Adam Schiff

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Let me ask the question this way. I was in the airport yesterday when someone handed me a note that said: ``Please save our country.'' ``Please save our country.'' And I think the genesis of the note was her profound concern over the direction of this country, over the increasingly authoritarian direction of this country and what is happening to the rule of law in America. We look at institution after institution, and we see the guardrails of our democracy coming down. We see an assault on the rule of law unlike anything we have seen in modern history, maybe in the entire history of the United States of America--each and every institution, and why? Because they can, because they feel they can. So they are going after the colleges and universities.

Mr. SCHIFF. They are going after the institutions of higher learning. This was an attack that was presaged by JD Vance years ago in his speech where he talked about ``the professors are the enemy.'' They have to go after ``the seat of learning.'' So they are going after the universities, and they are using enormous cudgel: We will cut off your funds. We will cut off hundreds of millions in your funds if you do things, if you say things that we in the administration don't like. If you irritate the personal predilection of the President, you will have your funding cut. It is unlawful; it is illegal; and yet they are doing it because they can.

Mr. SCHIFF. They are going after major American law firms because these law firms had the audacity, the unmitigated temerity to hire lawyers or have lawyers who would take on causes inimical to the President's personal interests. So they are going after these firms, and they are threatening the livelihood of these firms. We will close the courthouse doors. We will cut your clients off from contracts unless you kiss the ring. And, of course, it is not just the firms or what they represent. It is everyone who is in need of a lawyer who now needs to know that, if they run afoul of the policy preference of the administration, they may never get a lawyer. And why are they doing this at law firms? Because they can. And they are going after judges. They are calling for the impeachment of judges. The latest is Judge Boasberg, in a case involving the administration grabbing a bunch of people, designating them as part of a Venezuelan gang, and without any due process, without any process at all, taking them to some maximum security prison in El Salvador, and, in fact, it would appear, doing so even against the court order, when the judge said: Turn those planes around. Now, why are they encouraging the impeachment of a judge? Well, I impeached a judge here. I was a lead manager before there was an impeachment of Donald Trump--or two of them. I led an impeachment of a corrupt judge. It is the same standard of high crimes and misdemeanors. It is not a high crime or misdemeanor to disagree in a case brought before a Federal district court, to disagree with the flawed reasoning of the government. Why are they doing this to judges? Because they can. Because they can. They are going after the press. They are going after the press and saying: If you don't call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, we are going to prevent you from attending press events at the White House or on Air Force One. And why are they doing this, this party that claims to be against censorship? Why are they doing this to the press? Because they can. And they will continue to do so as long as they believe that they can until we--and not just we in this body, but we in this country--stand up to them and tell them: No, you can't. No, you can't. If the slogan years ago was ``Yes, we can,'' today it has to be ``No, you can't.'' No, you can't trample the rights of the American people. No, you can't censor our speech. No, you can't bring the weight of the Justice Department down on the American people. No, you can't because we are going to stand together. We universities are not going to let you pick one of us off. We are going to band together. No, we are not going to let you go after the law firms. We are going to band together. No, we are not going to let you go after the press organizations. We are going to demand free speech. Until we come together, until we mobilize in a massive way together to say, ``No, you can't; no, you can't,'' they will continue to believe that, yes, they can violate the law with impunity. So my question, Senator Booker, is how do we tell them: No, you can't--not with our country. No, you can't violate the law, violate our values, violate our interests. No, you can't. How do we tell the administration no?

Mr. SCHIFF. Will the Senator yield for one last question?

Mr. SCHIFF. Well, this gets to exactly, Senator Booker, your point. I am optimistic about this country, notwithstanding this deep, difficult, dark period we are in. I am optimistic about this country, and I am optimistic because of something that Alexis de Tocqueville might have said. There is some dispute about whether he actually said this.

Mr. SCHIFF. I would like to believe he said this: America is a great country because America is a good country. If he didn't say it, he should have said it, because it is true. This country is what makes me an optimist. There are wonderful, beautiful, patriotic people in every State of the Union, and they will see us through this. But it does, I think, require all of us to be reminded, every now and then, of the better angels of our nature. Now, I remember standing in that well during the first impeachment of Donald Trump.

Mr. SCHIFF. And I will tell you, I approached that case as a prosecutor would approach a case--that I just needed to prove the President guilty of what he was charged with. But it became apparent very quickly that that was not enough, that notwithstanding the abundant evidence of his guilt, I needed to show something more. I needed to show that it was dangerous to keep him in office. Now, tragically, events since have proven my point. But I made a different argument at that point of the trial, which I think gets us to the present moment, which is that truth should matter to us, what is right should matter to us. And even if it doesn't matter to the President, it should matter to us that we are decent as Americans. We are decent. We are good and decent people, as Americans. That is who we are. We don't believe that when someone is needing medical help that they should be turned away. We don't believe that we should turn our back on our neighbor. We believe in extending our hand. We believe we should be able to disagree with each other without it becoming a personal hatred or antagonism. We are Americans. This is who we are. I do think sometimes we forget, and we have to remind ourselves that, as Elijah Cummings used to say, ``We are better than this.''

Mr. SCHIFF. We are better than this.

Mr. SCHIFF. And you remind us of this all the time, Senator Booker. You really do. You also remind us that we are not defined by what we are against. We are defined by what we are for. And I am fully on the same page with you that we haven't lived up to our responsibility as a party and what we are for. I think our democracy is in trouble because our economy has been in trouble. And I think our economy has been in trouble because it is not like after the Depression or during the Depression, or the great recession, when people were out of work. The problem today is not that people are out of work. The problem today is that people are working. They are working, and they still can't get by. And you have too many millions of Americans who see their quality of life, and they look at what their parents had and see it as better, and they look at the future for their kids and see it as worse. And amidst that economic difficulty, they are ready to embrace anyone who offers something different, any demagogue who comes along and promises them they can fix it. And while this demagogue is not going to fix it and, indeed, has made their lot much worse, it is not going to fix itself. It falls on us to come up with those big ideas.

Mr. SCHIFF. Now, some of those big ideas are not new. Medicare for all, which I support, is a big idea. That would expand healthcare access for millions of people and make sure people, parents can go to work and understand if they get sick or their kid gets sick that they will have access to healthcare. We haven't kept pace with changes in the nature of work, changes that are going to accelerate with artificial intelligence, changes which have meant that, over the last several decades, as the country has become more productive, that productivity and prosperity has simply not been shared with the people who made it possible. And I think this economic anxiety, which is felt all over the world with these global changes in the marketplace, have put great stress on the whole democratic experiment. (Mr. BANKS assumed the Chair.) If democracy is not working for people, they will flirt with other models, like authoritarianism. But we are here to tell folks that is not the direction we want to go in. But it is still incumbent on us to offer bold ideas for how we can make the economy work for people again. But I do think that what has led people into such bitter antagonisms with each other has been a lot of this uncertainty, the feeling that they are only a car payment or a health problem away from failure. It is up to us to address that. So I join you, Senator Booker, and your optimism about the American people. I join you in the call on all of us, really, in both parties. But if they are not going to do it, it falls on us to put forward the big bold economic plans that will ensure that we can answer the central question of our time, which is, if you are working hard in America, can you still earn a good living? We need to be able to answer that question, ``Yes, you can.'' Right now, what we are seeing with this tax cut for billionaires and large corporations is just going to make the problem so much worse. But I want to thank you, Senator Booker, for your irrepressible optimism about the country, which I share. I want to thank you for seizing the helm today and every day to put forward that positive vision for our Country. And my question is, Where do you find the energy, my friend?

Mr. SCHIFF. Amen.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, John Adams once said that we are a Nation of laws, not men. And this idea has been foundational to the understanding of the American Republic. But what does it mean to be a Nation of laws, and is it still true in America in the era of Donald Trump? Are we a Nation of laws when characterized by a legal code that applies equally to all citizens, a justice system in which no one is above the law or beyond its reach, in which there is not one law for the rich and powerful and yet another for everyone else? Or have we become a Nation of men in which the law must bend to the will of its most powerful citizens, a society in which wealth and privilege mean that the law need not apply to them with the same force as it applies to others or not at all? Four years ago, after losing his reelection campaign, Donald Trump conspired to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power and incited a violent attack on the Capitol. He also withheld highly classified material and obstructed an investigation into that offense. In what could be seen as a vindication of the rule of law, Donald Trump was indicted for these crimes, but the system of justice bound by the rule of law requires not only that charging decisions be made against people similarly situated without preference or disfavor according to their position but that the conduct of those prosecutions likewise be timely and appropriate. In this, our justice system failed miserably. Trump was able to seek endless delays in court, and the courts, understanding of that motivation and mindful of the fact that justice delayed can mean justice is denied, willfully delayed the prosecution of Donald Trump until he could avoid a reckoning with justice altogether. Most egregious was the conduct of the High Court itself. The Roberts Court first delayed any potential trial of the President and then crippled the prosecution altogether in a decision granting the President immunity from prosecution for the commission of crimes while in office. No wonder the President thanked the Court at last night's joint address and told Justice Roberts, in particular, that he would not forget. For the first time in America, the Supreme Court held that if you reach the pinnacle of power, the Presidency, the criminal laws need not apply to you; that, indeed, you may use the power of that office itself to commit crimes and never be held to account. As Justice Sotomayor wrote, that new immunity lies about like a loaded weapon and makes a mockery of the principle that no man is above the law. Now we have entered a perilous new phase as a country, in which a person who escaped the application of law is now charged with administering the law in which Donald Trump has appointed his own criminal defense lawyers to top positions in the Justice Department and appointed an FBI Director with a long published enemies list. It is a Justice Department in which Trump's lawyers have sought to dismiss a serious corruption case against the mayor of New York, as an alleged quid pro quo for his willingness to do the President's bidding on unrelated policy matters. They seek a dismissal without prejudice, meaning the President can lower that sword of Damocles on the head of the mayor should he ever demonstrate independence from the whims of the President. Six senior Justice Department prosecutors resigned their office rather than pervert justice in this way. As one wrote in his resignation letter, ``I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.'' Other prosecutors at the Justice Department have likewise refused illegal orders to initiate investigations where no probable cause exists, rather than violate their oaths of office. If this continues, we will be left with a Justice Department leadership populated by only cowards and fools--a Justice Department used both as a sword to go after the President's enemies and a shield to hide its corruption. Then, what will remain of our Nation of laws but a sad memory of a time when we lived up to our Founders' dreams only to squander the gift of our inheritance. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, ``I urge you to beware the temptation of . . . label[ing] both sides equally at fault--

Mr. SCHIFF. May I have consent to speak for 2 minutes?

