruption of the most blatant kind, and it is illustrative of the same message Donald Trump continues to send donors and friends: If you have got enough money or the right political connections, the law simply doesn't apply to you. The President isn't using the power of his office to ensure hungry families have access to food next month. He is not using the power of his office to make sure that Americans can afford to pay for their healthcare. He is using the power of his office to pardon a convicted billionaire and one who just happens to be doing business with the Trump family crypto platform, World Liberty Financial. We have seen this story before. And this is just the latest example of the President's use, abuse of the pardon power as a means of rewarding wealthy donors, family members, allies, and benefiting himself personally. We saw it when Trump pardoned corporate executives convicted of bribery and campaign finance crimes as a thank-you for donating millions to his campaign. We saw it in his first term when he pardoned operatives like Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Steve Bannon who helped him or his allies evade accountability. And we saw it when he issued sweeping ``unconditional'' pardons for 1,500 individuals involved in the January 6 attack on this Capitol, including many who were convicted of violent crimes, violent acts, against law enforcement. In fact, the President even stacked the offices tasked with reviewing pardon applications with his allies, installing Ed Martin as pardon attorney at the Justice Department after his failed nomination to be U.S. attorney for DC. In case after case after case, the message has been clear: Loyalty to Donald Trump is more important than the rule of law; it is more important than anything in the public interest. This is not what the Framers intended when they gave the President the authority to grant clemency. And they certainly never envisioned it as a ``get out of jail free'' card for political allies, campaign donors, and business partners. But this administration has turned the pardon power into a tool for corruption and self-dealing, which is why Senator Warren and I have introduced this resolution to shine a light on the rampant corruption of this administration and to hold those responsible accountable. I urge my colleagues to join us in sending a clear, bipartisan message that the U.S. Government should act in the public interest, not the financial interest of the President, and that the pardon power must not be for sale. With that, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 466; further, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I just want to join in raising a few points in response to our colleague. First, the pardon power is not absolute. If the pardon power were absolute, a President could order vast branches of the U.S. Government to break an infinite number of laws and then simply pardon all of the offenders. The Constitution is not interpreted as a matter of constitutional law so as to negate all other sections of the Constitution. If it were absolute, it would negate all other sections of the Constitution. It is not absolute. But we are not contesting whether the President has the power to grant this particular pardon. What we are contesting is the morality of doing it. What we are contesting is whether we should sit blindly while the pardon is used in such a corrupt fashion toward friends and allies and to enrich the President's family. The fact that he may have the power to do it doesn't make it right to do and the fact that he may have the power to do it doesn't prevent us from condemning it. And by the way, vis-a-vis President Biden, I did condemn the use of his pardon, but that certainly does not justify the use of the pardon here. It simply cannot be, should not be the case that a President gives a pardon to a convicted criminal who has helped launder money to avoid sanctions on our adversaries and that we simply shrug and say: He has the power to do it, and we shall not condemn it. We should condemn it. And the absence of condemnation, I think, will only be an encouragement for the President to continue abusing the pardon power. Mr. President, I urge support for the resolution, and I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for offering it. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize Stacey Mortensen, who is retiring after nearly 30 years of outstanding public service, including her noteworthy tenure as executive director of the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission. A Fortuna, CA, native raised in Concord, Stacey developed a passion for transportation early on in her professional career. After earning a degree in environmental planning and management from the University of California, Davis, she began her vocation by conducting traffic counts with the city of Vacaville, a humble beginning that led to Stacey's pioneering role in shaping rail service across California's Central Valley and beyond. Stacey was at the forefront of initial efforts to develop rail service between Silicon Valley and Stockton. She was working at the San Joaquin County Department of Public Works when the manager of the rail planning section departed suddenly. Stacey stepped into that role and was soon chosen as executive director of the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission. In 1998, under her stalworth leadership, the Altamont Corridor Express, ACE, was launched. ACE connected San Joaquin, Santa Clara, and Alameda Counties with a new model of regional rail service. Stacey oversaw ACE's design, procurement, funding, negotiations, and infrastructure development. Among her many accomplishments, Stacey was essential in the creation and expansion of the Valley Rail Program, which united more than 20 regional agencies to expand passenger rail service across Merced, Stanislaus, San Joaquin, and Sacramento Counties and led to the formation of the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority. In addition, Stacey helped formulate the Stockton Diamond Grade Separation Project, one of California's largest rail infrastructure projects that aims to eliminate one of the country's most congested rail crossings. She also assisted with the launch of the Rail Academy of Central California, a workforce development program that trains the next generation of rail professionals. Under Stacey's exemplary guidance, the rail maintenance facility, operated by the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission, became a national model for environmental standards and efficiency. Along with supporting ACE operations, the facility provides maintenance for many different trains, establishing a regional hub of rail knowledge and expertise that employs over 200 people. As Stacey leaves her position with the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission, her legacy as a transformative force in California's transportation arena will continue through the innovative, enduring impact of her work. I ask all Members to join me in thanking Stacey Mortensen for nearly three decades of leadership and excellence in California's regional transportation network.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I thank Senator Blumenthal for leading this special order opportunity on the Senate floor, on such a vital issue, at such an important time. I stand in this well in support of my colleague's request as the Senator representing both the State first impacted by the President's abuse of our military and one against which he has threatened further action and deployment. So here we are. The President deploys thousands of members of the California National Guard on the streets of Los Angeles, against the wishes of the mayor and Governor. Here we are. The President tells the Marines--those who have trained to land on beachheads and be the tip of the spear--that their next mission will be Los Angeles. These might sound like hypothetical scenarios or the futuristic plot of some film, but this is what actually happened. And the President did not stop there. From Los Angeles, he turned to our Nation's Capital. He put the National Guard on corner after corner and even called on them to, well, pick up trash--because this has never been about crime or quelling some kind of rebellion or insurrection for the President who refused to act when our Capitol was under actual insurrection on January 6. This has never been about public safety. It has been about control. It has been about crushing dissent. It has been about using our troops as political pawns to show anyone in any city in America that the President is not to be crossed. But such deployments of our servicemembers are dangerous. They are destructive, and they are illegal. We are grateful to our National Guard to lend a hand in times of natural disasters like fires and floods--and we have all too much experience of both in California. But it is plainly not permitted under the law to use the Armed Forces to assist the President in some ambiguous campaign of fear or domestic policing or indiscriminate immigration raids. That is not the purpose of the military. That is not the function of the military. That is not a lawful use of the military. Courts around the country have recognized the lawless nature of these deployments and the false representations made to justify them or try to, as one judge in Portland observed that the administration claims are ``untethered to facts.'' Because the legal justification for these deployments has been found legally wanting, the President and his administration, including the chief architect of this campaign of suppression, Stephen Miller, have dusted off and may be prepared to deploy a different archaic law to form an even more dangerous and expansive legal basis for these deployments, and that is the Insurrection Act. The Insurrection Act was originally enacted in 1792 during a very different era, when our Republic was in its infancy. It was intended to provide the President, in only the rarest and most extreme circumstances, with the ability to federalize our military to respond to and ``suppress'' a ``rebellion'' or ``insurrection'' against the authority of the United States. It was not enacted to empower the President to deploy the military to pick up trash or to engage in domestic policing or do things that local police or law enforcement could do on their own--no. It was enacted to suppress a rebellion against the government or an insurrection against the government. The law was, in fact, intended by Congress as an exception to another law-- the Posse Comitatus law--that otherwise forbids the military from undertaking domestic law enforcement. The Insurrection Act, therefore, must be understood as an authority that Congress enacted at the outset of our Republic for a President to use only in the narrowest and most exceptional and extreme of circumstances where all other means of protecting our country and enforcing our laws have been exhausted. That is clearly not the case here. The history and purpose of this law is clear and should not be abused by any President. It should only apply to cases of demonstrable insurrection or rebellion against the United States and where all other means of protecting Americans and enforcing our laws simply do not exist. Now, let's look at the plain facts of the matter. There is no rebellion or insurrection--not in Los Angeles, not in Portland, not in Chicago, not in San Francisco, not in Washington, DC, nowhere to be found. So what is really going on here? Well, I think the President admitted it very plainly when he spoke to generals and admirals last month at the Pentagon when he spoke of an ``invasion from within.'' And he spoke of his real goal, which was that ``we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.'' But our cities are not military training grounds, and there is no way to assert an insurrection like the Shay's Rebellion or the Whiskey Rebellion that had occurred shortly before the Insurrection Act was passed in the 1790s to justify today the unjustifiable. There is no disorder in this country that cannot be dispersed by State and local law enforcement. But despite the clear letter of the