Mark Warner

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I rise this afternoon in opposition to the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to be Director of National Intelligence because nothing less than our national security is currently on the line. I am going to start by saying that I have nothing but respect for Ms. Gabbard's many years of service to our Nation, both in uniform and as a Representative for Hawaii. I don't question Ms. Gabbard's patriotism. I oppose her nomination because I question her judgment. Now, many may not understand the important role that the Director of National Intelligence plays. If confirmed, Ms. Gabbard will lead the 18 Agencies of the intelligence community. She will also serve as the principal adviser to the President, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for all intelligence matters related to national security; and in this role as well, she will be responsible for over $100 billion between the national intelligence program and the military intelligence program. Now, the stakes here have become all the more critical in recent days. Just in the past couple of weeks, President Trump has issued several directives that could irreparably harm our intelligence efforts and our Nation's ability to defend itself against the many threats we face. At the FBI, some of our most experienced agents who have protected us for decades from terrorists, drug traffickers, spies, and violent criminals have all been unceremoniously fired. Thousands more may have reason to fear they may be next based on the vindictive list apparently being assembled of every FBI official who was involved in the investigations into the Capitol riot on January 6. It is not just the FBI. Across the IC, including the CIA, DIA, NSA, NRO, and NGA--an alphabet of Agencies that most folks don't fully appreciate or understand--in every one of these Agencies, I am hearing that intelligence officers and analysts with irreplaceable skills are unfortunately being indiscriminately pressured to resign or retire. Reportedly, senior law enforcement and national security officials are being asked to take political litmus tests, such as whether the 2020 Presidential election was stolen and whether the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was an inside job. Across the government, whole Agencies are being eliminated and funding impounded in flagrant defiance of the Constitution and the law, while unvetted, unqualified DOGE bros--one who formally worked for a Russia hacker group and was fired for leaking sensitive company secrets to a competitor and yet another who proudly declared himself a ``racist'' and said he would not mind if ``Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth''--that individual, I understand, has actually been rehired after he initially quit--these DOGE bros are illegally burrowing into classified and other sensitive information, jeopardizing our national security and violating Americans' privacy. To take just one recent example of what is at stake here, just last week, the CIA sent an email, using an unclassified system--an unclassified system--to the White House listing the names of all recently hired employees. This is, again, from the CIA. It takes months to get a CIA employee security clearance and then a year to train. Suddenly, all of their names are out. This happened evidently in an attempt to comply with an Executive order to reduce the size of the workforce no matter how badly their skills might be needed. These 200-plus individuals--and I can assure you, with a name or the last letter of a name and appropriate AI tools, based on where these folks are working, you can find out their identities, and these agents may be burned before they even start their careers. I know that many of my Republican colleagues profess to take the issue of unclassified servers very seriously indeed. There was a whole litany of attack on this earlier. But the fact is, beyond the counterintelligence risk of foolishly exposing these officers' names using channels known to be targeted by foreign hackers, this careless effort to identify and potentially dismiss recently recruited and trained CIA officers also imperils the longstanding bipartisan efforts by the Senate Intelligence Committee to actually modernize and streamline the Agency's hiring process, because we need to make sure that we continue to recruit and retain talented young officers when it comes to confronting the growing national security threat posed by the PRC. We need leaders in the intelligence community and throughout government who are prepared to stand up to those shortsighted attempts to attack our workforce at the expense of our national security. Unfortunately, I don't believe Ms. Gabbard is such a leader, nor is she well-suited by dint of experience or judgment to serve as Director of National Intelligence. The DNI is a position of great importance and significance to our national security, created, candidly, after one of our worst security failures in our Nation's history--9/11. For that reason, when Congress established this position--in many ways due to the efforts of my good friend Susan Collins--it mandated in law that any individual nominated for the position must have ``extensive national security expertise.'' As I noted previously, the DNI was created to fill this gap after 9/ 11. Its mission is to share intelligence not only between the 18 entities that make up the American IC but also to work with our allies. This sharing of information, sharing of intelligence with our allies, is predicated on trust--there is no agreement--trust that we and our allies will protect each other's secrets. Yet, repeatedly, Ms. Gabbard has excused our adversaries' worst actions and instead often blamed the United States and our allies for them. For example, she blamed NATO for Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. And despite the unanimous assessment of the Trump administration's DOD, State Department, and IC, she rejected the conclusion that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. Now, I don't know if her intent in making those statements was to defend those dictators or if she was simply unaware of the intelligence and how her statements would be perceived. In either case, it calls into question her judgment and if she has what it takes to build and develop the trust relationships necessary to give not only our IC workforce but, equally important, give our allies confidence that they can share their most sensitive intelligence with us. Make no mistake about it, if our allies stop sharing that intelligence, we will be less safe. To offer just one example, last summer, intelligence sharing between the United States and Austria saved countless lives by disrupting a terrorist attack at a Taylor Swift concert, underscoring the importance of these relationships. Ms. Gabbard has also been publicly outspoken in her praise and defense of Edward Snowden--someone who betrayed the trust and jeopardized the security of our Nation. The vast majority of the information he stole and leaked--before, I would remind you, he ran off and hightailed it to both China and Russia--most of this information, I can assure you, had nothing to do with America's privacy but did compromise our Nation's most sensitive collection sources and methods. In many ways, we are still paying a price for Snowden's betrayal, and it is beyond dispute that his actions put our men and women in uniform in places like Iraq and Afghanistan at risk. Yet Ms. Gabbard has celebrated Snowden as a ``brave whistleblower'' and advocated for his pardon. This is someone that my friend Tom Cotton, who is the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, called a ``traitor'' who should ``rot in jail for the rest of his life.'' A week ago, at the hearing, member after member--particularly my Republican friends--gave her chance after chance to just be willing to call out Snowden as a traitor. She repeatedly declined. Instead, she said: The DNI has no role in determining whether or not Edward Snowden is a lawful whistleblower. Not only does she seem to believe that someone who divulged sensitive national secrets to Russia and China should be celebrated as ``brave'' and not denounced as a ``traitor,'' she also does not seem to understand the DNI's role in whistleblower determinations, because, in fact, the DNI has a significant role in transmitting lawful whistleblower complaints to the Intelligence Committees. It would be irresponsible to confirm someone who cannot distinguish between complaints that are made lawfully and those that are not. Further, it is the statutory responsibility of the DNI to ``protect intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure.'' What message would it send to an intelligence workforce to have a DNI who would celebrate staff and contractors deciding to leak our Nation's most sensitive secrets as they see fit? Now, let me move to another issue of pressing