Mr. SCHIFF. I thank my colleagues for their courtesy to speak on this resolution. I urge you to beware the temptation of . . . label[ing] both sides equally at fault, [the temptation] to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire. My colleagues, these are not my words; they are, of course, the words of Ronald Reagan almost 42 years ago to the day. Imagine if he could see his party now turning its back on our ally and fellow democracy, Ukraine; sponsoring a U.N. resolution that would whitewash the start of the war; engaging in the most immoral equivalence and failing to assign responsibility to Russia for its invasion and ruthless aggression; voting with Russia and North Korea against our longtime friends and allies in Europe and around the world; and abandoning and insulting our allies as Putin seeks to remake the map of Europe. What is this resolution in the United Nations about that we helped defeat? The United States has used its influence and its vetoes in the Security Council many times, but this resolution was offered by dozens of our close allies on the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. What was in it that was so objectionable to split the United States from its friends? The resolution made clear that Russia started this war. It reaffirmed the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. It deplored Russian aggression on women and children. It raised concerns with North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces. It noted the threat to nuclear safety. It called for an end to the war and a just and lasting peace and the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian lands. None of this is in dispute--none. This was the resolution that the United States, the leader of the free world, blocked at the United Nations. Can any Member of this body point to a single problematic word in that resolution? Of course not. The Senate should stand by that resolution, even as we must stand by Ukraine. Today, the White House and Kremlin seek to rewrite the history of this war with falsehood and slander, calling Zelenskyy the dictator, Ukraine the instigator, and Putin the hero. We need to do more than say something; we need to do something. ``Slava Ukraini.''

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, today, the Senate is on track to confirm Kash Patel as Director of the FBI. Think about that statement for a moment. Kash Patel--conspiracy theorist, January 6 denier, MAGA sycophant, and political provocateur--will be FBI Director. The absurdity of it, the destructive consequences of it--and it is worth asking today: How did we get here to such an extreme point, to this moment when someone so patently unqualified--really, disqualified from any position of responsibility--is poised to become Director of the Nation's preeminent law enforcement Agency? Earlier today, I stood with my colleagues out in front of the FBI headquarters, a building that Kash Patel promised to dismantle on his first day as FBI Director and turn into a museum to the deep state, the home of a Department that we all know he will convert into a political weapon for the President--the President who is a serial law breaker and will use Patel as a tool for retribution against his enemies. But in a democracy, law enforcement does not serve the President, let alone someone who fashions himself as a King. Law enforcement serves the people. It is nonpartisan. It is not a vehicle of political payback for a political party. And yet we are watching the FBI and DOJ hollowed out, dismantled, and turned into an investigative and prosecutorial extension of Donald Trump's White House. We are watching it live in realtime. It is already happening in that building we visited this morning. In just the last month, Donald Trump's Department of Justice has engaged in a brazen sweeping purge, a rolling Saturday night massacre, an unmistakable campaign to intimidate, punish, and drive out thousands of hard-working nonpartisan FBI and career DOJ employees. This is happening as we speak. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove fired roughly two dozen prosecutors involved in January 6 criminal cases--not for cause, not for corruption, not for misconduct. They were fired for failing what is, in effect, a loyalty test--a loyalty test. A MAGA mob attacks the Capitol on January 6 to stop the peaceful transfer of power. They beat police officers, gouge them, bear-spray them, all in the service of an even bigger crime--stopping the peaceful transfer of power after Donald Trump lost his reelection. And they get pardoned by Donald Trump. The lawbreakers get pardoned, and the brave FBI agents who tracked down these violent miscreants--these agents get punished, they get fired, they get purged. The one-man wrecking ball that is Donald Trump is turning the world upside down. The criminals are being pardoned and the cops are being punished. Kash Patel sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee and, under oath, insisted he knew of no plans to punish FBI employees involved in investigations related to Donald Trump. He positively levitated at the suggestion that such a thing could even be true. Then, within days, top FBI agents were fired. Thousands of FBI employees--career professionals--were sent a detailed questionnaire demanding they disclose any involvement in investigations related to the January 6 insurrection. A warning accompanied this: ``Additional personnel actions'' could follow. Yet Mr. Patel testified that ``there will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by any FBI should I be confirmed as FBI Director.'' He sat in that committee room and told the Senate all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution. That was a Thursday, 3 weeks ago. The very next day, the purges began. Before the ink had dried on the transcript of that hearing, the retribution campaign had begun. In his written response to questions, Patel denies knowing about these actions in advance; denies knowing whether he discussed these dismissals with the White House, the DOJ, or the FBI. He wrote: I do not recall having conversations with the transition team about pursuing any particular investigations or targets. I asked him in writing about these actions and his answer was he doesn't remember. But, in fact, whistleblowers have come forward to testify or to state that, not only did Patel know about the upcoming purges, he was directing those dismissals. How could he not recall that? It wasn't years ago or even months. It was days before--days before his written answers to those questions-- those written answers where he said he couldn't recall he was directing these purges covertly as a private citizen. But he doesn't recall-- purges of quality career professionals who dedicated their lives to the rule of law, who have been fired, laid-off, or forced out because they dared investigate a violent insurrection on our Capitol or the President's retention of classified documents that contained our nuclear and other national security secrets. There was a time in our country when the FBI was weaponized, when it served as a sword for the President; and the DOJ served as his shield when Hoover authorized covert harassment campaigns against the perceived enemies of the President. We thought those days were over. And they were over, until now. We must not put in place a Roy Cohn for the President, someone who will bend and break the law to serve the President's personal and political aims, for therein lies the path to corruption, to unlimited power, and to malfeasance of the highest order. We put up guardrails to prevent one man and his cadre of company men from turning the Bureau and Department into a partisan and lawless battering ram. We must not take them down because we know the road that lies ahead, and we know that Donald Trump cannot destroy the nonpartisan character of the FBI and the Department of Justice without his enablers. And Kash Patel? Kash Patel is Donald Trump's handpicked enabler and henchman, the guy who would say yes when everyone else would say no to any immoral and unlawful request made by Donald Trump--the guy who publicized his ``deep state'' list, almost half of whom are Republicans; the guy who worked for--and retains millions of dollars in stock in--a company supported by the Chinese Communist Party. In any normal world, that would automatically disqualify someone from leading the Nation's premier law enforcement and counterintelligence Agency. This is not someone we would want running the FBI. It would be unthinkable to confirm a nominee who has written an entire book in service of ``dramatically limit[ing] and refocus[ing] the scope of the FBI's authority''--a nominee who has publicly said: ``It would be fun to go on a manhunt of government gangsters'' alongside those who ``represent Donald Trump's army to take this country back.'' I am of the opinion that the people the FBI should be going on manhunts for are actual criminals, not the President's enemies of the day. The FBI shouldn't serve as Donald Trump's army. Alas, we will not soon forget the last time Donald Trump's army presented itself to us, when they beat down the doors of this Capitol, when they attacked law enforcement and sought to overturn an election. Mr. Patel is quite familiar with that mob. He celebrated them in song. Mr. Patel tried to deny his association with the January 6 choir. He said he has nothing to do with their recording. But earlier, on Steve Bannon's podcast, he was all too proud to brag about it: So what we thought would be cool is if we captured that audio and then, of course, had the greatest President, President Donald J. Trump, recite the pledge of allegiance, then we went to a studio and recorded it, mastered it, digitized it, put it out as a song now released exclusively on the War Room. When I asked him about this, under oath, his response was--and you may never believe this--when he said ``we did this and we did that,'' ``we'' didn't include him. I don't know what is worse, taking credit for something he didn't do or doing something then lying about it. But what I do know is this is not the character of someone who should be Director of the FBI. At the hearing, I also asked him to turn and face the Capitol Police officers in the room--these officers from the same department that suffered such grievous injuries on January 6. He couldn't do so. He couldn't look them in the eye. I don't blame him for being too ashamed. He should be ashamed, celebrating their victimization in a song. He should be ashamed, and anyone voting to confirm him should be ashamed. Yet here we are, on the fast track to rubberstamp his confirmation, asked to turn a blind eye as he takes control of the most powerful law enforcement Agency in the country. That is what my Republican colleagues seem poised to do. I will ask again: How on Earth did we get here? And where are we going by confirming a nominee who is so plainly unqualified, who is tied up in shady business dealings with the CCP and the Kremlin, who made songs with violent cop beaters, who made memes of himself sawing the heads off of Members of Congress. How on Earth did we get here? Because we all know where this road ends: a weaponized FBI; investigations into anyone who stands up to Donald Trump--elected officials, journalists, Democrats and Republicans--anyone. I know some of my colleagues seek solace in the belief that if they just toe the line for long enough, they will be spared, but we all know what happens when someone falls out of favor with Donald Trump--when you are inevitably asked to vote for something or do something so egregious that you cannot possibly continue to say yes. When you reach that moment when you are forced to cross the President or abandon your final line in the sand, it will be these moments you will remember: the concessions to a wannabe authoritarian that you were willing to entertain; the lines that you allowed him to cross so you would be spared his wrath. But you will not be spared. No one is--not the veteran, nonpartisan employees at the FBI, not the maverick, moderate Members of this body, nor even the most extreme supporters--left out in the cold the moment they are no longer valuable to this President. When, not if, you fall out of favor with Donald Trump, Patel and others may be unleashed on you as well. My colleagues should remember there is more room under Donald Trump's bus than on it. Enabling his administration is a one-way street, and by continuing to go down it, you drive yourselves and the foundations of our democracy to the very precipice. My colleagues, we have a duty today--a duty to the Constitution and a duty to the American people. We have a duty to the 38,000 men and women of the FBI who put themselves and their lives on the line every single day, those who work in the building where we stood this morning in the freezing cold and in communities and cities across the country, keeping us safe and secure. We must take that duty seriously because if we confirm Kash Patel knowing what we are getting, knowing where we are going, we will only have ourselves to blame. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 316 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I stand here on behalf of Western States colleagues--Senators Padilla, Heinrich, Lujan, Bennet, and Hickenlooper--to ask this Chamber to take a clear stand on behalf of the firefighters who help fight and prevent wildfires. Wildfires don't discriminate. They hit red States and blue States. Even as deadly devastating wildfires were burning in L.A. County, President Trump adopted a freeze on hiring so widespread that it is blocking the Forest Service from onboarding the seasonal firefighters we require to prevent future fires. Not only that, President Trump has also empowered an unelected billionaire to run rampant through the ranks of our public servants, not with a scalpel but with a hatchet. As a result, firefighters who had just finished weekends of around-the-clock shifts fighting these dangerous fires were given a thank-you note from their Commander in Chief that said: Please quit. Please quit--this was the reward our firefighters got. Our amendment would make it very clear that we are committed to reversing these cuts to the ranks of wildland firefighters.