law not being met here, the President continues to flirt with invoking the Insurrection Act anyway because the President's goal here is not to prevent disorder but to create it; not to quell unrest but to provoke it; to enlist the Nation's military in a civil dispute against his perceived enemies, against community organizers, against American cities, against clergymen, against those who fight to uphold the checks and balances in our Constitution, against a free and fair press, against journalists, against our courts, against anyone who dares to raise their voice against him. It is no accident that this President and his administration have deliberately tried to paint all of his opposition--political opposition, everyday citizens out protesting on No Kings Day--he would paint them all--all who stand up for our Constitution and our rights as Americans--he would paint them all as some kind of terrorists or extremists. That is the language we hear from the White House, and that is the language we hear from authoritarians who use it to justify using the awesome power of the state, including its military, against its real or perceived domestic opponents. We should not take this President's threats idly. We should make clear, as Senator Blumenthal would do with his legislation, that the President's flirtations with this law are not within his powers; that the military is not his to deploy for pageantry, political theater, vengeance, or intimidation. In the President's words, he calls this law ``unquestioned power,'' and that is really what the President is after--unquestioned power. Does that sound like a President who believes in a system of checks and balances? Does that sound like a President who believes in democracy? Or does that sound like a President who wants to be a King and will use any law, archaic or otherwise, as a pretext? Because the use of this law could forever erase the line between an apolitical military and the political whims of the Oval Office. Now, Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to pit State against State and deploy the Guard from one State against another State, and this not only tears at the social cohesion of our Nation but also undermines our military, which has the broad trust of our people, and squanders that trust. When you consider the sacrifices that are made by men and women in uniform, to squander that sacrifice by deploying the military against our own citizens, to take them away from the focus of their job, the mission of their job, which is to protect our country from foreign enemies and adversaries, it is not only dangerous to our people but also disastrous to the military. I say to my colleagues here: Even if your city is not Chicago, like Senator Durbin's, or your State is not Connecticut, like Senator Blumenthal's, or your State is not California or Oregon and may not be on the tip of the President's tongue now, there is nothing that will protect you when he turns against your State next--not if you don't stand up now. This slippery slope only gets steeper. The voice of dissent must get louder. We must stand now, before the troops are quartered in every city, pulling your community's families out, hog-tying the children in your cities in front of their parents; before Black Hawk helicopters are landing on your roofs; before your citizens are being asked for their papers and paying fines just to go about their lives. Now is the time to speak louder. Now is the time to insist on adherence to the law. Now is the time to push back against even greater abuses of the law like we would see with invocation of the Insurrection Act. I thank my colleague for leading this debate. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Yes. Would the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the Senator for yielding and for your extraordinary speech and all that you have elucidated today and for your powerful advocacy on behalf of our democracy. I think there are any number of signs of when a democracy is in trouble, when a country is descending into a kind of dictatorship. Books have been written about this subject. No one account, I think, can comprise all of the elements of the deterioration of democracy, but there are certain telltale signs that I think we are seeing all too clearly. And my question goes to some of the things that we are witnessing that I think are hallmarks of the decline of a democracy and that ought to be sounding a three-alarm fire for the American people. Let me begin with a few of them. First is the misuse of the military at home and abroad. When a President begins to use a military for unpurposeful purposes, when a President deploys American forces in violation of the law to American cities, when a President assembles top leadership--flag officers, generals, admirals--and tells them that our cities are to be military training grounds, that there is an enemy within, it is as sure as anything a sign of a democracy in trouble, of a democracy in decline. When troops are repelling in Black Hawk helicopters, not in Somalia but in Chicago, it is the most visible sign of a democracy in trouble. This is, as we all know, in violation of the law which prohibits the use of our military for domestic law enforcement purposes. Likewise, the misuse of the military abroad, without the authorization of Congress, is another sign of the deterioration of our democracy. When a President arrogates to himself the power to blow up ships in the Caribbean or now in the Pacific without any authority, in violation of law and Constitution, it is another sign of the President arrogating the military power to himself--to the person of himself, not to the Constitution, not to his core responsibilities, but to himself. No. 2, among the dozen or so most virulent signs of the decline of our democracy, at the risk of an authoritarian regime taking hold of this country, are the attacks on our universities. We see this in Hungary and elsewhere. When rulers start to attack the independence, the academic freedom of our universities, it is a sure sign of a democracy in trouble. When a President tries to dictate by withholding Federal funds--the lifeblood of research universities--and withholds those funds unless an academic institution agrees to adopt his cultural agenda or fire certain faculty or allow it to have some kind of a monitor, some kind of a Big Brother overseeing what takes place in our universities, it is a sign of a democracy in decline. No. 3, when an administration, when a ruler goes after the right of representation by attacking lawyers, law firms, legal professionals and says: Thou shall not represent this cause which is deeply unpopular to me, you shall not take on this client who is antagonistic to me, you shall not hire this lawyer who is a personal enemy of mine--that is antithetical to the history of our democracy and all democracies. John Adams, prior to becoming President, took on one of the most unpopular cases in American history, representing British soldiers who had participated in the Boston Massacre. Why did he do that? Why take on such an unpopular cause? Because he understood the importance to a democracy of the right of representation. No. 4 of the signs that our democracy is in deep, deep trouble is the abuse of the Justice Department to go after the President's enemies and to protect his friends. It is in actions like, in the State of Virginia, the firing of a U.S. attorney who believes that a prosecution is not warranted, notwithstanding the personal injunction of the President that ``thou must prosecute these people.'' That prosecutor was fired and another was brought in to implement the President's will to go after his enemies. But it is also, likewise, a sign of the loss of democracy when the powers of the Justice Department can be used to protect the President's friends, when a Justice Department can be told: You shall not look further into the $50,000 in bribe money taken from a top White House official; close down that investigation. You shall look no further into the corruption of the mayor of New York; close down that investigation because that mayor is useful to the administration politically. That is as sure a sign as anything that we no longer have an independent Justice Department but one in the thrall of the White House. No. 5, suppression of free speech. Suppression of free speech, something not just in any amendment but in our First Amendment. When an administration uses its power to force ABC to pay him personally or to force CBS to pay him personally for the right to continue its broadcast license or for the opportunity of its parent to have a merger, these are overt efforts to censor the press. When it uses its regulatory power and threats to try to take off the air a comedian or two comedians, it is a sure sign of the loss of press freedom. And, equally, we see in other requests of regimes an effort to concentrate power, to concentrate the media itself in the hands of friendly oligarchs or to create a kind of state-run media, which we are deeply at risk of and see in the development of TikTok, and the course of power of the government to decide who the future owners of TikTok will be, to make sure they are of the same political persuasion as the President; or we see reflected in the oligarch control of Twitter or now X; or we see in organizations that are buying up stations like Sinclair and using its vast power for the purpose of censorship. Next, in a declining democracy, in a budding autocracy, we see the demonization of vulnerable communities. And what could be more visible in America today than the demonization of immigrant communities by this administration or the demonization of the other, the false portrait that people who come to this country are all murderers and rapists and drug smugglers? The demonization of some of the most vulnerable people in America are also in the LGBTQ community and the trans community. We see this time and time again in history in countries becoming dictatorships, that they build their power on the backs of people they dehumanize. You are seeing at home another powerful sign of a budding authoritarianism--a growing authoritarianism--and that is the use of propaganda, the use of taxpayer money for propaganda. You see banners with the President's glowering face now on public buildings in violation of law. You see Kristi Noem doing Hollywood-looking produced ads that are played at airports, falsely blaming Democrats for the shutdown--political propaganda paid for by you, the taxpayer; or highly-produced immigration videos featuring Kristi Noem thanking the President--more political propaganda. Another sign of the decline of our democracy, of the growth of our authoritarian regime, is the corrupt use of government power for self- enrichment. This we saw from the very first days of this administration: the meme coin dinners in which the premises of the White House are used but private donors are encouraged to buy the President's meme coin, a cut of which the President gets; using the power of the prestige of that office--sometimes even the venue of that office--to enrich himself; the receipt of aircraft, a $400 million aircraft from Qatar, a nation that has a keen interest in U.S. policy; the President acquiring a plane in plain violation of the emolument clause; soliciting private donors for ballrooms; real estate deals in the Gulf; the rampant conflicts of interest with crypto money coming in from the Gulf to the First Family; the use of government power and position for corruption and self-enrichment. Another powerful sign of a democracy in decline is the usurpation of Congress's power of the purse, the illegal withholding of funding, the impoundment of funding, the illegal rescission of funding, the illegal termination of grants, and, I would say beyond that, the mass firing of Federal employees--the lawless firing of Federal employees--the use of Congress's power to appropriate money, one of the most important powers--arguably, the most important power we have--now taken by the administration and without a fight in this body, certainly not a bipartisan fight. That is surely a sign that we are losing our democracy. The undermining of elections and voting