A resolution honoring the memory of the 5 victims of the attack at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, on June 28, 2018.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I take this time to support the passage of S.J. Res. 54. I commend my colleagues who have brought this resolution forward. The impact of this resolution would be to end the U.S. military engagement in Yemen, and I believe that military engagement should end for several reasons.

First, let me comment on what others have already pointed out, and that is that the humanitarian crisis in Yemen is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the world. That is saying a lot because there are a lot of areas around the world where we are seeing humanitarian challenges.

In Yemen today, 10,000 people have been killed due to the war, and 22 million-plus--75 percent of the population in Yemen--are at grave risk today. It is estimated that there are 400,000 children under the age of 5 who are at the risk of starvation due to hunger and malnutrition, and 85,000 children have died, according to Save the Children, from starvation.

The U.S. military engagement has really not assisted in ending this humanitarian crisis. There are 1 million people with cholera and 8.4 million people on the verge of famine. For a long time, we have been, focused on the Port of Hodeidah, saying that it had to be opened in order to be able to deliver humanitarian assistance. I think many of us thought that because of our military involvement in Yemen, at a minimum, we could get the port open. We find we are not able to have safe routes for the delivery of humanitarian assistance, so through our military we have not been able to impact the horrible tragedies that are taking place because of this humanitarian disaster.

Secondly, I think most experts will tell us there is no military solution to the war that is taking place in Yemen that dates back to 2014. The warring sides are not going to end as a result of the military. It is going to take diplomacy, and our military involvement has not assisted in a diplomatic answer. We have not made the progress I think many of us would have expected. So, yes, I do believe America needs to be engaged in Yemen, just not from our military. Let's do an all-out press on diplomacy and bring the parties to the peace table and end this horrible conflict.

Yes, make no mistake about it, the Houthis are not nice people. I understand that, but we are not going to win this by our military. So let's concentrate on diplomacy. I think many have pointed out that, yes, we have been in this region since the attack on our country on September 11. Nothing in this resolution would affect our ability to fight against al-Qaida and its associated forces.

The resolution specifically exempts--specifically exempts--from the withdrawal of American military our campaign against al-Qaida and associated forces.

There is also no question that since the Saudis have engaged in this conflict, there have been many violations of human rights. Yes, we are facilitating and helping. I am not saying we are committing, but we are certainly part of the Saudi effort. We are supposedly helping them with targeting. That means giving them intelligence information to minimize civilian casualties. I am certain the American military is helping in that regard, but the bottom line is, we are told that 61 percent of casualties are due to coalition strikes. There is tremendous civilian loss as a result of this campaign, and the United States is one of the honest brokers in trying to minimize that. We have not been successful through the use of our military.

The use of our military has never been authorized by Congress. Now, this is a debate we have had many times. I know the distinguished chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been part of that debate and has wanted us to come to grips with a congressional authorization for military use in Yemen. I applaud the chairman. I am very proud to be on that committee. I think if it were left up to our committee, we may have been able to agree on a resolution, but it was clear we couldn't get it through the Senate, couldn't get it through the Congress. That was clear. I am not saying we are culpable for not passing authorization, but we have not passed authorization, and there is no authorization for the use of military force in Yemen, despite the fact that article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution of the United States gives the Congress the sole power to declare war.

We are responsible for the military, and if you can't get that authorization, there should at least be a presumption that we shouldn't be using our military. If you can't get the support of Congress--if the President, Commander in Chief, can't get the support of Congress for the use of force, there should not be a sustained use. We know about emergency situations. We expect it of the Commander in Chief. This is not an emergency situation. This is a situation where there should be an authorization for the use of force if we are to remain. I don't believe we should remain.

We have had our disagreements with the President on the use of force. Congress passed the War Powers Act in 1973. The President didn't like it. We passed it anyway. We believe the President should not only notify but respect the will of Congress's power under article I to declare war and authorize our military presence.

Section 5(c) gives the power to Congress to pass a joint resolution to remove our troops where there has been no authorization. So what is being done today--the resolution that is before us--is the vehicle that we determined to be the appropriate way to remove our troops from unauthorized war. Therefore, it is an appropriate action by the Congress--probably the only action we can take in order to end the war in Yemen with U.S. participation.

I want to make a comment about the relationship between the United States and the Saudis. I heard many of my colleagues talk about it. I think it is a very important relationship. I think the Saudis are a strategic partner of the United States. I had many opportunities to visit with the Saudis. I know about a lot of the things they are doing, but make no mistake about it, that relationship is important to the United States, but it is very important to the Saudis. It is more than just our military support for a war in Yemen. It has a lot to do with security issues generally. It has to do with intelligence sharing. It has to do with economics.

Our relationship should always be wrapped in our values. Our foreign policy should always be based upon our values as Americans, and our values in regard to what is happening in this war in Yemen tell us we should not be participating in it.

I haven't even mentioned the tragic death of Jamal Khashoggi. When taking a look at what happened there and the involvement of the royal family and the Crown Prince, that clearly cannot go unchallenged. Human rights violations and the military campaign, all of that cries out for the United States not to be engaged in the military aspects of what is happening in Yemen, and the passage of S.J. Res. 54 will, in fact, make that a reality, and I urge our colleagues to support that resolution.

TIME Magazine's Person of the Year

Mr. President, it is a related subject.

I am going to talk about TIME magazine for their selection of their Person of the Year, the ``Guardians and the War on Truth.'' I say it is related because Jamal Khashoggi is one of the figures that is on the cover of TIME magazine as one of the guardians.

In making their selection, TIME magazine wrote: ``For taking great risks in pursuit of greater truths, for the imperfect but essential quest for

facts that are central to civil discourse, for speaking up and for speaking out, the Guardians'' are the Person of the Year.

TIME magazine wrote:

As we looked at the choices, it became clear that the

manipulation and abuse of truth is really the common thread

in so many of this year's major stories . . . this ought to

be a time when democracy leaps forward, an informed citizenry

being essential to self-government. Instead, it's in retreat.

And the story of this assault on truth is, somewhat

paradoxically, one of the hardest to tell.

TIME magazine wrote in this week's issue:

In Annapolis, Md., staff of the Capital, a newspaper

published by Capital Gazette Communications, which traces its

history of telling readers about the events in Maryland to

before the American Revolution, press on without the five

colleagues gunned down in their newsroom on June 28. Still

intact, indeed strengthened after the mass shooting, are the

bonds of trust and community that for national news outlets

have been eroded on strikingly partisan lines, never more

than this year.

``I can tell you this,'' declared Chase Cook, a reporter

for the Capital Gazette [on that fateful day]. ``We are

putting out a damn paper tomorrow.'' Cook's promise . . .

came just a few hours after five of his colleagues were

killed. The man charged with their murders had been obsessed

with the paper since it wrote about his harassment of a high

school classmate--part of its routine coverage of local legal

proceedings. He made the office a crime scene. To put the

damn paper out, staffers set up laptops in the bed of a

pickup in a parking garage across the street.

When the next edition arrived--on schedule--the opinion

page was blank but for the names of the dead. Gerald

Fischman. Rob Hiaasen. John McNamara. Rebecca Smith. Wendi

Winters. Beneath their names was . . . written with a goose

quill: ``Tomorrow this page will return to its steady purpose

of offering our readers informed opinions about the world

around them, that they might be better citizens.''