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

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, it is a great day to be a billionaire in America; for the rest of us, not so much. Egg prices are the highest they have ever been. Rent is through the roof. Prescription drug costs are squeezing families and seniors. But billionaires like Elon Musk-- billionaires--are doing just great. In fact, they are about to be doing a whole lot better because, if Donald Trump and my Republican colleagues have it their way, they are about to get another massive handout--a $4.5 trillion handout, to be precise--yes, trillion with a ``t''--and one that will explode the national debt. This bill, the one we will all, but certainly soon, consider on this very floor, reads like a thank-you card to the ultrawealthy. It supercharges the President's 2017 billionaire windfall. But how, we should ask, are we going to pay for it? Well, we already know; don't we? They are going to come after Medicaid. Forty-four percent of their proposed cuts to fund this tax cut for billionaires are to Medicaid. They are going to come after Medicare and healthcare generally. They are going to come after the services that keep our veterans housed, our communities healthy, our children educated. All of it--all of it--is on the chopping block, and here is the thing: They are already chopping away. So let's be crystal clear about what Republicans are asking us to consider. It is a smash-and-grab, targeting not the local store but the national Treasury--a cash grab from the programs that keep so many hard-working families afloat and what will be the biggest wealth transfer in modern American history, and in exactly the wrong direction, from the working and middle-class families to the uberrich, at a time when billionaires need it the least. Now, don't get me wrong. I am all for people succeeding beyond their wildest imagination. But like everyone else, they should earn it through hard work, not by stealing it from working people. All of this comes as Elon Musk and Donald Trump seek to co-opt every lever of government to go after anyone who dares stand up to them. When I called out Musk for seeking access to Americans' personal banking and financial data from the IRS, he retweeted one of the replies and aimed it at--well, me, yours truly. It read: He's not trying to snoop around my personal finances. He's trying to snoop around yours-- Meaning mine. They are not even hiding it anymore. The goal has never been to cut government waste or make government more efficient. No, the goal is to help their wealthy friends and go after anyone who dares criticize them or holds them accountable. They plan to use a weaponized IRS, a weaponized DOJ, and a weaponized FBI to investigate and prosecute and persecute Donald Trump's enemies, not just elected officials like myself but anyone who steps out of line: business owners, big or small, who could be next in line for an audit if they express their opposition to the President and what he is doing to hurt them with tariffs or anything else, or journalists who write stories that the President doesn't like--anyone--because anyone standing up to them is standing in the way of their very simple, well-demonstrated goal: One-man rule-- give Donald Trump all the power, so he can take from the poor and give to the rich to feed his ego and bank account and that of his pals. Remember the winter of 2023? Donald Trump stood at the gold-plated Mar-a-Lago podium and told a room full of the richest people in America: You're all people that have a lot of money. . . . You're rich as hell. . . . We're going to give you tax cuts. Most of my California constituents are not ``rich as hell''--far from it--and Donald Trump couldn't care less about them. The vast majority of them make less in a decade than it costs to pay the million-dollar membership fee at Mar-a-Lago, let alone the amount necessary to get a gold-plated promise from the now-President that their taxes will get lowered. But for this administration, it has never been about ordinary Americans. And if you look at what Donald Trump is proposing here, the priority is exceedingly clear. If you look at what Elon Musk has done over the last few weeks, his priority is pretty damn clear as well. A single mother choosing between paying rent and buying groceries, that is not the priority. A veteran wondering if the housing assistance that helped them get off the street is going to dry up, that is not their priority. But that billionaire who wants another yacht, now that is their priority. When a CEO wants another corporate loophole, that is the priority. Now, of course, they won't put it that way. They will tell you this is about spurring investment or creating jobs or unleashing the power of the free market. We have heard that story before. Remember 2017, when Donald Trump gave trillions to the wealthy and promised these tax cuts would pay for themselves? Guess what--and you won't believe this. They didn't. They didn't pay for themselves. In fact, they exploded the deficit by as much as $2 trillion. And now they are telling us the only way to fix the hole they dug is by cutting services for the Americans who actually need them and, of course, more tax cuts for rich people. We all heard it when they told us: If we just cut corporate taxes a bit more, the savings are sure to trickle down to working families. Well, they didn't. Corporate profits hit record highs. CEO bonuses soared, but wages--wages for regular people--they barely budged, to the point where it would take an average worker at an S&P 500 company almost 200 years to make what their CEO made last year. Just think about that for a moment. It would now take an average worker at an S&P 500 company almost 200 years to make what their CEO made last year. How is that right? How is that fair? How is that good economics? And how could they possibly want to make that worse? What is their goal? To provide another tax cut for the wealthy so that it will now take 300 years for an average worker to make what their CEO makes? We are hearing the same pitch all over again, but, I will tell you, what has changed since 2017, since that last big give-away? Nothing. Nada. Bubkes. They want you to believe that we can afford to shower the wealthiest people and corporations with even more tax breaks, but we can't afford to pay Federal workers, including a ton of veterans who dedicated their lives to serving this country at home and abroad. Now, we can hand trillions to millionaires and billionaires, but we can't afford to help families afford childcare, or hire firefighters, or fund critical cancer research--that the real problem, they would have you believe, in the richest country in the world is the program that helps seniors retire with dignity. At the end of the day, governing is about choices. The choices aren't always easy. There are very few clear choices in a complex and robust democracy, but this should not be a hard choice, because today we are not asked what we can afford. We are asked what we choose to afford. We could choose to invest in our children, in our workers, in our future; or we can choose to hand the wealthiest Americans another tax cut they don't need. We can choose to honor the commitments we made to seniors, to veterans, to families struggling to get by; or we can choose to break those commitments just to make sure that Elon Musk's tax bill stays as low as humanly possible. After all, launching your car into space isn't cheap. We could choose to build an economy that works for everyone, or we could choose to keep writing blank checks to those who already have more than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes or 200 or 300. Donald Trump has made his choice. Elon Musk has made his choice. What will we choose? Donald Trump and Elon Musk would have you believe that America is broke. America isn't broke, but it is broken for so many people who actually do the work. So, no, it is not a great day to be a teacher struggling to pay the rent or a nurse working a double shift just to afford groceries. It is not a great day to be a retiree watching Social Security and Medicare under attack. But it is a great day to be a billionaire in America, and that, my colleagues, is exactly the problem. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, today, we consider the nomination of RFK, Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. In a time when science has given us the tools to extend life, to eradicate disease, to protect the most vulnerable among us, this body is being asked to confirm a man who has dedicated the better part of his career to attacking science. But the debate over RFK, Jr., and his anti-science agenda does not take place in isolation. It is part of a broader and far more reaching and destructive agenda. It is part of an effort to dismantle public services, to strip away all the country's resources, to defund the Department of Health and Human Services, to take away from those who have little and hand it to those who have everything. So this is not just about RFK, Jr.; it is about every senior who relies on Medicare, every low-income family whose children get healthcare through Medicaid, every person who depends on the government not as a luxury but as a necessity. I want to take us back for a moment to talk about why we even have a Department of Health and Human Services in the first place. Because when a government works the way it is supposed to, when public health and security is taken seriously, HHS exists to ensure that no American has to choose between their health and bankruptcy. It exists because we decided as a nation that we would not let people lose everything just because they get sick, that we would not let children die from preventable diseases, that we would set basic rules on food and drug safety to protect families, that we would invest in science not as an indulgence but as a way to improve the life and the quality of life for all Americans. And, tonight, we are being asked to hand over that responsibility to a man who has spent his career undermining scientific achievement, to a man who has told Americans a thousand different times in a thousand different ways not to trust the very science that has saved millions of lives. So who exactly is RFK, Jr., and what does he believe? Let's talk about what this nominee has actually said. In 2005, he wrote an article, one so riddled with falsehoods that even the publisher, Rolling Stone, retracted it--this article accusing the government of covering up a supposed link between vaccines and autism, an article that said vaccines ``poison[ed] an entire generation of American children.'' That claim has been debunked more times than any of us can count. The New England Journal of Medicine, the CDC, the WHO, the American Academy of Pediatrics--every credible institution that studies this issue has confirmed what the science has long established: Vaccines do not cause autism. But Mr. Kennedy did not retract the claim. He did not acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus. No. No. He doubled down. He founded the Children's Health Defense, an organization that masquerades as a public health group while spreading disinformation that has fueled vaccine hesitancy across this country and beyond. His group has falsely linked vaccines to neurological disorders, to chronic illnesses, to developmental delays. They have suggested, without a shred of evidence, that childhood immunization schedules are unsafe. They have flooded social media with scare tactics, with conspiracy theories, with outright lies that have led parents to refuse vaccines for their children. They even sold children's onesies with catch phrases like ``No Vax, No Problem'' and ``Unvaxxed, Unafraid.'' And because words have power, because a lie repeated enough can masquerade as truth, the damage has been staggering. The 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa: Why did that happen? Because vaccination rates plummeted down to just 31 percent after anti-vaccine activists spread fear and misinformation. Robert F. Kennedy was part of that. His organization amplified the very lies that led Samoan parents to hesitate, to delay, to forgo the measles vaccine--reckless, irresponsible, and deadly. Mr. President, 83 lives were lost when measles tore throughout the region. Most of those killed were children. There were parents who trusted, as all parents do, that the world would be safe for their sons and daughters, and what did they find? They found that trust abused by people peddling misinformation, by reckless speculation dressed up as concern, by the very ideas Mr. Kennedy has trafficked in for years. Let's not pretend that this is some harmless contrarian at play here, that this is some cocktail party eccentric, or that this is some kind of lively academic debate. When a man tells millions of people not to vaccinate their children and they listen, children die. It did not stop there. In 2021, in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic, as COVID-19 tore through communities and filled emergency rooms to capacity, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., used his platform not to encourage vaccination, not to protect the public, but to do quite the opposite. He promoted the lie that mRNA vaccines alter human DNA. False--they do not. He suggested, without evidence, that the COVID vaccine was more dangerous than the virus itself--false. He compared vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany, invoking Anne Frank--a grotesque and offensive distortion of history. As recent as 2023, RFK was on podcasts arguing that ``there's no vaccine that is safe and effective.'' This is the man we are considering for Secretary of Health and Human Services--a man who, when presented with lifesaving science, does not champion it, he undermines it; a man who, when given the choice between protecting public health and indulging conspiracy theories, chooses conspiracy every single time. It is worth asking ourselves why Donald Trump would support a nominee so unqualified for this position, whose views are so contrary to science. Yes, I get it, RFK dropped out of the Presidential race and endorsed Donald Trump, but is there more to it than that? I think the answer is yes. To understand why Donald Trump would support a nominee so unqualified, it is worth asking ourselves why scientists like Anthony Fauci, who have devoted their long careers to deploying science in the service of better health, have been made a villain by Donald Trump. Because the answer lies in the mirror image of the two. Why promote RFK, Jr., the vaccine charlatan, and at the same time vilify Anthony Fauci, the vaccine champion? I will say this: Of all the attacks on our institutions during the first 4 years of Donald Trump, nothing was more corrosive to our democracy than his relentless assault on the truth because nothing is more useful to a demagogue than to destroy