relevance to this nomination, and that is section 702 of FISA. This bill, this tool--it is really hard to overstate the importance. The information we derive from this tool is responsible for about 60 percent of the intelligence in the President's Daily Brief, and it has been instrumental in disrupting everything from terrorists attacks, to fentanyl trafficking, to foreign cyber attacks. Many in Congress have at various points supported reforms to 702 to better balance security and civil liberties, but, again, Ms. Gabbard has gone so much further. Not only did she vote against reauthorizing 702, she introduced legislation to repeal the whole thing and called its very existence a ``blatant disregard for our Fourth Amendment constitutional rights.'' I do understand that after she was nominated to be DNI, she had a conversion--a confirmation conversion--and expressed a change of heart. Now, that is welcome, but it is just not credible. Just last May, she criticized the reforms put into 702. Just last May, she criticized those very reforms she now credits with changing her mind. Again, the reforms, she claimed, ``made the law many, many times worse.'' The DNI is responsible for making annual certifications under section 702, without which all collection under the law will cease, and the law itself is up for reauthorization in just over a year--a process typically led by the DNI. I have no confidence in Ms. Gabbard's commitment to either task. Nor is it the only issue where she has demonstrated poor judgment that should be disqualifying for the role. During an ill-advised trip to Syria and Lebanon in 2017, Ms. Gabbard exercised terrible judgment and elected to meet with Bashar al-Assad amid a conflict in which Assad was using gas and other chemical weapons against his own people. On that same trip, she also met with Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun. Many Americans may not be familiar with Mr. Hassoun, but in 2011, he threatened to commit suicide bomb attacks against the United States. At her confirmation hearing, Ms. Gabbard claimed not to know about Hassoun's past, but reporting following the hearing makes it clear that her staff made her aware of that at the time of her trip in 2017, to say nothing of the fact that if she had simply googled this guy, that would have revealed his past. What does it say about her judgment and experience that she would willingly meet with someone who has very publicly issued threats against the United States of America? Nor is this an isolated lapse. Just last summer, she accepted a trip to Italy that was paid for by the foundation of Pierre Louvrier--a man with deep connections to sanctioned Russian oligarchs. At her confirmation hearing, she seemed unable to recognize why the national security interests of the United States might be better protected if TikTok--a social media app that reaches into the homes of millions of Americans--was actually under American ownership rather than being subject to the controls of the PRC and ultimately the Communist Party of China. The world today is more complex and more dangerous than ever before, and we need serious people with the experience, expertise, and judgment to navigate that complexity. Unfortunately, Ms. Gabbard is not such a nominee. A vote in favor of her confirmation is an endorsement of President Trump's lawless efforts to hollow out our national security workforce, and her confirmation will further strain the alliances that have kept our country safe for decades; therefore, I urge my colleagues to oppose Ms. Gabbard's nomination. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.

Mr. WARNER

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

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. For due process for all our Federal workers, I vote no.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I know my time has been squeezed a little bit. I have other colleagues. I want to mention one thing to my friend from Louisiana. I love to listen to him talk. There are a lot of things he says that I tend to agree with, a lot of things I tend to disagree with. I do want to make sure folks know what I have some concern about. You want a debate about any of these programs; that is fair cooking. If there are ways to save spending, count me in. In fact, you are a former Governor; I am a former Governor. Virginia got named best managed State in the country when I was Governor. And you know how we got that information about line item programs? Because about a decade ago--maybe 12 years ago--Rob Portman and I did something called the DATA Act, which gives you that line-by-line information. We can debate about the validity of these programs. What you don't need to do is to put two--I have the name of one person, maybe not the name of the other--into the Treasury with, to my knowledge, at least for one of them, we are not sure if they have any security clearances at all--to look at $1.3 billion of checks being written out by the U.S. Treasury. You want to debate about USAID; have at it, if the programs can't be defended. But why would you give someone--a coder--the potential keys to the kingdom of the U.S. Treasury? Why does this coder--or Mr. Musk's DOGE bros--need to know how much the U.S. Government paid the Senator from Louisiana on a tax refund or the Senator from Virginia or anyone? I will make it a simple question to ask. Come in and explain yourself. I would love to go through more, but I know I have colleagues waiting too.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, let me first of all thank my colleagues from Kansas. I know you were there that night. I want to thank as well, obviously, my dear friend of 40-plus years from Virginia. We were at the airport, along with friends from Maryland and DC, by 7 o'clock the next morning. The remarkable thing was, this is a route I take home every night. I have the luxury, frankly--my home is actually closer to the Capitol than all 535 other Members, even local Congressman Don Beyer by a couple of blocks. I drive along the parkway each night. I think I missed the actual collision by no less than 7 or 8 minutes. Yet we then saw a number of red lights rushing into National across the river in Maryland, and we all know that the souls on American Flight 5342 and those pilots in the Army helicopter--awful, awful collision. My friends have said it. We can't give you words that would get rid of that terror of that awful event, but we have seen over the last week how many young lives--so many folks from the skating world. They were Kansans, they were Virginians, and they were literally people from, frankly, around the globe. The contributions to their friends and families that they will never be able to fulfill are going to leave an ache in the hearts of those families that I can't nearly articulate as well as some of my colleagues. But I also want to acknowledge that even in these moments of tragedy, there are moments of grace and heroic actions. Folks that don't live in the Capital region don't know the kind of messy, bureaucratic, multiple jurisdictions between Maryland, the District, and Virginia. Senator Kaine and I were both Governors of Virginia. We used to say the Potomac was the great divide. But at a moment like this, with this tragedy, it stops being Maryland, Virginia, the District, Federal. People dropped everything, and literally there were first responders from 40 different jurisdictions. That is remarkable. Everybody else has mentioned, whether it was the divers, the folks that went into that bitterly cold river and, frankly, what they have had to do in terms of recovery of remains in the days afterwards--the emotional toll it is going to take on those men and women literally probably for the rest of their lives, but they did what was right. I also want to say we have the safest skies in the world. We have the pilots. We have valuable air traffic controllers. Clearly, something went wrong here. I think we owe it to the restoration of that confidence that the sky is safe in our country. I want to applaud the brandnew Secretary of Transportation, who was with us--Mr. Duffy, from Donald Trump's administration--he was with us that morning, at 7 o'clock in the morning. Those families and those first responders deserve the answers of what went wrong here. I have great faith in the NTSB. Senator Kaine and I worked with them in other tragedies in the past. They are going to do their job. They are going to find out what went wrong and make sure that kind of mistake is not made again. I will simply close by saying, again, condolences for the loss of the families. Thank you to the first responders and all who responded. I think it is totally appropriate. I want to thank on a personal basis the fact that Senator Moran decided to put this resolution together, to bring us to the floor to kind of get that affirmation that here we are literally 8 days after this tragedy. Thank you, Jerry, for what you have done. I yield the floor.