is another key ingredient in dictators around the world. Cementing their position and power is the undermining of the foundational right to vote. We see it in its various forms now. We see it in this push to engage in gerrymandering around the country. But we see it in closing down polling stations in urban areas. We see it in efforts to suppress the vote of certain communities. We see it in the purging of voter rolls. We see it in affirmative efforts to discourage people from voting. We see it in the demonization of election workers, the interference with election boards. Finally, although the list is much longer, I would end with this: the attack on truth itself, the attack on facts, the attack on science, the purging of people from our scientific agencies, the rabid falsehood, the firehose of falsehood coming out of the White House and our Agencies, daily--provable, palpable falsehood, eroding the very idea of truth and fact. If you can persuade people that nothing is true, then what are we to use to decide who should govern? If there is no shared experience, then how do we decide what the policies should be? How do we avoid just falling back on political tribes or, worse, political violence, if there is no truth? if there is no fact? if there is no accountability? So I thank Senator Merkley for shedding light on the risk--the risk to our precious democracy and the risk to this incredible inheritance from our Founders. Part and parcel of saving our Republic and part and parcel of saving the country is to understand the dangers so that we can confront them. Future generations are going to ask what we did in this hour when our democracy was most vulnerable. Our parents and their parents went off to world wars to protect our democracy. Our task is far easier, on the one hand, but no less important on the other. So I ask you: Are you seeing these same signs I am seeing of the danger to our democracy, of the degradation of our democracy, and what do you feel we can do to save this inheritance? (Mr. SCHMITT assumed the Chair.)

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I want to take a look at the last 9 months in this country, at the first 9 months of this administration, and see just how far we have traveled down the road toward dictatorship in 9 months. So let me see if in less than 9 minutes I can summarize 9 months. First, let's look at the President's early attacks on our universities and the President withholding Federal funding from universities that are using a curriculum he doesn't like or employing professors he doesn't want or that are unwilling to make changes that sacrifice their academic freedom and that suit the ideological predilections of the administration. An attack on our institutions of higher learning is unprecedented in our history. Some of the first attacks on the freedom of the American people were attacks on our universities. They were, in quick succession, followed by attacks on law firms; that is, the President of the United States telling law firms that you must not represent these unpopular clients--unpopular to the President--because they took action against the President or they spoke out against the President or they belonged to the Justice Department when the Justice Department was investigating the President's corruption. So the President has tried to dictate to the legal community who it can defend and who it cannot. In our country, our Founders underscored the importance of the right of representation, of the right to a jury trial, of the right even for unpopular causes to have representation. Indeed, John Adams took on one of the most unpopular cases of his time and represented those clients because he wanted to establish the principle in American jurisprudence that everyone is entitled to counsel, but under this administration, that is not true. This administration has attacked law firms and said: You shall not represent these clients, and if you do, we will cut off your access to courthouses or we will cut off your access to Federal contracts or security clearances that you would need to represent your clients. Sadly, as in the case of universities, many law firms have crumbled. Having given years of lip service--decades of lip service--to the idea that everyone is entitled to vigorous representation, they have crumbled. But the administration wasn't content to try to silence universities or professors or to silence law firms. The censorship and the intimidation campaign continued in the President using the power of the regulatory body of the Federal Communications Commission to try to silence late-night comedians because they told jokes about the President. Effectively, with Paramount, which wanted to merge with Skydance, it was made abundantly clear that that merger--that multimillion-dollar merger--wouldn't go forward unless you paid off the President in his litigation against CBS. Unless you paid the President millions of dollars, personally, that merger was not going to go through. And what is more, that pesky, late-night comedian Stephen Colbert needs to go. So Stephen Colbert gets his show canceled. Jimmy Kimmel gets his show canceled. His show was, thankfully, brought back, but the administration is using regulatory power to censor late-night comedians. He is going after the press, the freedom of the press, telling the AP: If you don't use my Gulf of America lexicon instead of the Gulf of Mexico, you are not going to be able to cover certain things at the White House. You are not going to be able to accompany the President on certain trips. He is suing the Wall Street Journal because they are reporting about his contacts with Jeffrey Epstein. He is trying to silence the media, intimidate the media, chill the media, and it is working. You see the Washington Post change their editorial policy. You see the LA Times withhold its editorial of the Presidential election. The censorship is working. But it is not just the press. It is not just late-night comedy. It is not just universities. It is not just law firms. The President is telling corporate America: You can't hire this person. Microsoft, you can't hire this person. The threat is, if they do, they won't get government contracts. The President is saying to other companies: You want to export your product? You have got to give the U.S. Government a share. You have got to make the U.S. Government an equity partner in your company. And if under Bill Clinton the era of Big Government was over, the era of Big Government is back with Donald Trump--a Big Government that can make decisions about whom corporations can do business with and where and what they can export and whom they can hire. But it doesn't stop there, of course, because now the President is using the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. This week, it is James Comey. Next week, it will be someone else, and the week after that, who knows? It is a long and growing list of enemies with the President tweeting out whom he wants prosecuted, whom he wants investigated--commanding, dictating vindictive prosecutions almost every day--abusing the Department that I once served in for almost 6 years in a way we have never seen before in this country. He is threatening to take people's liberty away from them if they stand up to the President. Now we have this--what brings us to the floor tonight--and that is the unprecedented use of the military, the U.S. military, and our Guard against our own people. You have the President telling a roomful of generals and admirals that there is an enemy within, and that enemy is the American people or at least those American people who didn't vote for him. They are the enemy within, and he is going to go after them. He wants the military to use those American cities that didn't vote for him as their training grounds. No sooner is it said than we see helicopters over the skies in Chicago, and we see military troops rappelling from Black Hawks. We see the military being used against their own citizens. We see children shackled, crying for their parents in the middle of the night. We see signs of horror and chaos. We see a President so determined to use the military against our own people that, when a Governor says: No, you cannot use our National Guard in this lawless way, he commandeers the military anyway. California was the test case. We were the first. Los Angeles was the first. Over the objections of the mayor of Los Angeles and the objections of the Governor of California, the President of the United States commandeered California's National Guard to be used against our own people to increase the risk of violence and disorder so that the President might have a pretext to order in more military troops. Now, in California, like in most States, we revere our National Guard for what they do for us during good times and hard times; how they protect us from fire and flood. So to abuse the Guard in that way, to try to breach the trust the Guard has with our own citizens, is a calamity. It is gravely damaging the morale of the troops in the Guard even as it is damaging the trust of the people of the State in their Guard. Now we see this replicated in Portland--this militarization, this attack on American cities. We see this in court in Portland, wherein the judge, in hearing the government's case for the use and misuse of this military force, says that its presentation is untethered to fact-- untethered to fact; that there is no lawful basis, no factual basis, to use the military in this way. Now they are doing the same in Chicago, and they are threatening San Francisco. And if they can't get a State's own National Guard to be used against its own citizens, they are now inviting the Guard from other States, like Texas, to leave their State, with a willing Governor, to send them to another State. I was grateful to hear the Republican Governor of Oklahoma speak out against this terrible abuse of the National Guard, which not only undermines the military readiness of our forces to be abused in this way but is so deliberately divisive that we would have one State now turn against another State; that we would have Texas against Illinois and deploy Texas's military in that way--its Guard in that way--was previously unthinkable. It should be unthinkable today. Today, it is California. Today, it is Illinois. Today, it is Oregon. Where will it be tomorrow? Where does this end? I will tell you where it ends. It ends in more civil strife. It ends in more morale problems in the military. It ends in a lesser democracy. If we are here in 9 months, where will we be with 4 years of this? I will tell you this: We will not be a democracy. At the pace we are going, in 4 years, we will not be a democracy. But today, 9 months into this, it is not too late to put a stop to this. All that it would require is a handful of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to say: Enough. Enough already. Enough of the attacks on our universities and our press. Enough of the attacks on our cities. Enough of the weaponization of our Department of Justice. Enough of the lawlessness. We are going to be Senators once again. We are going to assert the power of Congress once again to put an end, to put a stop to this lawlessness. That is all it would take, is a few people of conscience to stand up to this President and say: Enough. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I rise today to bring before the Senate a resolution concerning one of our most serious constitutional responsibilities: whether the United States should engage in armed conflict against a particular adversary. The Constitution clearly and intentionally places the power to declare war in the hands of this body, the Congress, not with the President or the executive branch. Our Constitution's Framers, having just endured a war and having paid the toll that war always takes, wanted to ensure that our newly independent Nation would see the representatives of the people make the decision of whether and when to put American lives on the line. In 1798, James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson about the danger of leaving that power in the hands of an executive. He said: The Constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature. For the past month, Congress's power to authorize or refuse to authorize the use of power has been usurped by the Executive. This administration has carried out at least four military strikes against vessels that it asserts have ties to drug trafficking organizations. These strikes were not authorized by Congress. Congress has not been shown the evidence of who exactly was on board these ships, whether they were all headed to the United States or some other destination, or whether they posed an imminent danger of attack on the United States. Such strikes are not legal, and they are not made legal or constitutional by the claim--correctly or incorrectly, with or without evidence--that some or all of the occupants of these boats belong to a list of organizations kept secret by the administration. Being put on a list by the executive branch does not deprive Congress of its vital role in approving the use of force, but such a list kept hidden from the American people, if used as a justification, may drag our Nation into an unintended war. If it were as simple for a President--any President--to claim that war power for himself by placing an individual or a group of individuals on a list, let alone one held in secret, there would be no limiting principle to the executive's use of force--no limits whatsoever--and that is deeply inconsistent with the intent of our Framers' and the desire of the American people to be kept out of unnecessary military conflicts. Indeed, the President has confirmed that he does not see a limit. He saw targets at sea, and now he sees potential targets on land. Now, I know that the word ``unprecedented'' gets used so much these days that perhaps it has lost some of its value, but we need to put in context just how far from normal these strikes are. For perhaps the first time in our history, a President of the United States ordered the U.S. military to use lethal force against individuals who posed no imminent threat of attack and who could have been stopped thousands of miles from our shore had we interdicted and arrested those on board just as they routinely are by our Coast Guard. Instead, the U.S. military used lethal force on four separate occasions, killing everyone on board. Despite this breathtaking departure from more than two centuries of law and practice, we still know almost nothing about these strikes, some taking place as far as 2,700 miles away. It may be that there were narcotics traffickers on board some or all of these vessels. It may also be that some of these boats were being used for human trafficking and that the victims of that offense were killed along with the perpetrators, or, if not on one of the first four ships destroyed, then perhaps on the next one. The lack of detail concerning these strikes is telling. We have learned of these strikes through social media posts from the President, the Secretary of Defense, and from the press. In fact, administration officials have offered differing accounts of where these vessels were heading. Media reports have suggested--without rebuttal from the administration--that the first vessel to be struck had turned around prior to being hit. The Secretary of State originally claimed that one of the boats wasn't even heading to the United States. Given our Coast Guard presence in the region and with a sizable Navy deployment and expansive intelligence resources, U.S. personnel could have boarded all of these vessels, detained those aboard, seized any drugs or cash, and gathered additional information about ties to drug trafficking organizations, just as they normally do. Secretary of State Rubio even acknowledged publicly that this could have been done but said that the President wanted to send a message by killing all of those on board. We all agree that the scourge of drugs is real and that scores of Americans die from such poison every year. We are all committed on both sides of the aisle to battling the importation of illegal drugs, even as we work to beat back addiction here at home. But we are also committed to our Constitution, to a system of checks and balances that wisely places the power to make war in our hands, not with an Executive who may grow too fond of using it. That is why Senator Kaine and I have introduced a resolution to direct the President to stop engaging in armed strikes against these vessels or the country from which they emanate without the explicit authorization of Congress. We are here today to ask our colleagues to join us in this nonpartisan vote, in this affirmation of Congress's authority to declare war or to refuse to declare it; to authorize force or to refuse to authorize it. We have been precise and deliberate in crafting it. This resolution does not affect the United States' ability to target terrorist groups covered by Congress's existing authorizations to use military force, including al-Qaida, ISIS or its affiliates and offshoots, or to address real threats posed by other groups, like the Houthis. It also in no way limits the United States' ability to defend our own citizens and interests or to come to the collective self-defense of our allies and our partners. It comes down to this: The President has used our military to strike unknown targets on at least four occasions, and he is promising more. With at least 21 people dead and more killing on the way and with the President telling us that strikes on land-based targets may be next, we ask you to join us in reasserting Congress's vital control over the war power. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, let me just take this opportunity to address some of the remarks of my colleague who has, I think, rightly pointed out the horrors of drug trafficking and those that are engaged in that poisonous, deadly trade. I agree with that, and we should do everything we can to fight back against those who are trying to traffic that poison into this country. And I agree with him about the murderous dictator that is Maduro. But here is the thing. If my colleagues in this Congress want to go to war with Venezuela, if they want to use military force to bring about regime change in Venezuela, or if they want to wage a literal war using the military and armed force to blow up traffickers, then they need to come to Congress and seek an authorization to use military force for that purpose because our Constitution is clear. There are, essentially, three circumstances in which we can constitutionally use force. One is if Congress declares war. We have not declared war on Venezuela. We have not declared a literal fighting war using military troops either. Or we authorize the use of military force. We have not done so. Now, the third circumstance in which a President is authorized to use force is in the event of imminent threat of attack from our adversaries. And that is simply not the circumstance here. Instead, what the administration seems to be relying on is a claim that it has the power, somehow, to put organizations on a list and go after them wherever they may be, without the approval of Congress. That is what this resolution is about. Now, my colleague also made an argument about the Houthis. Nothing in this resolution affects the ability to defend ourselves from the Houthis as necessary. The President and the former Presidents who have taken action against the Houthis have not done so on the basis of the Houthis being added to some list. Being added to a list, even the foreign terrorist organization list, empowers an administration to put sanctions on that organization. But being placed on a list by the Executive does not give any greater authority to use armed force against an organization. The basis in which this President and previous Presidents have used force against the Houthis is the Houthis have attacked us, and if the Houthis attack us again, the President will have the article II power to defend ourselves. And nothing in this resolution touches that in any way, shape, or form. But let me just underscore the perils of what we are discussing today. Now, this is an article that just came out. I haven't had the chance to vet it: ``Colombia president claims U.S. bombed Colombian boat in strike off Venezuela.'' So I don't know whether we have now struck a Colombian ship or what the circumstances were or who was on board, and that is exactly the problem. That is exactly the problem. Now, maybe this is real and maybe it isn't, but the fact that we don't know, the fact that the Executive asserts the authority to blow up ships without coming to Congress for the authorization of that kind of force could invariably lead to mistakes, could also lead, inadvertently, to war with another country. This resolution says: If you want to use force against narcoterrorists by blowing up ships, come to Congress for an authorization because at this point you don't have it. If there is an imminent threat of attack, you have all of the authority you need under article II. But if you want to engage in a war with Venezuela or a regime change with Maduro and you want to use military force to do it, you need to come to Congress for an authorization. There being none, these strikes are unconstitutional and unlawful. I would urge my colleagues to join Senator Kaine and myself in supporting this resolution. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Pursuant to Section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act, and as provided under the order of October 7, 2025, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 83, to direct the removal of the United States Armed Forces from hostilities that have not been authorized by Congress, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. SCHIFF. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I rise today to welcome to Washington, DC, next week His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christianity. His All-Holiness is a guiding light for the 300 million Orthodox Christians, including many thousands across California, from San Diego to Eureka. More than that, since ascending to his position in 1991, he has reached beyond Orthodox Christianity to be an inspiration to people of all faiths around the world suffering from religious persecution, violence, and displacement. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has fostered dialogue across the world and across religions with Christians, Muslims, and Jews. On today of all days, I note his efforts to combat international terrorism, helping lead the effort to the Brussels Declaration in December 2001 calling on leaders of all religions to condemn violence and forswear the use of religious justification for terrorism and mistreatment. His All-Holiness is also a true champion of peace, tolerance, and defense of the environment. His coming to Washington will highlight the role that religious leaders play in pursuit of these goals and remind us to be stewards of all people and the planet before pursuing partisan and personal ends. I congratulate His All-Holiness on the well-deserved and highly impressive honor of being awarded the 2025 Templeton Prize, which recognizes spiritual and scientific advancement. The award puts him in the company of Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, King Abdullah, Jane Goodall, and Francis Collins--men and women from all walks of life who have made contributions to understanding the universe and humanity's place within it. In awarding the prize, the Templeton Foundation noted Bartholomew's dedication to environmental causes, for which he has earned the nickname of the ``Green Patriarch.'' The foundation said his environmental ministry is ``harnessing the power of the sciences to expand our collective understanding of humankind's place and purpose in the world'' and that ``Bartholomew has also deepened Christians' ideas of what it means to be faithful in the world today. It involves caring for all aspects of God's creation including the people around us and the natural world in which we live.'' I join American Orthodox Christians, environmentalists, and peacemakers in welcoming back to Washington and the United States His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. Congress will be honored to once again host him in our Halls next week. I urge my colleagues to listen to his message of peace, environmental stewardship, and the importance of bridging the divides between religions, nations, and all groups who spend more time on the things that divide us than those that should bring us together. We will gain from his return if we have the wisdom to listen.