the very idea of truth. If nothing is to be believed, then nothing is to be believed. If there is not some shared experience to draw upon, then what is left to decide who should govern but political tribe or violence and one-man rule? This is why the demagogue always attacks a free press and calls it fake. He must cause the public not to believe its lying eyes. A vicious mob attacks the Capitol; the would-be despot calls them tourists. The mob attacks police and beats them; the would-be despot calls them political prisoners. He fires inspectors general whose job it is to root out corruption and says it is to fight corruption. He wants to dismantle the Agency that protects consumers; he says that it is to protect consumers. He wants to plunder the Treasury to make his rich friends richer and shower them with tax cuts, and he says he is saving the Treasury by emptying it. But why the attack on science? What has science to do with a despot's need to attack the truth? Well, what is the scientific inquiry but a search for fact and truth? And what is the scientist but the symbol of a search for fact and truth? Want to attack the truth? You must attack the truth tellers. You must attack science itself. Out with the Faucis and in with the charlatans. But the truth cannot be made to disappear so easily. I remember who saved our country during its most deadly pandemic in 100 years, and it wasn't the charlatans. It was the scientists and the healthcare workers and the essential workers. We saw true heroes during that pandemic. I remember the images clear as day--first responders without the necessary PPE rushing into homes where infected individuals were afraid and alone; nurses and EMTs working back-to-back shifts and watching their friends, neighbors, and communities torn apart inside and out by this horrible disease. We got out of that pandemic in significant part because of the vaccine and the brave healthcare providers who administered it and other lifesaving care, not despite it. While Mr. Kennedy postures as a skeptic, while he frames himself as a crusader against corruption, his organization did nothing to help us through that deadly pandemic, and, in fact, he has profited handsomely from the fear that organization sows. In 2020 alone, Children's Health Defense saw its revenue double, raking in millions as the pandemic worsened. Mr. Kennedy built himself a lucrative career not by exposing anti-science falsehoods but by spreading them, by cultivating them, and profiting from them. This is opportunism of the most grotesque kind. This is grift masquerading as principle. And now, we are being asked to entrust the health of 330 million Americans to this man? I have to ask because it demands to be asked: What exactly is the vision here? What kind of Health and Human Services Secretary does the Trump administration believe they are appointing? I think they know, and I think they know they have their man in RFK, Jr., because if your goal is to dismantle public health, if your goal is to dismantle the truth, if you want a Secretary who will tell people to ignore doctors and trust whatever random YouTube video they last saw, then, yes, this is your guy. If you want a Secretary who won't say no even if the falsehoods cost lives, like advocating bleach or horse dewormer to cure COVID, this is your guy. If you want a Secretary who has no will, desire, or guts to stand up to Elon Musk or Donald Trump, who craves nothing more than the attention that a high office will bring, then this--this is most definitely your guy. If your goal is to make sure that Medicaid--the single largest source of health insurance in this country--becomes nothing more than a cautionary tale at the behest of RFK, Jr., and Dr. Oz; if you want millions of people to lose coverage; if you want seniors to see their Medicare protections gutted, then by all means, let's give Mr. Kennedy the job. While they are gutting healthcare, while they are stripping away protections, while they are making measles great again, they want to hand out tax cuts to billionaires like party favors. Trillions of dollars taken out of our healthcare system and handed over to the wealthiest among us. Trillions of dollars to people who already have more than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. But that child in Medicare or Medicaid who needs insulin, that senior on Medicare who has a heart condition--no, we are told there is just not enough in the budget for them. Well, I reject the cynical notion that government exists only to serve the powerful. I reject the idea that expertise is optional, that science is negotiable, and that the well-being of the American people is just another chip to be bargained away. I reject it, and I know I am not the only one. I do not believe in a government that exists only to protect the powerful, I do not believe that we are at our best when we are most indifferent, and I do not believe that the American experiment was meant to end with a nation that surrenders its own future to cynics and con men. So let me tell you what I do believe. I believe in the doctor pulling a double shift in the community hospital, exhausted but unwavering, because she took an oath to heal. I believe in the mother who walks her child into a free clinic and breathes easier knowing that today, at least, her son's asthma will be treated and he will breathe easier. I believe in the scientist who spends a lifetime working in obscurity so that one day no child has to suffer such a terrible and specific disease again. I believe in a government that does not mock these people, that does not sabotage them, that does not sell them out for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many. And I believe we need the best and brightest to shepherd our healthcare system, our resources, to maximize every dollar in search of every cure. RFK is not the best or the brightest. He will not bring back Camelot or make America healthy again, but his ignorance of science just might make people sick again, might deprive them of a treatment they need again, might cause hospitals to close again, might discourage young people from entering the sciences again. He just might. We must not confirm a man who so willingly endeavors to be the enemy of the truth when it comes to our health. We need to vote like our lives depend on it because, for a great many Americans, it will. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, after Tulsi Gabbard was selected as Donald Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence, the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda was overjoyed. They wrote: ``The CIA and FBI are trembling.'' Sadly, the Russian newspaper is probably right about that. Another Russian state outlet called her a ``Comrade.'' On a separate broadcast, top Putin mouthpiece Vladimir Solovyov, after gushing about Kash Patel, said: ``And what about our girl? We have our girl there.'' ``Our girl'' is evidently the Kremlin's way of referring to our nominee Tulsi Gabbard. His guest asked, so as to be sure, ``Intelligence?'' The answer was yes. RT, yet another Russian outlet that Ms. Gabbard ``regularly read and shared articles from,'' took to Twitter to defend her: ``We've got your back, Tulsi.'' Yes, they certainly do. In September, it was revealed that RT was acting covertly on behalf of Moscow to spread propaganda in the United States. It is not a surprise that RT has Tulsi Gabbard's back. The question is, Should we? The Director of National Intelligence is the nerve center of our Nation's intelligence network. It is the linchpin between 18 Agencies tasked with detecting and preventing threats to our national security and coordinating our intelligence resources. It is a job that requires judgment. It requires experience. It requires a high degree of trust. Above all, it requires a deep and unwavering commitment to the truth and a willingness to stand up to despots. Yet the nominee before us is stunningly lacking in all of these qualities. Ms. Gabbard's record in Congress is not one of distinction in intelligence matters. She did not serve on the Intelligence Committee in the House and was not known for advancing meaningful legislation on intelligence in this space. When she did sign on to legislation, it was to eliminate critically important intelligence programs or it was to praise those who leaked classified information and did great damage to our Nation, like Edward Snowden. She did not wrestle with the complexities of the intelligence- gathering analysis process. In fact, in the moments when her voice was heard on matters of foreign policy, it was in ways that should concern all of us. She has echoed, amplified, and at times outright defended the positions of autocrats and despots. When now-deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people, she cast doubt on the findings of our own intelligence Agencies--cast doubt on them just like the Russian propaganda outlets did--this, after she engaged in her own form of freelance foreign policy, traveling to Syria to meet with Assad and get the full scoop on his government's narrative of that murderous crusade. On her return, she positively crowed about how lovely this dictator was. ``He wants to be seen as someone who cares for his country.'' Well, maybe if he wanted to be seen as someone who cares for his country, he shouldn't have gassed his own people. ``He wants to be seen as someone who would not conduct these kinds of atrocities,'' Tulsi Gabbard said--except that he did. He did commit these kinds of atrocities. When Vladimir Putin launched his brutal war against our ally Ukraine, she once again parroted Kremlin talking points about so-called ``provocations'' by NATO. She repeated Russian propaganda claims that the United States had set up secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine and argued that the United States, not Russia, is responsible for Putin's nuclear brinksmanship. This is the nominee for our intelligence Agencies--not the Kremlin's; this is our nominee, Tulsi Gabbard. This is who this President seeks to hand over the keys to our national security; to entrust her with the Nation's most closely held secrets; to be the final voice in the room advising the President on intelligence; to be, in the plain words of the law, ``the principal adviser to the President, to the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to the national security''--this, Tulsi Gabbard. This nomination is not just unwise, it is dangerous. Make no mistake, Ms. Gabbard is entitled to her own personal opinions. She can apologize for Assad or Putin or any other murderous dictator to her heart's content. But we are not considering Ms. Gabbard for some position in which her bizarre fondness for foreign despots is beside the point. She is not the nominee for Postmaster General. We are considering her for one of the most important jobs in our intelligence community. For that, Tulsi Gabbard is a walking five-alarm fire and must be rejected--must be. There is a reason the Director of National Intelligence must have the confidence of both the intelligence professionals that they oversee and the national security establishment--because the job requires accountability; it requires trust; it requires truthfulness. In 2015, Ms. Gabbard joined a congressional delegation trip to the Middle East, the kind that so many of us in this Chamber have participated in. She visited a Turkish town near the Syrian border where countless refugees were sheltering. Her guide took Ms. Gabbard to meet two Syrian girls, age just 9 and 4 years old, who had been badly burned in a bombing carried out by the Syrian dictator's warplanes. The children's parents had been killed in that attack. These brave, small children told their story to the then-Congresswoman. In this situation, I think any of us would have roughly the same response: some form of sympathy, some form of empathy, some attempt to provide comfort to these children who saw their lives and their families destroyed in front of them. But Ms. Gabbard had a very different response. By the account of the guide who was with her, she looked at the children and said: ``How do you know if it was Assad? What if it was ISIS?'' I should note that ISIS, of course, has no air force. But, of course, that wasn't really the point, was it? The point was perhaps best illustrated by her guide who was with her that day and who said of that experience--those days with Ms. Gabbard--he said: ``It dawned on me that Tulsi wasn't misinformed or ignorant.'' He said he worried instead that she ``had a worldview that was adversarial to the United States''--``adversarial to the United States.'' Think about that: ``adversarial to the United States.'' And consider whether this is the right person to be the Director of National Intelligence. Where do we draw the line with Donald Trump? What level of unfitness in a nominee? What level of unconstitutionality in an Executive action? What level of abject disregard of our judicial system? What national security threat or risk will it take? What action could he commit where we would be joined by our Republican colleagues in saying we have had enough? Where is the line? When is an action too egregious or an appointment too absurd, a risk or threat that is too big? Where is the line? Is it disobeying a lawful court order, which this administration seems to be laying the groundwork to do? Is it confirming a patently unqualified FBI Director who wants to close down FBI headquarters and makes music with felons who beat law enforcement? Is it a Director of HHS who doesn't believe in vaccines or a Director of National Intelligence who has sought to undermine vital intelligence operations and whom the Russians and others viewed as aligned with them instead of with us? Where is the line? Because, for me, that line has been crossed a long, long time ago. I cannot--I will not--support this nomination, and I urge my colleagues to think long and hard before they do because if Ms. Gabbard is confirmed, we will not need the luxury of hindsight. We already have the luxury of hindsight. The threats to our Nation are real. Those who wish us harm are busy plotting against us. There are plots to conduct attacks on U.S. soil. There are intelligence warnings about China's intentions to replace U.S. influence around the world and about Russia's relentless assault against our friends and allies. At a moment when the world is watching, when our allies and our adversaries are questioning America's stability and leadership on the global stage, we cannot afford to confirm a Director of National Intelligence who lacks the qualifications, the judgment, and the credibility to lead. We cannot. Remember that Russian broadcaster I mentioned earlier, Vladimir Solovyov? Here is some of the rest of that exchange with the guest on his show: ``Well with Tulsi Gabbard it's not that simple,'' the guest replied. ``It might not work because . . . what if it's not approved?'' The Russians are worried that Tulsi Gabbard might not be approved by this body. That should tell us something. People, please, do we need the Kremlin to spell it out for us, what they are hoping and, if they prayed, would be praying for us to do? Solovyov seemingly answered that question for us live on Russian TV: ``Why are you suddenly so doubtful?'' he asked his guest. Solovyov seemed nervous about the chances for confirmation of the woman he described as ``our girl,'' Tulsi Gabbard. Perhaps he fears that Congress has more common sense than to confirm someone who prefers Russia's worldview over matters like Ukraine's sovereignty to our own national security professionals. But do we? Do we possess that basic common sense? For the sake of our country, for the sake of our Nation's most sensitive classified information, and for the sake of the workforce that keeps us safe, I hope and pray that we do, that we possess the common sense to vote down Tulsi Gabbard. We will soon find out. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, it is getting late, too late for some of the people we serve to even be awake--though I imagine many are. Not by choice, a mother in the Central Valley is awake, staring at her kitchen table, trying to work out where her sick child can receive the medical care that child needs now that a Federal grant supporting the only rural healthcare center in her community is in limbo. A Federal employee is awake trying to figure out how they will make the rent next month if they are laid off. Maybe they spent a few decades serving this country overseas and were just called back home. Now what? People around the world are awake watching humanitarian help that means their next meal or safe harbor from disease has disappeared, wondering why, in their time of most need, their longtime ally has decided to abandon them, because the Trump administration has turned their lives, turned so many of our lives, into a series of question marks, because this President and his cronies like Elon Musk and Russ Vought are putting politics and profits over people's lives, over people's livelihoods, over lives. They are creating chaos, and then, somehow, worst of all, they are gloating about it. Imagine gloating about acts so callous. ``Chaos'' seems to be the watchword of this administration, but the chaos is not a consequence of this. The chaos is the goal. The chaos is the purpose. By throwing everything at the wall, they can create confusion. They hope to muddy the waters while opening the floodgates: unconstitutional Executive orders, illegal memos, illegally accessing private citizens' data. The scope and the speed of these actions are almost impossible to comprehend, and the impact is incalculable. This is all part of a larger effort to consolidate power, every possible power, in the control of one man--well, maybe two men--so they can plunder the country to benefit themselves and their billionaire buddies. What is this all about, what we have witnessed in the first couple weeks of this administration? What do these disparate acts have in common? What is the through line? What is it that the seizure of data belonging to millions and millions of Americans by Elon Musk--what does that have in common with the efforts to shutter American development assistance around the world through USAID? What does that have in common with efforts to fire top prosecutors at the Justice Department and purge FBI agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation? What does this have in common, too, with pardoning violent criminals who attacked this building? What does it have in common with a funding freeze and then a memorandum to implement the funding freeze and then the repeal of the memorandum and all the confusion that has caused? What does the mass deportation order have in common with all of this? What is the story of what they are doing here? How does this all fit together? It fits together in this way: This is an effort to try to consolidate power--all of the power of this government--in the hands of Donald Trump and a few of his handpicked, very wealthy, billionaire friends. It is designed to consolidate that power to essentially take the resources of this country and enrich themselves and their friends--an effort to enrich themselves which would not be possible, will not be possible, if our system of checks and balances work. But if they can somehow take apart these institutions; if they can somehow persuade or demand or cow the people in this institution and the House of Representatives and the courts and the Supreme Court; if they can prevent us from playing our institutional role as a check and balance, then what is left between them and the Treasury? Nothing. Nothing. So this is the goal: Discredit the government, dismember the government, dismember checks and balances so they can raid the till. Make government purposefully dysfunctional, discredit every institution so that all that is left is the power of the strongman, and the wealth of this country can be stripped away. Checks and balances be damned. Congressional authority be damned. The President wants to steamroll all of that, and at the moment, it appears he is succeeding. But Donald Trump can't do this on his own. He needs enablers--enablers to subvert our laws, enablers to divert congressionally approved funds. Sure, everyone knows Elon Musk, but it is not just Elon Musk. And today, we consider the nomination of the system's engineer to lead the Office of Management and Budget--probably the most important Agency no one has heard of. That engineer, that architect of this effort to strip the country of its resources so they can be plundered by the President and his wealthy friends; the architect, the engineer of this, the one who will make the trains run on time, the guy that stops the train to allow the highway robbery of that train, is a man named Russ Vought. We all recall Project 2025. Project 2025--Russ Vought helped to write it. That funding freeze? Vought helped orchestrate the plan for it. And the slew of outrageous, dangerous actions taken by this administration over the past several weeks were in many ways a direct result of Vought and his plan to dismantle and destroy the government in the service of Donald Trump and his wealthy friends. One analysis found that two-thirds of the Executive orders that Trump has signed come from--that is right--Project 2025. Russ Vought doesn't believe in government except as a vehicle to take from the poor and take from the middle class and give to the wealthy people, who should be running everything. He doesn't believe in the simple idea that we the people compose our institutions; we the people are the government--a government that is supposed to be for the people, not for a handful of very wealthy people. No, Russ Vought believes in dismantling that government of the people piece by piece, brick by brick, until what remains is a hollowed-out bureaucracy that serves the interests of the wealthy and abandons everyone else, to make it so small they can drown it in a bathtub, because that is what this is all about. This is all about taking the Nation's resources for themselves. It is about using the infrastructure, the architecture of the government to enrich themselves. This is about plunder. That is what they are trying to do. The last few weeks are not incompetence. It isn't mismanagement, although there is plenty of that. No. This is a deliberate effort to break the Federal Government so completely that people lose faith in its ability to function at all. When people lose faith in the government of the people, when they stop believing it is for the people, that is when the real damage begins. That is when they can dismantle the safety net program by program. That is when they can make the people beholden to the strongman. That is when Federal workers-- scientists, economists, social workers, public health experts--are replaced by unqualified ideologues or driven out entirely. Turn the Federal workforce--or what is left of it--into an arm of the President, beholden only to the President. No more oath to the Constitution but an oath to the person of the President, a loyalty oath demanded of our Federal employees. That is when the next disaster--whether it is a pandemic, a financial collapse, or a natural disaster--becomes unmanageable, because the very institutions designed to respond have been gutted, because that is their end goal--not just to shrink the government of the people but to sabotage it, to make it dysfunctional, to make it ineffective, to paralyze it, and then to turn around and say ``Hey, see, it doesn't work. The government of the people doesn't work'' because of course they don't want it to work except to the degree that it can be used to take the resources of the American people and give them to their wealthy friends and to large corporations, to distribute every possible dime amongst the privileged few and not working families. This is why they are elevating Russ Vought, because when you need someone to dismantle the very machinery of governance, to turn the government of the people into an engine of destruction rather than an agency of stewardship, Russ Vought is your guy. And now he has a second chance--a second chance to make sure that when that mother in the Central Valley reaches for help, there is nothing there. We are seeing, of course, Head Starts around the country--the Head Start Program--wonder whether they are going to be able to open their doors the next day, wondering what is going to happen to--if they are supported. Of course, all the parents that have their kids in Head Start are wondering what the future holds for their kids. But the view of this administration is, hey, that Head Start is getting valuable money they would rather give to themselves and to their wealthy friends. If it means the sacrifice of those kids in the Head Start, well, that is just the price you have to pay for oligarchy. Russ Vought is your guy. A second chance--he has a second chance now to turn Social Security and Medicare into bargaining chips in a political game that none of us have agreed to play, keeping seniors up at night worrying whether a Social Security check might not make it to them after all. He has a second chance to rewrite the rules in a way that ensures that the wealthy and well connected are taken care of while everyone else is left behind. We should be clear about what this nomination represents. Russ Vought wants to oversee the erosion of the very services that millions of Americans rely on every day--every single day; to lead the charge to remake the United States into a country where people are left to fend for themselves, where the government doesn't work because they don't mean it to. They don't want it to. They don't want a government of the people or a government by the people or government for the people; they want a government of them, they want a government by them, and they want a government for them. But let's be very clear. It does not have to be this way. We can reject this vision. We can reject this nominee. We can reject the idea that our government exists only to serve the powerful or to punish the vulnerable. And we will reject it because if we do nothing, if we simply sit back and let Russ Vought take the reins of OMB once again, then we will be complicit in the destruction that follows. So let's take a closer look at the last few weeks. Let's take a closer look at Donald Trump and Elon Musk's hostile takeover of the Federal Government and the targeting of our institutions one after another, over and over again. Let's take a closer look at this effort to gut critical programs to pay for their enormous tax breaks and what that means for all of us. Let's start with access to your personal data. As of today, Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire--I think maybe the wealthiest man in the world--with a vested financial interest in this administration's success--you would think that being the wealthiest man in the world or one of the top wealthiest people in the world would be enough, but no. He has a vested interest in the administration's success and billions in government contracts--because apparently the billions he has already are not enough. He has deployed a team of loyalists who infiltrate government Agencies to help with the plunder of the public fisc. So let's think about that for a moment. Let's try to take this in. The world's richest man has brought in his loyalists--some of them apparently just teenagers--to breach Federal Departments to access sensitive data, classified information, and who knows what. Are we supposed to think that is OK? Are we supposed to pretend this is normal, to have the wealthiest man in the world run roughshod over private data, over our Agencies? Are we supposed to act like this is anything other than what it is--a blatant and unconstitutional grab of power and our personal data, a takeover of government by a billionaire who has decided that the rules and laws don't apply to him and our national security doesn't matter? But why? Why go to these lengths? Again, we have to follow the money. Trump's 2017 billionaire tax cuts--the ones that handed corporations and the ultrawealthy an unfathomable windfall while exploding the deficit--are set to expire this year, and Elon Musk and his buddies want to keep these tax cuts in place. If they are going to do that, then Donald Trump and Elon Musk--Donald and Elon--have to find $4 trillion somewhere. So where do they look? Not to the billionaires who profited from these tax cuts, not to the corporations that benefited the most--no. They are going to go after money where the cuts will hurt the most. They are going to go after what they consider low-hanging fruit. After all, what is the power of the poor, what is the power of even the middle class compared to the power of the oligarchs? They are going to go after where the money is easiest to grab. So they are going to go after Medicaid. They are going to go after Medicaid. After all, it is just seniors or folks who are disabled or folks who are working class or struggling to get by and reliant on it for their healthcare. What is that weighed against more money for Elon Musk and his friends? What is that in the balance with Donald Trump and his desire to enrich himself? There was a press conference about a week and a half ago. It kind of got lost in the blizzard of everything happening. But I found it very striking at this press conference. The President was asked by a reporter whether he was going to stop trading in his own personal interests and his meme coin. What followed was this discussion between the President and this reporter while the cameras were rolling where the reporter says: You are making a lot of money. And the President asked: How much money am I making from this meme coin? Well, a lot. I don't know what the exact language of this dialogue was, but it was blatant. It was so out in the open. I mean, it