Mr. WARNER

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

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, it is good to see you sitting up there. As a recent former Governor--I say that as a former Governor myself-- I won't ask you what you are hearing in West Virginia, but I have to tell you, I rise to the floor today amongst a huge amount of confusion. Two days ago, the Trump administration, without warning to any States, to any Governors, without warning to Congress, late at night, put out an order freezing all Federal spending for 90 days. Earlier today, less than 48 hours later, that order was formally rescinded. But hold it. The good news--entirely good news--lasted about 30 minutes, 45 minutes, because 45 minutes later, the Press Secretary in the White House says: No, the freeze will actually stay in place and be rigorously enforced. So--I don't know--as a Governor, which one do you follow? Because, as the Presiding Officer knows, an awful lot of our State programs are actually Federal dollars passing through our capitals into these programs. So I ask, which one is it? Unfortunately, I am not the only one asking the question, and I have an awful lot of stressed Virginians to prove it. In Virginia, as in West Virginia or any other State, Federal funding supports countless programs that serve kids, seniors, community infrastructure, and a whole lot more. Yesterday alone, my office was literally flooded with outreach from organizations and local governments. I heard from firefighters from Southwest Virginia. They are worried they won't be able to replace their tanker truck with Federal funding that was supposed to be coming pretty soon. I heard from an affordable housing organization in Northern Virginia that if they go 90 days without Federal dollars, they might have to shut down their organization. People would have to find different jobs. That organization--you can't turn on or off the flow of these resources. I heard from law enforcement in the Shenandoah Valley and from the greater Richmond area that a lot of these localities depend on Federal dollars to pay police officers. If they don't have those funds for the next 90 days, this will take cops off the street. I heard from a number--not just one but a number--of domestic violence shelters across the Commonwealth that without this funding, because they don't have huge reserves, they will have to leave women and children without housing support. Listen to this one. We have a little town called West Point, VA. It was an old mill town. They have a very good Head Start Program. Head Start gets funded by the Federal Government. Their Head Start funding runs out on Friday, January 31. They had been told--they can't get any answer--that their next round of funding was in process and there would be no break in the action. What do the Head Start moms and dads who have kids in that program in West Point, VA, do starting next Monday? Senator Kaine and I probably had 8 to 10 Head Start Programs here. As a matter of fact, there is a gag order put in place right now so that people can't talk about these things inside the administration, and the Head Start directors were trying to call their contact, kind of their resource person, and they got no response. So whether you care about meals for low-income seniors, whether you care about Head Start for vulnerable kids, whether you care about teens who need that mental health support oftentimes coming from Federal dollars, that all is up in the air at this point. What do we tell these folks? Many of these folks voted for President Trump because they thought he was going to bring grocery prices down. Like the Presiding Officer, I have not only been a Governor, but I was a business guy. I can claim still that I was in business longer than in politics. This is not the way you run an operation. The truth is, this is unbelievable. I was so proud when I was Governor of Virginia. We got named the best managed State. This is management malpractice 101. The most important enterprise in the world is the American Government, not only in terms of safety and security but in terms of how we treat our people. The truth is, rescinded or not, these chaotic antics have real consequences. I know of an organization in Virginia that had to call an emergency board meeting yesterday to see if they should go out of business. I have heard from folks who are worried that they will have to lay off their employees. Without this Federal funding, they are just not going to be able to make payroll. One Virginian wrote to me and said that ``the mental and physical damage is already immense.'' It is not right to play with people's lives in such a grossly irresponsible way. I have been doing this for a while. I have never heard of some kind of arbitrary freeze on all Federal spending. It was bad enough what happened when they put a freeze on Federal assistance to folks around the world. I commend Secretary Rubio. One of the reasons why I was proud to support him was that he has actually tried to back off from that order, making sure that humanitarian aid is not going to disappear. The story has been out. I have been very interested in the conflict in Sudan. There is a ship in Port Sudan right now with American medicine on it. The aid group was going to take that out--the medicine--to save people's lives. That medicine will go to rot if those funds are not flowing. It is bad enough, this issue of how we are treating Americans who depend on these Federal funds--these are real programs with real people--you take that and layer on the other whammy. In Virginia, we have a disproportionate number of Federal workers. You have quite a few in West Virginia I know as well due to great former West Virginia Senators. Suddenly, in an, again, unprecedented and I believe potentially illegal move, every Federal employee is offered this chance to quit and get paid for 6 months, until September 30, if you quit. Now, nothing like this has ever been done before. Maybe this is the way you do business in the tech world, and I used to be in the tech world, but if you manage a good company, you don't go out and basically say to all your workers: Quit. Of course, the problem is--and I urge my Federal workers to think about this--unfortunately, this President has a record of not only sticking it to Federal workers, but he has a record of sticking it to all the business contractors he did business with by not paying the bills. So I worry because not only is there very much a legal question of whether the President can offer this buyout offer to all these Federal workers, but I can assure you, there is nothing in the budget--there is nothing in the budget--that we still haven't negotiated for the balance of this fiscal year that has got this X-billion-dollar number next to it that is going to pay for all of these buyouts. We know where this comes from. It comes from the fellow that is being put up to be head of the OMB, Russell Vought, who wrote Project 2025, the very project that President Trump as a candidate said: Don't worry. I didn't read it. I don't know anything about it. In that document, it goes on at length about how the goal of Project 2025 and Mr. Vought, who wants to be head of OMB, which kind of controls the management and budget of the Federal Government, was that he wanted to traumatize Federal workers. He wanted them not to go to work. He wanted to classify them as villains--his words, not mine. I can tell you this: For a whole lot of Federal workers, they have already hit that goal. They are traumatized. And I worry like heck. You say: Gosh, I don't know what I should do. Maybe I will take the offer. But before you sign that and send it back--what may be an illegal offer that is not funded, that chances are you are not going to get paid--think a little bit about it. If this becomes another kind of passing fad where there is not any enforcement and not a payment, if you sign that and send it back, chances are you have made an indication that you are going to be the first person that gets RIFed, maybe without that 6- month severance. I also have to wonder. You