I must tell you I am very proud of what the Capital Gazette has done. They continued through very difficult times with the quality reporting and opinion pages they have been known for, for a long time--a real treasured institution in our State's capital.

One of the four TIME magazine covers includes the journalists of the Capital Gazette, the Annapolis, MD, newspaper where five employees were murdered by a gunman last June.

I spoke about this shooting on the Senate floor last June, and the Senate unanimously adopted S. Res. 575, which I authored and which was cosponsored by all Members of the Senate. This Senate resolution commemorates the lives, careers, and service of five victims of the Capital Gazette shooting in Annapolis, MD; honors the survivors of the attack and the families of the victims and pledges to continue support for their recovery; thanks law enforcement officers and other emergency first responders for their heroic actions; and reaffirms the commitment of the Senate to defending the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

Wendi Winters was among the five Capital Gazette employees killed in the June 28 shooting. According to eyewitness accounts from survivors, Wendi armed herself with the closest weapons at hand--her trash and recycling bins--and charged the shooter, shouting for him to stop. It is believed Wendi's actions distracted the shooter enough to enable several of her coworkers to escape.

We think of violence against reporters as something that happens in other countries, in war zones and the like, but not here, not in the United States of America. All around the world, reporters work to gather facts, ask questions, and report the news in the spirit of free, open, and transparent societies and governments that all people deserve. Too often, reporters are harassed, jailed, and even killed simply because of the nature of their work, which often exposes cronyism and corruption.

Jason Rezaian, a reporter with the Washington Post who was falsely imprisoned in Iran for doing his job as a journalist, had this to say earlier this year. He talks about the attack I referenced earlier in Annapolis.

Mostly I have covered attacks on the media taking place on

the other side of the world, usually in countries where the

flow of information is restricted or conditions are such that

a sense of desperation or political or tribal affiliation can

compel individuals to take heinous action. . . . Writing

about a deadly attack that happened less than 30 miles away,

in an idyllic town that I recently visited with relatives

from overseas, is a new experience for me. And I have to say

that I don't relish the task.

We Americans have certain rights and responsibilities granted to us through the Constitution, which established the rule of law in this country. Freedom of the press is one of those most basic rights, and it is central to the First Amendment of the Constitution: ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.'' This precious freedom has often been under attack, figuratively speaking, since our Nation's founding.

Today, attacks on the American media have become more frequent and more literal, spurred on by dangerous rhetoric that has created an ``open season'' on harassing the media for doing its job--asking the questions that need to be asked, investigating the stories that need to be uncovered, and bringing needed transparency to the halls of power, whether they are in Annapolis, Washington, DC, or elsewhere.

Then-candidate and now-President Trump's rhetoric--calling the media ``a stain on America'' and ``the enemy of the American people''-- certainly has caused damage. At the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the President said to the audience that they are ``not to believe'' what they see and hear. The President of the United States told a crowd of veterans:

Stick with us. Don't believe the crap you see from these

people, the fake news. . . . What you're seeing and what

you're reading is not what's happening.

That is the President of the United States saying those comments-- again, demeaning the press and the importance of the free press.

Why is the President doing this? Earlier this year, CBS ``60 Minutes'' correspondent Leslie Stahl, an icon in the news business, shared comments from President Trump from an interview she did with him soon after the 2016 election win. Stahl recalled that she said to Donald Trump about his attacks on the media:

Why are you doing this? You're doing it over and over. It's

boring and it's time to end that.

The candidate's response was straightforward and shocking. He said:

You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and

demean you all so that when you write negative stories about

me no one will believe you.

Let that sink in for a moment. A man who was about to assume the position of President of the United States explicitly acknowledged he was purposefully working to diminish the integrity of the free press.

After the Capitol Gazette shooting, Donald Trump said: ``Journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their job.'' But how do we interpret his sincerity when, more frequently, he is calling the media ``fake news'' or ``totally unhinged'' and telling the people of America that reporters are truly bad people?

Donald Trump's constant dismissal needs to end. He needs to accept that one of the press's most important roles is to speak truth to power--truth to power, including to the President of the United States.

Here at home, we are left to wonder whether Donald Trump is more inclined to agree with Russian President Vladimir Putin's view of the press--where journalists are routinely jailed and physically attacked-- than with Thomas Jefferson, who famously said: ``Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.''

Journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their job--both figuratively and literally. The right of journalists to report the news is nothing less than the right of all of us to know. Media freedom and media pluralism are essential for the expression of, or ensuring respect for, other fundamental freedoms and safeguarding democracy, the rule of law, and a system of checks and balances.

Every one of us in this body--Democrats and Republicans--has sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. As leaders of this great Nation, we have a responsibility to defend the rights of our

citizens, including the freedom of press.

Yesterday, TIME magazine featured three covers in addition to the Capital Gazette. One is Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post contributor who was killed at the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul in October. I would note that this is the first time that a TIME Person of the Year is a deceased person.

The United States of America must stand up for justice and human rights at home and abroad. I agree that Saudi Arabia is a strong ally in a variety of important areas, but that should only strengthen their understanding of America's commitment to the rule of law, and we as a Nation cannot sanction extrajudicial killings. America's national security is harmed, not helped, when dictators and strongmen believe they can get away with such heinous actions as the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Congress must act to demand accountability for those responsible for Jamal Khashoggi's murder and to send the right signal to the world that America will continue to be a beacon of justice and defender of human rights.

Another cover features Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters journalists who were arrested 1 year ago in Myanmar while working on stories about the killings of the Rohingya Muslims. These journalists remain behind bars, but their wives were photographed for the cover. From this floor, I stood in solidarity with these Reuters reporters who were detained in Burma for shining a light on the horrific abuses that occur in the Rakhine State.

I have stood in solidarity with Ethiopian journalists and bloggers who are routinely arrested for criticizing the Ethiopian Government and exposing human rights abuses in that country. I have talked frequently about China, a country that engages in routine censorship and online blocking, harassment, reprisals, and detention of journalists, visa delays, and denials for journalists.

Another TIME cover shows Maria Ressa, the chief executive of the Philippine news website, Rappler, who was indicted on tax evasion charges by President Duterte's administration as part of a crackdown on free speech and dissent.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide, more than 600 journalists and media workers have been killed in the last 10 years while doing their job.

Of the member States of the Organization for Security and Co- operation in Europe, Russia remains the deadliest country for journalists.

Turkey is the largest jailer of journalists in the world, and scores of media outlets have been closed since the attempted coup there. The heavyhanded measures used against media freedom in Turkey, both before and during the recent elections, illustrates the lengths to which the government went to control the information available to voters. It also serves as a reminder of the essential role of a pluralistic media for free and fair elections.

I have also worked on many other countries that have infringed upon the freedom of press in my role on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a ranking Democrat on the Helsinki Commission. I could give you examples of what we have done in Malta, what we have done in Slovakia, what we have done in Belarus--and the list goes on and on.

I therefore ask the Trump administration and my colleagues in the Senate to redouble their efforts to protect the freedom of the press, both at home and abroad. We must lead by example as the very foundational legitimacy of a democratic republic is at stake.