takes your breath away. I remember, because it seems quaint, the beginning of the first Trump administration, when you remember he had that press conference and he was talking about how he was--I don't know--going to make sure that his business interests were somehow separated from his interest as President or the country's interest. And he had those stacks of--I don't know--binders or white paper. I don't think anybody knew what was in those stacks of paper or whether it was blank paper. But at least there was a superficial effort to suggest that he was going to have some walling off of his personal financial interests. Of course, what we saw of those 4 years was there was none of that walling off. There were Gulf nations that were essentially paying tribute by staying in his hotels and all kinds of other graft going on. But now, there is no effort to even hide the profit-taking with this meme coin or the distribution from his social media platform to people like Kash Patel. I mean, the grift is out there right in the open. But that is really still small potatoes compared to the ability to raid the Treasury, compared to the ability to take all the money that goes into providing healthcare for sick people and Medicaid and using that to enrich yourself. Now, that is where the money is. Part of what they are targeting is also USAID, and they are targeting Federal workers. They want Federal workers to resign. They sent Federal workers a letter that says, basically: Hey, you can reply to this message and say you quit and have basically a paid vacation until September. Of course, there is no money to pay for that. It is unlawful what they are offering. But if people respond to that message, then they are on a list. Why do Elon Musk and Donald Trump want all these Federal workers to quit? That is more money for them. That is more money for those tax cuts. They have to find those trillions somewhere. Let's see if we can push people who work for the government out the door. Education of our kids--let's close down the Department of Education. OK, comparatively, you look at the Department of Education and you look at the Department of Defense. There is not a whole lot of money already in the Department of Education, but, hey, if it helps to pay for one more of those tax cuts, let's do away with the Department of Education. Essential public services. OK, Federal grants for firefighters or firefighting equipment--what is that in the scale of things when we are talking about another tax cut for very wealthy folks? Take it from those who need it to fund giveaways for those who need it least. It is kind of your reverse Robin Hood. And who is leading the charge? A billionaire with billions in government contracts who stands to benefit financially if this administration stays in power and these cuts go through. That is what is happening. That is what they are trying to do. That is what this is about. This is about consolidating power, doing away with the checks and the balances, consolidating power so that you can raid the Treasury. If we saw it during the financial collapse, banks that were too big to fail, this is a caper too big to stop--but only if we don't do our jobs in this building. Strip government to the bone, funnel money to people who already have more than they could ever spend--how many lifetimes would it take to spend all those billions--and use the Federal Government as an instrument of personal gain, without accountability and without justice. And, tragically, one of the things that makes this whole caper so possible now was something that took place in the building just across the street from here, when the Supreme Court of the United States said to the President of the United States: You can commit criminal acts while you are President and they can't touch you. If you use the Justice Department, you have absolute immunity. If you use other Departments, your immunity is so strong, you can argue the presumption is pretty much irrebuttable. They gave the President immunity to commit crimes. His pardoning of all these violent criminals that attacked this building is a message that says: Hey, can't hold the President accountable--not anymore, not after this Supreme Court gave him that ``get out of jail free'' card. You do things for me that are unlawful; you do things for me that are unethical--I have your back. There is a pardon waiting for you at the end of all this. Let's turn to USAID. What is the deal with USAID? USAID has been kind of a favorite issue Agency--idea, theme--that conservatives have loved to attack for a long time. And why? Because I think, reflexively, the idea of providing assistance around the world isn't the highest priority for many people. I totally get that. Of course, what we don't realize, unless we dig into what that money goes for, is a couple of things. One, the money we invest in development around the world ultimately helps the United States a great deal. If we are looking at this just from a fairly selfish point of view, the money we invest in USAID helps us a great deal. Why is that? Well, if there are diseases halfway around the world like Ebola, like other potential dangers to the United States if they were to get to our shores, if we can work with our friends overseas and we can stop these viruses where they are, it means we don't have to deal with them here. If we can stop the instability in places around the world, it means less fertile soil for terrorism and terrorists who might attack us here. It improves our security. It improves our health. It wins friends for the United States around the world. Now, I realize the administration has an America-first policy, which I think the way they are executing it means everyone else last. Of course, not a policy ``everyone else last'' that is doubly endearing to your allies, but this administration doesn't seem to think we need any friends around the world. But even as we, through this administration, decide, well, we are done with development around the world, guess who stands to benefit. Certainly not the people around the world, not the people fighting HIV/ AIDS, not the people fighting malaria, not the people fighting poverty, not the people fighting starvation. No, our adversaries benefit. Probably the biggest beneficiary is China. Why does China benefit from our abandoning the field? Because it opens the field for China. China is already around the world investing in other countries and doing so with strings attached. It is making debtor nations of other countries. It is making them obligated to China--countries that are rich in rare minerals. It is giving China the foothold or, even more explicitly, giving China military bases and naval bases. And they are using development systems to leverage other countries. These other countries, so many of them will tell us: We don't want to work with China. They are not doing this for altruistic reasons. We know what China is all about. But if America is going to abandon the field, if we have no choice but to seek friends elsewhere, we will do what is necessary to feed our people. We will go to where we need to go to get help when we confront disease. And if America abandons the field, we will go to China. China is winning so much in these last 2 weeks, it is getting tired of winning. Just today, we learned that, apparently, some list, according to public reports, of officers at the CIA was sent to the White House in an unclassified email. Now, I remember a time that seems very quaint, when Donald Trump was always talking about Hillary's emails. What about this email that potentially exposes the identity of people who are working at the CIA, who want to work at the CIA, and according to public reports, the administration response is: Don't worry. That unclassified email only contained their first name and the first initial of their last name. Well, I am sure that China, with all of its big data analytics will have no trouble with that at all. With an answer like that, the administration may think they can pull the wool over our eyes, but they can't. What is more, they cannot pull the wool over the prying eyes of our competitors, our adversaries around the world. So USAID. First of all, let's start with a rather mundane point, it would appear, in this administration. What they are doing is illegal. I guess if you have absolute immunity, you don't worry about those things. But we in this body should worry about that. We should worry about whether the President and some wealthy billionaire are violating the law. We are in the business of making laws. We used to cherish our institutional prerogative. We used to think it was valuable in the scheme of things. We used to believe the Founders were quite brilliant in how they established each institution as a check on the other so none would have absolute power. But here we are faced with something which I think we have to acknowledge is plainly unlawful, and not a peep--not a peep--about that by those who could most strongly resist this. It is harder for us in the minority. We don't control anything in the Senate. We don't control anything in the House. If this administration succeeds in neutering the Congress of the United States, there is little we in the minority alone can do without the help of others who cherish this institution. We just cannot do that alone. We will do all that we can. We are here all night. We will be here as many nights as it takes. We will raise public awareness of this unlawful scheme. We will use litigation, and we are. We will use every tool at our disposal. But it shouldn't be just us. It shouldn't be just us. I think a lot of Americans are wondering now whether the Constitution is so brilliant after all, whether it is adequate to meet this moment-- a moment that our Founders really anticipated when we would have a demagogue who would ride the whirlwind of the confusion that he sows. Well, I think it is a brilliant Constitution. I think it is the best in the world, but it is not self-effectuating; it depends on all of us. To work, it depends on all of us. The genius of the Constitution is not that we are today where we are, where we have a Supreme Court that said the President is above the law; where we have a President acting like he is above the law; where we have the administration bringing in unelected billionaires to take data and who knows what else; where we have terrible national security breaches and not a murmur of dissent about them. The genius of the Constitution is not that this is happening but that it was forestalled until now; that we have gone through these more than two centuries without confronting this. But this is where we are, and this will be the real test of our Constitution--what it will mean in this moment when the President and a wealthy billionaire--the world's richest man--are engaged in things that are plainly unlawful. Doing away with an Agency like USAID is plainly unlawful. Even if you don't care about what USAID does, even if you are content to let China take over development around the world and win over friends and mineral rights and turn our allies into debtor nations, even if you are OK ceding global leadership to China--which I am most certainly not--the moment you say it is OK for them to violate the law--to shut down this one Agency--you have said it is OK for them to violate the law and shut down anything--anything. If they can do this with USAID, they can do this with the Department of Ed. If they can do it with the Department of Ed, they can do it with Head Start. If they can do it with Head Start, they can do it with Medicaid. If they can do it with Medicaid, they can do it with Social Security. They can do anything. The USAID was established by the U.S. Congress. It cannot and should not be eliminated on the whims of a President or his unelected billionaire friend. Shutting down USAID or pausing its work will have devastating global and potentially irreversible consequences, but the biggest consequence will be to us. It is the world's largest provider of humanitarian aid, and through it, the United States saves countless lives every year. I have to say, as I have had the opportunity as chair of the Intelligence Committee, and even prior to that position in the House, to travel to some of the most dangerous parts of the world--to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, to Yemen--you name it--I have met these USAID employees, the ones who just got this order: You need to get on a plane and come back. You are on leave whether you like it or not. I have met these folks. They are so patriotic and passionate about their work and such dedicated public servants. I remember being in Afghanistan fairly early in the war, and I met this young man with USAID. He looked to me to be in his early twenties. His deployment was for 1 year in Afghanistan. He had only been there for a few months. These folks were operating without much of a safety net, and in order to be effective, they needed to be out in the villages. They couldn't just stay on their base. They had to be out, exposed. This USAID worker--this young man--had been there only for a few months of a 1-year deployment, and he told me he had already signed up for his second year. I remember saying: Wow, that is pretty impressive. You like it here? You like your work that much where you have only been here for a few months and you have already decided you are going to re-up for another year? And he said: No. It is not that. We are in the development business. You really can't see the fruits of your labor in a single year. I want to be here long enough where I can see the results of the projects that I am working on, where I can see them come to fruition. This was the kind of public servant who populates USAID all over the world. This is the kind of public servant--I don't know if this young man is still with the USAID, but if he is--wherever he is in whatever part of the world where he is doing God's work--he just got an email saying: You are on involuntary leave. Thank you for nothing. Don't let the door hit you on the backside on the way out. Sincerely, Uncle Sam. What a hell of a way to treat people. These folks at USAID are stopping diseases from spreading. They are helping to feed communities that are starving. They are showing the United States cares about people around the world; that it cares about others; that the most powerful Nation in the world hasn't forgotten about the most powerless communities in the world. USAID represents decades of soft power that the United States has built. It has shown allies in developing nations that we stand by them in crises; building partnerships that last; protecting our national security. I remember visiting Pakistan. Now, Pakistan probably doesn't have a lot of great things to say about the United States much of the time, which I think and I recognize is frustrating--when you are trying to help and it doesn't seem like anything you do is enough. I get that. I