know, we are a couple thousand air traffic controllers short right now. If air traffic controllers--who, by the way, take about a year to get trained--if 5,000 of them say ``You know what, I am going to take that offer,'' what happens to air traffic safety? We don't have a fallback. We don't have a reserve of air traffic controllers to make sure that when you climb on an airplane, it is safe. Yet we have made that offer, to my understanding, to all the air traffic controllers in America: Sign here. We are going to pay you. You don't have to work for the next 6 months. Again, how many Americans are going to be happy with the fact that we are paying folks without them working for 6 months? What happens as well--are we going to really say to all the folks who do bird flu research and are trying to seek it out--we have a lot of poultry and turkeys and chickens both in the Shenandoah Valley and on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. One of the things people are experiencing most now is the rising cost of eggs. If suddenly all the folks who are working on bird flu quit, maybe people won't buy eggs, but I actually think it will drive up the already high cost of eggs two, three times. I thought President Trump was hired to try to bring down grocery prices. What happens as well with the folks who are the food inspectors-- salmonella? Are you going to really feel all right about going to the grocery store and buying something if a whole lot of folks have taken this buyout offer? This is not the way to run an operation. I think about earlier today. I asked a question of Mr. Kennedy, who wants to be head of HHS. He had told me in his earlier comments in my office that he wanted to get rid of 2,200 people in HHS. I asked him: What is your plan? Who are those 2,200? No answer. I know he has got strong feelings about NIH, where, candidly, we have the best researchers in the world that have taken years for us to recruit. If suddenly, based on President Trump's offer, all these NIH researchers quit because they can make two, three, four, five times as much in the private sector, but all that basic research is done at NIH, who are we going to fill those back in with? Not with as qualified people. The list goes on and on and on. Again, I would say this is management malpractice 101. You want to change your workforce. You want to make them more effective, more efficient. You don't try to traumatize them. But that is what has happened so far. To Americans across the country and to my fellow Virginians, if there are ways to find more efficiency, if there are ways to logically-- business-minded--think through the efficiency of our Federal Departments and maybe save some money and maybe cut back staff in a rational way, sign me up. But don't sign me up for something that looks like it is a flimflam con job where people are being potentially suckered into sending an email back when there is no assurance that that email or that whole offer is legal in the first place. There is no money in the till. And if you go back to the case of the current President, look at his record from when he was in the private sector. Did anybody get paid 100 cents on the dollar? So I know other Senators are going to be coming up. But I just think that, in many ways, President Trump got hired because they thought we could bring down consumer prices; they thought we could bring down grocery prices. None of this is bringing down grocery prices. None of this is bringing down consumer prices. None of this, I think, is going to make our Federal Government more efficient or effective or, in the long term, save money. If our most talented people quit, it is going to cost more to rehire them. Anybody knows that who has been in the private sector. And we are not going to get people with the same experience. What it feels like, and I know what I have been thinking, is one of the things that was the most troubling about the first Trump administration was this sense of chaos that people kind of got exhausted with. My goodness gracious, this is day 10--day 10--of the Trump administration. We have chaos on steroids. What I would hope is that my Republican colleagues in Virginia, in the legislature, in statewide elected office, and I would hope my Republican colleagues in the Senate and in the House would say: Hey, better efficiency, count me in. Across-the-board freezes of programs without regard to the people's lives that are going to be changed or affected, that doesn't make sense. State budgets--all the State legislatures are in right now doing their budgets. How do you plan with those Federal dollars that are maybe going to be suspended for 90 days or then maybe arbitrarily suspended forever? How do you plan that? And to the Federal workforce: I tell you, the idea of what potentially is illegal--a nonfunded buyout offer with no guarantee and, if anything, the opposite being true--I would urge people to think long and hard and not take this offer, not set you up for being fired, riffed, or eliminated. And I would appeal again: There is a better way to do all of this. And I say this as somebody who has now voted for five of President Trump's nominees for Cabinet positions. I have gotten a lot of grief from that already. From somebody who was a chief executive, I feel like a Governor or the President ought to get most of their choices but for people that I think fall outside the norm and don't have the credibility or judgment, and I will make those decisions. I have a very important hearing tomorrow, as the former chairman of the Intelligence Committee and now the vice chairman, on Tulsi Gabbard. But I want to reach out and work with this administration. Let's get back to lowering costs. Let's get back to driving grocery prices down. Let's not put people in fear not just for their jobs but for their lives, if you are that victim of domestic abuse, if you are that kid who needs Head Start, if you are that senior that is dependent upon Meals on Wheels. Those programs don't last for 90 days. And if they suddenly shut down and we decide after 90 days, ``Oh, we want to start them again,'' the cost is going to be double or triple. There is a better way to do this. So I appeal to my Republican friends. Maybe we need a gang on this to try to think about this in a more bipartisan way. But in the meantime, I implore the administration: Get your act together. Don't put out two separate statements totally contradicting each other on the same day about your intentions--two totally opposite. It just makes chaos and the stress go up, and, ultimately, later in this week, the services disappear. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Madam President, as I come to the floor today, as we all know, this is a time of incredible international instability. If you turn on the news, you are confronted with tragic images of conflict and displacement in Gaza and the West Bank; broader violence and upheaval in the Middle East, Syria, Lebanon; and the ongoing violence in Ukraine with Russia's illegal invasion. Now, each of these crises deserve our attention. What many of us may not know is that if you look all across the world, in terms of in what conflict are there more people impacted daily--with hunger, humanitarian, or literally acts of war--where are there more deaths than Gaza, Ukraine, and the Middle East combined--that is the ongoing war in Sudan. This is a conflict between two warring parties--no good guys here-- fueled by external actors, in which violence has caused tens of millions to flee their homes, and it has left more than half of Sudan's population of 50 million literally on the brink of starvation. The International Rescue Committee recently affirmed that this is ``the biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded.'' Think about that-- bigger than Darfur 20 years ago, bigger than--some of us will remember ``We Are the World'' and the horrible tragedy of starvation in Ethiopia. This is the biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded. Yet, for the most part, the Sudanese people feel forgotten by the world. I rise today because this conflict