Chris Van Hollen

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of Senator Schiff's War Powers Resolution to end President Trump's illegal war against Iran. Let's begin with a simple fact. We are now over 60 days into this illegal war. The war was started on February 28. A few days later, on March 2, President Trump and his administration submitted the notice to Congress. So even if you take the date of submission, tomorrow will be the 60 days. Of course, we don't want to create incentives for any administration to delay the submission of the notice. So the clock has run. But let's just be clear. Accepting their view of the world, tomorrow will be the 60th day--60 days since President Trump, together with Prime Minister Netanyahu, started this war against Iran--a war started without congressional authorization, without articulating any clear American interest, and without telling the American people the truth about what this war would cost. This war is making Americans less safe, and we are worse off because of it. The American people know that, which is why they overwhelmingly oppose this war and they want to see us bring it to an end now. Yet here we are over 60 days later. Fourteen American soldiers have been killed, hundreds of American troops wounded, thousands of civilians in the region killed, and at least $25 billion of taxpayer money already burned. We face even more regional instability in an already volatile part of the world. And we have an administration that cannot explain what it is they are trying to achieve. They can't explain it today. They couldn't explain it the day they started the war. In fact, over the last few weeks, President Trump has repeatedly pledged that the war would be resolved ``quickly''--a promise he has made and then broken many times. In fact, you may recall, colleagues, it was over a month ago that President Trump declared that we had won. He said: ``We won.'' Well, if we won, what the hell are we doing there? And the reality is we haven't won anything. Negotiations to end it are off again. Then they are on. Then they are off. Of course, a big part of these negotiations is about reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open the day before this war started. And now, reportedly, the President is preparing for an extended blockade of Iran, prolonging a conflict that has already driven up prices daily in the United States. We just saw that average gasoline prices have reached a 4-year high in the United States. He has also kept American servicemembers deployed overseas for recordbreaking periods and expended a huge amount of munitions, creating shortages in our supplies elsewhere. So what is the plan? What is the plan? Just to pursue an open-ended blockade, costing taxpayers billions of dollars--in fact, $1 billion a day--and further jeopardizing the global economy, offering no clear path to ending the war? Sometimes, President Trump says that this war was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Well, this is the President who tore up the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, that was negotiated by President Obama, which kept Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and had probably the most intrusive inspection regime in arms control history. And last year, before President Trump started this war, his own DNI said that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon. And, of course, after the military operations, in June of last year, against Iran's nuclear program, President Trump told the country that Iran's nuclear program was ``obliterated.'' I also think it is worth reminding people what Citizen Trump said back in 2011 because it is revealing as to the President's mindset. We know that this President often engages in projection. Here is what he said, back in 2011, about then-President Obama. He said: Our President will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected--and as sure as you're sitting there--is to start a war with Iran. Citizen Trump back in 2011 about President Obama. Well, President Obama negotiated an agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. President Trump, in his first term, tore it up. But here is Donald Trump, essentially telling us what he thinks. Obviously, Donald Trump couldn't negotiate a deal with Iran, and so he started a war with Iran, exactly what he was claiming that President Obama would do, because he claimed President Obama didn't have the skills to negotiate an agreement to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. So here we are. Just to recap, the President started a war to stop what he had called an ``obliterated'' nuclear program and to reopen an international waterway that was open before he started the war. And since he started this war, along with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the justifications have been inconsistent and ever-changing, zigzagging here and there. But the results are clear, which is that President Trump has led this country into a complete strategic mess, with no end in sight, and ever- rising costs that Americans have to bear, both in tax dollars expended and in higher prices at the pump and elsewhere. And the reason for so many weeks that this administration refused to have one of their decisionmakers testify in front of Congress was because what he heard behind closed doors revealed that there was no plan and no endgame. Now, in the last 2 days, we are hearing, finally, from Secretary Hegseth, and the American people can see in plain view that they have no plan. And yet this is the Secretary of the administration that is now asking this Congress to provide a $1.5 trillion defense budget. They just want to blow the roof off of the budget. And, of course, this is a Pentagon and Defense Department that have been unable to meet an audit. So what are we going to do at this point? We have got $25 billion gone. In fact, many people think that is a lowball estimate. But the reality is that we could put that money to much better use. We could use it to help our fellow Americans. But, no, Donald Trump said: We can't do that. We don't have the resources for that because we need the resources for this war--a war he said he would never start. In fact, what he said is--and I am quoting: It's not possible for us to take care of day care, [and] Medicaid, [and] Medicare, all these individual things [because] we're fighting wars. The wars he said he would never start. Well, maybe higher gas prices don't matter much to President Trump and his billionaire buddies and the biggest billionaire Cabinet in American history by far. Maybe they don't care about higher gas prices. But, I can tell you, Americans who are going to fuel their cars at the pump, they care. They are the ones bearing the burden here in America of this illegal Trump war. And we also know that we are burning through our munitions at a very rapid rate, munitions that should have been reserved for real national emergencies that we might face elsewhere in the world. We also heard something very disturbing again from Secretary Hegseth, when he testified in the House yesterday, which is his utter contempt-- his utter contempt--for the guardrails we put in place to prevent civilian harm in war. That is why I led nearly the entire Democratic caucus, a few weeks ago, in demanding answers and accountability on the U.S. airstrike that hit an elementary school in Iran, killing over 175 people, most of them children. But Secretary Hegseth, he is dismissive of all of these concerns. In fact, he said that the rules of engagement were ``stupid''--rules designed to prevent innocent people from getting killed in war. He should never have been nominated. He should never have been confirmed, and he should be relieved of duty today. And how can we trust an administration with additional funds when they so brazenly say they don't want to comply with rules designed to prevent civilian harm which, in the long run, are also designed to help protect the lives of our troops? And yet they are asking for more money and more resources, and all without any congressional authorization to go into this war. Now, I want to just say something about the War Powers Resolution here because, as I cited at the top of my remarks, we are now 60 days into this war, yesterday, or if we accept the administration's interpretation, tomorrow--60 days. Now, under the War Powers Resolution, the President doesn't have the authority to start a war and fight a war for 2 days, 3 days, 4 days-- let alone 60 days. But that is what President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu did. They started the war. The idea behind the War Powers Resolution is, if the United States faces an imminent threat that requires the President to engage in hostilities overseas, that we will have a clock to make sure that Congress, as representatives of the American people and given the power in the Constitution to declare war, has time to consider and debate. And it says you have 60 days, even if you are fighting a war that somebody else started. So we are hearing that the Trump administration--the President--may exercise the ability under the War Powers Resolution for another 30 days, on top of the 60 days. So that gives you 90 days. But here is the thing. The War Powers Resolution is very clear. That additional 30 days is not to ramp up a war. It is to ramp down a war. It is to bring American troops who are in hostility safely home. And yet here we are, around the 60th day, and President Trump, reportedly, is contemplating upping the tempo of the war, increasing strikes against Iran. That is a gross violation even of my Republican Senate colleagues' interpretation of the War Powers Act. Are they going to sit here and say nothing and do nothing while the President blatantly violates the War Powers Resolution? So far, they have been silent as he violated the constitutional requirement that only the Congress can declare war. But even if you adopt the world view that some of my Senate colleagues have expressed, the plain reading of the War Powers Resolution says: The next 30 days have to be used to wind down hostilities. Now, I understand that Secretary Hegseth, today, in the Armed Services Committee here in the Senate, said: Well, we are now in a cease-fire. So the clock was paused. It is not ticking. What a pile of nonsense. Here we have a full-on blockade, which we know is an active war, and the Secretary of Defense, who clearly just makes things up as he goes, is arguing that that somehow paused the statute. I hope my Republican Senate colleagues have the self-respect not to buy into that ridiculous interpretation of the law. But that is apparently the lie that the Secretary of Defense is trying to perpetrate as we speak. So let's be honest with the American people. We have a situation where the President, along with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, started a war against Iran. There was no imminent threat. They started it, and they did it without any congressional authorization. In fact, our colleagues here won't put forward a resolution to authorize the use of force. It would be great to see people take that kind of accountability. If you support the President's action, put forward an authorization for the use of military force--not a peep about that. But now, we have an actual statute that has already passed, the War Powers Resolution, which even the interpretation of Senate Republicans requires the President of the United States to spend the next 30 days winding down this war, not stepping up this war. So really, colleagues, you should level with the American people. We have a President who promised to keep us out of wars. We have a President who said he was going to bring down prices. He has done the exact opposite. He started wars. Prices are going up. Americans have been killed. Americans have been wounded. Thousands of civilians have been killed, thousands more wounded. And we are less safe and worse off. When you are digging a hole, stop digging. Vote for this War Powers Resolution, and let's put an end to this illegal war. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of this War Powers Resolution to make clear that the United States will not be dragged into yet another conflict, this time with Cuba--a conflict that would not serve American interests and does not have authorization from this U.S. Congress. Americans are already paying the price for President Trump's illegal war against Iran--a war that has no end in sight, a war that is making us less safe and worse off. And, of course, before the war in Iran, we saw Trump's illegal act of war against Venezuela, where he put our troops in danger in order to grab Venezuela's oil for his billionaire buddies. The administration continues to carry out illegal, monthslong boat strikes in international waters, which have killed at least 185 people since September. Now President Trump has also floated the idea of using force against our allies, like his scheme to seize Greenland, which, of course, is part of Denmark, which is part of the NATO alliance. And the list goes on and on and on. Our Constitution is explicit: The power to declare war rests with Congress--with the Senate and with the House--not with the President of the United States. Yet we are once again confronted with a situation where Trump appears ready to tear up our Constitution--a Constitution when he was once asked whether he had to abide by, he said: I don't know. And we are seeing that mindset in action every day. We have seen deeply alarming rhetoric and actions from the administration when it comes to Cuba. What began as economic warfare has now edged into open discussions of military intervention. President Trump himself has said: Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it. But we all know that Cuba is not property to be acquired by Donald Trump, and military force is not supposed to be a tool for Presidential impulse or political theater. And no President--no President--has the legal authority to unilaterally send American troops into conflict starting a war. But Trump has shown again and again that he thinks he is above the law and above the Constitution. Many of us just joined the King of England, King Charles, where he talked about the Magna Carta and checks and balances. This President of the United States thinks he is a King and thinks he is not bound by checks and balances. Any of our colleagues who aid and abet him are complicit in undermining the Constitution of the United States--one that he has shown disdain for time and again. To understand why we are here, we need to look at the choices this administration and previous administrations have made and the consequences that have followed. President Trump's current policy on Cuba is not a total aberration; it is him and Secretary Rubio doubling down and putting on steroids over 65 years of a failed, bankrupt policy. Since 1960, Republicans and Democratic administrations alike have pursued a policy of isolation and economic pressure and strangulation toward Cuba. After 6\1/2\ decades, the promise of political change still has not been realized. You would think that when you keep doing something and don't get the result you want, you would do something different. Instead, we see the Trump administration doubling down and putting their foot on the gas of failed policies. I recall that under President Biden, the United States began to turn the tide. It began to take some positive steps. The Obama administration restored diplomatic relations, expanded travel, and made an effort to engage with Cuba in a way that had not been done in decades. I had a chance to see this newfound diplomacy up close. My first trip to Cuba was to visit an American called Alan Gross. He was part of an international development contractor with USAID, and he was a constituent of mine in Maryland. He was imprisoned by the Cuban Government for 5 years. I worked closely with the Obama administration to help secure his release and joined the bipartisan delegation that included Senator Leahy and Senator Flake at the time that ultimately brought Alan Gross home in 2014. That breakthrough played a role in opening the door to a new chapter in U.S.