totally get that. But I remember when an earthquake struck northwest Pakistan, and American helicopters were helicoptering in relief, and a toy became very popular in Pakistan. It was a replica of an American helicopter because we suddenly became associated with helping people in their time of need. It was probably the single most valuable diplomacy we had done in years. I guess we are not going to do that anymore. All of that--all of that effort--to show that the United States is concerned about the well-being not just of ourselves but of others all over the world--all of that is at risk. Well, there are champagne bottles being popped right now in Beijing--and probably quite a few in Moscow--at the idea tonight that we are abandoning the field and that we are poised to confirm the architect of that abandonment--an otherwise obscure man named Russ Vought. Alliances and decades of work are going out the window. Russia's and China's influence are on the rise. And for what? USAID represents less than 1 percent of the Federal budget, but that 1 percent gets Elon Musk and Donald Trump closer to the $4 trillion hole they need to fill to give another tax cut to the wealthy; so it is on the chopping block, plain and simple. Let's look at some of the other events of the last couple of weeks and put them in perspective. Let's look at the firing of these top Department of Justice officials. Within hours of Donald Trump's order, the Justice Department fired more than a dozen prosecutors--many career public servants--who had worked on criminal cases involving the people who attacked this building or maybe they worked on criminal cases involving the one who incited the attack on this building. They weren't removed for incompetence, and they weren't removed for corruption. They were removed because they did their jobs patriotically. They were removed because they had the audacity to try to hold a powerful man accountable. The official justification for their firing was that these prosecutors--many of whom had worked under Special Counsel Jack Smith-- could not be trusted to implement Trump's agenda. Let's think about that. A President of the United States who spent years railing against the so-called weaponization of the government, which is the expression he would use for holding him accountable for law-breaking--that President who railed against the Department for weaponizing government has now purged his own Justice Department of the very people who investigated his many crimes. This purge was a product of the White House. The order came from Donald Trump himself. The firings were executed by his appointed allies in the Justice Department. When it was done, his administration made the end game clear: The Justice Department no longer represents the American people. It no longer enforces the law. It enforces Donald Trump's will. This is not a Department that can be counted on anymore to investigate corruption but to defend Donald Trump. It is a Justice Department that doesn't prosecute certain criminals. It protects them as long as they serve the President's interests or are the President himself. This is the new normal in Donald Trump's second term--a government that exists not as a check on his power but as an extension of it. The message was unmistakable to prosecutors, to judges, and to anyone working in law enforcement who still believes in the rule of law or an idea now which seems quaint--that no one is above the law. Do your job. Protect the person of the President, not the people of the country or you and your job may be next because, in Trump's America, there is only loyalty--not to Constitution, not to country, but to the person of the President. Now with the firings complete, the vacancies will be filled not with independent prosecutors but with loyalists; with lawyers who will spend the next 4 years reshaping the very foundation of the Justice Department, ensuring that the next time Donald Trump or anyone like him breaks the law, there won't be anyone left to prosecute. They will be there to go after Trump's enemies whether they are real or just perceived. We are not inevitably headed toward authoritarianism or one-man rule, but firing these top prosecutors takes us one step closer. If we don't stop it now, if we don't draw a line here, there will be little justice left in the Department to save. I spent almost 6 years with that Department. I was an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles--one of the best jobs I ever had. I worked with a cadre of prosecutors who was just top notch, some of the brightest lawyers in Los Angeles. They gravitated to that office. They were some of the most capable and idealistic young lawyers who wanted to do justice. The office was completely apolitical. I had no idea whether my fellow prosecutors were Democrats or Republicans. And, yes, when U.S. attorneys changed and Presidents changed, there might be different priorities in the office, but they were broad policy priorities. There might be more of an emphasis on drug cases or there might be more of an emphasis on white-collar crime cases, but it was a difference of policy; it was never about the politics of vengeance or retribution. No one in that office had any misunderstanding or misapprehension of what their role was, and their role was to do justice. Now, I think the Department made a mistake after this building was attacked, after our police officers were savagely beaten, after our President--this President--sat in that White House dining room and watched that violence occur, I think the Department of Justice made a mistake--not by investigating that massive crime on this building, on our police, on the peaceful transfer of power, on our democracy, but in taking so long. I think they made a mistake in focusing on the foot soldiers of that attack who broke into this building rather than those who incited it and organized it. But I understand why that mistake was made. That mistake was made because there was a desire, after the first 4 years of Donald Trump and the terrible politicization of that Department by Bill Barr, there was a desire to restore the independence of the Department. There was a reluctance to follow the evidence where it would lead. That reluctance, that desire to insulate the Department from criticism resulted in justice being delayed and ultimately justice being denied. One of the biggest culprits in that failure of the justice system was that building across the street and, indeed, the entire court system because that court system, and most particularly the High Court, understood what was happening, understood the endless delays in bringing to justice the ones who incited those attacks. They understood exactly what was happening, and they permitted it to happen. More than that, the High Court not only permitted it to happen, but by countenancing these endless delays by letting the President play rope-a-dope in the courts, they ensured that justice would be delayed so that justice might be denied. And in fact, it was denied. That was the mistake of the Department: excessive caution. And that mistake means that a court that has become a partisan court could use delay as a weapon to defeat justice, and it did. But in this Alice in Wonderland world in which we live, Donald Trump would make that desire to move the Department away from the politicization of Bill Barr, restore a reputation for independence, that laudable goal, would turn that in some Alice in Wonderland way into a weaponization of the government. Why? Because it believed that the rule of law applies to everyone, even the most powerful man in the world. So why get rid of these prosecutors? Why purge the FBI agents? Why after promising in their nominees--Pam Bondi, Kash Patel--we have learned how much we can rely on the promises, the commitments they made in their confirmation: zero. But why is this firing the FBI agents such an important piece of this whole effort by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their enablers? Because if they are going to take money from the public fisc, if they are going to enrich themselves with their meme coins, if they are going to raid the Treasury, if they are going to take people's private data, if they are going to try to illegally shut down Agencies, they don't want a Department, God forbid, to say no, that violates the law. They don't want an FBI that is going to examine anything they are doing. So stripping the Department of its independence, instilling fear in thousands and thousands of FBI agents, telling them you are just one wrong step away from being fired, this is the way to ensure that when they raid the Treasury, there is no one there to call out what they are doing. This is also part and parcel of what these pardons were all about. What role did these pardons play in this effort to bring about one-man rule and to enable that one man to raid the public fisc? So on his first day and with the stroke of a pen pardoning 1,550 people--people who violently beat law enforcement--the President wished to make something abundantly clear: If you use violence in my service, I will have your back. So people who came in through these doors and bear-sprayed police officers and beat them with flagpoles, took apart metal barricades and beat them with that, crushed them in the doors--Officer Daniel Hodges, I will never forget the images of him being crushed in that revolving door. The people who did that, they got a pardon. He pardoned the ring leaders or gave them clemency, leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, violent, unrepentant White nationalists who conspired to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power. I mean, how did we get here, where a President of the United States would pardon people for doing that? Some were convicted of seditious conspiracy, one of the most serious crimes in our legal system. Others were convicted of dragging police officers into violent crowds and of beating them, of bear-spraying them, of crushing them. We witnessed it. We were here. I was here, not on this side of the Capitol, but on the other side. I was here. I was here when they were breaking windows to get in. I was here on the House floor with one of the floor managers that day, opposing the efforts to overturn the election. I was here when the Speaker was whisked out of her chair. I was here when the Capitol Police first informed us there were rioters in the building. I was here when the Capitol Police told us that we needed to get our gas masks out. I was here when we struggled to open the damn things that were in these steel plastic pouches. I was here when those masks were deployed. It was a polyurethane bag you were supposed to pull over your head with an elastic band around your neck. I was here when the fan that circulates the air in those masks so that you don't asphyxiate, when the sound of those fans was everywhere on the House floor and in the Gallery. I was here when the Capitol Police told us that we needed to get out, that they cleared an exit route and we needed to get out. I was here when some of my Republican colleagues in the House--as I waited on the House floor, we could really hear those people banging on the doors to get in--said: You can't let them see you. One of them said: I know these people. I can talk to these people. I can talk my way through these people. You are in a whole different category. I have to say, at first, I was oddly touched by their evident concern for my safety. But my next impression was, if they hadn't been lying about the election, I wouldn't need to worry about my safety. None of us would. Donald Trump pardoning the folks who were attacking police officers that day, this wasn't about mercy. This wasn't about justice. These people hadn't made restitution or shown any--far from it. This was about power. This was about a hope to erase the crimes that they committed in his name. This was a message to his supporters that the violence and illegal acts aren't just to be tolerated; they are to be rewarded because that is what this was. This was a message--a message that if you fight for him, if you storm the Capitol, if you brutalize police officers, if you try to overthrow an election, you will be protected; you will be hailed, even. They will make choirs with you, like Kash Patel. You will be absolved because he, the President, so desperately wants to be absolved. He wants to somehow remove the stain of his impeachments, of the violent attack in his name. So what has happened to some of these criminals since they have been pardoned by Donald Trump? One of those pardoned was killed in a shootout with police in Indiana--a model citizen, I am sure. One of them was arrested four times between storming the Capitol and being pardoned by Donald Trump. Another was rearrested for unlawfully possessing a gun as a felon. That was for his 2017 conviction for a domestic violence battery by strangulation. Seems like a worthy candidate for a pardon by Donald Trump. One rioter who attacked police with bear spray and a metal whip on January 6 is now grappling with unresolved charges of soliciting a minor--a third-degree felony carrying up to 10 years in prison. Maybe he will be pardoned for that. These are the people whom Donald Trump pardoned, that he celebrated because they showed loyalty to him; and in Trump's world, nothing else matters. In order to carry out this plunder of the Treasury, to make the whole of government the vehicle for his self-enrichment and self- aggrandizement, he must have a loyal cadre willing to do even the most violent acts in his service. ``Stand back and stand by.'' So let's turn quickly to the funding freeze. How does that fit into this effort? There was a memo, as we know, to freeze all Federal funding, Federal loans, and assistance. We saw the reports, the days of chaos. We saw hospitals wondering whether they would get funding to keep their clinic doors open. We saw parents wondering whether their childcare would be available, seniors wondering whether they would have the services that they needed. And for what? Once again, this is an effort to prepare to raid the Treasury, to take the resources that belong to the American people and use them to fund a massive tax cut for those who don't need it. I represent a State that has been battered by natural disaster, so I take this very personally, this freeze on Federal funding, because my constituents need the help of FEMA. They need the help of the SBA. They need to know that as the government has been there for every other State in a natural disaster, it will be there for us. The idea of freezing that funding and inhibiting that recovery so that there can be just a bit more money for Donald Trump and Elon Musk and his allies is anathema to my constituents, and it should be unacceptable for all the rest of us. I yield the floor.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. On behalf of California fire victims counting on FEMA, I vote no.