America's leadership is essential to protect the freedom of the press--an essential institution for a democratic state. We must lead by first setting an example by our commitment to the freedom of press here at home. We must demand that freedom of the press be a priority in our global affairs, recognizing it is important to our national security.

TIME magazine got it right by naming the ``Guardians and the War on Truth'' as persons of the year.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, under our Constitution, we have article I, which addresses the powers of Congress, and article II, the powers of the Presidency. Our Founders were so concerned that the President would take us into war without justification that they made sure to explicitly place the power to go to war with Congress--with the House and Senate.

But here we are, debating the issue of how the President took us into war in Yemen as a facilitator of Saudi Arabia, providing intelligence, providing advice, refueling planes, providing armaments. It is time for us to take a powerful and clear stand and change this and end this.

Here is what has been going on. For multiple years now, Saudi Arabia has been bombing the civilian infrastructure of Yemen, indiscriminately slaughtering civilians, destroying schools and hospitals and neighborhoods and water systems. What is the result of destroying the water systems? The largest outbreak of cholera in the history of humankind. We now have well over 100 children under the age of 5 dying of hunger and starvation each day. We are told by the experts that 8 to 14 million people are at risk of starvation, but many are already starving, and not just children under 5--the whole spectrum of society.

We have been directly involved in ways that, in my mind, violate the War Powers Act by directly facilitating the movement of armaments and assisting Saudi Arabia in this assault, and this assault must end. We have to send a strong message, and we can do that through this vote we are facing ahead of us. That is one piece of the conversation regarding Saudi Arabia.

The other piece is that the Saudi Government has assassinated an American resident--an American resident who is also an American newspaper columnist. What do we have as a response? We have the weakest possible response from President Trump, with President Trump saying that we don't know what happened. The Saudi Crown Prince may have been involved; he might not have been involved. Who will ever know?

We need a strong watchdog for American values. We need the President to stand up to Saudi Arabia. We don't need to hear that we are going to be weak in the face of an assassination of an American resident because they happen to buy armaments from the United States. Yet that is what we are hearing from President Trump--weakness, selling out American values because they buy some American products.

What more trouble can we invite around the world if we don't stand up for human rights and we don't stand up for our residents and we don't stand up for our journalists, all tied in together here?

Let's be forceful in how we vote on this resolution. Let's send a strong message.

This challenge of the President in ignoring the article I powers in our Constitution, in which the power to be involved in war is vested in this body, Congress, is not the only problem we have. We also have core corruption of our Constitution in the form of gerrymandering and voter suppression and dark money, all of which erode the fundamental vision, the vision in our Constitution of a ``we the people'' government, one that serves as President Lincoln so eloquently said, to operate ``of the people, by the people, for the people.'' Instead, we have the government operating of, by, and for the powerful in this country--the 1 percent in this country.

It certainly wasn't done in 2017 with a tax bill that took $1.5 trillion--or call it $2 trillion, if you include the interest on the $1.5 trillion--out of our Federal Treasury and gave it to the very richest Americans. Boy, that is not a ``we the people'' action.

We didn't invest in healthcare. We didn't invest in education. We need apprenticeship programs. We need technical education. We need better public

schools. We need affordable colleges. We didn't invest in education. We didn't make our healthcare system more affordable. We didn't take on the drug companies. We didn't proceed to invest in the challenge of unaffordable housing. We didn't invest in infrastructure and create living-wage jobs. Those are the four foundations of a thriving family-- healthcare, housing, education, and living-wage jobs. We ignored all of that and had the government of the powerful giving $1.5 trillion or $2 trillion, if we include the interest, to the richest Americans-- government by and for the powerful.

Voter suppression is a key strategy in this. What did President Reagan have to say about that? President Reagan said: ``For this Nation to remain true to its principles, we cannot allow any American's vote to be denied, diluted or defiled.''

Now, there is a statement by a man who understood that voting is the foundation of our democratic republic--a core right of Americans--and he believed we needed to stand up and make sure that core value remains fully intact. But so often in our Nation we have seen those who wield power for the powerful proceed to deny or dilute or defile the power to vote, particularly in poor communities, particularly in communities of color.

We have seen everything. We have seen poll taxes. We have seen literacy tests. We have seen post-Civil War good character tests. We have seen the use of felony charges to make it impossible for African Americans to vote in the South. We have seen voter intimidation, and we have seen it sometimes through racist dog whistling and political postcards. We have a long history of these types of actions to deny, dilute, and defile the power to vote.

I would like to say there is something of our past that we saw with the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but that act was struck down by the Supreme Court. We are seeing all kinds of forms of voter suppression emerge in 2016 and 2018.

In 2018, thousands of Native Americans in North Dakota living on Tribal reserves and using their P.O. boxes for their mail address were kept from casting a ballot because of a law that came into effect in 2018. It said you can't vote without a conventional address--the North Dakota ``conventional address'' effort to dilute or deny or obstruct the power to vote.

In Georgia, the then-secretary of State, Brian Kemp, who was himself running for Governor, attempted to block 53,000 Georgians from voting-- 70 percent of whom were African-American voters--because of minor differences in the wording of the way they filled out their registration form. If the name wasn't exactly identical or had some other slight variation, he was sitting on those voting registration cards--the ``identical name'' gambit from Georgia.

In Ohio, a county elections board proceeded on the orders of Secretary of State Jon Husted to purge thousands of Ohioans from the voting rolls. If you are not on the voting rolls, you can't vote when the election comes. Again, who were disproportionately affected? African Americans--the Ohio voting roll purge strategy of voter suppression.

What did we see in North Carolina? Thanks to a law passed by the Republican State legislature, nearly 20 percent of North Carolina's early voting locations were closed, forcing voters to travel longer or wait in long election-day lines to cast their vote. I will give you one guess on who was impacted the most. Who was this target aimed at? Well, it was aimed at African-American voters--the long line strategy from North Carolina and Kansas, as well.

In Kansas, the county clerk in Dodge City, citing construction, moved the only polling place in a town that is 60 percent Hispanic from a spot downtown to an arena built for rodeo and farming shows outside the city limits. This was a location that had no sidewalk and is separated from the rest of the city by train tracks, making it as difficult as possible for voters to get there. It was targeted at a Hispanic community.

We saw voting suppression aimed at college students, too. In Iowa, the legislature passed a bill to cut 11 days off early voting this year in order to make it harder to vote. It also had a tricky little deal on an ID requirement, which will not now go into effect until next year, but it created a great deal of confusion about this year because it made people think they weren't eligible to vote because it said your ID had to have an expiration date on it. Why was this tricky little thing done? Because college IDs often don't have an expiration date on them.

Well, it is a total violation of the vision Ronald Reagan laid out, and really, of the foundation--the vision--of our Constitution and the power to vote.

In New Hampshire, a bill was signed into law this past July aimed at suppressing college-age voters as well. It says students and other part-time residents have to become permanent residents. How do you become a permanent resident in order to cast a ballot? You have to buy an in-State license. If you have a car in another State, you have to reregister it in New Hampshire, which means registration fees, fees for license plates, and possibly separate State and municipal fees. It is like a poll tax placed on college students. So there we have this 21st century poll tax coming back aimed at college students.