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Senator, thank you. There are lots of extraordinary and suspicious happenings around the Epstein case in the last few months. But just by way of background to those who may not be following each development, you have Epstein at one point describing himself as one of Donald Trump's closest friends. You have Donald Trump saying at one point that he shares a bond with Epstein over their mutual like of attractive women and pointing out that, in the case of Epstein, they tend to be on the younger side. You have the President recently acknowledging he is upset with Jeffrey Epstein for stealing young women from Mar-a-Lago--by Epstein--for purposes that he did not disclose--the President did not disclose. Tragically, in April, one of those women--one of those children, underage women--working at Mar-a-Lago committed suicide. She was a victim of the Ghislaine Maxwell-Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking. Just this past April, she took her own life. But she was one of those women, apparently, that Trump was upset that Epstein was taking away from him at Mar-a-Lago. It certainly begs the question of, what did Trump think Jeffrey Epstein was doing with these young women he was taking from Mar-a-Lago? So these are just some of the questions we hope will be answered, but, of course, after promising the MAGA base that he would disclose these files, after Bondi promised and Kash Patel promised and Trump promised, they have reneged on this. So this is the backdrop in which Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche goes to visit the No. 1 coconspirator, Maxwell. The other background piece of this is that Todd Blanche isn't just some Deputy Attorney General; Todd Blanche is Trump's former criminal defense lawyer. Todd Blanche is the guy who sat in the courtroom in Manhattan helping to defend Donald Trump against the Stormy Daniels allegations against him, for which Donald Trump was convicted of multiple felonies. As you will remember from the Judiciary Committee when Blanche came for his confirmation hearing, you and I were both concerned about whether Blanche would be able to shed his role as Trump's criminal defense lawyer when he adopted the new role of being the No. 2 person in the Justice Department. All of this begs the question of, when this very unusual thing happened where the No. 2 person at the Justice Department goes to talk to the coconspirator, this child sex predator, is he acting as Trump's defense lawyer or is he acting as a Deputy AG? As you were alluding to, if this wasn't bizarre enough, for a top person like that to go interview a witness is unprecedented. For them to do it secretly--and we don't know if this was recorded; we don't know if an FBI agent was present. It would be unthinkable to do this in the absence of an FBI agent taking down the statement, but there is no evidence that took place. The only thing we do know is that this interview lasted 9 hours, and after the interview, Ghislaine Maxwell got the special treatment of being moved from her prison in Florida to a minimum security prison in Texas that is like a camp, to which sex predators are not supposed to be sent. So why did she get that special treatment? Finally, one other point I would make before I yield back to you about how unusual all this is, is the defense attorney representing Maxwell is friends, apparently, with Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General, and when Maxwell was asked ``Are you hoping for a pardon out of this? he basically said ``We didn't ask for one, but of course the President has said he has the power to do it.'' They obviously want some special treatment. They are already getting it. But we have no record of any of this. So, yes, this is so unusual, extraordinary, and unprecedented. And if they think this is going to somehow answer the questions that have been raised by their refusal to turn over these documents, it is the furthest thing from that, wouldn't you say?

Mr. SCHIFF. Can I make one last point, with your indulgence? One other extraordinary fact about this is that none of the prosecutors who actually worked on prosecuting Maxwell were present. The reason you would want them there is, they know the facts. Blanche doesn't know the facts. So when you are interrogating this person, when you are taking their statement, you want somebody who knows the facts, who can attest to whether they are being forthcoming, telling the truth or not. Also, a defense lawyer representing 20 of the Epstein victims asked to be present, and they were turned down. This just stinks to high heaven. I yield to my colleague from Maryland.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, the Senate this week is considering a nominee so patently unfit to be a Federal judge, so lacking in the temperament, integrity, and judgment to serve as an arbiter of the Nation's laws, that the chorus of opposition has grown deafening and the facts revealing his unfitness for office are too voluminous to be ignored. I am speaking, of course, of Emil Bove, the lawyer whose misconduct was so egregious, his fellow prosecutors in the Southern District of New York thought he should be demoted; someone whose management of cases was so flawed that a Federal judge not only concluded that his team had misled the court but that it withheld exculpatory evidence. The court then ordered the case dismissed, and the Southern District prosecutor's office didn't even bother to try to refile the case. It was that tainted by Mr. Bove's leadership of that team. After Bove left the U.S. Attorney's Office under the threat of demotion, he became one of Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyers, losing the hush money payment to a porn star case in which Donald Trump is convicted of dozens of felonies. Bove, though, turned that loss and his blind obedience to Trump into a top position at the Department of Justice. And now, for the past months, it seems like every time there has been an abuse of power at the Justice Department, Emil Bove either directed it, supervised it, or carried it out himself. When Donald Trump wanted to purge the Justice Department of prosecutors who worked diligently to investigate the January 6 insurrection, Bove was the instrument of his vengeance. When Trump wanted to purge the Department of prosecutors who proved to juries beyond a reasonable doubt that the violent offenders who attacked police officers that day did so to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power, Emil Bove was there to punish not the criminals but the prosecutors. When Stephen Miller and then-FBI Director Nominee Kash Patel worked to carry out an additional purge of career FBI officials who worked on the January 6 investigations, Emil Bove was there too. Earlier this year, when the Trump administration wanted a justification to freeze grants already approved from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and they wanted to trump up some justification--some rationale for trying to prevent the distribution of these funds--whom did they turn to? Well, of course, they turned to Emil Bove. He and then-U.S. Attorney Ed Martin pressured the head of the Criminal Division for the DC U.S. Attorney's Office to open a criminal investigation into the fund. But there was a problem. There was no evidence of criminal activity. There was no probable cause. There was no predication. How do we know this? How do we know the opening of this case or the threat of opening this case was bogus? Because the Chief of the Criminal Division in that office resigned rather than comply with this unethical edict. When Trump's DOJ sought to dismiss a serious and credible corruption case against the mayor of New York Eric Adams, who was the one who ordered career prosecutors to drop the case? That is right, Emil Bove. Time after time, we have seen career public servants stand up to abuses of power like this and refuse to obey, leaving careers they loved at the Justice Department rather than be part of Bove's perversion of justice. I served for almost 6 years in the Justice Department. I know the sense of mission that the lawyers in that Department feel and how much they love serving and appearing before a court and introducing themselves on behalf of the United States. It is not a job that people give up easily or for no reason. I also know that, when put in the position of choosing to follow their ethics and the law or choosing to obey a dishonorable and dishonest instruction from a supervisor, yes, they will resign their posts, and so many have. Acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon was ordered by Bove to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams. In refusing, she called it what it was: an ``improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for the dismissal of his case''--in other words, a quid pro quo. I just want to underscore for people what this means and how astonishingly abnormal and unethical this action was. The Justice Department intervened in a criminal case in New York over the objection of the prosecutors handling the case, including the acting U.S. attorney, to dismiss that corruption case against a public official, not because there was a lack of evidence--they didn't even try to claim that--not because there was any prosecutorial misconduct-- they didn't even try to argue that--but because he was useful to the President on his immigration policy. It is an edict from Bove that says: If you do the President's bidding, we have got your back; we will make your corruption case go away--a quid pro quo. Now, interestingly, they didn't want it to go away completely. They wanted it to go away without prejudice--that is, so they could bring it back if he didn't do exactly what the President wanted. Anyone who has ever served in the Justice Department can tell you just how unethical that is. Rather than obey those orders from Bove, Acting U.S. Attorney Sassoon resigned, and many others followed. One of them said: I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool or . . . a coward to file your motion. But it was never going to be me. No, it didn't have to be him because it was enough for Emil Bove. He is there whenever Donald Trump needs someone to carry out his will, regardless of ethical or even legal considerations. And dedicated public servants, career prosecutors are standing up, willing to risk their jobs and willing to risk retaliation by a vindictive President. Some of those brave attorneys have come to our committees as whistleblowers. In one case, Erez Reuveni, a 15-year veteran at the Department who worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations, shared with our committee that Emil Bove told DOJ's lawyers that they would need to consider telling the courts ``f you'' and ignore any such court order that might get in the way of the Trump administration's strategy of rapid deportation without due process. In fact, Bove's lawyers at the DOJ would go on to lie to the judge and violate court orders, prompting the judge to issue an order to show cause why they should not be held in contempt. Senator Whitehouse is exactly right: The court of appeals has delayed that hearing on the order to show cause why those lawyers under Bove's supervision should not be held in contempt. And my colleagues here want to rush this thing through. Well, what will they say if the judge finds that Bove and others at the Justice Department willfully ignored court orders? What will they say once they have given him a lifetime tenure on the court of appeals? During Bove's confirmation hearing, I asked him about his ``f you'' instruction, and he made the dubious claim that he couldn't recall. Now, that is remarkable. It is not like we are talking about events that happened 10 years ago. This was, like, 2 months ago, just a few weeks ago. I think I would