Mr. SCHIFF

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, just over 8 years ago, Donald Trump assumed the Office of the Presidency for the first time. He began that administration with at least a few people of independence and stature, people that had enough of a respect for themselves and the rule of law that, when they were asked to do things that violated the law, their oath, or their own sense of decency, they said no or resigned--people like Defense Secretary Mattis, who wrote in his resignation letter: My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity, and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances. Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position. Treating allies with respect; being clear-eyed about malign actors; advancing an international order conducive to our national security, prosperity, and values; the solidarity of our alliances--these didn't use to be novel ideas. They didn't used to be controversial ideas. What Secretary Mattis said about an ``international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity, and values'' may also be applied to a domestic order that is respectful of our Agencies and institutions, our norms and values. Not everyone in Trump's first administration was like Secretary Mattis. Some took much longer to realize that the President's demand for loyalty to him be placed above all else was incompatible with their own oath of office. Attorney General Bill Barr, once so desperate for a job in the Trump administration that he wrote a lengthy job application castigating an investigation he knew little about, found, ultimately, that there were lines even he could not cross, like lying about the election. Others still, like Kash Patel, seemed never to find a demand by the President too taxing of their own moral code to raise an objection, but rather viewed any questionable order as a means of advancement. The question we face with the nomination of Pam Bondi is, What will she do when, inevitably, she is put to the test by a President who feels unbound by law or propriety? Her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee tells us that she will not pass the test. When asked about whether the President lost the 2020 election, she could not answer. When asked whether she would preserve evidence gathered in the January 6 investigation, she could not agree to do so. When asked about potential pardons of violent criminals who attacked police on January 6, she indignantly assured us that she would review all pardon cases on a case by case basis--a promise breached by the President so soon thereafter that her words seemed still to hang in the air. If she could not assert her independence now, before Congress, before taking office, what hope can we have that she will do so when put to the test by the President? When asked about this, too, she demurred: That is a hypothetical. But it wasn't then, and it isn't now. The President has already pardoned hundreds of violent criminals. He has already issued Executive orders that violate the law and Constitution. Would Pam Bondi have objected to the firing of inspectors general? Do any of us believe that she would? The President has issued an Executive order attempting to amend the Constitution. A Federal judge struck down this order as presenting perhaps the simplest constitutional question he had ever heard. Could we have expected Pam Bondi to defend it? Sadly, yes. The President issued an Executive order freezing and illegally impounding congressionally appropriated funds. Would she have uttered a word of protest? Certainly not. Dozens of top prosecutors have already been fired, by the Department of Justice, who did their lawful duty investigating the rioters who attacked police. Would she have resigned in protest? She has witnessed this Saturday night massacre and still wants the job. So, plainly, the answer is no. She is no Elliot Richardson. Top-ranking FBI agents have been fired. Questionnaires have gone out to identify the hundreds--perhaps thousands--of agents who were involved in the legitimate prosecution of these felons. Would she have defended these FBI agents at the risk of her own job, as one senior FBI leader has done? Of course not, and let us not pretend otherwise. Donald Trump only took the oath of office a mere 2 weeks ago--with an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, to faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, to faithfully execute the laws of this country that Congress passed and funded. Each day, it seems he has found new ways to bend and break those laws, to put in power unelected billionaires and political cronies to dismantle Agencies, take control of payment systems, and exact political retribution. One after another, each of his nominees, asked whether they would oppose such conduct, has claimed that they won't engage in hypotheticals, claimed that there was simply no way the President would take these actions, stated that what the President promised to do during the campaign simply wouldn't happen. But it is happening. It has happened. His campaign of retribution is happening. His empowering of a shadow President is happening. His dismantling of congressionally approved Departments is happening. We cannot afford an Attorney General who believes their role is to defend him rather than the American people and the democracy we have inherited from our Founders--this big, bold, brave, and improbable experiment in self-governance. We need an Attorney General with a backbone of steel, with a stature to say no, whose purpose is to enforce the laws against any lawbreaker, including the President of the United States. That person is not Pam Bondi. Senator Rufus Choate, who once walked these halls and served in this body, reminded us nearly 200 years ago that we have built no temple but the Capitol, that we consult no common oracle but the Constitution. And what does that oracle tell us? I think maybe simply this: We have been given the most brilliant Constitution ever devised to constrain the worst impulses of human nature, but even that brilliant document will not protect us if we do not inhabit positions of great responsibility with people worthy of them, with people who view our system of checks and balances not as a weakness to overcome or to overrun but as a source of strength, who view the domestic order they produce, to borrow Secretary Mattis's words from a different context, as ``most conducive to our security, prosperity and values.'' We need an Attorney General who will stand strong when the President seeks to turn this Capitol into a rubberstamp for unconstitutional and unlawful actions, when the President seeks to empower the likes of Elon Musk to ignore laws that Congress has passed and Departments that Congress has funded, when the President ignores our allies and emboldens our enemies, when the President targets those in government who did their job to investigate crimes and malfeasance and does so to exact vengeance. Vengeance. Apart from self-aggrandizement and self- enrichment, the President's only motivation--vengeance. Donald Trump is hoping that in the chaos of his Executive orders, of oligarchs marauding through the Agencies of government, of tariffs that turn on and off like a blinking light, that we will get lost and in getting lost, be lost. We must not be. His actions will get worse. They will. With a congressional majority that empowers him, with appointees that embolden him, he himself will only grow more emboldened in return. His unconscionable and unconstitutional actions will multiply, and when that happens, will Pam Bondi take up her role, her duty, as the people's lawyer or will she serve as the President's lawyer as she has done before? Will Pam Bondi say no to the President's unlawful actions? no to purges of perceived political enemies? no to investigations of career officials? because if she will not say no, if she cannot say no, it is up to us today to say no. No to this nomination. No to Pam Bondi. It is up to us. I yield the floor.