Why are all these voting suppression strategies aimed at poor communities, aimed at communities of color, African-American communities and Hispanic communities? Why are they aimed at college students? They are aimed at these three populations because those three populations vote primarily on the Democratic side of the ballot. It is wrong for any official in this country to simply target voters of the other party to try to prevent them from voting. It is un-American. It goes against the essence of what our Constitution is all about.

It is wrong, and yet, since the Voting Rights Act was torn down by the Supreme Court of the United States, we see it time and again. We don't just see it before the election. We see it during the election day.

In Georgia, we saw hours-long lines to vote in majority-minority districts, either because machines didn't happen to be working or they didn't have the extension cords to turn them on.

In Arizona, one polling place didn't exist on election day because even though people were told to vote there, it was in a building that was locked up. Voting machines were inside, but the doors were locked. The building had been foreclosed on, but they didn't bother to move it next door or somewhere close by, enabling people to vote.

In Texas, we heard about the machines that were changing people's votes from a Democratic candidate to Republican candidate.

All the while, President Trump was working to cast doubt on the legitimacy of our normal election processes--tweeting out that ballots coming in after election night shouldn't be counted. What was he talking about down in Florida, about ballots that shouldn't be counted? We are talking about the absentee ballots for our soldiers overseas. But because the President was concerned that they might change the outcome, he didn't want them counted.

If only Ronald Reagan could spend a few minutes with President Trump and remind him of what our Nation is all about, what our Constitution is all about, how important voting is, and that it should never be denied or diluted.

None of these efforts are unique. We saw these efforts back in 2016, as well, in the first election after the Voting Rights Act was torn down by the Supreme Court. That was the Shelby County v. Holder decision. The Court thought this wasn't necessary any more. Maybe they should ask Congress whether it was necessary. Now that we find out it was necessary, maybe they should reverse their decision. We need to put a new issue before them. Maybe we need a new Voting Rights Act. Maybe it should apply to every State, rather than just the States that were in the 1965 Voting Rights Act bill.

In 2016, that first election after the Voting Rights Act was torn down by the Supreme Court, we saw 900 fewer polling places open to voters than in 2014--2 years earlier. Most of that change was in the States that previously were under the regulation, the oversight of the Voting Rights Act. We saw that in Texas, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina. When you reduce the number of polling places in poor communities and communities of color, you create long wait lines, and you deny the vote.

Nearly 17,000 Wisconsinites--disproportionately minorities--were kept from the polls because of Wisconsin's voter ID law. The State saw its lowest turnout in two decades. This law had nothing to do with security. It had everything to do with voter suppression because it is a known fact that residents in low-income and minority communities are less likely to be able to access the IDs that are required for polls. This is keenly targeted.

In fact, after North Carolina's voter ID law was struck down in 2016, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision noted that it targeted African Americans with ``almost surgical precision.'' The State resorted that year--after it was struck down--to eliminating early voting days, severely curtailing the number of polling places, and affecting their hours of operation in communities of color.

By the way, the lead plaintiff in the case that challenged the voting suppression strategy of the voter ID law passed away this weekend at age 97. Ms. Rosanell Eaton was once described by President Obama as a beacon of civil rights. She was a life-long devotee of and advocate for voting rights. Now, that is a patriot.

It is because of unsung heroes like her that our Nation has come far and why we must continue pushing ourselves forward to ensure justice and equality for all.

In a ``we the people'' nation, can any of these efforts to suppress the vote be allowed to continue? The answer is no--not if we want the vision of government of, by, and for the people. How can any of us sit by and allow citizens of this country--citizens like Rosanell Eaton--to be systematically denied the most fundamental right?

We have to work together--Democrats and Republicans--to honor and to strengthen the vision of the ability to vote. We need a fierce and formidable voting rights bill for the 21st century, ensuring in every way possible that every single American can exercise his or her right to vote freely and fairly. We need a voting rights bill that bans the type of shenanigans and the types of deceptive strategies that target poor communities, communities of color, and college students that I talked about today.

But we also need a voting rights bill that requires preapproval for changes to voting procedures to make sure that they are not being changed in order to take away the ability to vote and to make it more difficult for some communities than for other communities within a State. We need a voting rights commission with the power to ban new voter suppression practices as they evolve because, surely, people will try new strategies from people who do not believe in the vision of our Constitution.

From the 15th amendment of 1870, which recognized African-Americans' right to vote, to the 19th amendment of 1920, 50 years later, which recognized a woman's right to vote, and all the way up to the civil rights marches of the 1960s and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, America's story has been of expanding opportunity for every American to have a say in the direction of our government.

But we are far from ensuring that today every American has that opportunity because the strategies of voter suppression are rampant, they are extensive, and they are targeted. Voter suppression and voter intimidation must end, and we need to ensure that every American has the unfettered right to have a voice in their government, that every American has the unfettered right to cast a ballot during the election.

President Reagan had it right back in 1981. He supported the expansion of the Voting Rights Act. He said: ``For this Nation to remain true to its principles, we cannot allow any American's vote to be denied, diluted or defiled.''

Let's make it so.

Thank you, Mr. President.

(Mr. GARDNER assumed the Chair.)

Mr. President, the Senate is currently considering S.J. Res. 54. I am proud to be a cosponsor of this legislation--lead cosponsor, along with my distinguished colleague from Vermont, Senator Sanders. He and I, along with Senator Murphy and a number of other Members of this body, have engaged in this bipartisan effort, in a concerted endeavor to make sure that the separation of powers among our three branches of government is respected.

There is perhaps no more morally significant decision made in government than the decision to go to war. Whenever we take an action as a government that puts American treasure and, especially, American blood on the line, we have a sacred responsibility to evaluate and carefully weigh the relative risks and advantages of acting and the relative risks and advantages of not acting.

To make sure that kind of analysis takes place, the Founding Fathers wisely put this power squarely within the branch of government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals--the Congress. This was a big distinction from our former National Government, based in London, where the chief executive--the King--had the power to commit troops to war without going to Parliament.

Alexander Hamilton explained this principle in Federalist No. 69. He explained that it was no accident that this power was put in the hands of Congress. To be sure, the power Congress has to declare war means more than simply to state something in the abstract. It is something that has to happen before we put American blood and treasure on the line.

It is something that should never happen in the absence of some type of dire emergency--some set of exigent circumstances in which the President must protect the United States of America from an imminent attack. It needs to be declared by Congress.

This isn't a mere formality; this is the only thing that guarantees that this is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It is the only thing guaranteeing that we will actually have a debate about the relative merits of the conflict in question. There are a number of reasons why.

In addition to the fact that there is an obvious economic expense associated with war, there is a tremendous human cost associated with war on our side, on the side of those among whom we might be fighting, and on the side of those against whom we might be fighting.

This particular conflict in Yemen provides one of many examples of the moral perilousness associated with war, of the many moral questions brought about as a result of war. We are involved in a conflict half a world away. We are involved in providing targeting assistance, midair refueling, reconnaissance, and surveillance. We are involved in this conflict as cobelligerents.