must not be ignored and because America must lead--not back away--in times like these, when suffering and terror are at their peak. At the heart of this crisis is the ongoing violence between the Sudanese Armed Forces, called SAF, and the Rapid Support Forces, RSF, fighting for control over this country. It is estimated that the fighting and resulting food crisis have killed upwards of more than 100,000 Sudanese and left literally millions on the verge of starvation. Both SAF and RSF have inflicted horrible tragedies and atrocities on the people of Sudan. The State Department has accused members of both SAF and RSF of war crimes, while members of the RSF and allied militias stand accused of additional crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. A recent United Nations report documents ``large-scale human rights and international humanitarian law violations'' by both sides and also, particular to RSF, horrific alleged sexual crimes, including ``widespread sexual and gender-based violence, rape, sexual slavery, abduction, and recruitment and use of children in hostilities.'' These atrocities, over nearly 2 years of conflict, have left the Sudanese population of more than 50 million in total--over 25 million of those in desperate need of food assistance. Health and sanitation conditions have contributed to spiraling outbreaks of cholera, malaria, dengue fever, and other diseases. Our Ambassador to the United Nations said in recent months that this conflict and resulting conditions place millions of Sudanese ``on the verge of a generational famine.'' Due to these conditions, more than 14 million Sudanese have been forced to flee their homes, with large numbers actually seeking refuge in neighboring countries, which, again, risks broader destabilization. I think one of the newest countries in the world--very poor--is South Sudan. If you are fleeing to South Sudan, Chad, or Ethiopia because Sudan is in such challenging states, that could lead to destabilization across all of east Africa. And as much as we cite these statistics, the real truth is we don't really know because this civil war has, for the most part, completely excluded all outside media. From what I have learned over the last year--and there are other Members of this body who have spoken on this issue--one thing is clear to me: This is a catastrophe. First and foremost, the Sudanese need humanitarian aid; and aid workers, humanitarian actors, and local Sudanese volunteers need safe access to respond. But despite public promises to the contrary, both SAF and the RSF have consistently erected physical and bureaucratic barriers to deny, delay, and otherwise hinder humanitarian aid from reaching those displaced civilians, even, at times, targeting and literally killing aid workers. As we mark the human tragedies of this conflict, we must also recognize the conflict's political tragedy. The outbreak of this violence a couple of years ago came just after the historic pro- democracy protests that swept parts of Sudan in 2019, when literally hundreds of civic, professional, and political organizations came to call for an end and actually got rid of then-President Omar al-Bashir's government. That government had lasted since 1989--for 30 years--and it had, again, a historic record of depriving citizens and trampling on human rights. So what happened was these groups came together and ousted Bashir with the promise of a democracy. Yet both sides, after a year or so of some back and forth, instead started this warring civil war that, rather than bring democratic reform, has again brought unprecedented levels of violence, brutality, and depravation. Now, the Biden administration has helped. They are currently the largest donor of humanitarian aid and just today--just today--added $200 million more to that humanitarian aid. The Biden administration-- again, through the Special Envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello--a former Congressman from Virginia, I might add--has leveraged sanctions to pressure actors fueling the conflict, and that has resulted in increased humanitarian access into the country and has particularly provided critical assistance to local responders, including the Sudanese Emergency Response Rooms, which are led by community members in Sudan who, oftentimes at risk of their own lives, have been truly incredible on the ground. They actually were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, despite this aid, the violence continues to escalate, not deescalate; and starvation, disease, and death are increasing, not decreasing. So we can't just look at the current conditions and say anything other than the following: that we and, frankly, the world have come up short on this conflict. The vacuum created by the lack of a coordinated international response has been filled by a considerable degree of outside influence, with foreign governments and foreign entities, frankly, backing proxies on both sides. Russia, always willing to spread mischief, is actually fueling parts of warring factions on both sides. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt--in many ways our allies--they have supported humanitarian aid; but at the same time, they have almost created a proxy battle with UAE supporting the RSF and, oftentimes, Saudi Arabia and Egypt supporting SAF, which really needs to be called out. Foreign business entities are profiting--literally billions and billions of dollars--from this conflict. This week, I sent a letter to President Biden, along with Senator Risch and other bipartisan colleagues, urging the administration to take additional steps to ensure that humanitarian aid continues to flow and that the actual external parties who are fueling the conflict be held accountable, including, in particular, the administration to sanction business entities profiting from the illegal and illicit smuggling of Sudanese gold. Many of us remember the conflicts in central Africa years ago with blood diamonds. In many ways in size and scale, the profiting coming from mining, extraction, and then smuggling of Sudanese gold dwarfs those other activities. The truth is, Sudan is one of Africa's largest gold producers and has a gold industry worth, literally, billions of dollars. And while both SAF and RSF control some of the mines, the RSF controls the vast majority. And over the past decade, its leadership has, frankly, funded a lot of itself by taking that gold and illegally smuggling it to then raise money for arms, for propaganda, and to fund their efforts. The U.S. Department of the Treasury has identified gold operations as ``a vital source of revenue . . . for the RSF,'' and as has been documented by the United Nations, these revenues go directly into fueling this conflict. And while the true scale of this whole illicit gold network is obscured, the truth is, most of this gold is ending up in companies in the UAE. Reports have further linked not only this gold going to the UAE, but also, the notorious Russia Wagner group has been skimming off part of this and using these funds to support conflict from Wagner group not only in other proxy wars in Africa but also back to help Russia in Ukraine. Finally, the Treasury Department has taken steps in recent months to designate certain commercial entities in the UAE for sanctions, but more can and must be done to disrupt these revenue streams. We must stop all of the revenue that is going to funding, again, the conflict where more people are displaced and die every day than in Gaza and Ukraine combined. Through tools like the Global Magnitsky Act and Executive orders already in the books, the administration can and must hold to account not only the warring parties, but also these external actors who are aiding and abetting this conflict. And we must stop these foreign entities, some who are our allies, from arming these warring parties. As I mentioned before, there are detailed and well-reported allegations from news organizations and from our intelligence community about foreign weapons and other support into the hands of both RSF and SAF. Media reports point to alleged