-Cuban relations. At the time, we began to see some shoots of real progress and liberalization in the Cuban economy. The problems at hand were, of course, not solved overnight, but the light at the end of the tunnel was beginning to look bright, and it was clear that this new approach had real potential. But that chapter was short-lived, as President Trump in his first term reversed course, reimposing strict travel restrictions and tightening sanctions--back to the failed playbook of over 60 years. A diplomatic relationship cannot be repaired overnight--especially with two countries with decades of fraught history like the United States and Cuba--and the Biden administration failed to take meaningful steps to get us back on the course that the Obama administration had taken us, which brings us to where we are today, with the Trump administration not only reverting to their first-term policies but doubling down on this hostile, ineffective, and proven failure of an approach. The Trump administration has pursued an aggressive pressure campaign against Cuba: tightening restrictions, cutting off critical fuel supplies, and effectively imposing an oil blockade on the island--an oil blockade that is exhausting the country's supply of fuel, restricting both travel and daily life within the country while also crippling the Nation's healthcare system, resulting in preventable deaths. Here is a headline from the March 26 New York Times. It reads ``Cuban Patients Are Dying Because of U.S. Blockade, Doctors Say.'' The stated goal was to force political change in Havana, but months into the Trump administration's belligerent approach, it is clear they have not begun to achieve the intended result. Again, same old policy, no better results--in fact, worse. The Cuban authoritarian government remains fully in control. Instead, what we are seeing is the rapid deterioration of conditions for the people of Cuba. Across the island, families are living through prolonged blackouts and an energy crisis that has crippled infrastructure across the island. Without sufficient fuel, hospitals cannot function properly, schools and businesses are forced to close, and families are left to navigate daily life without the most basic necessities. The only change--the only change--that the United States has succeeded in forcing upon Cuba is a humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people, because of Trump and Rubio's reckless blockade that is punishing the Cuban people, not the Cuban regime. We have seen this approach before. We have seen it for 60 years. We know how it ends. The longer we continue down this path, the more severe the consequences will become--not for those in power but for the millions of people caught in the middle. That should force all of us to ask a critical question: What exactly is the Trump-Rubio strategy here? We see they don't have a strategy in Iran, and they clearly don't have a strategy here, because if the goal is to support the Cuban people, then it is failing--failing, failing, failing--because what we are seeing is yet another policy built on the assumption that maximum pressure will produce quick political change. Instead, it has produced maximum citizen and civilian suffering with minimal results. Now, instead of reconsidering this failed approach, the administration appears to be considering an even more dangerous step-- that of military escalation. Of course we want democracy and fundamental freedoms for the people of Cuba, but we have seen over decades that economic strangulation does not work, and we have learned the hard way in Afghanistan and now Iran that bombs don't turn dictatorships into democracies. Yet here we are with reports that the administration is considering yet another war that is not in this country's interest. Americans are asking for stability. They are asking for lower costs. The idea of launching another illegal, costly, regime-change war is completely out of step with what their hopes and aspirations are. Yet that is what this administration is pursuing even though Candidate Trump promised he would focus on bringing down prices and keeping us out of war. The American people are already bearing significant costs of the war in Iran--lives lost, treasure expended, making us less safe--and all of this not authorized by this Congress. And now, instead of bringing that conflict to an end, this administration is signaling it may open the door to yet another one in Cuba. We have to ask what gets crowded out when we have a President and a White House that are focused on getting Americans into war rather than on the economic well-being of the American people. We have a responsibility here to the American people to represent them and to act in their interests. And decisions of war and peace, whether it is Iran or Cuba or anywhere else, must be made with the involvement of the representatives of the American people. That is not just my sentiment; that is what is in the Constitution of the United States. So we have the opportunity today to get ahead of another bad decision by the Trump administration, another bad decision to drag us into an illegal war, and to do it now before that conflict begins instead of hoping we can end it once the fuse is lit. In fact, it is our duty--it is our duty--to uphold the Constitution and make clear that we will do our jobs here in the U.S. Senate. So I urge my colleagues to support this resolution to uphold our constitutional responsibilities and to vote in favor of this War Powers Resolution. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the life and legacy of Mr. James McArthur ``Mack'' Alsobrooks. Mr. Alsobrooks was a beloved husband, father, neighbor, and friend who centered kindness and faith in all that he did. Mr. Alsobrooks was born on January 24, 1948, in Wadesboro, NC, to Adam Willis Alsobrooks and Sarah Daisy (nee Tillman) Alsobrooks. The eldest of three children, he stepped into his role as big brother with ease. He was a product of the District of Columbia Public Schools system, having attended Charles Young Elementary School, Brown Junior High School, and Spingarn High School. He continued to pursue his appetite for knowledge with the help of his teachers, including his music teacher, Roberta Flack. On December 6, 1969, Mr. Alsobrooks married Patricia Ann Thompson. They raised their incredible daughters, Kimberly Patrice and Angela DeNeece in Suitland, Prince George's County, MD. Mr. Alsobrooks' daughters were the light of his life, and he sacrificed endlessly to provide them with the opportunity to chase their dreams. He was always their fiercest supporter and was able to stand by his daughter, our colleague, as she was sworn into the U.S. Senate. I saw him beaming with pride that day. Mr. Alsobrooks applied his deep belief in humanity to every aspect of his life. He cofounded the Alliance of Concerned Men, an organization committed to interrupting cycles of violence and pursuing community healing. Through his church, he participated in a program to counsel, support, and uplift young men. He also served on the Prince George's County Commission on Fathers, Men, and Boys, where he advocated for policies and programs that empower men across generations. Mr. Alsobrooks was also a man of profound faith and a lifelong member of the church. He worshipped with the Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, MD, for over four decades. The outpouring of love from friends, family, and community members since Mr. Alsobrooks' passing is a testament to the kind of life he lived, one filled with joy, devotion, and an uncompromising belief in humanity. He will always be remembered for his wit, his empathy, and his love for a good game of pool. He is survived by his beloved wife Patricia; his daughters Kimberly and Angela; his adored granddaughter Alexandra; his sisters Carol and Barbara; his nephew Aaron; his godson Avery; and many dear family members and friends--all of whom will carry his legacy forward. I invite my fellow Members to join me in offering our sincere condolences to our colleague Senator Alsobrooks and to her family.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, as we gather here, prices and costs around the country are going up and up and up. The cost of gas is going up. Electric bills are going up. The price of groceries is going up. The costs of rent and mortgages are up. Childcare costs are up, and the list goes on and on. So rising costs and prices are clearly on the minds of the American people as they try to make ends meet. Dealing with those costs should be a priority for this Congress, but in this bill, Senate Republicans are telling the country--telling our fellow Americans--that rising costs and affordability are not their problem, are not their priority. Budgets always tell us a lot about what the President and the Congress think is important, and the budget reconciliation process that Republicans are using right now specifically tells us a lot about what the Senate majority's priorities are. It tells us what, in this moment, Senate Republicans are focused on. That is because it is a special procedure that allows the majority party--in this case, the Republican Party--to pass something without a single vote from the minority party. The Senate Republicans are preparing to pass this without any Democratic vote. You can only do this once per fiscal year. So it is reserved for the biggest goals, the top priorities, the things that the majority party--the Senate Republicans--thinks are the most important, the things it wants to become law. When the Democrats were last in the majority, we used the budget reconciliation process as well. We used it to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. That allowed us to require Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices. We used it to cap the price of insulin for seniors. We used it to accelerate the deployment of clean energy to create good-paying jobs and to expand Affordable Care Act tax credits to make healthcare more affordable for millions and millions of our fellow Americans. That is what we used it for. In fact, it was those Affordable Care Act tax credits that Republicans allowed to expire at the end of last year. So, last year, Republicans passed a reconciliation bill as well. They called it their Big Beautiful Bill. Well, it was beautiful if you were a billionaire, but it was pretty much a big betrayal for everyone else. It provided permanent tax cuts for the wealthy, and it was in that bill that Senate Republicans and the President allowed the Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire, causing premiums to go up for 22 million of our fellow Americans. In fact, they went up so high that 4 million Americans lost their coverage altogether. But in that bill, wherein tax credits for working Americans to better afford healthcare were not extended, Republicans and President Trump provided big, permanent tax cuts for the rich. I want colleagues to focus on this chart for a moment because it tells you exactly what the tax priorities were in the Republicans' reconciliation bill from last year. As I said, it was a Big Beautiful Bill if you were a billionaire. As you can see, 72 percent of the tax benefits went to the richest 20 percent of the American people--72 percent of the tax benefits went to the top 20 percent. In fact, it gets even more skewed than that. If you zero in more closely with a magnifying glass, 22 percent of the total tax benefits went to the top 1 percent--the richest Americans. That is what Republicans did in their so-called Big Beautiful Bill. That is why I say it was beautiful if you were a billionaire. We know that it was skewed in that direction not only by the numbers but because Republicans chose to make the tax cuts for billionaires and the very rich permanent. Those go on forever. I asked the Director of the President's Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, about this phenomenon in a hearing just last week. He conceded that the bill last year, the reconciliation bill, provided permanent tax cuts for the very rich, and he conceded that the tax cuts and benefits for everybody else, which are much smaller as a proportion of the whole, were made temporary. For example, the ``no tax on tips'' provision will expire at the end of 2028. Smaller tax cuts for working people--temporary. Big tax cuts for wealthy Americans--permanent. They have admitted to it. That was a choice that was made by Republicans as part of that bill. That is why I introduced an alternative, the Working Americans' Tax Cut Act, which provides 100 percent of its tax benefits not to the richest 20 percent but to the 80 percent of American taxpayers who are working hard--paycheck to paycheck--to make ends meet for themselves and their families. Now, the Trump tax plan that he worked on and passed with Republicans not only provided very wealthy individuals with these big tax cuts but also big profitable corporations. In fact, the changes that were made by President Trump and Republicans have enabled 88 of the largest corporations in America to pay no--zero--Federal income taxes, despite having more than $100 billion in total profits among them. At the same time that these huge tax cuts were given to big corporations and the very wealthy, Republicans cut by $1 trillion our investments in health and nutrition programs for our fellow Americans. By the way, all told, it adds $4 trillion to our national debt. There was another major part of that bill that Republicans passed last year with the President, and it was a massive slush fund for their mass deportation agenda. They put in that bill $140 billion for ICE and CBP. So, just for comparison's sake, for ICE, that was seven times their previous annual appropriation. They stuffed that into that one so-called Big Beautiful Bill. You know, that is as much money as many countries spend on their militaries in a year. The results have been predictable--a bloated, unaccountable Agency that is not focused on deporting the ``worst of the worst,'' as the President said he would do, but that goes into communities and indiscriminately abducts people, ships them around the country, and then tries to deport them. Overwhelmingly--overwhelmingly--they are people with no criminal records who, according to DHS' own data, pose no risk to our communities: small business owners, pastors, veterans, parents taking their kids to school, even children. When the American people rose up against these brutal policies and exercised their right to protest, when they took to the streets to exercise their First Amendment rights and to take pictures of what ICE agents were doing, we saw in Minneapolis two American citizens shot and killed--a mom, Renee Good, who was killed as she tried to drive away from ICE agents who were aggressively approaching her car, and a VA nurse Alex Pretti, who was killed when he stopped to help a fellow observer. He was shot in the back by CBP agents. And the Trump administration--what was their response? They called the victims--they called Renee Good and Alex Pretti--domestic terrorists. That is the mindset of this out-of-control, lawless ICE operation. Well, my constituents in Maryland and Americans across the country have been horrified by these actions. They said it has to stop, and it needs to stop. These Agencies need to be held accountable. They need to be reined in. We need independent investigations. So Democrats put forward some pretty straightforward proposed reforms: require Federal agents to show identification, take off the masks that allow them to evade accountability. Our local police officers don't wear masks. Our local police officers provide identification. We also said: You have got to cooperate with State and local law enforcement investigating these incidents. When you have an administration calling the victims domestic terrorists, it is hard to trust the outcome of an administration that is doing the investigation. We want the local and State law enforcement authorities involved. And our list of reforms went on, but they were rejected by Republicans and rejected by the White House. They didn't want meaningful reforms. They wanted to keep the blank check going. And so then Democrats proposed that: OK, let's set aside ICE and CBP, and let's negotiate those, but let's immediately fund other parts of the Department of Homeland Security, like TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard. We were resisted for a very long time, and then finally Senate Republicans agreed. There was no reason to hold TSA, for example, hostage to an out-of-control ICE operation. So we passed that out of the U.S. Senate, allowing those other entities to get funding. But what happened in the Republican-controlled House? Speaker Johnson refused to even let it come to a vote. And so here we are, and Republicans are putting forward their reconciliation bill for this fiscal year. Their top priority? At this moment, when Americans are seeing their bills go up, their costs rise, when American families have had to absorb the huge increases as a result of Trump's illegal, unconstitutional tariff taxes--which is estimated, on average, to cost American families $1,700 a year. By the way, the President should give those families their money back, and do it now. But as all of these costs are rising, Republicans here in Congress have decided to focus, instead, not on affordability but on using this special, rare process to do something else: to add to the slush fund for ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. And they are doing it in a way that doesn't require any Democratic votes. So this is Republicans only, so that is how we know that this is their top priority. And, by the way, they are wasting a ton of taxpayer money in the process--a lot of taxpayer money--on these warehouses that they are buying up around the country to retrofit for detention centers, often paying way over market value. In my State of Maryland, they have spent $102 million to buy a warehouse in Western Maryland to turn into a detention center. They did so without adequate notice, without consultation with the community, and it is going to put strains on local water supplies and sewage capacity. That warehouse project has been halted by a judge and is now being reconsidered by DHS, but $100 million of taxpayer money, already wasted. I don't think any of us are surprised by the priorities that have been put forward by the Trump administration and now with Republicans in Congress because it was right down the hall here that Donald Trump was sworn in, and he promised a golden age for America, for Americans. Well, he has been delivering a golden age--a Gilded Age--for his billionaire buddies. And despite what he said during his campaign when he said he was going to stop wars and bring down prices, he has started wars. Prices are going up. He is focused on building a gold-plated ballroom in the White House and new monuments to himself. He is focused on hiding portions of the Epstein files from survivors and the American people. He has been busy lying to the American people time and time again, telling them that prices are going down and the world is more peaceful and everybody is doing just great. He wants everybody to believe the dear leader; and, unfortunately, if you look at a Cabinet meeting these days, you can see all the Cabinet officials--the most billionaire-filled Cabinet in history--nodding along. But we can do better than that, and we should do better than that. We should listen to the concerns being expressed by people all over the country, and we should focus on bringing costs down and letting people have and keep a little bit more of their hard-earned money--working people, not mostly the billionaires. Instead, we see this effort by Republicans simply to fatten an Agency that is out of control, engaged in lawless activity, instead of what is important to the American people. So I urge all of my colleagues to oppose--to strongly oppose--this reconciliation bill, which is simply an effort to stuff an illegal Agency like ICE at the expense of the American people. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the two resolutions offered by my colleague Senator Sanders that would bar the transfer of certain offensive weapons and equipment to the Netanyahu government. Specifically, these resolutions would block the transfer of 12,000 1,000-pound bombs and 132 armored bulldozers, valued at more than $446 million and funded entirely by American taxpayers. We cannot continue to provide a blank check to the Netanyahu government as it continues to use U.S. weapons in violation of U.S. and international law. As I have long said, Israel was justified in its war against Hamas after the horrific attack of October 7, 2023. But the Netanyahu government is not justified in imposing collective punishment on all the people of Gaza. As Senator Merkley and I wrote in our report after traveling to the region in August 2025, ``The Netanyahu Government is Implementing a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza of Palestinians. America is Complicit.'' And now, as Senator Sanders indicated, Israeli leaders are saying out loud they plan to apply the same plans in southern Lebanon as they implemented in Gaza. Senator Sanders mentioned threatening what they did in Khan Yunis. As recently as March 31, Israeli Defense Minister Katz said: All homes in Lebanese villages near the border will be destroyed--in accordance with the Rafah and Beit Hanoun model in Gaza. Well, colleagues, I visited Gaza. I visited the Gaza crossing--the Rafah crossing--twice, along with my colleague Senator Merkley, first in January 2024, when Gaza's population had quadrupled from prewar levels to more than 1 million people who had been displaced within Gaza, from northern Gaza. And then we traveled to the Rafah crossing, in August 2025, after the IDF's offensive against Rafah, one that the Biden administration claimed that they tried to stop. And on that visit, Senator Merkley and I climbed a rooftop, and you could look into Rafah--obliterated, reduced to absolute rubble. And as we were told by former IDF soldiers--eyewitnesses who had the courage to speak with us--Israel has systematically dismantled essential infrastructure and brought near-total destruction of civilian sites throughout Gaza, including through the use of these bulldozers and 1,000-pound bombs. And now the Israeli Minister of Defense says they are going to do the same thing in southern Lebanon. And, indeed, since the war in Lebanon restarted, Israeli forces have killed over 2,000 people, including 250 people in 10 minutes, the day after the cease-fire was announced. Entire villages have been destroyed and over 1.1 million people displaced. Now, let's not forget how we got into this most recent round of destruction in the region. President Trump is fully responsible for getting America into this war, period. But we know from Trump administration officials and public reporting how Prime Minister Netanyahu, for his own reasons, was pushing Trump to attack Iran. Indeed, he said it himself on April 11. Netanyahu boasted to the Israeli public that Israel was ``first to act because we knew what was at stake. But if I had told you a year ago that our pilots, men and women, would fly in Iran, who would have believed it?'' So said Prime Minister Netanyahu. He went on to say: If I had told you a year ago that the United States of America, the strongest power in the world, would fight by our side, shoulder to shoulder, wing to wing, for nearly 40 days against the common enemy, who would have believed it? And then Prime Minister Netanyahu went on to say: All this happened because we initiated, we acted, we attacked. Now, those of us who have been around here a little while know that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been pushing for a war with Iran for a very long time. In fact, he recently publicly acknowledged that the current U.S.-Israeli war on Iran ``allows us to do what I have been hoping to do for 40 years.'' That is what Prime Minister Netanyahu said. I remember when Prime Minister Netanyahu actually spoke before a joint session of Congress, asking us not to support the JCPOA, which, of course, prevented Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Of course, the current President then tore that up when he first came into office. So Prime Minister Netanyahu had been trying to get previous Presidents to join him in attacking Iran, but no previous President was stupid enough or reckless enough to actually do it. So here we are without facing any imminent threat, and President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu started an illegal war against Iran. It is a gross violation of international law. Indeed, on April 2, a group of over 100 international law experts, people who actually believe in international law, which included former U.S. and U.N. officials, published an open letter stating that ``the initiation of the campaign was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter'' and that the conduct of the United States and Israeli forces in the war ``raise serious concerns about violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes.'' That is on top of the illegality of initiating a war against Iran. Look, earlier this afternoon, nearly all Democrats voted together to end Donald Trump's illegal war against Iran. Many of us have vowed that we will not support 1 taxpayer dollar to continue this war that is making us less safe and less well-loved. Well, that commitment and determination should apply to the Trump administration and to the Netanyahu administration. We need to rein in Trump in this illegal war, and we need to rein in the Netanyahu administration in this illegal war. Now, colleagues, I want to focus for a moment on the portion of the Sanders resolution that bans the transfer of bulldozers to the IDF. These are the bulldozers that helped raze Rafah in Gaza to the ground. For those who don't remember, I ask them to recall the case of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American peace activist who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to block the razing of buildings in Rafah over 20 years ago. Rachel Corrie has never gotten any justice, and her family will tell you that today. In fact, just since January of 2022, at least nine more American citizens have been killed by extremist Israeli settlers or security forces in the West Bank. Not one of them--not one--has gotten justice, just like Rachel Corrie--no accountability. There is no piece of equipment that has helped Israel and the Netanyahu government destroy civilian infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza and now Lebanon more than the bulldozer. Just look at the titles of some of the reporting coming from what is happening in southern Lebanon. The Guardian title: `` `Everything is gone.' Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon.'' And you can see it for yourself. I really encourage my colleagues just to look at the videos. Some of them have been shared by members of the Israeli military themselves. They showed controlled detonations and destruction of entire villages. This isn't new. During the last war in Lebanon, Amnesty International documented how the Israeli military carried out extensive and deliberate destruction of civilian property across almost the entire Lebanese border with Israel, including 10,000 structures, primarily through the use of manually laid explosives and bulldozers. In the West Bank, as we speak, we are seeing violent Israeli settlers kill Palestinian citizens with impunity. We are also seeing the use of these bulldozers to demolish Palestinian homes in the West Bank and other civilian infrastructures. Again, you can see it for yourselves in the videos. This is all part of a slow-motion ethnic cleansing effort in the West Bank and de facto annexation of the West Bank. Indeed, the New York Times in September 2024 spoke about raids in the West Bank villages of Tulkarm and Jenin. The headline is this: ``Israeli Bulldozers Flatten Mile After Mile in the West Bank.'' In total, since the Gaza war started, Israeli authorities have demolished at least 4,900 structures in the West Bank and displaced 9,000 Palestinians there. As this has gone on, so has settler violence, often with the complicity of the IDF. In the West Bank, over 1,000 Palestinians, including 230 children, have been killed with virtual impunity since October of 2023--with impunity. The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din said that between 2000 and September 2025--that is a 20-year period--more than 93 percent of police investigations into settler violence in the West Bank concluded without an indictment. So what are we going to do about this? We need to stop providing the Netanyahu government with an absolute blank check. We need to demand accountability for American citizens who have been killed there. So I urge my colleagues now to support this resolution. If we want to rein in a Trump administration that wants an illegal war against Iran, we should also rein in the Netanyahu administration. It is doing exactly the same thing with American taxpayer dollars. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from New Jersey for his powerful words, and I, too, rise in support of this War Powers Resolution put forward by our colleague Senator Duckworth, who knows a thing or two about the costs of war. This is a resolution to halt President Trump's unjustified, illegal war against Iran--a war that the overwhelming majority of American people want to see end; a war that this Congress never authorized and where we have never had a hearing from a Trump administration decisionmaker about the war; a war that was started by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu that has made us less--not more--safe; and a war that has made us much worse off, not better off. We have lost 13 American servicemembers. Hundreds more have been wounded. Thousands of civilians, innocent civilians, have been killed throughout the region. And the sacrifice of our servicemembers deserves more respect than the President casually remarking that ``[s]adly, there will likely be more. . . . That's the way it is.'' That is what President Trump said. Well, that is not the way it is, and it is not the way it should be, and it is not the way an American President should talk about our troops. We must not and cannot normalize President Trump's reckless actions that have brought us to this point. The costs of this war are mounting. We just saw it today: The President intends to send thousands more troops to the Middle East-- 6,000 as part of a naval deployment and thousands more to come later. This war has already cost us, in addition to lives, $52 billion--$52 billion--and another billion dollars every day from the American taxpayers. On top of that, on top of what taxpayers will be shelling out, we are seeing Americans struggle with rising prices: gas prices, oil prices. Of course, when you have rising gas and oil prices, it drives up prices on everything else, like fertilizers that our farmers need as we go into the season of growing. And all this coming from the President who promised that he would focus on lowering prices and ending wars. He promised the American people he would be ``a peacemaker,'' and he is a warmonger. He lied, and because of his lies, people are dying. Now the President wants to put even more lives at risk to open the Strait of Hormuz. We should all remind our fellow Americans that the Strait of Hormuz was open before the President started this war. It was open before the President started this war, and now the President's main goal is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The President also said the other day that we achieved regime change. He just didn't tell the American people that when he knocked off some of the top Iranian leaders--the ayatollahs--they were replaced by an even more militant and even more radical regime. That is the President's definition of ``regime change.'' Now, the President likes to claim periodically that we won. In fact, more than 3 weeks ago, the President of the United States said ``We won,'' the United States won. He said that a few days ago. The President said ``We won.'' My question for my Republican colleagues is, If we won, what the hell are we still doing there? If we won, why are we still there? Why are we still putting American lives at risk? Why are we spending a billion dollars of taxpayer money a day if we won? Well, we didn't win. And it is impossible to measure how you win because the President never set forth clear rationales for this war because there wasn't really one to be had. And certainly they have advanced no endgame, like what does it mean for him to win the war that he already said that he won. So we know from the President's own words that there is no clear endgame here, and it is clear every day that this war is not in the interests of the American people. Now, we have seen from President Trump not strength or leadership. What we have seen is recklessness. Now we in the Senate should apply some brakes and accountability. We have seen a President threatening massive war crimes in the name of the American people, threatening to end a civilization. Colleagues, this is a time for sober and serious American leadership, and Donald Trump is not a serious leader. In addition to threatening to end a civilization, he has attacked the Pope because the Pope seeks peace. He has posted an image of himself as Jesus Christ. This is the man in the White House who is running this war. He is putting American lives at risk and endangering people throughout the world, and he is simply not fit to be Commander in Chief. So all of this without the consent of the American people. That is where Congress is supposed to come in. So when the Presiding Officer is looking at a President of the United States who is so unhinged, how is it that we can only find one Republican Senator, Senator Rand Paul--how is it that we can only find one to stand up for the Constitution and against this President who clearly is not following the will of the American people, a President who took us into an illegal war that is making us less safe and worse off? That is our job. That is our job, and this Senate keeps ducking its responsibility. This resolution put forward by Senator Duckworth is another opportunity for our Republican colleagues to show that they are going to exercise their responsibilities under the Constitution of the United States. We will keep offering War Powers Resolutions so the American people know that we are working every day to end this war which they want to see come to a close. Maybe we can begin that process today. I thank Senator Duckworth for offering this resolution and really urge my colleagues to search their souls and talk to their constituents and vote yes. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the life and legacy of a remarkable Marylander, Dr. Mark Hallett. Dr. Hallett was a pioneer, a prolific researcher, and an unforgettable mentor. The impacts of his work will be felt for generations to come. Dr. Hallett was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, where he graduated high school before attending Harvard College. He then received his M.D. at Harvard Medical School and completed his internship at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. In 1970, Dr. Hallett began his work at the National Institutes of Health and quickly discovered his interest in motor control research. He completed his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and his fellowship at the Institute of Psychiatry in London before returning to Peter Bent Brigham Hospital as chief of the Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratory. Dr. Hallett later returned to NIH and created the Human Motor Control Section with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. He pioneered new methods to research human movement, motor control, and various motor disorders, and treated countless patients. He played a crucial role in the discovery of Havana Syndrome in American diplomats and successfully helped renowned pianist Leon Fleisher recover use of his hand. For all his professional accolades, Dr. Hallett remained modest and treated everyone he encountered with dignity and respect. He served as a mentor to hundreds of researchers around the world. His leadership qualities were undeniable, earning him several influential positions, including with the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology, the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society, and the American Academy of Neurology. His pioneering work has advanced the field of neurology and left an indelible mark on the way healthcare facilities treat countless illnesses and disorders. Above all, Dr. Hallett's proudest achievement was his beautiful family, and we in the Congress have been fortunate to have the benefit of his wonderful wife Judy, an incredible researcher, brilliant historian, and storied leader whose work has defined generations of academic development. I invite my colleagues to join me in offering appreciation and condolences to Judy, his children Nicholas and Victoria, his grandchildren Celeste and Flora, and his siblings Eileen and Bruce.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I know we are waiting for the Senator from Nevada to come to the floor to make a few remarks, and I want to thank Senator Wyden for his remarks. I am just looking around the floor here and thinking this would be a great time to propose a unanimous consent request that we fully fund TSA. I won't do it at this moment. I see the chairman of the Finance Committee here. But I want to make the point, Mr. President, that we could get it done right now. We could end the lines at airports around the country, we could fund TSA, we could fund FEMA, and we could fund the Coast Guard as we continue negotiations to rein in a lawless ICE operation--an ICE operation that took the lives of two American citizens in Minneapolis; a lawless ICE operation that is not focused, as President Trump promised, on the worst of the worst; a lawless ICE operation that is trampling over people's First Amendment rights around the country and due process rights. So as I was looking around the floor, I didn't see any Republican colleagues for a moment, and I think it is worth making the point to folks watching that we could have gotten unanimous consent to open FEMA, to open TSA, and to open the Coast Guard. That is what we should do, and we should do it now. I see the Senator from Nevada. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I think all of us know here in the Senate that Senators have the ability to write the titles of their own bills. You can give a bill whatever name you want, whether it is accurate and true or misleading. And in this case, we have a bill that has been entitled the SAVE America Act. But make no mistake, this is not about saving America. That is a fraud on the American people. And what we are hearing from our Republican colleagues and what we hear from the President of the United States is that there is this rampant noncitizen voting in our elections. Donald Trump says there are so many noncitizens voting at the polls that they are rigged. In fact, that is why he lost in 2020, he says. But, of course, we know there is zero proof for that. We know, in fact, that it is a big lie. It is already illegal to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen. And the cases of noncitizen registration and noncitizen voting are vanishingly rare, almost nonexistent. So what is this really about? Well, it is about Trump's obsession with a Federal takeover of our elections. That is not my word; that is his. He said he wanted to ``takeover'' our elections. And they do-- Donald Trump does--want to make it particularly hard for voters who they think will vote against them. He wants to make it particularly hard for those voters to actually be able to cast their votes. And that is what this bill is all about. It is about making it more difficult for millions and millions of Americans to exercise their right to vote, and it is calculated to try to make it harder for those Americans who President Trump assesses will vote against him or against Republicans. Why else would Donald Trump have said it will ``guarantee the midterms''? By ``it,'' he meant this bill. So the President of the United States is saying that if Republicans pass this bill, it will guarantee them the midterm elections. The only way that could be true is if this bill were designed to try to prevent, slow down, make it harder for millions of Americans to cast their vote who Republicans and Donald Trump think will vote against Republicans in the midterms. He goes on to say: ``If you don't get it, big trouble''--meaning, if we actually let American citizens vote and we don't put up these additional restrictions, President Trump assesses that Republicans will lose the midterms. And he is desperate to change that. We already saw that in the redistricting effort in Texas and other places around the country. This is part and parcel of that effort. Donald Trump said that was the goal, and, in fact, recently fired former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the same thing in different words. Here is what she said, a few weeks ago, in Arizona: ``We have been proactive to make sure that we have the right people [to vote]-- And then she said the other part out loud-- [to vote to elect] the right leaders. In other words, let's try to shape the electorate by passing this bill so that we--we the Republicans and President Trump--get the voters they want to elect the ``leaders'' they want, meaning Republicans. That is what this is all about. It is not about saving America. It is about saving Republicans in the midterm elections and beyond. And they do this by making it harder for citizens to vote. So, yes, it is suppressing the vote. If you make it harder for anyone in this room who is an American citizen or anybody around the country to go out and cast their vote, if you put up hurdles to casting those votes, yes, it is making it more difficult to vote. That is suppressing the vote. So let's look a little more deeply at the underlying claims behind this bill--the claim that we have all these noncitizens that are voting. They can't prove it. In fact, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said that noncitizens voting is something they know is happening ``intuitively''--``intuitively.'' He went on to say: But it's not been something that is easily provable. Not something easily provable--that is ridiculous. Of course, it is provable. People go into a voting booth. They give their name. That is a matter of the official record. And you can go about finding out whether the person who registered and cast their vote, in fact, is an American citizen. It is provable. And the problem Republicans have is they set out to prove it and came out completely empty--completely empty. Let's look at the findings of the conservative Heritage Foundation. So this is a conservative think tank, a Republican think tank. They could only find 24 instances in 20 years of somebody who voted without being a citizen, or maybe it was just registered to vote--but 24 instances between the year 2003 and the year 2023. This is what they are calling a rampant problem. The Cato Institute, which is not a liberal organization, put out a report last month noting that Utah--the State of Utah--reviewed its approximately 2.1 million voters, and found 1 confirmed noncitizen who had registered but never voted. I mean, it is certainly possible that if you are a permanent resident, if you have a green card, you might mistakenly believe you can vote in an election and register, and then realize you really can't and then not cast the vote. So Utah looked at 2.1 million voters, and not a single one--not a single noncitizen among them--cast a vote and only 1 registered. In Georgia, out of 8.2 million registrants, Georgia found only 20 who were noncitizens. I don't even know if they ended up voting or not. So, obviously, in this country, we want only American citizens to vote, and that is what is happening. American citizens are the ones who are voting, not noncitizens. And if you think about that, it makes intuitive sense, right? The penalty--the Federal penalty--for providing false information when you register is up to 5 years in prison. And then, if you actually go ahead and cast a vote as a noncitizen, it is up to another 1 year in prison. Nobody--nobody--is going to risk going to prison for 6 years in order to cast a vote in an election. I mean, that defies common sense, and it also defies the fact, which is why Republicans can't come up with any proof to support their claim, which they argue justifies this bill-- none. Again, the Speaker says it is an intuition. In other words, it is a feeling he has got, but there is no proof to support it. It is because there isn't any. So that is the false claim being made to justify this bill. In other words, it is a bill in search of a problem, but actually the problem doesn't exist. So it is obviously in search of something else, and that something else is making it harder for millions of Americans to vote. As I mentioned, Donald Trump thinks if this bill is passed, it will ``guarantee'' the Republicans ``the midterms.'' The former Secretary of Homeland Security says we need this bill to get the right voters to vote for the ``right leaders.'' Now, I was just listening to one of my Republican colleagues on the floor talk about how we need ID for all sorts of things, and, of course, that is true. You need a license to drive a car. But guess what. That license that you get, that is not proof of citizenship. That doesn't qualify under this bill. Even the new REAL IDs don't qualify for proof of citizenship under this bill because there are noncitizens who have those forms of ID. So when Republican Senators talk about these other forms of ID that we use every day, suggesting that they could be used for this purpose, that is just not true. What this bill does is essentially narrow the forms of ID that you need to prove that you are a citizen in the first place to essentially two categories. One is a passport. Now, it turns out that only about half of Americans have a passport. So that means half of the American citizens that are preparing to go out and vote will not be able to vote because they wouldn't have the proof of citizenship. They don't have a passport. Or it is an original birth certificate. Well, I think we all know that there are lots of Americans that don't have their original birth certificate. In fact, if you are a woman who has gotten married and changed her name, that original birth certificate won't provide you the proof of citizenship required under this law. And research at the Brennan Center at the University of Maryland shows that more than 21 million American citizens do not have these required documents readily available--21 million American citizens who will be forced to go through all these additional hoops and, by the way, pay money in order to get the required ID. And, of course, in America, we are not supposed to have a poll tax. You are not supposed to have to pay the government any money for the right to exercise your right to vote. But that is what this bill does for maybe up to 21 million of our fellow American citizens. So if there really were proof of an epidemic of noncitizen voting, of course, we would need to look for ways to prevent that from happening. We would have to come up with some form of required ID to meet that problem. But there is no proof there. There is no ``there'' there. Now, one of the ways that the Trump administration proposed for trying to get to the bottom of all this claimed fraud was to require States to send the Department of Homeland Security their voting information. In fact, the Department of Justice has been asking a lot of States for this information. You may recall that Attorney General Bondi and former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem were telling people in Minnesota: You know, we will call back ICE and their lawless efforts if you give us your voter ID information. Of course, in our country, we have State-based elections, thank goodness. Thank goodness we count our elections at the State level. Can you imagine if we did what Donald Trump wants to do, which is federalize the elections and count them at the White House? I mean, do you remember in 2020, after he lost, the President of the United States was calling down to Georgia--Fulton County--and saying: Find me--what was it?--6,000-some votes. Thank goodness we don't have centralized Federal elections in the United States of America because you can be sure that President Trump would make sure, when he conducted the count at the White House, it would come out his way. So we don't have that, but we now have a Department of Homeland Security that is essentially demanding that States provide the Federal Government with their voter information. A lot of States are suing. They are fighting back. Some States have been providing that information to the Department of Justice and to other entities. But it turns out that when the States hear back from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Homeland Security is giving them all sorts of misinformation. Let's look at a couple examples of States that have already shared their voter roll data with DHS. This was, again, for the purpose of DHS checking to make sure that voter rolls in those States did not include noncitizens. So DHS was going to scrub those records and let the States know what kind of problems they have. Well, Missouri's records were reviewed by DHS, and it turns out that DHS found hundreds of voters that DHS said were ineligible to vote. Guess what. It turned out that DHS was wrong and that they were eligible voters. So DHS was essentially telling the State of Missouri that eligible American citizen voters in fact were not eligible. One county clerk in Missouri said of the DHS system: This is not ready for prime time. And I'm not going to risk the security and constitutional rights of my voters for bad data. That is a clerk in the State of Missouri. An election administrator in Texas said: I really find no merit in any of this. That was after three eligible Texas voters--in other words, eligible American citizen Texas voters--had been flagged for removal by DHS. So here is the State of Texas: OK, DHS, take a look at our voter files, and you find all those people that are really not American citizens. Well, guess what. They didn't get any back that flagged people who were not American citizens. They did get back people that DHS claimed were not eligible, but when Texas inspected it, it turns out they were eligible to vote. That is the kind of operation the Trump administration is running at DHS. In addition to requiring this essential Federal takeover of review of the voter rolls, this second bill that has been introduced by Republicans in the Senate is even worse than the first. The first was called the SAVE Act. This one is called the SAVE America Act--which, as I said, the real purpose is to ``Save the Republican Party in the Midterm Elections Act.'' But this second one actually makes it harder for people to register to vote and to vote. It includes new provisions that President Trump has demanded prohibiting vote-by-mail except in very, very narrow circumstances. In order to vote by mail, a voter would have to submit sworn certifications to the specific circumstances, including their health status or travel plans, to their board of elections. Even after that, you can't just drop the ballot in the mailbox; you have to send it by certified mail, with signature verification. So this isn't a voter ID bill. That is just untrue. It is a specific kind of ID that is required, which millions of American citizens don't have. It is really a ``Show Me Your Papers Voter Purge Bill,'' making it harder for American citizens to exercise their right to vote. As I said earlier, the real purpose is not to prevent noncitizens from voting; it is to prevent citizens who the Trump administration and Republicans assess will vote against them in the midterm elections--to make it harder for them to vote. You are seeing many other efforts that are ongoing right now to try to rig the midterm elections. I mentioned earlier the efforts to redistrict in Texas. We see challenges to the Voting Rights Act. We see this bill. It is a sign of desperation. It is a sign that Donald Trump knows that the American people don't like what they see coming out of this administration. After all, this is a President who, as a candidate, said he would keep us out of wars--especially in the Middle East--and he would focus on lowering prices. That is what Candidate Trump said. What has President Trump delivered? He has gotten us involved in more conflicts than any other President in a very long time--including an illegal war of choice in Iran as we speak. The Economy Mr. President, prices and costs are going up, up, up. The price of groceries is going up. The price of rent and mortgages is going up. Healthcare is going up. By the way, we could have at least reduced some people's healthcare costs if this Senate had voted to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, but Republicans in this body blocked that effort. So I have constituents in Maryland who now have to pay more because while the Republicans' so-called Big Beautiful Bill permanently extended tax cuts for billionaires, they let the one tax credit that helps middle-class families afford their healthcare--they let that lapse. Billionaires--permanent tax cuts. American working families' tax credit for healthcare--that one they let die, go away, so healthcare costs are going up really for everybody. Childcare costs are going up. Instead of addressing those issues, we have a President who continues to hide portions of the Epstein files from the survivors as well as from the American people, and we have a President who is engaged in driving up costs for the American people instead of bringing them down. I don't know exactly how many days it has been since the Supreme Court struck down his illegal tariff tax, but it has certainly been enough time for the President and his administration to say that they are going to send the money they stole from the American people back to American households. Mr. President, $1,700 per household is the estimate of what those Trump illegal tariff taxes cost on average. Give them their money back, President Trump. Do it today. But that is not what President Trump is doing. Iran Mr. President, the war in Iran has already cost us the lives of 13 servicemembers. Hundreds more have been injured. Over 2,000 civilians have been killed throughout the region, from Iran, to Lebanon, to Israel, including over 160 Iranian schoolgirls killed, apparently, by a U.S. Tomahawk missile. That war is making us less safe, not more safe. We all know that the administration has no endgame. They took the lid off Pandora's box. They, together with Israel, took out a number of members of the Iranian regime. It is a heinous regime, and it has been brutal to its own people. But public reporting indicates that our intelligence Agencies assess that if you got rid of the top-level Iranian leadership, very likely, they would be replaced by even more radical leaders, people who are closer to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard--in other words, people who are even more dangerous and more likely to destabilize the region. And that is what we are seeing. We are spending a billion dollars of taxpayer money every day-- probably more--on this war that is making us less safe. By the way, for the President who said he was going to reduce prices, oil and gas prices are going up, up, up. Corruption Mr. President, the American people don't like what they see. On top of this, it is mixed with a toxic amount of corruption. We have the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner going around and pretending to be the big peacemaker in the Middle East--look how that is going--and at the same time doing big, huge deals with Gulf States, with Saudi Arabia and others. We know that this is a President who, with his so-called meme coin, has pocketed millions and millions of dollars for himself and his family, accepted a luxury jet from the Qatari royal family and a gold- plated Rolex desk clock from Swiss business leaders, and in exchange for a gold crown, gave South Korea a lower tariff rate. Probably one of the most corrupt transactions of them all was with the UAE, because what happened with the UAE was just before Donald Trump was inaugurated as President. Someone in the UAE--one of the members of the royal family--made a huge investment in the Trump family stablecoin business--a huge investment. It wasn't long thereafter that the President's son Eric Trump went to the UAE. And guess what happened. Sheik Tahnoon, who is a member of the royal family, invested billions of dollars in that Trump family stable coin business. Then it was about 2 weeks later that Donald Trump goes to the UAE and says to the UAE that he is going to relax the restrictions the United States had in place on the transfer of very sophisticated technology to the UAE--semiconductor technology, AI technology. We were especially worried about transferring that technology to a particular set of companies in the UAE because of their relationships with China. But do you know what? The UAE--a member of the royal family--had just invested a lot of money in the Trump family stablecoin business, and so, hey, Donald Trump relaxed the restrictions on the transfer of U.S. technology to the UAE and put that at risk of transfer to China. It is massive corruption that benefited the Trump family at the expense of American national security. So, yes, the American people don't like what they are seeing. We are seeing that in all the polling.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, today, I am voting in favor of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. Whether they are renting or buying, too many Americans struggle with the cost of housing. This bill includes crucial reforms to streamline and enhance housing programs, as well as important incentives for communities to build high quality, affordable housing for all. I am also proud that this legislation includes my bipartisan VA Home Loan Awareness Act and VALID Act to help more veterans and their families secure affordable home loans. We have much more work to do to deliver affordable housing to the American people, but this bipartisan legislation is a step forward. We need to examine ways to increase investment in housing supply and improve financing options, as well as expand vouchers to directly assist families. There are also different perspectives on how this legislation's treatment of ``build-to-rent'' housing could affect housing supply and prices. Accordingly, we must closely monitor housing markets to ensure those provisions support housing affordability appropriately and make adjustments if circumstances warrant. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues to increase the production of affordable housing communities need.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I just want to pick up where my colleague from New Jersey left off, which is the proposal that was put forward by the Senator from Washington, Senator Murray, which is to have a vote today to make sure that we fully fund TSA, that we fully fund FEMA, and that we fully fund the Coast Guard. I have heard a couple times just on this floor from our Republican colleagues that Democrats are blocking funding for TSA and FEMA and the Coast Guard. That simply isn't true. In fact, I am looking at a post. I heard a couple mentions of politics as part of this conversation. Just a few days ago, a Senate Republican post said, ``Democrats are forcing 100,000+ Federal employees to work without pay.'' Well, this wasn't true then because just last week, Senator Murray also proposed that we fully fund TSA and FEMA and the Coast Guard. It wasn't true when they posted it, and it is not true today. In fact, what we are doing today is giving our Republican colleagues another chance to actually pay these Federal employees. Now, I don't think anybody is confused about what is happening here, and that is that the American people understand that Trump's ICE operation is out of control. It is violating the constitutional due process of people throughout the country. It is violating the First Amendment rights of people throughout the country, including the right to peacefully protest. We all recall, like it was yesterday, the fact that DHS agents shot and killed two American citizens in Minneapolis: Renee Good and Alex Pretti. And then the Secretary of Homeland Security--the former Secretary of Homeland Security turned around and called them domestic terrorists, called the victims of those shootings domestic terrorists. And from the very start, the Trump administration has lied to the American people about the purpose of the ICE operation, and I heard it again on the floor of the Senate here today. They said they were going to go after ``the worst of the worst,'' people who were here illegally and posed a threat to public safety in our communities. That would have been acceptable, but that is not what they are doing in the overwhelming number of these cases. In Maryland, they swept up a pastor from the Eastern Shore. They arrested and imprisoned and then deported a small business woman from Hagerstown. She had been here 20 years, Vietnamese-American woman, beloved in her community, had a nail business. And the list goes on and on and on. And, in fact, Republicans are beginning to recognize that this is completely unpopular with the American people. Yesterday, here are two headlines, one is in the Washington Post, ``White House tells GOP to avoid mass deportation talks ahead of the midterms.'' Axios, ``White House tells House Republicans to stop talking about mass deportations.'' Well, they want Republicans to stop talking about mass deportations, but they are not actually doing anything to stop mass deportations. And what Democrats have said is: We want meaningful changes at ICE before we provide any additional funding. I have been clear: I won't support 1 more penny for Trump's lawless ICE operation, and yet we are not getting any meaningful response from the White House with respect to the necessary reforms. And so that is why we have said: Let's not hold hostage TSA. Let's not hold hostage FEMA. Let's not hold hostage the Coast Guard. Let's make sure they can continue to operate. Let's make sure that those Federal employees can get paid for the work that they are doing. I mean, I am looking again at this post, the social media post that Republican Senators put out--Senate Republicans. It has got all these headlines from around the country, ``Partial government shutdown, spring break travel leads to hours-long TSA lines at Hobby Airport.'' And they go on and on. We are saying we can end this. We can end it today. But Republicans are blocking it. I just want to close with this point, and it has been made by the Senator from Washington Senator Murray and others, when Republicans passed what they call their Big Beautiful Bill, which was beautiful if you are a billionaire because you got big tax cuts, they cut Medicaid, they cut other health programs, they cut food programs; but as part of that bill, they increased the ICE budget by over seven times its annual amount. And they increased the Customs and Border Patrol budget by about double its annual amount. So that is why, as we speak, ICE agents are being paid. As we speak, Customs and Border Patrol agents are being paid out of those accounts. You know who is not being paid? TSA. You know who is not being paid? FEMA. You know who is not being paid? Coast Guard. Do you know what the Democratic proposal would do that is offered by Senator Murray? Pay all those people so they can do the work that they need to do on behalf of the American people and get paid for the good work that they do. That is what our proposal does. It does what Senate Republicans claim on their social media posts that they want to do, that they want to pay these 100,000 Federal employees; but today, through their votes and their actions, they are actually saying the opposite. They are saying they want to continue to deny funding for those particular Agencies because we won't give ICE and its lawless operations a blank check, and we are not going to give ICE a blank check. The American people don't want us to give a blank check to ICE. But for goodness' sake, let's not penalize folks at TSA and FEMA and the Coast Guard, and let's not penalize the American people by hampering those Agencies and preventing them from fully doing their good work on behalf of the country. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, with regards to the promotion of LTG Joshua Rudd to general, I do not oppose his promotion, but I have concerns about the administration's intent for him to serve as the Commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the Director of the National Security Agency. Both of these national security institutions are based in Maryland and they need a leader who has experience in the work they do for our Nation. While Lieutenant General Rudd has served the United States in many important roles, including his current role as deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, he does not have a background or expertise in cyber operations or signals intelligence. Moreover, during his confirmation process, he did not assuage my concerns about his commitment to constitutional and legal guardrails on spying on Americans. For these reasons, I am opposing his nomination.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of Senator Kaine's War Powers Resolution to halt Donald Trump's unjustified, illegal, regime-change war against Iran. We have a lawless President who is shredding our Constitution and attacking our democracy right here at home. And that same lawlessness and recklessness has pervaded our foreign and national security policy, now putting American troops in harm's way in Donald Trump's war of choice. Let's not forget, colleagues, what Donald Trump and JD Vance promised the American people. Think back to all the times that they looked the American people in the eye and said they would not drag America into another war, especially another war in the Middle East. They said it over and over. They called themselves the ``pro-peace'' ticket. Vice President Vance wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2023 making the case for Trump's 2024 Presidential candidacy. The headline of his op-ed: ``Trump's Best Foreign Policy? Not starting Any Wars.'' That is what JD Vance promised would come from a Trump-Vance White House. The Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sold ``No War with Iran'' shirts in 2020. Four years later, she declared: A vote for Donald Trump is a vote to end wars, not start them. That is our current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Donald Trump even calls himself now ``the peacemaker'' and on election night in 2024, he said: I'm not going to start wars, I'm going to stop wars. That was Donald Trump at the end of his campaign repeating what he had said throughout his Presidential campaign. Well, they broke their promises. They lied directly to the American people. President Trump has already ordered more military strikes against more countries than any President in the modern era, including against countries that have never been targeted by the U.S. military. And now, Trump has launched an all-out illegal regime-change war of choice against Iran. Let's be clear: This is not a war to make us safer. What the President has done is to make the world less safe for Americans, and he has chosen to put American service men and women at risk for a war that he said he would never start; that he promised he would never start. As of today, we have lost six brave American servicemembers to this war. I pray for them and their families. They should still be with us today. In response to their deaths, President Trump said just yesterday that ``sadly, there will likely be more. . . . That's the way it is.'' That is how Donald Trump responds to American troops killed in this war of choice that he started. He said: That's [just] the way it is. Really, colleagues? We should not send our sons and daughters to fight and die. We should not spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money for a war that is not in our interests and has no end in sight. No one--no one--in the Trump administration, including the President, has made a credible argument why it is in America's interest to start a war against Iran. They haven't because there isn't. Donald Trump and his administration have spent the last 48 hours telling different reporters and news agencies a whole host of different objectives and a whole set of different timelines. One claim that has been thoroughly debunked was that Iran was going to strike America first. That is a lie. It is a proven lie. So now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is spinning another version of this. He said we had to strike Iran first because Israel launched an attack on Iran. And here is his twisted logic. Israel was going to strike Iran, and, of course, we knew nothing about that, but we knew that if Israel struck Iran, that Iran would strike us, so we had to strike Iran first. The deception is deep, and it is sickening. This administration lied to the American people during the campaign before they were in office, and they are lying now. Another objective that has been cited was to end Iran's nuclear weapons capability. But we know that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons capability. That is also a lie. And, of course, we know that President Trump told the country that American and Israeli strikes last year had completely obliterated the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Remember that? And, of course, this is the President who in his first term, ripped up the agreement between the United States and Iran to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. We also know from the Omani intermediaries, including the Foreign Ministry of Oman, that Iran was willing to put much tighter restraints on any future possible nuclear enrichment programs. But apparently, the Trump administration had already decided to go to war. Another reason we heard from members of the administration--they are constantly shifting rationales--has been Iran's ballistic missile program. But Iran has zero missiles that can reach the United States. Not even close. None. So in yet another interview, Donald Trump said the aim is ``freedom for the Iranian people.'' In other words, regime change--regime change--the regime change he promised he would never undertake if he became President. Colleagues, we all know, every one of us, that the Iranian Government is a terrible regime, brutal to its own people, dangerous to the region. But we also learned from history that bombs don't turn dictatorships into democracies. And already, the Israeli and American strikes on Iran have produced mass civilian casualties. We have already seen reports of hospitals being bombed. In one strike alone, at least 175 civilians were killed at an elementary school, most of them schoolgirls, which has the hallmarks of a war crime. These killings should not be a surprise, especially when Secretary Hegseth said this morning that the operation would have ``no stupid rules of engagement.'' That is what the Secretary of Defense said-- anything goes. This is not a way to bring solidarity and support from the Iranian people. When we and the Israelis take out a country's leadership, we have no idea what will emerge next. In fact, back in 1953, the United States and the United Kingdom backed a coup against a democratically elected leader in Iran that enabled the Shah of Iran to consolidate power in the country. Some people thought that served American interests at the time. Instead, it became one of the primary drivers of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the creation of the Islamic Republic and its ideology. So beware what you ask for. Indeed, according to public reports, the CIA assessed that the most likely scenario if the Supreme Leader were killed was that more radical elements of the IRGC would take power in Iran. This does not advance America's interests in the region or the world. It will not make us safer. It will make the world less safe for America. And is it now the policy of the United States to go to war against every regime we hate? Colleagues, that is going to cost a lot of American lives and treasure. And that is presumably why Trump and Vance had previously been opposed to regime change and wars of choice. So beware what we ask for when we open up Pandora's box. Have we not learned the lessons of Iraq? The Iraq war cost the lives of 8,000 American soldiers and contractors. It cost trillions of dollars in taxpayer money. The war upended the region, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and helped spawn ISIS. It was the worst U.S. foreign policy blunder in a generation. The big winner from the war in Iraq? Iran. Iran was the big winner. So now Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says this war against Iran is something he has ``yearned to do for 40 years.'' Well, he got the war he wanted from Donald Trump. But there is a reason past Presidents have not started wars against Iran, and that is because they have refused to risk American lives and open Pandora's box for a regime change war when they had no idea how it would end. This war is rapidly turning into a conflict that we feared--a widespread, escalatory regional war with no end in sight. Iran has retaliated to U.S. and Israeli attacks by attacking U.S. assets and bases in every Arab country in the Persian Gulf, as well as targets in Israel, resulting in a further loss of lives. This includes drones and missile strikes on civilian infrastructure throughout the region. And just last night, Hezbollah joined the fray, launching missiles into Israel, prompting airstrikes from Israel into Beirut and across Lebanon. This is not ``America First,'' and we have no idea where it is going. What we do know is that the Framers of our Constitution never envisioned this to be allowed under our system of government. It is why the Framers, in our Constitution, gave Congress the power to declare war. They didn't want to give that power to one person. They didn't want to give that power to somebody like Donald Trump, who has said publicly that the only thing constraining his power is ``my own morality, my own mind.'' That is what Donald Trump has said. Colleagues in the Senate, you must understand that that is not what the Constitution requires. The Constitution requires Congress to act to declare war. So it is more important than ever that Congress stand up for the Constitution and that Congress insist that the President cannot continue these hostilities without approval from Congress. He shouldn't have started them without the approval of Congress. So the resolution before us asks a simple question: Do you support the Constitution of the United States and the role it gives to the U.S. Congress--that role to declare war? Do you believe that we, the people's elected representatives in the House and Senate, should have a voice in whether American lives--and specifically the lives of the members of our Nation's Armed Forces--are put at grave risk? Do you believe that this regime change war of choice that Donald Trump promised he would never launch serves American interests or makes our Nation safer? The American people do not want this war, and the Constitution entrusts the power to declare war with the U.S. Congress. Let's not surrender that responsibility. I urge my colleagues to support the War Powers Resolution and vote yes. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, today, I am cosponsoring the American Homeownership Act. When Wall Street buys up homes in communities across the country, we have all too often seen families get squeezed by higher costs and abusive landlords. This bill is an important step toward making a home more affordable and accessible. It would limit tax breaks for private equity firms and big corporations that acquire housing, expand investments in affordable housing programs, and crack down on companies that take control of the housing supply in a community. As we work to tackle Wall Street's role in our housing market, it is critical that we support efforts to rehabilitate existing housing stock and revitalize neighborhoods with new investment. I appreciate Senator Warren's thoughtful consideration of these issues, and I will work with my colleagues to ensure they are effectively addressed in this legislation.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, today, I am cosponsoring the American Homeownership Act. When Wall Street buys up homes in communities across the country, we have all too often seen families get squeezed by higher costs and abusive landlords. This bill is an important step toward making a home more affordable and accessible. It would limit tax breaks for private equity firms and big corporations that acquire housing, expand investments in affordable housing programs, and crack down on companies that take control of the housing supply in a community. As we work to tackle Wall Street's role in our housing market, it is critical that we support efforts to rehabilitate existing housing stock and revitalize neighborhoods with new investment. I appreciate Senator Warren's thoughtful consideration of these issues, and I will work with my colleagues to ensure they are effectively addressed in this legislation.