As we are involved in that, we are responsible in one way or another not only for the American lives that might one day be directly implicated in this conflict--more than they are today because we know how wars go; we know how they tend to spread. We know that once we put the good name of the United States of America on the line, we are understandably reluctant to walk away from it because of what that might say to the rest of the world.

But in order to make it legitimate, in order to make that decision authentic, in order to make it sustainable, it has to be done in the appropriate way, which means it first has to go to Congress.

Many of my colleagues will argue--in fact some of them have argued just within the last few minutes--that we are somehow not involved in a war in Yemen. My distinguished friend and colleague, the Senator from Oklahoma, came to the floor a little while ago, and he said that we are not engaged in direct military action in Yemen.

Let's peel that back for a minute. Let's figure out what that means. I am not sure what the distinction between direct and indirect is here. Maybe in a very technical sense--or under a definition of warfare or military action that has long since been rendered outdated--we are not involved in that, but

we are involved in a war. We are cobelligerents. The minute we start identifying targets or, as Secretary James Mattis put it about a year ago, in December 2017, the minute we are involved in the decisions involving making sure that they know the right stuff to hit, that is involvement in a war, and that is pretty direct. The minute we send up U.S. military aircraft to provide midair refueling assistance for Saudi jets en route to bombing missions, to combat missions on the ground in Yemen, that is our direct involvement in war.

Now, if you don't agree with me, ask any one of our armed services personnel who is involved in this effort. I would imagine that he or she would beg to differ. I would imagine that the parents, the children, the family members, the loved ones of these brave men and women who have been involved in this effort would beg to differ when told that we are not involved in a war in Yemen.

In any event, regardless of how you define war, regardless of what significance you might attach to direct versus indirect military involvement in a civil war half a world away, it still triggers the constitutional requirement that Congress and not merely the President decide that we are going to get involved in this war.

Look, I understand that there are some competing powers in the Constitution. It was set up deliberately that way. There is some arguable gray area between, on the one hand, the outer limits of the President's Executive authority as the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and, on the other hand, the power enjoyed exclusively by Congress to declare war. Because there is some gray area, some matters on which people of reasonable minds might disagree as to where a war begins, Congress, several decades ago, adopted the War Powers Act in an effort to try to delineate the respective powers of these branches. Congress decided, among other things, that it would be significant any time we got involved in hostilities.

Many of my colleagues will argue and many of them have argued on this very day, in fact, that we are not involved in hostilities in Yemen and therefore the War Powers Act is not triggered. Yes, there are a couple of problems with that argument.

One, it is just categorically untrue for the reasons I mentioned a minute ago. We are helping them get to the bombing sites. We are telling them what to bomb, what to hit, what to take out. That is rather direct involvement in war.

Increasingly these days, our wars are high-tech. Very often, our wars involve cyber activities. They involve reconnaissance, surveillance, target selection, midair refueling. It is hard--in many cases, impossible--to fight a war without those things. That is what war is.

Many of my colleagues, in arguing that we are not involved in hostilities, rely on a memorandum that is internal within the executive branch of the U.S. Government that was issued in 1976 that provides a very narrow, unreasonably slim definition of the word ``hostilities.'' It defines ``hostilities'' in a way that might have been relevant, that might have been accurate, perhaps, in the mid-19th century, but we no longer live in a world in which you have a war as understood by two competing countries that are lined up on opposite sides of a battlefield and engaged in direct exchanges of fire, one against another, at relatively short range. War encompasses a lot more than that. War certainly encompasses midair refueling, target selection, surveillance, and reconnaissance of the sort we are undertaking in Yemen.

Moreover, separate and apart from this very narrow, unreasonably slim definition of ``hostilities'' as determined by this internal executive branch document from 1976 that contains the outdated definition, we ourselves, under the War Powers Act, don't have to technically be involved in hostilities. It is triggered so long as we ourselves are sufficiently involved with the armed forces of another nation when those armed forces of another nation are themselves involved in hostilities. I am speaking, of course, in reference to the War Powers Act's provisions codified at 50 USC 1547(c).

For our purposes here, it is important to keep in mind what that provisions reads: ``For purposes of this chapter [under the War Powers Act], the term `introduction of United States Armed Forces' includes the assignment of members of such Armed Forces to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government when such military forces are engaged, or there exists an imminent threat that such forces will become engaged, in hostilities.''

In what sense, on what level, on what planet are we not involved in the commanding, in the coordination, in the participation, in the movement of or in the accompaniment of the armed forces of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia-led coalition in the civil war in Yemen? I challenge anyone to explain that to me--how it is that we are not involved in the way described by 50 USC 1547(c). We are. Because we are under this power-sharing agreement that was reached in the War Powers Act that has been in place over the last four or five decades, we need to follow those procedures. It is one of the reminders we have that we need to respect the separation of powers.

We first brought up this resolution--or one like it--earlier this year. It was about 8 or 9 months ago. At the time we brought it up and got it to the Senate floor, we utilized a privilege status accorded to resolutions like these in order to secure a vote on the Senate floor to try to bring this bill out of committee. At the time, sadly, we received only 44 votes to get it out of committee. That was not enough.

Fast-forward a few months to the week before last when we voted on it again. It was, actually, the same vote, and it resulted in 63 Members of this body supporting the idea of advancing it out of committee.

Then, today, we moved to the consideration of this bill, and we got, if I am not mistaken, about 60 votes for that. I am thrilled, I am ecstatic that we had that result, and I look forward to my colleagues passing S.J. Res. 54 in the coming days. I urge my colleagues to vote for it. I suggest, however, that it would have been even better had we done it sooner.

What, you might ask, changed? What changed between when we voted for this a few months ago and we fell short of the votes we needed and when we brought it up the week before last to discharge it out of committee and then voted today to move to the bill? Well, a number of things have happened.

First, the war in Yemen has continued. We have had a whole lot of people killed in Yemen as a result of this civil war. We have had a whole lot more people in Yemen die as a result of causes related to that war. There has been starvation. There have been all kinds of atrocities that have accompanied that war.

Now, I know--this is war, and war inevitably involves atrocities. War inevitably leads to some people dying as a result of a direct kinetic attack, and it almost inevitably leads to other people dying as a result of starvation or their being subjected to other violent acts or tragic outcomes. I get it. That is what war does. That is precisely why it is unconstitutional and morally bankrupt for us to get involved in a war without the people's elected representatives in Congress voting to do so, without our having the ability to debate it, to discuss it, and to vote affirmatively to put our brave young men and women in harm's way to engage in that war.

What else changed in addition to the fact that this war has gone on and on with a lot of death and suffering and misery by a whole lot of innocent people?

We have also seen that when we pulled back the mask a little bit, when we pulled back the curtains and looked into exactly who we were fighting for and why we were fighting, the people, understandably, got a little freaked out. The death, the murder of a journalist got a lot of people's attention.

I completely agree with the comments that have been made by several of my colleagues that every life is sacred, that every human soul has inestimable worth in the eyes of God and should be respected by each and every one of us. It is therefore sad that it has had to take this long for us to care about it. It shouldn't be the case that we had to wait for a journalist to be murdered for us to care about this unconstitutional, unjustified, and, I believe, immoral war.

