3D Printed Gun Safety Act of 2023

Madam President, I would like to begin my remarks by focusing on what we are debating and what we are not debating. We really need clarity on this point of order and what it is about.

To be perfectly clear, what this point of order would do would simply be to remove from the National Defense Authorization Act a nongermane reauthorization of a surveillance authority--section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--that has a well-documented history of abuse.

Including the reauthorization in the NDAA, of course, violates rule XXVIII of the Senate rules governing conference reports. This particular provision was airdropped into the National Defense Authorization Act, notwithstanding the absence of any predicate for that provision either in the House version or the Senate version of the bill, which, of course, the conference committee was created to iron out. It was created to iron out the differences between those two bills.

Because it was in neither version, the Senate Parliamentarian correctly concluded that this is a nongermane addition to the measure, and as such, it is subject to a rule XXVIII point of order.

What this means as a practical matter today is this comes out; it comes out unless 60 Senators make a deliberate, conscious choice and make that choice by voting to waive rule XXVIII. They would be saying: Yeah, it is not germane. Yeah, it wasn't in the House version or the Senate version. Notwithstanding that, we want it in there anyway.

For the reasons that I will articulate now, that would be a grave mistake--a grave mistake on multiple levels. As I make that explanation, I do want to clarify at the very outset what I am not asking for, what is not my objective here. My objective is not to cede our ability to collect the substance of communications from our foreign adversaries under section 702 of FISA. That is not it. I am not trying to make the whole program go dark.

What I am talking about is the fact that we need much needed reform in this area because section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been widely, infamously, severely abused over a long period of time, to the point that, literally, hundreds of thousands of American citizens have become victims of what I refer to as warrantless backdoor searches.

What does this mean? OK. So the way it works under FISA 702: FISA 702 allows our intelligence-gathering Agencies to go out and scoop up information--bits of information, recordings, phone calls, records of things like texts and email exchanges, and other types of electronic communications--and store them in a database. Insofar as those are directed, as section 702 orders are supposed to be under the Foreign

Intelligence Surveillance Act, at foreign nationals operating on foreign soil, we are not concerned about them.

The Fourth Amendment is not there to protect them. It is not there to protect our foreign adversaries operating on foreign soil. No. It is there to protect the American people, the American people against their own government.

The Fourth Amendment has been around for a long time. It has been on the books in the United States since 1791 when it was made part of the Constitution. And it provides, in essence, that you are entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy in your person, in your papers, in your home; that the government can't just come in and search and seize your papers, your personal effects and communications--not without a warrant, a warrant that has to be based on probable cause, evidence of probable cause of a crime and that describes, with particularity, the things to be searched, the items to be seized, and so forth.

While new to this country as a matter of U.S. constitutional law as of 1791, it actually goes back a lot farther than that. These were things that evolved over many centuries under British law--and with good reason. So it was with good reason, it was on that foundation-- centuries of British common law experience--that we adopted the Fourth Amendment into our Constitution. And it matters that we follow it. It matters that we follow it in every circumstance.

And every American ought to be concerned about deviations from that, especially whereas here, there is a pattern and practice of abuse, of going after Americans' communications.

So how does that happen?

In a database that is full of communications collected on and from and pertaining to our foreign adversaries on foreign soil, how do the rights of American citizens end up being threatened by that?

Well, here is how it happens: When they collect all of this stuff--on some occasions, foreign nationals communicate with friends, relatives, business associates--I don't know--perhaps intelligence targets, whatever they may be, who are in the United States, who are United States citizens. So some of those conversations--by phone, by text, by email, or whatever electronic means--end up being, as we say, incidentally collected and placed into the 702 database.

One of the biggest things we are concerned about here is that on literally hundreds of thousands of occasions, innocent, law-abiding Americans have been subjected to what we call a backdoor, warrantless search whereby someone at the FBI or another Agency enters in information.

They know that Bob Smith has a certain phone number or a certain email address or some other identifier; they know that Bob Smith is a U.S. citizen; and they go in and they search for communications in the 702 database pertaining not to a foreign terrorist, not to an agent of a foreign power outside the United States, not to a foreign adversary in any way outside the United States, but to Bob Smith, the law-abiding American citizen. In that circumstance, it is a problem. It is a problem to go into that without a warrant.

That stuff is there not just for the government's curiosity. It is there not for some voyeuristic, pleasure-seeking impulse on the part of Federal agents. No. It is there to protect the United States of America from foreign adversaries and to allow us to track our foreign adversaries and what they are doing. And so in order to go into that database, they should have to get a warrant.

Now, deep down, folks at the FBI appear not to disagree with that, at least in the sense that they try mightily to convince us that they are already preventing warrantless backdoor searches of American citizens' private communications on that database. In fact, they have been doing this. I have been in the Senate--along with my friend and colleague, the junior Senator from Kentucky, we have both been here for 13 years. The entirety of that time, I have served on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The entirety of that time, I have questioned FBI Directors and other people within the government, asking them about what happens with this 702 database, particularly as it relates to private communications that are stored in the 702 database of American citizens and searches involving American citizens.

Over and over and over again, for 13 years, like deja vu all over again, I get the same variation of the same set of answers: Don't worry. You have got nothing to worry about. We have really good procedures in the U.S. Government. We follow those procedures. We take them seriously. We are professionals, and we will not mess with your information.

Yet again and again and again and again, every single time they make that promise, it is like it is a curse because it gets worse every single time they say it. And every single time, I ask them more questions designed to delve into what they are actually doing, and every single time, including my most recent interaction with the FBI Director, Christopher Wray, just last week, it becomes clear, on closer examination, that they are not really stopping these things from happening.