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, so this is a really embarrassing moment for the U.S. Senate. It is a gross, gratuitous assault on the people of the District of Columbia, the people who live in our Nation's Capital. And also, as I listen to the rhetoric around this, it is actually one of the most dishonest arguments I have heard in the U.S. Senate for a long time. That is saying a lot. I also want to make clear from the outset that at a time when Americans in every State in the Union are feeling squeezed by costs and rising prices, this doesn't do a thing for any of the constituents of any Senator in this U.S. Senate--not a thing. And it doesn't do a damn thing for the Federal budget. What it does is pretend to say that you are protecting the people of the District of Columbia because you are assuring that they will get the benefit of the President Trump so-called Big Beautiful Bill. So with everything happening in this country, what we are doing here or what is being attempted here is to micromanage the government of the District of Columbia. This has nothing to do with Federal taxes-- nothing. The people of the District of Columbia are going to get the same Federal income tax form as people in every part of the country. I have the form right here that the people of the District of Columbia will fill out. It is a 1040. It has also got the additional deductions. It has all the deductions that are in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. They have got no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. The list goes on--qualified passenger vehicle loan interest deduction. So people who live in the District of Columbia will get this Federal tax form for their Federal taxes. We can't change the Federal Tax Code for the people of the District of Columbia. They are going to do exactly what everybody else in the United States is doing. And yet there are some who are pretending that somehow this is an effort to ensure that the people of the District of Columbia get the benefits of the changes to the Federal Tax Code. They are going to get whatever benefits people think are available under the Federal Tax Code. The author of this resolution, who is on the Senate floor, has said: . . . the D.C. Council's recent move that prevents federal tax laws under President Trump's Working Families Tax Cuts from going into effect for district residents. That is not true. District residents are going to get the same Federal tax form as the constituents of every Senator in this body. Congressman Gill, one of the supporters of this resolution in the House says: The DC Council's actions would block DC residents . . . from receiving these Federal tax credits . . . and from keeping their hard-earned money in their wallets. Not true. Not true. They pay the same Federal income taxes and have the same Federal tax deductions as every other person in the country. House Speaker Johnson said: If this act were to become local law, D.C. residents would be prevented from claiming no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, the increased standard deduction, and so much more. Not true. They are going to fill out the same Federal tax form as everybody else in the United States of America. So this is an example of complete false and deceptive advertising. What it is attempting to do, in reality, is not deny the District of Columbia benefits under the Federal Tax Code as they fill out their Federal tax forms, it is to prevent the people from the District of Columbia, when it comes to their local tax code, from having the autonomy that all of our jurisdictions have. That is what it does. And the people of the District of Columbia, through their elected representatives, chose, with respect to their local tax law, to make some different decisions than under the Federal Tax Code. So, for example, they restored the District of Columbia's local child tax credit, and they increased the District of Columbia's existing earned income tax credit. In fact, they adopted 84 of the provisions that were passed through from the Federal cut. Just 13 of the 84 provisions were changed as a matter of local DC law. So, for example, they decided that they could not afford to immediately implement the ability of companies to fully expense their R&D costs. They concluded, they did an analysis that if you adopted that Federal provision and you put that also in your DC tax code, that the people of the District of Columbia--the District of Columbia would lose $170 million. As I said, they did choose to enhance their child tax credit, and so if you actually vote for this resolution on the floor of the Senate, you are going to increase taxes on 78,000 children. Families that represent 78,000 children in the District of Columbia are going to see their taxes go up if you pass this Republican resolution. And, in fact, by increasing the child tax credit and taking measures on the earned income tax credit as a matter of local DC tax law, they are reducing poverty in the United States by 20 percent. So if you actually vote to overturn that, you are going to increase poverty in our Nation's Capital by 20 percent. It is insane what they are proposing. So like many States, and I am going to point out some of the other States that decouple from the Federal Tax Code when it comes to their State or local taxes--like many States what the District of Columbia wanted to do was to at least temporarily decouple so that they could examine what impact the Federal tax law changes would have if they incorporated them directly into their local tax system. And they are not alone in doing that. In fact, at least 13 States, represented by U.S. Senators in this body, have decoupled from some of the Republicans' reconciliation bill, tax bill. Those include the States of Alabama, Michigan, Illinois, and Virginia. And additionally, there are about 20 States, including Kentucky, Ohio, and Wisconsin, that do not automatically adopt changes to the Federal Tax Code as part of their State tax code. My State of Maryland doesn't automatically do it. Indiana doesn't do it. In fact, if you look through the various States, you will find that many do not do it. Let's look at Alabama. It is under Republican control right now. They voted to actively decouple their State tax provisions from the Federal tax provisions. I don't see any Senator here on the floor trying to undo the State of Alabama's tax code. Let's look at Kentucky law, and I am reading directly out of their statute. FEDERAL TAX LAW CHANGES--Recent federal income tax changes were enacted after Kentucky's conformity date set forth in

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak 10 minutes beyond my original time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, we are considering an appropriations package on the floor this week, and there has rightfully been a lot of focus on the section of the bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security, a section that I and my Democratic colleagues continue to insist should be considered separately, as it was in the House, to secure essential reforms to end the Department's abuses, stop the killings, protect people's rights, and ensure real accountability. Any additional funding for this unconstrained, lawless operation at DHS is unacceptable as we witness executions of civilians in our streets, unaccountable and warrantless raids, and in my home State of Maryland, inhumane conditions at the Baltimore Holding Center even as ICE moves to set up a warehouse with the capacity to process and detain 1,500 persons. I said I would not support one more dime for Trump's lawless ICE operation, and I meant it--not even for 1 more day. But I also want to take a moment to speak to the rest of that funding package, which includes the work of five other Appropriations subcommittees: Defense, State and Foreign Operations, Transportation and Housing, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Financial Services and General Government. I appreciate the work of the Democratic ranking members of these subcommittees and Vice Chair Murray, who secured some important provisions in the bill to reassert the congressional power of the purse with specific spending directives in legislative text. For example, the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bill rejects the administration's effort to eliminate the Department of Education and cut Pell grants. It also rejects the Trump proposal to cut NIH nearly in half and instead increases funding; and it successfully overrides the OMB directive that NIH fund more lump sum multi-year grants, which would otherwise result in fewer overall grants and less research activity. NIH, which is located in my home State of Maryland, is one of our greatest American success stories, where some of our brightest minds pursue treatments and cures to diseases that impact virtually every American family. This administration has spent the last year attacking the critical work of NIH, canceling grants and clinical trials and short-circuiting lifesaving research. I am glad this bill roundly rejects that and requires the administration to change course. At the same time, I am very disappointed that the bill does not reverse the rescission cut to public broadcasting, which provides critical services to Americans across the country, particularly in rural communities. Indeed, while these bills make important investments and include some critical safeguards, I have serious concerns that they do not go far enough to protect the power of the purse and the Federal employees who carry out the programs we fund, particularly as the administration continues its efforts to strip away the protections that safeguard our nonpartisan civil service and hollow out Agencies. Without enhanced guardrails in this package, the administration will continue to wreak havoc on the ability of our dedicated, merit-based civil servants to provide critical services to the American people. I also have deep concerns about the State foreign operations bill, now called the national security package. I know and appreciate the work of Vice Chair Murray and Ranking Member Schatz to preserve the legacy of U.S. foreign assistance in this bill after Elon Musk, Russell Vought, and their DOGE cronies took a chainsaw to USAID and the State Department. The bill includes some new guardrails to prevent deeper cuts going forward, but it still reflects a $9 billion cut from FY25 levels. The largest share of those cuts comes from humanitarian assistance and development assistance. Foreign aid is not a giveaway; it is an investment in the world we all live in. When your neighbor's house is on fire, it is foolish to wait until the flames reach your own home. Conflicts, pandemics, and humanitarian collapse do not respect borders. Preventing wars from starting and stopping new diseases before they reach American shores costs far less than fighting those threats once they arrive here. For less than 1 percent of the Federal budget, we can help save the lives of the world's most vulnerable children. Cutting that support is not fiscally responsible; it is morally indefensible. A Lancet study estimated that Trump's foreign aid cuts will cost 14 million lives by 2030, including over 4.5 million kids. Thousands of children are already dying. The bill also codifies an $850 million ``America First Opportunity Fund'' for an administration that has proven itself to be a reckless and unlawful custodian of Federal funding. This risks becoming a political slush fund, untethered from evidence-based programs and longstanding safeguards that ensure taxpayer dollars are used to advance genuine U.S. interests, not pet projects and foreign ventures that serve the interests of the Trump family, Trump campaign contributors, and his billionaire buddies at the expense of America's national security interests. The bill imposes a new cap on how much foreign assistance can be transferred to the Department of Homeland Security--an important check--but it still allows hundreds of millions of dollars to be transferred to an already bloated DHS for immigration enforcement. That is unacceptable. I also object to the bill's $3.3 billion in foreign military financing to the Government of Israel with no conditions or guardrails. The Netanyahu government has spent years openly flouting international law and disregarding U.S. interests, advice, and warnings, including concerns ranging from blocking humanitarian assistance and ethnic cleansing in Gaza to continued settler violence and mushrooming illegal settlements in the West Bank. I made clear on October 7, 2023, the day the heinous Hamas attack brutally killed over 1,200 people and seized over 200 hostages, that Israel had a right--indeed a duty--to go after Hamas. But the Netanyahu government's response went way beyond targeting Hamas to imposing collective punishment on all the people of Gaza. In Gaza, entire neighborhoods have been systematically destroyed. Throughout the war, more than 1.9 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, many of them multiple times, through military orders, bombardment, and the deliberate rendering of civilian areas unlivable. All of this has occurred with U.S.-funded weapons and equipment. In the West Bank, 240 Palestinians, including 55 children, were killed by Israeli forces or settlers in 2025, according to OCHA. Even the IDF found that Israeli settler violence in the West Bank rose by about 25 percent in 2025. This violence happened with virtual impunity and in many cases with the complicity of Israeli forces in the area. Along with settler violence, Israeli settlement expansion continues to rise, with a record number of 9,629 settlement housing units being approved by the Israeli Government in 2025, more than the previous 6 years combined. This includes approval for construction in the area known as E1, east of Jerusalem. Construction in E1 would effectively bisect the West Bank, preventing the development of a contiguous Palestinian state and sounding the death knell of the already diminishing prospects for a two-state solution. The Netanyahu government also retroactively legalized eight illegal outposts, half of which are located deep within the West Bank. We should be using every tool at our disposal to ensure that the Netanyahu government complies with President Trump's stated objective of a ``credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood'' and end its slow-motion annexation of the West Bank, destruction of neighborhoods in Gaza, and displacement of the Palestinian people. Conditions on foreign military financing and other types of assistance are not unusual; in fact, they are the norm. Other U.S. partners--including longstanding recipients like Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, El Salvador, Colombia, and Mexico--have had their assistance routinely tied to human rights, accountability, or other statutory benchmarks. Yet this bill provides the Netanyahu government with a blank check and no meaningful guardrails. That double standard weakens U.S. credibility and undermines our commitment to our core values. I appreciate that the Defense title in this bill funds a pay raise for our servicemembers and makes investments to support military families and critical work at Maryland's military bases. But I am deeply disturbed by the way Trump has misused and wrongfully deployed our military, from our Active-Duty forces to our National Guard. The Trump administration's abduction of dictator Nicolas Maduro wasn't a ``law enforcement operation'' or an effort to stop drug trafficking. It was about oil, seizing and controlling Venezuela's oil for the benefit of Trump's billionaire buddies. It is simply wrong to risk the lives of brave American soldiers to profit the Trump campaign's political contributors. And Trump has deployed the National Guard to DC, Los Angeles, Memphis, and Chicago, manufacturing claims of emergency and chaos to use the Guard in domestic law enforcement and his mass deportation agenda rather than using Justice Department resources to work with local partners and keep communities safe. And as State and local leaders and courts have stood in the way of these deployments, Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to bypass them and the restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act. Taken together, these abuses of power show an authoritarian administration using the military for its own ends, not for U.S. national security. These concerns only reinforce my existing reservations about the continued uncontrolled growth in defense spending, especially when the Pentagon continues to fail independent audits for 8 consecutive years. Finally, I want to underscore a point regarding the financial services and general government portion of this bill, which funds the General Services Administration. GSA, together with the FBI, is responsible for the FBI headquarters project. This bill provides no additional funding for that project, but GSA has funding available from prior year appropriations. There are still significant outstanding questions about this project and a security assessment and construction plan is underway and must be delivered to Congress as directed in the CJS Appropriations bill. From the start of this project, Congress has expected that the building would meet Level 5 ISC security requirements to safeguard the FBI mission, and GSA has shared its expectation that this project will meet that standard, though the security assessment is not yet complete. In order to ensure adequate congressional oversight and use taxpayer resources responsibly, GSA should also pause activities until the plan is finished and Congress has reviewed it. As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I recognize the challenges in negotiating these bills given the radical demands of the administration and the complicity of too many of my Republican colleagues in the House and Senate. I appreciate the hard-won investments and safeguards in these bills and the rejection of dozens of partisan House policy riders. That said, for the reasons I have outlined and because I believe more can be done to rein in this administration's authoritarian impulses, I oppose this package.