Regardless of how we got here, we are here. The murder of Mr. Khashoggi caused us to think long and hard--with good reason--about the fact that we have gone somewhat blindly into war, first under a Democratic President and then under a Republican President, where it has been continued, following, somewhat blindly, the leadership of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The fact that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has been implicated in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi has caused a lot of people to stop and say: Wait a minute. Maybe this doesn't make sense. Wait a minute. Perhaps this is a regime that we ought not be supporting or at least, at a minimum, regardless of the fact that we may have some interest, some reason to be allied with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in some ways, maybe--just maybe--this is enough of a reason for us not to be fighting a war on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We know this to be true.

Those of us who serve in this body or who serve down the hall in the U.S. House of Representatives know something very significant, which is that if we went to almost any one of our constituents in any part of the country and asked them ``Why should we, the United States of America--the greatest military power, the greatest republic, arguably, the greatest civilization the world has ever known--be putting American blood and treasure on the line to fight as cobelligerents in a civil war half a world away in Yemen?'' we know that 99 times out of 100-- perhaps 999 times out of 1,000--that it would not result in a confident answer. We know that it would result in an answer full of uncertainty, ambiguity, grave concern, and well-justified fear for the fact that we are involved in somebody else's civil war--in a civil war in which we have no business fighting, in a civil war in which we have blindly followed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into conflict.

This is our decision to make. That war results in bloodshed and the shedding of blood that will be on our hands if we fail to exercise our constitutional prerogatives under a system of government in which we have taken an oath to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I hope and expect that we will do our duty. I hope and expect that we will respect the lives of those who put their lives on the line to protect us.

I urge my colleagues, with all the emotion and all the compassion I am capable of summoning, to vote for and pass S.J. Res. 54.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we have been debating for quite some time on the Senate floor the Yemen war powers resolution introduced by my colleagues Senator Sanders and Senator Lee, which would cut off support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen--support that began under President Obama.

Surrounding this vote today, many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle have expressed extreme frustration with the Saudi Crown Prince, Muhammad bin Salman, especially regarding the death of Jamal Khashoggi, an American-based Saudi journalist murdered in Turkey. I have a lot of respect for the Senators weighing in, making their arguments all day today, including Senators Young, Lee, Corker, Paul, Graham, Murphy, Menendez, and Cardin--many. We do need to understand what happened, what our intelligence and our government have surrounding this death. I am glad the CIA Director came to the Hill to brief Members. But this debate has taken something of a much more complex turn.

Certainly, the heinous murderers need to be held accountable. There is no doubt about that. But what we have been discussing, and what is really being implicated here on the floor--which hasn't really been talked about too much--is the broader issue of U.S. or American presence in the region, not just regarding the current conflict in Yemen but also our broader strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia and our national security interests in the region.

My colleagues are justified in their frustration--no doubt I share it as well--with the Saudis, with what is happening, but removing American leadership and oversight from this conflict through this resolution is not the way we should go about addressing this issue. We are trying to execute a policy that both reflects America's values and our national security interests. That is what is being debated here today. We need to send a strong message to the Saudis, but that message cannot undercut our own national security or those of our allies. The message cannot strengthen what clearly is the biggest threat in the region; that is, Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism, which almost nobody on the Senate floor has been talking about over the last several weeks. I intend to.

Today's vote has meant different things to different Senators. I have watched and listened to floor speeches. I have participated in debates with my colleagues within the Republican Conference and when all the Senators have met when we were briefed by administration officials.

I thought I would try to unpack a little bit of some of these different arguments as I have seen them and provide my views.

Generally, this debate is focused in three different areas: One, about the constitutional authority--the War Powers Act--that we have actually been undertaking these kind of operations with the Saudis in Yemen. The other is limiting and ending U.S. assistance to Saudi operations--U.S. military assistance--in Yemen. Finally, some Senators have been focused on downgrading the U.S. relationship with the Saudis because of what has been happening both in Yemen and with the Khashoggi murder.

First, let me talk about the constitutional arguments on the War Powers Act; that the Trump administration needs congressional authority, either pursuant to the War Powers Act or, more important, pursuant to article II of the U.S. Constitution, to conduct military operations in support of Saudi Arabia's military goals in Yemen.

Senator Lee has done a great job of pressing this issue. There are many issues on which I agree with Senator Lee of Utah. He is clearly one of this body's most knowledgeable and passionate Members in safeguarding constitutional prerogatives, but in this case, I simply disagree with him and the other Senators whose views I view as way too restrictive on the Commander in Chief's ability to utilize our military.

If we set the precedent that even an operation such as the refueling of aircraft of allied countries, not even occurring in a war zone, needs congressional authority either through the War Powers Act or article II, we would severely limit the executive branch's ability to direct international crises and safeguard our global national security interests. I believe the notion that refueling allied aircraft constitutes hostilities would be an unworkable precedent and is a stretch of the term.

I have also been skeptical of Senate attempts to vote to remove Presidential authority on our military operations once those operations have begun. For example, we had a debate on military operations and the authority of our military to operate in Afghanistan, which I believe sends the wrong message to our troops. It is a precedent that once hostilities begin, we don't have the backs of our forces. I think that is also a dangerous precedent.

That is not to say this is not an important debate. It is certainly an important debate. Other Members such as Senator Kaine have talked about the importance of the issue of military authority, but with regard to this discussion, I think it is too limiting.

Let me talk about the second major issue involved that most Senators have been focused on: whether to vote to affirmatively end U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia and their actions in Yemen and whether and how, in doing so, it will help end the humanitarian disaster going on there.

I compliment Senator Young and Senator Murphy, who have been making the case passionately on this topic with much expertise. Clearly, they and this body have been focused on two goals: We all want a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Yemen, and we all want an end to the humanitarian disaster in Yemen.

The reason I voted against the resolution today is because I do not believe that either of these goals will be made easier or advanced by less American involvement in the conflict. To the contrary, if the United States no longer has the ability to help guide the Saudis militarily in Yemen, I believe these

two important goals--ending the humanitarian crisis and bringing a peaceful resolution--will actually be harder to reach.

That is not just my view; that was the view of Secretary Mattis and Secretary Pompeo when they came to brief all 100 Senators 2 weeks ago. In particular, Secretary Mattis knows the region and certainly knows about how hostilities end and begin in the region.

The basis of their arguments--with which I agree--was, first, there is no doubt the Saudis have prosecuted the war badly, but both the Obama administration's Department of Defense and the Trump administration's Department of Defense have worked hard to minimize casualties.

Does anyone actually believe the situation in Yemen will improve without U.S. assistance and guidance? The question almost answers itself. Having our military involved has helped the Saudis improve their coordination and improve their targeting to minimize civilian casualties. Having our military involved has helped the Saudis manage disagreements between them and their Gulf coalition partners. These partners also play an important role in helping to bring an end to this war.

Having our military involved has also helped provide critical leverage as we move into the hopeful peace negotiations underway in Sweden as we speak. Yemen's Government and the Houthi rebels have evidently agreed to a prisoner swap, which could include thousands of prisoners and could be the beginning of a diplomatic breakthrough.

I had the opportunity to talk with Secretaries Mattis and Pompeo this weekend. Both said this would be exactly the wrong time, at a key diplomatic moment, to have the United States limit and end its military assistance to Saudi Arabia.