involvement, as I mentioned, from many countries--Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt--into arms in this region. And while there are decades-old arms embargoes that impact the Darfur region of Sudan, this new conflict is at a new scale and takes in wide swaths of the country that weren't in conflict in Darfur. It is time for the United States, alongside its allies and partners, to urge the U.N. Security Council to expand the existing Darfur embargo across all of Sudan. We must make clear to all countries around the world that any foreign government or entity that is providing support for either side of this civil war, that allows it to continue to drag on--to have this massive, worst humanitarian crisis ever--those entities must be held accountable. And beyond foreign actors ending support to warring parties, it is incumbent on all of these countries--all of these countries--many of which we have very close relationships with, to work towards a ceasefire and a civilian government in Sudan. There is also more that can actually be done here at home. Last spring, my colleague Senator Kaine and I called on the Biden administration to issue a new temporary protective status--what we call TPS--for certain Sudanese individuals living in the United States who are unable to return to their country due to this conflict. I was pleased, in August of last year, that the administration took that step, allowing those individuals not to go back to this worst conflict in the world. The problem is, that designation runs out next spring. And I call on the administration to extend that designation before they leave office. One of the things that we are proud of in Virginia is that we are home to a large Sudanese diaspora. I am lucky enough to have part of that Sudanese diaspora--I am proud to have--work on my staff, one of my rising legislative assistant stars. I have heard from those members of that community on a regular basis that we have to do more. In fact, the Sudanese people didn't ask for this war. They threw out a dictator of 30 years and said we ought to bring in a democracy. The rest of the world focused a little bit of attention, but, when it got messy, they turned away. We need a government in Sudan that reflects the struggle that the young people and civil society groups brought in 2019 and not have that promise sniffed out. We find ourselves about a month away from a new administration in Washington. I have worked and pledge to work with the incoming Trump administration where I can. I make the appeal right now. But Sudan should be one of those areas. We have to make sure that we show American leadership in this crisis. The truth is, if we could actually resolve this major conflict in Africa, where we show that we care about Africans killing Africans-- supported by outside forces that we call our allies in certain ways--we can do remarkable things in terms of restoring America's image as a protector of democracy and the aspirations of people all over the world. We have to also make sure that all of the international partners continue to work to bring humanitarian assistance and put their pressure, as well, on the funders and suppliers of the arms that go into this conflict. There are more things the administration can do. The unfortunate truth is this probably won't be resolved by January 20. One of the things that was in the NDAA, that I know the President will sign, will be a more permanent status for the Special Envoy for Sudan. It is my hope that the Trump administration will choose someone of similar caliber to Tom Perriello to continue this critically important role. Again, I want to thank friends like the incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Jim Risch, who partnered with this. This is a bipartisan issue. We can't let it lie fallow any longer. We can't forget, when we turn on these images and we see Gaza, Ukraine, Lebanon and Syria, that there is something actually worse happening in Africa that we could help bring a conclusion to. I know we can do more. I pray we will do more. I yield the floor.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Madam President, this explanation reflects the status of negotiations and disposition of issues reached between the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025. The explanation shall have the same effect with respect to the implementation of this Act as if it were a joint explanatory statement of a conference committee. I ask unanimous consent that the explanatory statement for the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 be printed in the Record.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise today in support of Senator Kaine's request for unanimous consent for the Senate to pass the Saving the Civil Service Act. It is a critical bill that I hope all my colleagues would agree needs to be enshrined into law. One of the great strengths of our democracy is that we have an independent, merit-based civil service. Back in the 19th century, we saw what happens when you had a Federal workforce that was made up of a system of spoils and political patronage. So the Congress, back in 1883, said: We ought to put in place an independent civil service. That has been the law of the land for the last 150 years. Virtually every other industrial nation in the world has modeled their independent workforce after the American model. We have 2 million Federal employees across the country. Virginia has 147,000. There are close to that many in Maryland and in the District, but they are all over. Senator Hirono mentioned earlier Hawaii has some of the highest concentration. Senator Kaine's bill, which we are all proud to be cosponsoring, would simply say: Let's not break that system. The idea--and the incoming President has said he wants this--to make and get rid of a merit-based civil service is, in my mind, beyond comprehension. Do you really want that nurse at the VA hospital, that the first criteria we are looking for is who did she vote for as opposed to whether she knows nursing; or that air traffic controller that says: Well, I may have been politically active for an unpopular candidate, so I am going to get fired? Or, more likely, one of the things that we have seen that has been a strength of our system: The independent economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Presidents of each party get mad when their numbers come out each month because those numbers are independently verified. Do you want to fire all those folks and put in political loyalists? The rest of the world would run from that, and it would, frankly, undermine the reserved nature of the U.S. dollar as the currency of the backbone of the world, if we are cooking the books on our economic numbers. There are a host of other examples that we could go almost category by category. I can tell you, the vast majority of Federal workers whom I interact with, most of them could actually have done better in the private sector. They do this work because of that sense of public service. And if you get rid of a merit-based system and do it all for political patronage, who is going to actually join that kind of government on a going-forward basis? This would undermine our economy, undermine our security, and obviously undermine the ability of the American people to get a fair administration of government services. With that, I am going to yield to my good friend, the Senator from Maryland Senator Van Hollen.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I actually rise to the floor to follow, I think, one of the Democratic leaders, my dear friend from Illinois, to probably make pretty similar comments about some of our retiring Members. And, you know, the work we do in this body sometimes is frustrating. Sometimes, it is inefficient. It is critically important. But one of the things that makes it worthwhile is the relationships and friendships that we develop with colleagues all across the political spectrum, from both sides of the aisle. And I am sure I am going to echo some of the comments that have already been made by the senior Senator from Illinois. So let me talk about some of these comments. I want to highlight their accomplishments one by one.