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor Vice Admiral Nancy Hann on the occasion of her retirement. VADM Hann is retiring after more than 30 years of extraordinary service with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. After graduating from the University of California San Diego in 1996 with a bachelor's degree in marine science and biology, VADM Hann started her career with NOAA as a fisheries observer. Over time, she expanded her expertise and was later commissioned as an officer in the NOAA Officer Corps, where she served in a variety of capacities. VADM Hann's versatility and dedication to her profession have made her an incomparable asset to NOAA and to the Nation. She later went on to earn a master's in space studies and remote sensing at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and a master of public administration at the Harvard Kennedy School. Most notably, VADM Hann has served in many operational and top management assignments including her positions as NOAA's Acting Administrator, deputy director of the NOAA Corps and the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, OMAO, commanding officer of the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center, and NOAA liaison to the U.S. Pacific Command. Most recently, VADM Hann completed a tour as the director of the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps and is currently the highest- ranking officer in the NOAA Corps. VADM Hann is a trailblazer in her field. She was she one of the first female officers to qualify as an aircraft commander and the first woman to achieve the rank of vice admiral in the NOAA Corps, as well as one of NOAA's first uncrewed systems operators. She has consistently led by example through her experience, her achievements, and her demonstrated commitment to equitable workspaces. VADM Hann's leadership has left an enduring legacy of professionalism, mentorship, and innovation that will inspire generations to come. Upon retiring, VADM Hann is closing out an illustrious, awe-inspiring career, one spent in service to research, coastal and marine stewardship, and our Nation. She has dedicated the entirety of her career to principled leadership and environmental conservation, and I thank her for her commitment. I invite my colleagues to join me in thanking VADM Hann for her lifetime of service and to congratulate her on her well-deserved retirement.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, on Saturday, the Nation learned the name of Alex Pretti. Alex was an ICU nurse at the Veterans' Administration, fulfilling our Nation's sacred promise to care for our wounded warriors. Many have probably seen the video of him paying final respects and honors to one of our fallen veterans. Alex was also a neighbor who cared deeply about his community, and because of those values, Alex was an observer, recording and bearing witness to the actions of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol as they descended upon his hometown, stopping and detaining individuals without judicial warrants. We all saw video of Alex's final moments, when he stopped to help a fellow observer, a woman who had been pushed by Federal agents, before those agents sprayed him with chemicals, disarmed him of the gun he legally carried, and shot him in the back, firing 10 shots in less than 5 seconds. We all saw this on video--in fact, multiple videos from multiple angles from other civilians on the street that day bearing witness. But this administration--the Trump administration--immediately lied to us. And when I say ``us,'' I mean the American people. They called Alex a ``domestic terrorist.'' They called him a ``would-be assassin.'' This administration must think the American people are really stupid, telling them not to believe their own eyes. This was the killing of an American citizen exercising his constitutional rights, and you would think that that by itself would spur a reckoning with the actions of the Department of Homeland Security. But this isn't one isolated event. This isn't even the only killing committed by DHS agents in Minnesota this year. On January 7, a Minneapolis mom, Renee Good, was shot and killed as she attempted to drive away from immigration agents who aggressively approached her, contrary to DHS's use-of-force policy, and, ultimately, killed her, and then prevented her from receiving immediate medical assistance. They lied about her case, as well, accusing her also of ``domestic terrorism,'' despite the evidence that people across this land could see with their own eyes. This is not a case of just a few untrained bad apples. It is the result of an out-of-control Federal Agency that has directed its agents to act with impunity, to detain and deport scores of people who pose no risk to our communities in so many cases and have no criminal records, including small business owners, pastors, parents taking their kids to school, neighbors walking their dogs, children. This is an intentional policy coming out of the White House--from Donald Trump to Stephen Miller, to the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. JD Vance, the Vice President, said the agent who shot Renee Good was ``protected by absolute immunity.'' That is what the Vice President of the United States said. He should know better. And they have deliberately cut funding for offices at DHS that monitor the conduct of immigration officers to protect civil rights and civil liberties. They are giving agents a license to kill with impunity. Secretary Noem should be fired immediately--if not fired, impeached. Stephen Miller has now tried to point the finger at others, when he has been the ringleader in the White House. He should be fired. DHS operates at the direction of the White House and the President with orders to meet arbitrary quotas, to detain and deport not just the worst of the worst but anybody. They conduct masked raids in unmarked vehicles and refuse to show identification. They arrest people without warrants, use force to enter homes, and lock people up without due process. They sweep up citizens, legal immigrants, and immigrants without deportation orders. And when they are confronted with their abuses, they lie. They tell us not to believe what we see with our own eyes. I want to salute the people in Minneapolis and across the country, including in Maryland, who are taking videos and working to hold these Federal forces accountable. Think about what would have happened if there was no video in these cases. These videos have complicated the Trump administration's effort at a coverup, even as the Trump administration refuses to work with State and local law enforcement to investigate these killings. In my State of Maryland, DHS lied about the circumstances surrounding a nonfatal shooting, and they were exposed in their lies because of a local county investigation that showed that DHS was plain wrong. DHS has restricted access to detention centers, preventing congressional oversight into inhuman conditions, where we know at least 30 people have died in custody, including one death in Texas that has been ruled a homicide. And as they view the actions of peaceful protestors and observers as a personal offense, they have reacted with violence and labeled them domestic terrorists for practicing their constitutional freedoms and rights. In Minnesota, these Federal agents hurled chemical irritants at peaceful crowds who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights to freedom of assembly and peaceful protest. They view whistles as weapons. In Portland, they claimed to be threatened by people wearing frog costumes. My colleagues, Republicans in Congress, have fueled this surge in illegal activity by exploding the DHS budget with $165 billion as part of what Donald Trump called the Big Beautiful Bill. Remember, that is the bill where the richest people in the country were given permanent tax cuts. That is the bill that made deep cuts in healthcare for tens of millions of Americans. And in that bill was also this huge slush fund for DHS. ICE, by itself, is now the Nation's highest funded law enforcement Agency and has more funding than the militaries of most countries in the world--including Italy, Israel, and Brazil. ICE, by itself, has more funds than the armies of those countries, and now they are spending those funds to hire more agents and are putting more of them out on the streets with limited training. They are preparing to turn warehouses into so-called processing sites and detention centers, including one in my home State of Maryland, doing it against the will of the community. We see DHS spitting in the face of local communities across the country. In Maryland, we had a rally with hundreds of people on a very cold day, sending a message to ICE and to the Trump administration that the people in that community did not want a warehouse for detainees right there. Within days of that demonstration, the Trump administration-- ICE--signed a deal for $100 million of our taxpayer money to purchase a warehouse where they say they can keep up to 1,500 detainees. I can tell you Maryland taxpayers don't want their money going to that purpose, and I will bet you the great majority of taxpayers around this country don't want to see their tax dollars used in that way as well. And now, despite the fact that they are already clearly misusing these taxpayer dollars, as American citizens are killed on the streets, our fellow Republicans, our Republicans in the Senate, want to give them even more in the bill that would be up on this floor this week--in fact, another $10 billion more for ICE and over $18 billion more for Customs and Border Patrol, while refusing to rein in these abuses-- another blank check for lawless activity, another blank check that results in the killing of Americans, another blank check with no accountability. That would be madness. We cannot green-light the actions of an Agency that is already terrorizing our communities and executing our neighbors with billions of dollars in new funds without any regard to their constitutional rights. Again, President Trump said he was going to go after ``the worst of the worst.'' That has not been their focus, and we can see it with our own eyes. And we cannot accept the administration's claim that these agents have some kind of absolute immunity and are free from the consequences of their actions. That is why an independent investigation into the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have to happen, and I appreciate my colleagues from the other side of the aisle who have called for one. But that should be a standard situation. That should be the standard operating procedure in a situation like this. State and local law enforcement should, of course, be partners in that effort. The Feds should not be trying to hide evidence from those local and State law enforcement officers. We must do that, but it is not enough to take the word of the Trump administration that they will do that. We can't simply trust an administration that has repeatedly lied to the American people, as if, this time, they will try to do better. And, again, we wouldn't be here, probably, but for that video. The administration would have thought that it got away with its lies. So let's not be naive. We are not going to give away our responsibility as legislators to put real reforms right into the DHS bill to prevent this lawlessness, to prevent these killings, to protect our freedoms, and to assure real accountability. Our most important job is protecting the life and liberty of the American people. It is sadly too late to protect Alex Pretti and too late to protect Renee Good, as they should have been protected, but it is not too late to act on behalf of the rest of the American people. So, this week, we have before us a package of appropriation bills that includes the work of six appropriations subcommittees--including Defense; Transportations and Housing; Labor, Health and Human Services; Foreign Operations; and Financial Services. These are not perfect bills, and I have serious concerns with some of them that I would like to see addressed. But it is also clear that there is enough support in this body to pass them. We could pass them today if they were separated out. In fact, when those bills went through the House of Representatives, they considered the Department of Homeland Security bill on its own merits. They didn't bundle it in with everything else and say: You know, you have got to vote for this whole package at one time. So the House, after they passed it individually, they pulled all those bills together and sent them in a bundle over here to the U.S. Senate. But, my goodness, that doesn't mean the U.S. Senate has to take it that way from the House. This is supposed to be an independent branch of the Congress. I don't know why we would surrender our responsibilities to the House of Representatives. And they should get right back into Washington if we change this bill and pass it to prevent a shutdown of those Agencies. That is their responsibility. The House needs to perform its duties, and we need to perform ours. And ours involve making sure that we separate out those five appropriation bills that I mentioned from the Homeland Security appropriations bill. In fact, I would argue that we should also take-- as part of the package of five bills, we should take FEMA and TSA and the Coast Guard, which are part of the DHS bill, and we could send all of those back to the House for immediate passage to go on to the President. But, instead, Republican colleagues here are wasting time. We could take up that package today, if there was the will to do it among my Republican colleagues. But, right now, instead, we are holding all of those other Agencies--the Defense Department, Health and Human Services--hostage to holding onto the Department of Homeland Security bill that needs to be changed dramatically. I don't think that a single person in this body would argue against deporting those who have committed serious crimes--``the worst of the worst''--but that is not what this administration has been focused on. Nothing about this has been targeted. And Trump's ICE has not focused, as they promised, on ``the worst of the worst.'' They are stopping and arresting people who are citizens, who are legal residents, who have legal pending asylum claims, just because of how they look or their accent. And they are wreaking havoc on communities across the country, including on peaceful protestors, two of whom have now given their lives to protect our freedoms. And do you know what? They are not just using their own agents as part of this indiscriminate dragnet. They are bringing in other Agencies as well, distracting them and redirecting them from critical missions. Senator Warner released data that showed nearly half of the FBI agents in its largest field offices have been redirected to immigration, away from fighting drug trafficking, terrorism, and violent crime. It is time for us in the Senate to do our job. This isn't going to go away with the couple hours of extra training, personnel reassignments, or administration statements. Let's make this a moment for real change and not give DHS another huge blank check. I, for one, will not vote for one more dime for this lawless DHS operation that we are witnessing at this time. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, today we consider S. 3627. This legislation would limit the information students receive about their healthcare and family planning options. No one disagrees that pregnant and parenting students should have access to care and necessary accommodations. But this legislation explicitly and intentionally excludes information on the entire range of healthcare available to students, including contraception and abortion care. Students should have access to information regarding all comprehensive healthcare choices, including pregnancy and postpartum care, contraception, and abortion care, so they can make their own decisions. This bill does not create any new rights or supports that students do not already have; it simply limits what information would be available to them. Instead of focusing on limiting healthcare options for the American people, Republicans should focus on providing real supports for families, like comprehensive maternity and postpartum care and access to affordable childcare.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise as the ranking member of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee--known around here as CJS--to discuss the funding for critical national programs provided to those Agencies for fiscal year 2026. This is one of the appropriations bills that is before the Senate right now. I want to thank Senator Moran, the chairman and my partner on the CJS Subcommittee, and his staff Brian Daner, Kevin Wheeler, and Rachel Taylor, for working closely with me and my team to produce this important final bill for consideration of the Senate. I want to thank House CJS chairman Hal Rogers and ranking member Grace Meng and their staffs as well. This bill is the result of many long days and nights of tough negotiations over the holidays, including a very productive call among the four of us on New Year's Eve to broker a final deal on the bill's remaining and outstanding items. This bill has already overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives. The CJS appropriations agreement meets the allocation that was given to our subcommittee of $78 billion in discretionary spending. It rejects the very deep and reckless cuts proposed in the President's budget. At the same time, it is not much higher than the 2025 continuing resolution--so basically flat funding even as needs have grown in these important programs. We had to make tough decisions when it came to what programs to cut and what to protect. Senator Moran and I were able to work together with our House colleagues in a bipartisan way to do our best to make those decisions. I must say this is not the bill I would have written if I were doing it on my own, but it is the result of negotiations. Republicans currently control every branch of government--majorities in the House and Senate and, of course, control of the White House. But this bill, while not what I would have written alone, will ensure that Congress-- and not Donald Trump or Russ Vought--decides how taxpayer dollars get spent for the Agencies covered in this bill. So I am happy to report to my colleagues that the CJS conference bill before us is a strong bipartisan one that rejects the very devastating, misguided funding cuts and program eliminations that had been advanced and suggested by President Trump, and it rejects dozens and dozens of extreme poison pill riders that had been proposed by our House Republican colleagues. It makes smart and targeted investments in a wide range of critical initiatives that affect the lives of all of our fellow Americans. It prioritizes keeping our communities safe. It advances American leadership in science and innovation. It boosts economic opportunities around the country, including through the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program. It funds vital initiatives at Federal Agencies in