I know sometimes people don't like to think this way, but military strength and leverage is often critical--critical to successful diplomatic negotiations. For the first time, there is promise--promise in negotiations in Sweden. All of us want that to succeed. However, I believe we undermine our chances of success in these diplomatic efforts if Congress forces the United States to end military assistance to the Saudis.

We also have an even more direct and real national security interest in the region. Yemen is an important front in the war on terror: It is the home to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP. They have attempted multiple times to directly attack our homeland. They were responsible for the attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors and severely wounded 39 others, and they were responsible for the 2015 massacre at Charlie Hebdo's offices in Paris. Limiting our military involvement in Yemen could pose significant risk with regard to AQAP that I believe would be unacceptable for the American people.

The third line of argument we have seen on the floor and many have been discussing goes much broader than just the relationship between our military involvement in Yemen and really implicates the entire U.S.-Saudi strategic relationship. It is the desire of a number of my colleagues to use this debate and the despicable Khashoggi murder as an opportunity to fully downgrade this decades-old strategic relationship.

The Saudis are difficult partners, no doubt. They have been for decades. Last week, when I was presiding, Senator Rubio gave an excellent speech saying that he believed the Saudis are testing the limits of their relationship with the United States and that we should look to draw some hard lines and recalibrate elements of our relationship while demanding improvements in other areas. I agreed with much of Senator Rubio's speech, including his conclusion, like mine, that we should not be cutting off our military assistance to the Saudis in Yemen because it would do much more harm than good.

Nevertheless, some Senators have argued for much more downgrading of the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia. In fact, so much of this has been exclusively focused on the Saudis, with no other reference to any other country in the Middle East, that it seems this debate on the floor has been in a vacuum, but as we know, there are a lot more countries in the region, including the world's biggest sponsor of state terrorism, Iran, which nobody is talking about. We should be talking about them because, in fact, the war in Yemen began when Tehran-backed Houthi rebels seized power in 2015. Again, there is not a lot of discussion about how it began.

Tehran is trying to establish a Hezbollah-like entity on the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, including increased capabilities to target cities in Saudi Arabia with ballistic missiles supplied by Iran. This is all part of Iran's broader strategy in the region to encircle our traditional allies--whether Saudi Arabia, Gulf Arab States, and of course Israel--with proxy fighters throughout Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and close relationships in Iraq. Yet no one in this debate seems to want to talk about Iran. I thought I would do so for a minute.

Let's talk about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. U.S. humanitarian aid has totaled almost $697 million in the past 14 months. Yes, Saudi Arabia could do a much better job, but they have invested well over $1 billion to try to end the suffering. Iran--the country which started the war, the country nobody on the Senate floor is talking about--not a dime to relieve the suffering. Sure, they have supplied weapons and ballistic missiles in the tens of millions of dollars but nothing to relieve the suffering.

If we cut off U.S. military assistance to Riyadh and Yemen, you had better believe the one capital in the Middle East that will be cheering the loudest is Tehran--again, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. Such an action would further embolden Iran and no doubt embolden its proxies, while at the same time our allies, including Israel, would feel less secure.

As this debate has carried on in the Senate, with no one talking about the largest state sponsor of terrorism, I have found it very troubling because the lens through which we need to view security in the Middle East is through Iran. Although we have dissatisfaction and frustration with some of our allies, we must remember the most significant and serious threat in the Middle East continues to be Iran.

There has been a lot of focus on the horrible death of Mr. Khashoggi. Any death is horrible, but let me talk about some other deaths.

In the Middle East, in Iraq, we have had over 500 American military members killed and almost 2,000 wounded by improvised explosive devices supplied to Iraqi Shia militias by the Iranians. Let me say that again: Over 2,000 Americans killed and wounded by the largest state sponsor of terrorism. Yet nobody seems to talk about that. Yes, one death of an American journalist is horrible. Over 2,000 American dead and wounded is really horrible. Where was the outrage about those deaths? Where was the outrage about those murders? Where were the editorials about those murders of American citizens? The previous administration wasn't focused on those because they were focused on the Iran nuclear deal.

All I am saying is, in this debate, nobody is talking about the real enemy of the United States--the Iranians, who are watching this debate and smiling because no one is talking about them. So I thought it was important to come down and say: Some of us are. Some of us know you are behind the war in Yemen. Some of us know you continually say you want to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. Some of us know the Iran deal only emboldened you.

What we need to keep in mind is, yes, we have difficult partners. No doubt the Saudis are difficult. They are not perfect by any sense of the word.

But this is a difficult region, and these are difficult issues, and if we think we can debate Yemen and our help there without talking about the Saudis and the Iranians, who started the war and are trying to circle our different allies, including Israel, and think somehow that this debate is not emboldening them more, I think we are misguided.

I voted against this resolution because I still think it is important to keep in mind that the lens through which we need to assess our security interests and those of our allies in the Middle East is through what helps or undermines Iran. I am concerned that this resolution can help them, and that is not good for the United States, it is not good for the war in Yemen, it is not good for the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, and it is certainly not good for all allies like Israel.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to begin by thanking a number of my colleagues who have contributed so much to bringing us to this point on S.J. Res. 54. I have been very pleased and honored to work with them in cosponsoring these measures in the past--most recently in March and now today--to end all U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen that is killing innocent civilians and murdering children and committing, arguably, war crimes.

The United States should have no complicity in these actions that betray our values and our national interest, so this resolution would direct the removal of all U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities.

There are many to thank--Senators Sanders and Lee, Senator Menendez, and my colleague from Connecticut, Senator Murphy--but I want to thank some people who have not been mentioned during this proceeding

Before Yemen and before the killing of Khashoggi--that is, before the civil war in Yemen and the Saudi involvement in it and before the brutal, heinous killing of the American journalist Jamal Khashoggi-- there was 9/11. The victims and loved ones of those victims are remembered by me. They are friends. They are heroes. They have fought relentlessly to hold the Government of Saudi Arabia accountable for its culpability--not yet proven in court, but they are seeking to hold the monarchy accountable for its possible involvement.

They have been largely absent from the discussion on this floor, but they are the original champions of holding the Saudis responsible for any and all possible involvement in supporting the 9/11 attack on our Nation. Make no mistake--their loved ones were victims, but it was an attack on our Nation, on the Twin Towers, on our Defense Department, on a plane that was forced to crash in Pennsylvania.

I am pleased that the U.S. Senate is pursuing justice for Jamal Khashoggi. He was a journalist, an opinion writer for an American newspaper with two young children who are U.S. citizens.

The United States has a moral obligation to end support for a government that engages in this kind of heinous, murderous action. There is intelligence that points directly to the highest levels of the Saudi monarchy--namely to the Crown Prince, Muhammad bin Salman.

The United States ought to end its support for the humanitarian crisis caused by the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Make no mistake--it was and is a Saudi-led attack, and the Kingdom is responsible for it, but this monarchy was doing bad things and engaged in bad behavior well before the Yemen civil war and Khashoggi's tragic death. The Saudis have a long record of violating human rights and international norms. They have funded extremism that led to the rise of terrorism. They may well have provided financial support and even training for the Saudis who went to the United States and thereafter enabled and led and participated in the attack on this Nation.