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I will be brief, but I just want to add a word. A lot of us in this body sometimes complain about this job, whether it is the schedule or whether it is the lack of resources, the amount of time. And what has always struck me about Jon Tester--I mean, a lot of us in this business, we wonder about authenticity. So there isn't any Senator, either side of the aisle, who is more authentic and more true to who he has been and will be and will always be than Jon Tester. The fact that we have also--to echo what Cory said, I have not invaded Dylan's house, but I have invaded Jon and Sharla's house a number of times. And whenever I would think about the challenges of this job, bitch and moan, I always came back--and I talked to other Senators on this; I have talked to many folks around the country. When I think about somebody who defines public service in the 21st century, there is one person that comes to mind--somebody who was a teacher, a musician, a farmer; somebody who had to get up at 3 o'clock in the morning to drive a couple hours to get on not one plane but two, to shlep back here for sometimes a week of nothing votes and then climb back on that flight to go back and still maintain that farm--I can't say that, as a guy who lives 20 minutes away. I can't say that in terms of somebody who doesn't have the kind of personal financial resources but never raised a word of complaint through his years of service. So echoing what others said and will continue to say, any time I doubt my commitment or any of our commitments, I ask you all: Think who defines public service. I think that person is Jon Tester. I yield the floor. (Applause.)

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I want to make sure we give a little bit of the Democratic response. I had the opportunity to get to know Joe and Gayle--Lisa and I did-- when he was a Governor. And Joe gave this incredibly moving, important speech today. He left out one small part, because when he was making the decision to leave--Gayle, as you know, he has described it many times as the best job ever--he called me. And I said: Joe, come here, and we can do a whole lot of things. And I say to my Republican colleagues, he was that independent streak from his first caucus meeting. We had our caucus lunch. You know, he did not adhere to the ``freshman should be seen but not speak.'' So he got up, early on in the lunch, and was already complaining about the job. He sat down, and, I swear to goodness--and, Gayle, we have talked about this--at the end of the lunch, he got up for a second time because he wanted to remind us that when he was Governor of the great State of West Virginia, he had two airplanes, a helicopter, and control of the whole National Guard, and now he is reduced to a junior Senator. Over the years, he has reminded me often of that call. As people talked, he sometimes would complain about the process or what was happening this week or that week on the floor. And as has been echoed by everyone else, one of the things that Joe always stood for and has always been about is this notion that we ought to reason together. We have been in more groups or gangs--or whatever description you want to have of a bipartisan association--whenever that has happened, in his 14 years in the Senate, he has been involved in every one of them. And the list of accomplishments that you laid out and your colleagues--our friends from the Republican side--laid out, that is a remarkable body of work, and it is a tribute not only to your staff and your family. It is also a tribute to the great people of West Virginia. And, quite honestly, this country is better because of your bipartisan work in the U.S. Senate. And I join with all who love you and your family. We know you are not going far. We look forward to many times of bringing us together in the future. And I think, at some point, you owe it to the body to acknowledge that you are actually glad you made that change to come to this body. West Virginia is better for it. The country is better for it. And I know it has been a challenge at times for the family, but, at the end of the day, I know they are incredibly proud of the great work you have done. I yield the floor.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the privileges of the floor be granted to the following member of my staff, Payton Thomas, during the pendency of the 118th Congress.

Mr. WARNER

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

Mr. WARNER. I yield the floor.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank my friends from North Carolina, Senator Budd and Senator Tillis. Let me acknowledge in front of you that you guys got hit the hardest, but we got hit as well in southwest Virginia, and we have got communities that without this relief are going to die. I want to echo what both of my colleagues have said in that this RELIEF Act is bipartisan. It is what we do as a matter of course when an entity like the SBA runs out of money. Since October 15, 34,000 businesses across the country have applied for SBA relief. Many of them have gotten approved, but they get a response that says: We will give you money when Congress does its job. This is done as a matter of course, and, frankly, the SBA screwed up a little bit on not getting better numbers before we broke before the election. Let me take one moment and tell you about a community in particular in southwest Virginia. Damascus, VA, was an old town. Basically, its economy had disappeared. It came back because there is something called the Creeper Trail, with biking and hiking. I bike this trail. And, Senator Tillis, parts of that trail are gone now. We have 34 road trestles, and 18 of them are damaged or gone. We have got part of our road that gets to the top of the mountain that is gone as well. I went to Damascus, and I went to 10 jurisdictions in southwest Virginia, but in this little town, every business and home was affected. One guy had three businesses--two restaurants and a bed and breakfast. He paid out of his pocket to try to keep his workers on, even though it will be months before anything happens, even if the money were there. We owe it to the folks in Damascus, across southwest Virginia, in North Carolina, and across all of the jurisdictions in our country that have been hard hit to do our job. Just like the folks in western North Carolina, the folks in southwest Virginia are proud, and they have an enormous amount of self-help. But this kind of assistance, whether it is FEMA dollars or SBA loans, is not charity; it is their right as Americans. It is what we pay our taxes for. Instead, thousands of Virginians who have asked for that right to apply for this loan have gotten a note, saying: We can't send you the money until Congress does its job. We have a chance today for unanimous consent to take this bipartisan piece of legislation, to pass it through, and get those businesses the funds they deserve. I thank my colleague. I yield back to the senior Senator from North Carolina.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I just want to say, I am prepared to object as well. And is it not the case, even when it comes to SBA--frankly, if SBA had gotten their act together a little earlier and had a better accounting so we knew how much we needed to refill the pot, we might not have been here. But this is--if we want to change the law about how the SBA operates and disaster relief, that is a fair debate, and I will take on anyone in this Chamber. In the meantime, whether it is in your community or mine, people are sitting there with a piece of paper that says: You will get your loan, you have been approved, once Congress does its job. Would not your bill, my bill, our bipartisan bill, if it had been able to go through today, wouldn't those folks in North Carolina, Virginia, and across our country who have been hit be one step closer-- those small businesses--to getting the SBA loans that they have earned, deserved, and should be funded?