my home State of Maryland, from scientific research at NASA Goddard, to operations at NOAA and NIST, to preparations for the next census. Through the Department of Commerce, we maintain the current generation of NOAA weather and climate satellites, and we invest in next-generation satellites that will track severe weather. We also promote American businesses and exports through Department of Commerce efforts. We also help Agencies like NIST that are creating cybersecurity and AI standards for the future. Through NOAA, we are also enabling sustainable management of ocean resources that are so vital to our fisheries and to commerce throughout our country. To promote American innovation and scientific discovery, the bill provides $8.75 billion for the National Science Foundation, sparing it from the 57-percent cut sought by President Trump. Colleagues, we cannot expect to maintain our cutting edge in science and discovery and stay ahead of our competitors if we are not making the vital investments in research through the National Science Foundation. The bill funds NASA at $24.4 billion to explore the solar system, to advance our understanding of climate change, to promote innovation and sustainability in aeronautics, and to protect our planet. This is another area where we rejected very deep cuts proposed by the Trump administration, including the 47-percent cut they had proposed to NASA's Science budget. Colleagues, we won't have a space program if we don't understand what is happening in space and get to the fundamentals of science in space. You cannot have one without the other. So we reject those cuts. The President's budget would have wrecked the exciting work being done right now at Maryland's Goddard Space Flight Center, where they are completing what is known as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It is on time--in fact, ahead of schedule--and, right now, under budget, and is expected to launch later this year to investigate dark energy and the formation of galaxies and stars--all things that will add to the body of human knowledge and help the United States remain a leader when it comes to space discovery exploration. The next step will be the development of the Habitable Worlds Observatory that can answer the fundamental question of whether we are alone in the universe. That is another exciting project where America will take the lead, but only if we provide the resources to get it done, and that is another important program led by NASA Goddard. I also included language directing NASA to preserve all the technical and scientific world-class capabilities at Goddard during any consolidation of the campus and calling for a National Academy of Sciences study to make sure that NASA Goddard is set up for long-term success. It is a national treasure, and we need to preserve it. Reform, yes, but let's make sure we reform it in a way that can allow it to continue to be a leader when it comes to space science, Earth science, and the American enterprise. Funding in this bill will also help better protect American communities. It invests in lifesaving grant programs from State, local, and Tribal law enforcement, to advancing criminal justice initiatives, to providing the highest level of funding ever for the Office on Violence Against Women. In addition to these funding priorities, the bill also includes language I worked on to address the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to set aside and ignore the decades-long site selection process for a new FBI headquarters. The language in this bill requires that prior to spending any reprogrammed construction funds on a new headquarters, the FBI must submit the contracted and completed architectural and engineering plan for any new building, including the security plan, for review by the Appropriations Committee. I think we would all agree that it is essential that the men and women who work at the FBI have a headquarters that meets the security requirements that have been set out for it over the last 15 years to two decades, which is Level 5 Security. It is the highest level of security and needed given the very sensitive work that the FBI does on behalf of our country. This language is important to reasserting Congress' oversight role in a large and expensive project and ensuring that the new headquarters meets the mission and security needs of the men and women of the FBI. And I want to thank Senator Moran for working with me on this provision. As I said earlier, this bill is not perfect. It does, however, include guardrails to safeguard the Congress' powers when it comes to spending the taxpayer dollars, at least within the domain of the Agencies in this particular appropriations bill. And that is one of the very important features of this legislation compared to what we would otherwise see in a straight continuing resolution. In this bill, we make sure that congressional prerogatives are protected, not just in report language, but in the statute itself. As I said, the bill is not perfect. There are many things that I would have chosen to do differently if I was doing this on my own. I will say one problem with the bill before us is that a provision that had been unanimously adopted in the Senate Appropriations Committee regarding the Epstein files was taken out of this bill. That provision would have required the Department of Justice to retain those records. It also required them to submit not just the files, but a report that provided information and analysis on various aspects of the Epstein files, from financial questions to links regarding foreign intelligence, anything that the documents reflected. And I will say, at a time when we have seen just a small percentage of those files actually released to the public and to the Congress, we need to do much better, which is why I have filed an amendment to this conference bill to restore the identical language that the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously adopted. Despite those shortcomings, I do think if you look at its full scope, that this bill is something that is worthy of bipartisan support. I think it will advance very important national interests, both when it comes to science and discovery, when it comes to law enforcement, and when it comes to other major national priorities. The funding in this bill and the resources it has provided will, in my view, strengthen our country, especially at a time when we are facing so many challenges around the world from competitors and adversaries, including China and others. We need to make sure that the United States invests in the future of our people and the future of our country. This bill is a positive step in that direction, and I urge my colleagues to adopt it. If I could, I did want to thank some of the folks on my team. And I want to thank them for all of the work that they did, including Jessica Berry, who is the lead Democratic clerk on the committee, as well as other members of our committee, Lindsay Erickson, TJ Lowdermilk, and Blaise Sheridan. I thanked the Republican staff members, Senator Moran's staff, who worked with us, and I want to thank my own team as well. And in closing, I also do want to thank the chair and vice chair of the Appropriations Committee--Senator Susan Collins and Senator Patty Murray--for their work in getting us to this point, and, again, I urge adoption of this legislation. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I think the real danger is that over time, this Congress has conceded and delivered its constitutional responsibilities to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and President Trump and other executives. It is time for Congress to take seriously its responsibilities, including the constitutional responsibility to decide when to declare war. Here at home, our fellow Americans are facing higher costs for virtually everything: for groceries, for electricity, childcare, healthcare. The list goes on and on. Folks all over the country are working nonstop just to make ends meet. So you would think that President Trump would be focused on keeping his campaign promise to bring down prices. He said he was going to do that on day one of his administration, but that is not what he is doing. He is doing the opposite. He and Republicans right here in the Senate and in Congress are actually driving up costs, including healthcare costs across the country. Members of Congress on the Republican side voted against extending tax credits to help middle-class Americans afford their healthcare. In fact, those tax credits expired at midnight on December 31, and 20 million Americans are seeing their healthcare costs spike. President Trump is also breaking another promise. He is breaking his promise to keep America from being dragged into costly foreign conflicts. He is not focused on nation building here at home. He is focused on nation building overseas--exactly what he said he did not want to do. First of all, he bailed out Argentina, and now, he says he is running Venezuela. He says he is in charge of Venezuela. In fact, just this morning, President Trump's Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said the United States would be overseeing the sale of Venezuela's oil production ``indefinitely.'' Here is a Washington Post story: ``U.S. vows to control Venezuela oil sales `indefinitely'''--Energy Secretary says. That is what this has been about from the beginning, grabbing and controlling Venezuela's oil for the benefit of Trump's billionaire buddies. That is why Wall Street appears to be drooling at the prospect of making more money in Venezuela. So I think we should start by pointing out the fact that the Trump administration has been engaged in a long campaign of deception and lies to the American people about the reasons for this adventure in Venezuela. They lied to the American people when they said this was all about stopping the flow of drugs into the United States. We all support that goal. But that is not what this has been about. If this was about stopping the flow of drugs into our country, the Trump administration would not have proposed big budget cuts to the Drug Enforcement Administration. They would not have shuttered the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. They shut it down. President Trump talks about deaths caused by fentanyl in the United States. He is absolutely right about that. What he does not tell the American people is that the fentanyl killing Americans is not originating or even transiting through Venezuela. And, of course, if President Trump was serious about fighting drugs, he would not, just as he did weeks ago, have pardoned the former Honduran President and notorious drug kingpin Juan Orlando Hernandez. I should say, even closer to home in December, we learned President Trump also pardoned a Baltimore City drug kingpin whom the DEA called ``one of the largest cocaine and heroin dealers to be arrested by the DEA in recent history.'' That sends a signal to everybody that Donald Trump is willing to pardon people who have been engaged in poisoning our people. So this has not been about stopping drugs for Donald Trump. And it certainly wasn't about removing an illegitimate leader--and Maduro is an illegitimate leader--but Donald Trump cozies up to dictators all over the world. Of course, yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Donald Trump's efforts to overturn a free and fair election right here in the United States. The President himself has made clear that this is all about the oil. When he announced the fact that the United States had seized Maduro, he said: ``We're going to get back our oil'' and ``We need total access . . . access to the oil and to other things in their country,'' meaning other natural resources in Venezuela. He uttered the word ``oil'' 19 times when he announced the seizure of Maduro. Indeed, while President Trump did not consult or notify Congress about his plans, as is required, he revealed that ``the oil companies were absolutely aware that we were thinking about doing something.'' So colleagues, Donald Trump wants to grab the oil, and he wants to do it to help his billionaire buddies. Case in point is Paul Singer. He is the billionaire head of Elliott Investment Management and a Trump megadonor. He recently acquired Citgo, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run oil company in November 2025, just a few months ago. He acquired it for approximately half the company's estimated value. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal in an article on January 5: Now Elliott appears poised to reap the rewards of owning Venezuela's most valuable foreign oil asset. The regime change could lead to an increase in Venezuelan oil production, which would likely provide cheap feedstock to Citgo's Gulf Coast refineries and increase the company's value, analysts and refining experts said. So a huge win for one of President Trump's biggest donors. Now, I think we all need to acknowledge and salute our troops who took part in this operation. They performed magnificently, flawlessly, bravely. I want to thank them on behalf of my fellow Marylanders. But it is also outrageous that President Trump would put the lives of American service men and women at risk to grab Venezuela's oil to enrich his friends on Wall Street. At least six of our American service men and women were wounded, approximately 80 Venezuelans were killed in this operation, including civilians, not to mention the over 100 people who were on those boats over the last couple of months who had been killed. And while the Trump administration and congressional Republicans attempt to bask in the euphoria of Maduro's removal, the hangover of running Venezuela is still to come. In fact, it has started. In recent remarks on Venezuela's future after Maduro's capture, President Trump said: You know, rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can't get any worse. Well, actually, colleagues, it can, and we have seen it before; two decades in Afghanistan, years in Iraq stand as a warning: The United States spilled blood and treasure on state-building fantasies that failed, undermined American interests, and left a more fractured and unstable region in their wake. The United States has no mandate to decide Venezuela's future. That is up to the Venezuelan people, not to be imposed through U.S. military regime change efforts that are really motivated by oil company interests and not to be dictated by threats of occupation. This time, President Trump has co-opted the U.S. military in service of those goals, benefiting oil companies and his billionaire buddies. And in doing so, he has charted a dangerous playbook that they say they may employ elsewhere. As we all know, since seizing Maduro, President Trump has threatened further action against Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland. After being asked about an operation in Greenland, which he has threatened several times with invasion since beginning his term, he said--President Trump said: We need Greenland. Just yesterday, the White House confirmed in a statement that they are discussing ``a range of options'' to acquire Greenland, not excluding military force. When asked about a U.S. operation against Colombia, President Trump said: It sounds good to me. Look, what we have seen is President Trump resurrecting a policy from a bygone era, one which would be better left in the dustbin of history, the Monroe Doctrine. That was encapsulated in his recent press conference as well when he said that ``American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.'' What he means by that is that he will deploy U.S. forces wherever he wants for whatever purpose he wants--and, again, trying to leave Congress out of the equation. You know, you listen to our Republican colleagues here who apparently just want to give the Executive a blank check. If you look at the National Security Strategy that the Trump administration unveiled a few weeks back, you will see how serious a change their proposal is because it essentially throws overboard the idea that the United States will employ a foreign policy based on values and principles, that we will support a rules-based order, human rights, freedom, and democracy. However imperfectly we have done that--and we have been far from perfect--that has been one of the guiding lights for U.S. foreign policy. And when you throw that overboard in favor of this new policy, which says we will essentially reassert a dominance in the Western Hemisphere, it is clearly a signal to others around the world--or at least this is the way they will hear it--that they get free rein in their neighborhoods, which explains why President Trump has been so weak when it comes to negotiating with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. We can explain it when we understand that when Donald Trump says ``Ukraine is your neighborhood,'' you, Vladimir Putin, get to do what you want in Ukraine. So he invites Vladimir Putin to a summit in Alaska, thinks he is going to sweet talk Putin. As soon as the summit is over, Russia and Putin escalate their attacks against Ukraine. Maybe in Donald Trump's mind it is like: Well, you know, Ukraine is in your neighborhood, none of my business. That is a very dangerous signal to send. Of course, President Xi--I mean he is looking at Taiwan 90 miles away and saying: Well, that is in my neighborhood. So Donald Trump has unleashed this idea that we are going to focus only on the Western Hemisphere--or mostly on the Western Hemisphere-- and that we are essentially going to live by the rule that might is right. When you unleash that idea around the world, other significant powers will listen and it will make the world a lot more dangerous and it will undermine American interests. So I do want to close where I started, which is instead of engaging in these costly foreign adventures that cost billions of dollars and put American lives at risk, we should be doing what Candidate Trump said he was going to do, which is focus on making sure we improve the lives of American people right here at home. That is not what the President is doing. That is what we should be doing, and we should start by saying no to this foreign, illegal adventure by supporting Senator Kaine's resolution. And then we should get about making sure that we work to bring costs down here in the United States, including, after the House passes later this week, legislation to restore those tax credits that help people afford their healthcare. We should take that up in the Senate and get it passed. Let's focus on helping the American people here at home rather than putting Americans and their lives at risk in costly foreign adventures to get our hands on Venezuela's oil for the benefit of Donald Trump's donors and billionaire buddies. I yield the floor.