remember if I had told other lawyers that we should say ``f you'' to the courts. So either he instructs them frequently to say ``f you'' to the courts, such that he wouldn't remember this particular occasion, or he is being dishonest with us. But his use of that vulgar injunction was corroborated by other DOJ lawyers in text messages. So we really don't need to wonder about this. As one DOJ lawyer texted another: Guess it's find out time on the ``f you.'' Well, now it is ``find out'' time for the U.S. Senate, when we find out whether we are willing to confirm just anybody--no matter how unfit, no matter how terrible the record, no matter how abundant the evidence. It is ``find out'' time for the U.S. Senate. What was Bove's role in tasking the DOJ and the FBI to scour old Epstein files and flag mentions of Donald Trump? I know my colleague Senator Booker has tried to find out, and Senator Durbin has tried to find out. We don't know because Bove refuses to tell us, but we do know that his fellow criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche--he and Blanche were the two lawyers who represented Trump in that ``hush money payment to a porn star'' case. Todd Blanche is now rushing to meet with Epstein's chief coconspirator in jail. It is self-evident that Blanche is there to represent the President's personal interests, not the public's interest, and Bove represents exactly the same problem. With Bove's nomination, we are about to find out if Republicans are content to give a man so routinely in defiance of the rule of law a lifetime job of interpreting it on behalf of millions of Americans. We wanted to hear from those whistleblowers like Erez Reuveni, who is just one of the hundreds of public servants who is speaking out, but Republicans have declined our request for testimony and additional hearings, even as they have rushed to jam through this nomination for a lifetime position. Sadly, we will all have a lifetime to regret it. Like so many of his unfit Cabinet nominees, Donald Trump is daring Senate Republicans to oppose him. I hope and pray they will because the pattern is clear: Emil Bove takes orders from Donald Trump, and that is it. His only merit is blind obedience, not to the law but to the President, and not just to any President but one who is also a convicted felon. So I urge my colleagues to look at Bove's record of disrespect for the law and reject this dangerous nominee. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2862 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, my Republican colleagues have offered a substitute amendment that claims to prohibit cuts for programs dealing with HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, as well as nutrition and maternal health support, but the total amount of money they are rescinding is unchanged, putting all of those efforts at risk. If this sounds familiar, it is a lot like a reconciliation process that demands a trillion dollars in cuts but says that Medicaid should not be touched. And we know what happened there: Medicaid was cut massively. Several Republicans have pointed out that we don't know how the administration is going to implement this bill. That is a major problem. So let's make this as simple as possible. The Senate doesn't want to cut funding for AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other diseases? Then let's remove those rescissions. My amendment would reduce the amount of cuts to global health programs in order to ensure that funding for HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and maternal health and nutrition programs remain, not just in theory but in real dollars and cents. I urge a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays. Vote on Amendment No. 2862

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to Jeremy Renner, one of Hollywood's most electrifying and influential actors. Throughout his career, Jeremy Renner has clearly displayed his versatility as an actor, with an ability to bring an extensive range of characters to life. His breakout role in ``The Hurt Locker'' earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. With his distinct boldness and gravitas, Mr. Renner continued making his mark on Hollywood in blockbuster franchises, including ``Mission: Impossible-- Ghost Protocol'', ``Mission: Impossible--Rogue Nation'', and ``The Bourne Legacy.'' Additionally, Mr. Renner is well known for his portrayal of Clint Barton, also known as Hawkeye, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Mr. Renner crafted a character that combines action-star grandeur with emotional nuance, making Hawkeye a beloved character that captures audiences over multiple blockbuster films and the Disney+ series ``Hawkeye.'' Mr. Renner currently stars in ``Mayor of Kingstown'', a thrilling crime drama in which his character Mike McLusky maneuvers through a morally tangled web of local politics and prisons. His upcoming role will be in the much-anticipated third ``Knives Out'' installment, ``Wake Up Dead Man.'' Mr. Renner's impact extends beyond his acting career as a New York Times bestselling author and nonprofit founder. Following a near-fatal accident, he wrote ``My Next Breath: A Memoir'', a deeply personal memoir that chronicles his road to recovery despite insurmountable odds. In 2023, Mr. Renner launched the RennerVation Foundation with his sister Kym Renner. The RennerVation Foundation empowers foster youth in Nevada to thrive through access to resources, education, and life- changing opportunities. At Camp RennerVation, foster and at-risk youth find community, lifelong mentors, and develop tools to navigate complex emotions. Nestled in the wilderness of Lake Tahoe, Camp RennerVation fosters connection, joy, and personal growth. Through his foundation, Mr. Renner continues to impact youth beyond the movie screen and empower them to be future leaders in their communities. We are honored to welcome Jeremy Renner as the keynote speaker at the 2025 Lake Tahoe Summit, and I ask all Members to join me in thanking Jeremy Renner for his tremendous contributions on screen and through his RennerVation Foundation.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to E. Clement ``Clem'' Shute, Jr., as he receives the 2025 Dianne Feinstein Lake Tahoe Award. For over 50 years, Mr. Shute has been a fierce advocate and champion for the environmental protection of Lake Tahoe. After graduating from the Boalt Hall School of Law in 1964, now known as the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, Mr. Shute dove into environmental law and advocacy. Mr. Shute helped pioneer California environmental law, initially through his position as the assistant attorney general in the California Attorney General's Office, where he was responsible for the environment and consumer protection section, and later through his law firm. As assistant attorney general, he was legal advisor to the Governor's Office of Planning and Research and counsel to the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, where he led innovative environmental litigation that safeguarded the Bay Area's natural beauty and environment. In 1980, Mr. Shute joined fellow environmental lawyers Marc Mihaly and Mark Weinberger to establish Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP law firm, where upon cofounding the business, he represented the town of Tiburon in the groundbreaking decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold open space zoning against claims of inverse condemnation. With Mr. Shute's particular expertise in wetland regulation, solid waste regulation, airport expansion, and other issues affecting Lake Tahoe and the San Francisco Bay area, he is a valued and consistent environmental law advisor not only in the northern California area but also throughout the State. He served on the California Advisory Board of the Trust for Public Land, helping preserve, expand, and increase accessibility to green spaces across the State. Mr. Shute is also credited for helping launch the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, where he served as a board member for nearly a decade and played a vital role in negotiating the regional plan update. Mr. Shute notably has also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Lawyers Association for his contributions to environmental law, the Peter Behr Lifetime Achievement Award from the Marin Conservation League, and has been named a California Super Lawyer for several years, among other honors. I ask all Members to join me in thanking Clem Shute for over half a century of dedicated service as one of Lake Tahoe's greatest advocates and congratulate him upon receiving the Dianne Feinstein Lake Tahoe Award.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, over the last 250 years, this country has grown from a handful of rebellious Colonies to an economic, scientific, military, cultural, technological, and agricultural behemoth. And, crucially, through it all, we have remained a democracy devoted to the hard work our Founders envisioned of making our Nation a more perfect Union. Progress has not always been straightforward, but it has been consistent over time and nothing short of extraordinary, which is why it is all the more heartbreaking to see so much damage, so much self- inflicted harm imposed on our country by this administration, over the last 170 days. Indeed, if you were to design a Presidency and policies to diminish our scientific and technological prowess from within, it would look a lot like this administration. If you were determined to kill our clean energy future and retreat from any hope of addressing climate change, it would look a lot like this. If you wanted to undermine our standing around the world, befriend dictatorships, and betray our fellow democracies, it would look a lot like this. If you wanted to deliberately tear at the social fabric and cohesion of our country, set State against State and people against people to the point of conflict in the streets, it would look a lot like this administration. The President and his Cabinet have been tearing down so much of what makes this country special--and so quickly--that it has been hard to see the big picture, hard to separate the biggest harms from merely the most sensational or the most proximate. One hundred days was not enough time to evaluate the harms this administration had already inflicted on our country and its people, but 170 days just might be sufficient. So, today, I want to go through the top 10 ways this administration has been wrecking the country. From the thoughtless and irresponsible to the illegal and unconstitutional, to the deliberately cruel and malicious, I want to tell you what the actions of this Presidency have really meant for the country and for our future. So here they are, the top 10 ways the administration is wrecking the country: No. 10, Donald Trump is waging an all-out war on America's research universities. America's universities have been the envy of the world, for much of the last century, in powering scientific achievement and economic growth, dramatic breakthroughs in medicine, significant achievements in the arts, technological innovation, and all of the attendant economic benefits have been driven by a decades-old partnership between universities and the Federal Government. As a part of this grand bargain, the Federal Government invests in research conducted at top universities, and the country enjoys the benefits. From brilliant scientists and academia, the military gets new technologies and capabilities, including innovations in fusion energy, laser technology, electronic jamming capabilities, and so much more. Our healthcare is improved and our lifespans are increased by university-led research into new medicines, medical implants, and devices. Food science helps us grow healthier crops and produce more food with less water and less pesticides. You would be hard-pressed to find a field of scientific endeavor in which university research has failed to deliver. Now all of that is on the chopping block. The administration has canceled tens of billions of dollars in university research funding. It is stopping some of the best and brightest students from coming to the