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

Mr. WARNER. I yield the floor.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I was absent on Monday, July 29, 2024, for rollcall vote No. 220. Had I been present, I would have voted yea on the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 702, Adam B. Landy, of South Carolina, to be a Judge of the United States Tax Court for a term of fifteen years. I was absent on Tuesday, July 30, 2024, for rollcall vote No. 222. Had I been present, I would have voted yea on the motion to invoke cloture for Executive Calendar No. 708, Stacey D. Neumann, of Maine, to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Maine. I was absent on Tuesday, July 30, 2024, for rollcall vote No. 223. Had I been present, I would have voted yea on confirmation for Executive Calendar No. 708, Stacey D. Neumann, of Maine, to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Maine. I was absent on Wednesday, July 31, 2024, for rollcall vote No. 224. Had I been present, I would have voted yea on the motion to invoke cloture for Executive Calendar No. 710, Meredith A. Vacca, of New York, to be U.S. District Judge for the Western District of New York. I was absent on Wednesday, July 31, 2024, for rollcall vote No. 225. Had I been present, I would have voted yea on confirmation for Executive Calendar No. 710, Meredith A. Vacca, of New York, to be U.S. District Judge for the Western District of New York. I was absent on Wednesday, July 31, 2024, for rollcall vote No. 226. Had I been present, I would have voted yea on the motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 709, Joseph Francis Saporito, Jr., of Pennsylvania, to be U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. I was absent on Wednesday, July 31, 2024, for rollcall vote No. 227. Had I been present, I would have voted Yay on the confirmation Executive Calendar No. 709, Joseph Francis Saporito, Jr., of Pennsylvania, to be U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. I was absent on Wednesday, July 31, 2024, for rollcall vote No. 228. Had I been present, I would have voted yea on the motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 582, Dorothy Camille Shea, of North Carolina, to be Deputy Representative to the United Nations, and the Deputy Representative in the Security Council of the United Nations. I was absent on Thursday, August 1, 2024, for rollcall vote No. 229. Had I been present, I would have voted yea on the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 582, Dorothy Camille Shea, of North Carolina, to be Deputy Representative to the United Nations, and the Deputy Representative in the Security Council of the United Nations. I was absent on Thursday, August 1, 2024, for rollcall vote No. 230. Had I been present, I would have voted yea on the Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to Cal. No. 349, H.R. 7024, Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I was unavoidably absent on July 30, 2024, for rollcall vote No. 221. Had I been present, I would have voted Yea on the motion to concur in House message to accompany S. 2073 with amendment No. 3021, Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for making this UC request. I have been in this body since early 2009. This issue which we are debating about--slots at DCA--is a perennial one. People feel very strongly on both sides. There has never been a time since I have been in the Senate that there was not either a bipartisan agreement to resolve this issue before it came to the floor or a debate on the floor which resulted in a vote. Sometimes it is part of the States--Virginia and Maryland--that don't want additional slots. We have been successful. Sometimes we have not. But each and every time, there has been a vote. As a matter of fact, if we look over at the proceedings on this bill, in the House, managers of those bills thought they had some sense of what should be included in or not included in, in a slot debate. But the House of Representatives actually had a vote, and to the surprise of the managers of the bill, slots were completely eliminated from that piece of legislation. I am not going to sit here and rehash all of the statistics. What is clear, though, is that the single busiest runway in the United States of America is not at DFW; it is not in New York; it is not in Seattle; it is not in Atlanta; it is at National Airport--an airport that was originally constructed for 15 million passengers, with 3 runways to allow some distribution of those flights. Now, because of the lack of turbo planes and prop planes, we have an airport that handled 25 million passengers last year--90 percent of all that traffic on a single runway. My friends who don't agree with this--and as the majority leader said, it is not a partisan issue; it comes from both sides--have said: No, no, Senator Kaine, Senator Warner, you are wrong. This won't add to the delay. It won't add more cancellations. It was a one-off a few weeks ago when two airplanes came within a few hundred feet of a collision. It won't add any additional safety concerns. So in an effort to try to meet folks halfway, we have amended the original Kaine amendment, which said, no, let's just have an up-or-down vote on slots, and said, no, let's allow the five slots if and only if the Secretary of Transportation certifies that no additional safety concerns will be raised, the traveling public won't be impaired, there won't be any additional cancellations, and there won't be any additional delays--all things the opposition has said: Add these slots. There is no problem. Well, let's not have Congress weigh in on something that, frankly, we don't have the expertise to weigh in on in the first place. Let's give it to the Secretary of Transportation to make that determination on passenger safety, on cancellations, on delays. Let's let the professionals make that decision. That is what our amendment does. Again, I am going to yield now to my friend, my fellow Senator from Virginia, Senator Kaine. Again, I thank the majority leader for making this request.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Madam President, this explanatory statement memorializes the understanding of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding the implementation of section 25 of Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act. I ask unanimous consent that the explanatory statement be printed in the Record.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying letter from the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court be printed in the Record.