We should never forget the survivors and the loved ones of 9/11. We should never overlook the Saudi role in that horrific attack. We should never relent in supporting those 9/11 families.

Fortunately, we have made progress in holding Saudi Arabia accountable for its culpability in 9/11. In 2016, this Congress unanimously passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act-- JASTA--to allow terrorist victims their day in court, their fair opportunity to hold accountable state sponsors of terrorism, including the Saudi Arabian Government. This September, the Senate unanimously passed my resolution to release all classified documents related to the 9/11 attack. These documents are absolutely essential to giving those families their day in court because they are the evidence that is needed to establish the link the United States has--intelligence dating from those days now seemingly long ago--that inculpates the Saudis.

We must support the continued investigation into 9/11 by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and we must support those 9/11 families to ensure that the facts are made public and that the necessary individuals, entities, and governments are held accountable.

The families of victims who perished on that horrific day deserve answers about those events and circumstances surrounding the terrorist attack. We know their pain and grief are very much with them. We should respect their loss and honor it with action.

We should recognize those heroes like Brett Eagleson of Connecticut and the families of Connecticut and New York and New Jersey and all around the country--and so many are from our area of New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey--who continue to demand justice and have done so year after year--well before this resolution came before us.

I say to my colleagues today, we need to keep our resolve alive and well to never forget, never yield to hopelessness, never allow our support for these 9/11 families to diminish, never cease our quest for justice in the name of Brett Eagleson's dad and his family and every family who still suffers the pain and grief from 9/11.

Given the role of the Saudi Government in perpetrating the 9/11 attacks, the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and the Saudi-inflicted humanitarian crisis, this reevaluation of the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia is long overdue.

The Saudi-led war has consisted of an aggressive campaign as brutal as the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, indiscriminately killing civilians and Houthis alike. Day after day, the humanitarian crisis of famine, cholera, other medical afflictions, and simple trauma to those children trying to grow up in the midst of exploding bombs continues to get worse. The United Nations warns that 14 million Yemenis could face starvation--14 million--14 million innocent people facing starvation.

Diplomatic efforts, in coordination with the United Nations and European allies, are vital to establish a peace framework and ensure civilian access to humanitarian aid.

In the absence of meaningful action from the United States, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen will only worsen. Regional instability will be exacerbated. America's standing in the global community will be further undercut and enduringly diminished.

In March of this year, I led a letter to the Department of Defense with my colleague Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, along with many of our colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee, stating our concern regarding U.S. support for Saudi military operations against the Houthis in Yemen and asking about the DOD's involvement, apparently without appropriate notification of Congress, and its agreements to provide refueling support to the Saudis and the Saudi coalition partners. We were concerned that the DOD had not appropriately documented reimbursements for aerial refueling support provided by the United States.

Eight months later--just days ago--the Department of Defense responded to our letter and admitted that it has failed to appropriately notify Congress of its support agreements; it has failed to adequately charge Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for fuel and refueling assistance. That admission 8 months after our inquiry is a damning indictment. These errors in accounting mean that the United States was directly funding the Saudi war in Yemen. It has been doing it since March of 2015.

In November, the administration announced an end to U.S. aerial refueling support for Saudi military operations in Yemen, but we still must determine whether the Department of Defense was incompetent or disingenuous--or both--in failing to charge the Saudis and Emiratis for previous refueling assistance. We need accountability, a full explanation from the Department of Defense.

The Department will be seeking reimbursement for its refueling support, but I will continue to demand and conduct oversight to get to the bottom of this apparent negligence. I have made the DOD aware of my concerns, and I will evaluate whether an inspector general investigation is necessary to determine the extent to which U.S. taxpayer funds--potentially millions and tens of millions of dollars-- were used to fund the Saudi war and used to fund it without the legally required acknowledgment and approval from the Congress of the United States.

Very simply, the United States should not be funding this war. We should not be supporting this war. We should not be providing intelligence or logistics support. We should not be complicit in the indiscriminate targeting of civilians in Yemen, the murder of children, the famine and humanitarian crisis that are ongoing right now. That is why today we should pass this resolution.

It is all the more important today, as well, that the Senate take a stand, given the Trump family ties to the Saudis and the President's habit of undermining the intelligence community. In the absence of leadership from the President, Congress must reassert its constitutional responsibility to authorize the use of U.S. military support.

We must take action to uphold the Constitution, as well as American values and interests. Intelligence assessments indicate with high certainty that members of the Saudi royal family, including the Crown Prince MBS, ordered and orchestrated the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. But both President Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner have undermined these findings and tried to stifle the intelligence community conclusions. They have undermined not only these conclusions but more broadly the intelligence community itself.

President Trump has debased and dishonored brave intelligence professionals by demeaning their fact-based conclusions as ``feelings.'' President Trump has falsely claimed that ``we may never know all the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi.''

His Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, unfortunately, have further demeaned those findings by saying that there is no direct evidence or there is no smoking gun. The fact is that there is powerful and compelling evidence.

We know from public statements of my colleagues coming from briefings by the intelligence community, and we recently learned that the White House Middle East adviser--I should put ``adviser'' in quotes--Jared Kushner offered advice to his close friend Muhammad Bin Salman about how to ``weather the storm'' during the warranted backlash of Saudi Arabia after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Rather than ensuring accountability, Jared Kushner is inexplicably offering support.

There is also stunning evidence that the Saudi Government lobbyists reserved blocks of rooms at the Trump hotel in Washington, paying for an estimated 500 nights in the luxury hotel just 3 months after President Trump was elected, bringing veterans to Washington to lobby against JASTA, the bill I mentioned earlier--the bill that enables the 9/11 victims to have their day in court, the bill that upholds American interests and American values and American people.

The effort of the Saudi Government to bring those veterans to Washington and fund their stays in the Trump hotel was a despicable irony and insult to America, but it yielded the Trump Organization $270,000 and millions of dollars, by the President's own acknowledgment--indeed, his boasting--go to the Trump organization from condos, apartments, and offices rented or bought in New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC, to say nothing of deals that may be contemplated by the Trump Organization now or after Donald Trump leaves office. These kinds of payments and benefits directly implicate the emoluments clause of the Constitution. They are part of the reason that I have enlisted almost 200 of my colleagues in the U.S. Congress in a lawsuit called Blumenthal v. Trump, and I believe this lawsuit, which claims that the President violated the chief anti-corruption provision of the U.S. Constitution, will shed even more light on those payments and benefits from Saudi Arabia and other countries around the world. These friendships and conflicts of interest demonstrate the very flawed and likely corrupt basis for the Trump administration's foreign policy with Saudi Arabia.

American credibility is at stake. We must end all U.S. involvement in the Saudi war. We must sanction the top levels of the Saudi monarchy under relevant statutes like the Global Magnitsky Act. We must ensure that the President removes U.S. forces from any hostilities against the Yemeni people.

There are countless reasons to vote for this resolution. I call on my colleagues to support it and to make sure that U.S. support for this unacceptable conflict in Saudi--the aggression and attacks by Saudi Arabia on innocent civilians--is ended now.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.