United States to study by banning international students from attending. Already, some of the world's most promising students are choosing to go elsewhere--to China or the UK or Sweden or Canada. The reason we want the very best students is so that we can remain the global leader in every field of endeavor. That is what makes us great. But this--this is a one-way brain drain in the wrong direction. The administration is also raising taxes on research universities and threatening the removal of accreditation from universities which fail to bow to the President's ideological and political whims. It is using real concerns about anti-Semitism on campus as a pretext or the policies of athletic departments that it disfavors to justify attacks on universities that will do nothing but set the country and our economy back. Their real agenda is to change the agenda at schools, to eliminate academic independence, and to indoctrinate students into an ideology that is more to their liking, turning administration bureaucrats into a kind of thought police. Coming in at No. 9 of the top 10 ways the administration is wrecking the country is taking away food from hungry kids in America. Donald Trump promised to make America healthy again, but he is not. Instead, he has settled for making America hungry again. The budget just realized through their big, ugly bill makes a multi- hundred-billion-dollar cut to the SNAP program--that is Supplemental Nutrition and Food Assistance--basically food for hungry kids and families. This isn't a cut that can be explained away with a vague, multipurpose phrase or platitude like ``waste, fraud, or abuse'' or by engaging in funny math. Feeding hungry families is not wasteful. Providing fresh food at schools for kids who can't otherwise afford to eat is not a fraud. Helping seniors living on the edge of poverty afford a meal is not an abuse. But taking this food away to fund tax cuts for wealthy people and corporations--that is a fraud, that is a waste, and that is an abuse. These cuts will mean more kids who are unable to get a school lunch; more seniors literally sitting and starving in their homes; an America that is more hungry than before; an America that, although it is the richest Nation on Earth and the most productive agricultural Nation on Earth, has chosen to adopt ``more hunger'' as its policy. Moving on to No. 8. Coming in at No. 8 of the top 10 ways the administration is wrecking the country, Donald Trump is destroying our alliances with democratic nations around the world and aligning our country with dictators. Across administrations and decades, America has been a symbol of stability for the globe, a trusted partner, a champion of freedom, a democracy. We have stood up to evil empires and championed the cause of liberty. And although we have made more than our share of mistakes in trying to rebuild other nations in our image, we have strived to achieve a foreign policy consistent with our values. Now, in just the first few months, so much of that legacy has been betrayed. So many of our alliances have been degraded. So much of our standing in the world has been made small. So many of our friends have become estranged. Our treaty partners are unsure of whether they can count on us in a pinch. Donald Trump likes to talk about peace through strength. He likes to think that bullying our friends or extorting a price for our security guarantees is what makes us strong, but he is wrong. He trashes our relationships with our friends. He belittles the Canadians and the British, who fought and died alongside American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. He denigrates Ukrainians and their brave President, who fight nobly in the defense of their democracy and their sovereignty. He insists on Ukraine paying tribute in the form of mineral rights to secure his support. He flatters and fawns over the Kremlin dictator--at least he did until even Trump could see that he was being made to play the fool by a mass murderer who did not want peace, only further mayhem. And who can say how long Trump's new resolve against Putin will last before it is overtaken by caprice or self-interest. The only true constant of Trump's foreign policy has been that the United States will be there for you if and only if it is pleasing to the President, if you flatter him, if you bow and scrape before him, or if there is something in it for him personally, like a $400 million aircraft or a multibillion-dollar crypto deal for his family. He has made it plain that American foreign policy is part protection racket and part just racket. All of this means that America is less safe and secure, with fewer friends we can rely upon out of any sense of shared sacrifice or values. The mutual defense clause of article 5 of NATO has been invoked only once, and that was on our behalf after we were viciously attacked by terrorists on September 11. Our friends and allies rushed to our defense--and not just out of a sense of treaty obligation but because of a shared sense of purpose and our common humanity. The problem with turning every relationship into a transitional or transactional one is that everyone will want something in return and no one will be there when you really need them. Moving on, No. 7 of the top 10 ways the administration is wrecking what is best about this country is their pointless, economically suicidal, and self-destructive attack on the development of renewable energy. Renewable energy can lead the world away from a climate catastrophe. It can be an economic slingshot, catapulting us into an abundant energy future that is American-made. It can truly make us energy independent instead of simply more dependent on the fossil fuel industry. But Trump has attacked clean energy with a vengeance, repealing incentives passed during the Biden administration. And why? Because they were passed during the Biden administration and because Donald Trump made a promise to oil companies in exchange for campaign cash-- lots of it, more than a billion of it. The ``Big Ugly Bill'' phases out tax credits meant to spur development of solar and wind power and replaces them with tax credits for coal. If you are wondering whether you heard that right, you did-- tax credits for coal mining in the year 2025. At a time when we have harnessed the capacity of the Sun and the wind to power entire communities, we are disinvesting in a renewable energy future in order to fund an industry from the 1800s. It is the policy equivalent of investing in black lung, and it will choke our energy supply over time and kneecap our economic potential. China knows this. In May, China installed 93 gigawatts of solar capacity. That is enough to power almost 70 million homes. And they did it in a single month. China is installing almost 100 solar panels every second. And that is not because the China Communist Party is populated by a bunch of crazy environmentalists; it is because they know this is the industry of the future. They want to dominate the global market in clean energy, and thanks to Donald Trump, they will. So how will Trump's energy policies impact you at home? It means your energy bills are going to go up--way up--by hundreds of dollars a month. Renewable sources of energy are the vast majority of new energy coming online in America. Take that away, and we are reliant on the same old capacity, your same old utility, less competition, and higher prices, costing you more to heat your home in the winter or cool it down during the hot, hot summer. It means more families will make the impossible choice between paying their utility bills and putting food on the table. Now, earlier, I talked about this administration's cuts to research universities, which brings me to No. 6: the broader attack on health and science. The administration is slashing the National Institutes of Health, the Nation's premier medical research Agency. They have cut NIH by almost half--almost half. Now, I am no scientist, but I took enough science classes in college to know my way around a lab, and I am certainly no economist, but I can do basic math, and I can tell you with certainty, as anyone can who looks at this, that cutting NIH in half, massively gutting research grants and positions, will lead to the cancelation of clinical trials and new treatments and to Americans needlessly suffering from any number of illnesses and diseases. It will mean scaling back research efforts on everything from cancer, to Alzheimer's, to HIV-AIDS, destroying years or decades of research in any number of fields that might have been weeks or months away from a breakthrough. That hurts everyone. There isn't a Senator in this body who hasn't been visited by families with sick children or sick parents or constituents who are ill themselves, constituents who have pleaded with us that we increase funding for NIH, who have put a human face on the hope that they or their loved ones might be saved--saved--if only we invest in NIH. And now we turn our backs on them. And for what? For what? At No. 5 of the top 10 ways the administration is wrecking the country, we have the massive DOGE cuts to the Federal workforce and Federal Agencies everywhere. Elon Musk and his lot of unqualified, unvetted, unrestrained tech bros have taken a chain saw to any number of Federal grants, Federal contracts, Federal Departments, and Federal jobs without the slightest understanding of the human consequences. Musk may have held himself harmless during these massive cuts--he managed to use his position in the administration to expand his billions in government contracts at Starlink--but everyone else was made to suffer. Now he is gone, but the wrecking crew continues its work. DOGE accidentally cut nuclear safety staff and then had to rush and try to rehire them. They cut specialists in bird flu, and then they had to try to rush and rehire them. (Mr. HUSTED assumed the Chair.) Remember those coal tax credits I mentioned earlier? Well, they are cutting mine safety efforts, making dangerous work even more so. They DOGE'd USAID and diminished our soft power around the world. They are dismantling the Department of Education and selling off our children's education piece by piece. And they would cut NASA in half. There is no more high-profile example of America's scientific and technological prowess than our space program, and, sadly, there is no better example of its deliberate forfeiture. In my lifetime alone, our space program was the first to plant a flag on the Moon. We launched the first solar probe. We took the first photos and landed the first rover on Mars. We are sending more humans into orbit than ever and on track to land the first human on Mars. We did those things not because they were easy. No. We did those things, as President Kennedy once said, ``because they are hard''; because space exploration can teach us things about our life on Earth that propel innovation here at home, innovation that allows us to travel faster, live longer, and live better; and because exploring space can provide the most profound thoughts of our place in the universe and whether, amidst all of that, we are alone. This Agency that has brought such hope and excitement and pride-- pride--will be brought low. It may be one small step for DOGE, but it represents one giant leap backward for mankind. The Trump administration has also paused the hiring of critical seasonal firefighting staff, laid off probationary employees just as we begin another devastating fire season. They cut staff and programs at NOAA and the National Weather Service, hurting early earthquake warnings--early warnings of all disasters--warnings that are pivotal when tragedy strikes, like it did in Texas this week, in North Carolina months ago, or in Los Angeles in January. They cut staff who run the phones at Social Security while closing regional offices, making it harder for seniors to get the benefits they paid into their entire life--because that was the goal. That was the goal. And for all the pain that DOGE has inflicted and continues to inflict, the only thing that bastard Agency has really served to accomplish is making government less effective, less efficient, and less trustworthy because, more than anything else, the DOGE bloodletting has killed the trust of countless Americans--trust that the Federal jobs and programs they relied upon would continue; trust that they might be paid less than private sector workers to do the work they love, to unravel new mysteries in space, in the oceans, in our bodies, and in ourselves but that they could rely upon the government as an employer; that they could be insulated from political and partisan considerations; that they would not become some ideological arm of the President or his party or its collateral damage. Now that trust is gone, and the loss of that talent and that trust just might be the most expensive loss of all. Now, No 4. At No. 4 of the top 10 ways in which the administration is wrecking our country and our economy: tariffs--the on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, on-again tariffs; the ill- considered, ill-executed, unpredictable, unproductive, costly, indiscriminate, and self-destructive tariffs. For a President who ran on lowering costs, his most significant economic action has been a colossal backfire. Prices for your Fourth of July barbecue last week were the highest they have ever been. Like the cost of burgers or beer, phones are now more expensive, cars are more expensive. Prices at Walmart, Target, Costco: up, up, up. And on Amazon, they were going to add a specific line item for the cost of the Trump tariffs beside each affected product, until the Trump administration begged its owner, Jeff Bezos, not to be so transparent with their own customers because it made the President look bad. This didn't stop Amazon from adding the Trump tax to the price of the goods you buy on Amazon. It just stopped Amazon from showing you just how much more you are paying. And while you get poorer because of these tariffs, America is not getting any stronger. While your pocketbook is getting hit, so, too, is our standing around the globe. After all, these chaotic tariffs give our trading partners all too accurate an impression that we are unpredictable; that we are unstable; that America, with all its power, is unreliable. So those trading partners are flocking elsewhere. They go to China or to India or elsewhere. The fact is, we have so alienated even our closest friends and allies that some countries, like Canada, have gone beyond reciprocal tariffs to a downright boycott of American goods, devastating American farmers, small businesses, and consumers alike. The ``Art of the Deal'' indeed. Which takes us to No. 3 and this administration's attack on our healthcare. When the Senate passed Trump's ``Big Ugly Bill'' last week, 50 of our colleagues put their stamp on a budget that will devastate Medicaid; that will mean hospitals and clinics close; that millions of Americans will lose access to lifesaving care; that will mean people get their care denied; that will mean the long, hard fight against opioids will be set back by cuts to substance abuse treatment. After promising that Medicaid would not be touched, that our healthcare would not be harmed, they cut it by $1 trillion--trillion with a ``t''--to fund tax cuts for wealthy people, by the trillions. And when your hospital closes because it loses millions in Medicaid dollars, it won't matter whether you were personally on Medicaid. Your hospital will be gone. You and everyone else will have to drive farther to find an emergency room, to have a baby, to get dialysis, or to be treated for a stroke. The quality of your care will decline. Your access to care will diminish, especially reproductive care but every kind of care. Most of us will pay more--a lot more--for the care we receive, but some will go without care altogether. In the richest nation on Earth, we will move farther away from universal quality care to a period of even greater scarcity, even shorter lifespans, even lesser quality of life. And again, for what? More tax cuts for wealthy people who don't need them and who already have all the care that they need? Now we have reached No. 2. No. 2 of the top 10 most destructive acts of the administration: Trump's undermining of the rule of law. The assault on the rule of law began almost immediately with the pardon of 1,550 people who committed one of the most serious offenses in the Nation's history: attacking the U.S. Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power. In granting pardons to hundreds of offenders who used violence that day against police officers, Donald Trump sent a powerful message to his followers that they may use violence on his behalf and he would have their back; that he would insulate them from the law and from accountability, and more than that, that he would promote them, advocate for them, appoint them to high positions in a new Justice Department, a Department oriented not toward justice, not devoted to a rule of law but devoted only to him. In Trump's Justice Department, we are no longer a nation of laws but a nation of men to be rewarded or punished according to the President's whims. A mayor of New York, charged with corruption, has his case dismissed not because of any prosecutorial misconduct or lack of evidence but because he is useful to the President on an unrelated policy matter. In Trump's Justice Department, the absence of evidence or lawful predication is no bar to initiating a criminal investigation when a political pretext will do. He is using the Department as both sword and shield: a sword to pursue his enemies and a shield to protect his friends and to protect no one--no one--more than himself; a President given immunity by Supreme Court Justices he appointed--acting like a convicted felon because he is a convicted felon--now engaging in the most blatant graft and corruption, accepting gifts and gratuities, airplanes and commissions, in the hundreds of millions, in the billions, and without any fear of investigation, let alone prosecution. The inspectors general are gone. The watchdogs are gone. Only the dogs are left to feed on the carrion that was the rule of law. When courts try to restrain the Trump administration's illegality, his Departments ignore their orders. We saw it with the Alien Enemies Act. We see it with the unlawful impoundment of FEMA funds, with the lawless withholding of State funding, with attacks on foreign assistance appropriated by Congress, with racial profiling and illegal renditions to foreign prisons without due process or, frankly, any kind of process. Which brings us to No. 1--the No. 1 way in which Donald Trump and his administration are wrecking this country--and that is by destroying the very idea of America. Our Nation was formed as an improbable experiment, an experiment based on the unproven idea that people possessed sufficient virtue to be self-governing, that we did not need to be ruled by a tyrant. From that humble and daring beginning, the idea grew that a country so constituted, so organized could not only rule itself but could attract the best and the brightest, the most industrious of souls from all over the Earth and make them Americans; that there would be no caste system in America; that, here, anyone with the drive, the talent, and the intellect could prosper; that there were no limits to what we could achieve. That idea that became America was our most powerful appeal, our calling card at home and around the world. It has driven people to our shores. It has inspired people in dark prison cells in Iran, in labor camps in China, in gulags in Russia, and in impoverished places everywhere to dream of America--what it stands for and what it might mean to them if only they were so lucky, so very lucky, to one day move to this great place called America. And Donald Trump's destruction of that idea, the idea of America as the last best hope of mankind, is the worst offense of this administration. During Ronald Reagan's final speech as President, he spoke of a man who wrote to him of the uniqueness of America: You can go to live in France-- The man wrote-- but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American. Other countries-- Reagan said-- may seek to compete with us; but in one vital area, as a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on Earth comes close. This-- He said-- is one of the most important sources of America's greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people--our strength--from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost. That was Ronald Reagan. But now we have Donald Trump, a President who, more than any other in our history, ``clings to a stale past.'' I can forgive the President for his reckless tariff policies, for his sycophantic hires, or his foolish tax giveaways to the rich, but I will never forgive him for the damage he has done and for the damage he continues to do to the very idea of America, for how the rest of the world now views this country, and more critically, more catastrophically, how we have come to view ourselves. Tackling immigrants to the ground, people who are landscapers or farmworkers or restaurant workers or garment workers, let alone beating them while they lay there, as agents did to the father of three U.S. marines, it is not how Americans treat the hard-working people who come here in search of a better life. Using the military against our own citizens, sowing chaos and division in our own cities is not consistent with the idea of America. This is not an America confident of its future and of its place in the world, able to inspire people around the world, able to see the best in ourselves. On a day that Benjamin Franklin watched our Nation being formed, on a day he witnessed George Washington preside over the Constitutional Convention, seated in a chair with an image of the Sun embossed on its top, Franklin pulled some of his colleagues aside and remarked to them about how artists often have a difficult time distinguishing between a rising and setting Sun in their art. I have often-- Franklin said-- and often in the course of this session . . . looked at that [emblem] behind the President, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length, I have the happiness to know, that it is a rising and not a setting sun. Today, I know that a great many Americans fear that our Sun is setting, but I do not believe that. I have more faith in America than that. We have overcome far greater challenges in our history than our present difficulties. And those who would bet against this country would be wise not to. Those who have are far more likely to be proven the losers than the winners of that bet. The Sun is not setting on our Republic, but eclipse-like, it is obscured and the actions of this administration have cast a kind of shadowy darkness over the land. Though our Sun is not setting, neither is it rising, nor would it rise of its own accord. In this respect, Franklin's celestial metaphor falls short. We have no control over the Sun. Our orbit has been predetermined by forces well beyond our time and understanding. We are powerless to change its trajectory, but we are not powerless to change our own. We are not powerless to save our country, to remember who we are, to once again capture the imagination, the hopes, and aspirations of a weary mankind. Our Sun, America's Sun will rise again and shine brightly unto ourselves and to all nations. But it will take all of us working together and well into the future to make it so. Until then, we must press on, doing all we can to mitigate the harms of the current administration until we can end them, until we can bind up our Nation's wounds--as Lincoln said--and begin again the sacred work of restoring the very best of America. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I have a motion to commit at the desk. The clerk will report.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I ask that the reading of the motion be dispensed with.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, my motion is simple. It will prevent families with kids under 12 from losing food assistance under the bill. It is bad enough that we are borrowing money--trillions of dollars-- from our kids and grandkids to pay for tax cuts for rich people, but it is worse still that we leave families hungry today. Mr. President, I reserve the balance of my time.