In fact, just last week, Director Wray had the audacity to tell me that, no, this has all stopped now because he adopted some new procedures--like I hadn't heard that one before--when, in fact, some of the examples he pointed to were things that supposedly happened only after he had adopted these procedures and all the bad stuff had stopped after those procedures--it turns out, some of those things had happened after he had adopted those procedures.

No surprise to me; no surprise to anyone who has followed this; no surprise to anyone who understands human nature. And those within government exercise power that doesn't belong to them.

So we shouldn't be reauthorizing this, not in the NDAA. Not only is it not germane, not only was it not in the House version or in the Senate version, Madam President, it is not even necessary.

Why? OK. When you look at the statutory text, the statutory text adopted by the U.S. Congress in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amendments of 2017, which I think took effect in early 2018, they make abundantly clear that they were written in such a way as to provide for this very circumstance, meaning the circumstance in which we are approaching now, the scheduled expiration of section 702 of FISA at midnight on December 31, on New Year's Eve.

So at the stroke of midnight--now New Year's Day--FISA expires. Those who are in favor of waiving this point of order, disregarding the Senate rule XXVIII that should require us to strike this unnecessary, overbroad, and manipulative extension of FISA 702, they would have us believe that Armageddon will immediately be upon us--dogs and cats living together in the streets, the wrath of God, Apocalyptic stuff like we never experienced. Why? Because FISA 702 will have gone dark.

The problem with that argument: It is not true. It flies in the face of statutory text adopted by this Congress the last time we reauthorized FISA 702. And that language makes clear that even if FISA 702 expires during that time period, because there was a certification granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISC--and that was issued on or about April 12 of 2023 and those certifications are designed to carry forward 365 days--we have at least until the end of the day on April 11, 2024, before communications could no longer be collected under section 702 because, again, we have the certification that is in place.

That certification, together with the language that was passed the last time we extended FISA 702, inadvisably--inadvisably--without any major statutory reforms--but we did include that one--we made that the case. So it is not going to go dark.

If Senator Paul's point of order under rule XXVIII succeeds, and if we are able to thwart the effort to waive that--and it would take only 41 of us to do it, only 41 of us would have to stand behind that to prevent them from getting it to 60 to waive it--if that happens, it is still not going to go dark. It wouldn't go dark unless or until we hadn't extended FISA 702 before April 11, 2024.

It begs the question: Why in the Sam Hill did we have to put this thing in here if it wasn't necessary?

Well, I have a sneaking suspicion I know why some might hope that it

happens that way, for the same reason that it is not going to make 702 collection go dark as of 12:01 a.m. on New Year's Day. This measure, the 702 extension buried within the 3,000 or so pages of the National Defense Authorization Act, will give them a bright and golden opportunity to make this not a 4-month extension of FISA 702 but a 16- month extension of section 702.

In other words, if you read through the statutory text that we adopted the last time we reauthorized 702 and you wanted this to extend and you wanted to make sure that we delayed and delayed and delayed the period of time in which Congress would be forced to make a decision--a decision could result in serious reforms to FISA 702--what would you do?

Well, you would pass this very thing. You would waive Senator Paul's point of order under rule XXVIII. And then you would probably wait until April, I don't know, 10 or 11 of 2024. You would go back to the FISC--the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court--and you would ask for a new certification. A certification that would do what? Move it forward another 365 days.

We would now be punting until April 2025, well after the 2024 election cycle had run to its end before having to address this. That is what we are dealing with.

Now, let's back up a minute. Let's say that there are some within the sound of my voice who might disagree with my interpretation of the statutory text we adopted the last time we renewed section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They would be wrong because the text is really clear, but let's just assume that for a minute. Let's accept that premise for purposes of argument here. Even if that is the case, we can still strip out this poorly written measure and replace it with another freestanding measure, not adopt it as part of the NDAA-- one that I prepared, one that I am introducing, along with my lead Democratic cosponsor, Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden--that would reauthorize section 702 until mid-March. It would reauthorize it with instructions that say: If during that time period the FISC issues a new certification, that certification may not be read to authorize further collection under 702 if during that time period FISA 702 were to expire.

This makes a huge difference because if we do it this way, rather than through the National Defense Authorization Act, as Senator Wyden and I have proposed doing, then we will actually have a force-moving event. We will actually have a real opportunity for the House and for the Senate to have an open, honest, robust, roiling debate about the nature and extent of the abuse that we have seen under FISA 702.

And we will be in a great position at that point to adopt real reforms--real reforms that would require you to get a warrant. If you want to collect information specifically on Americans in this FISA 702 database, you need to get a warrant. You just do.

The government may not like it because governments never like anything that makes it more difficult to do what they want to do, but our law enforcement Agencies do it all the time. They do it because they have to because it is the law, and it is the Constitution. We don't deviate from that. It is bad.

Somehow these intelligence gathering agencies and the FBI think that they are exempt when it comes to FISA 702. They are not. They should not be. No American should be comfortable with that. Recent experience and long-term experience have both taught us that there is a grave risk in doing that, in simply ignoring it, in simply presuming that the human beings that operate in this environment will always have their best interest at heart.

And yet, they want to push ahead with this measure, saying that the sky will fall. It will not. I am absolutely convinced, if we succeed tonight--if Senator Paul's point of order succeeds and it is not waived--I am confident that within 24 hours, we can and we will adopt this freestanding measure to make sure that 702 doesn't go dark. Even though it wouldn't go dark otherwise, even though we won't need it, we are willing to do that. We are just wanting to clarify one thing, which is that we still have to have this debate. We still have to have a force-moving event in the next few months that works out the case, that reforms the system, that requires the government to get a warrant if they are going after an American. It is not too much to ask, not at all.

We have proposals that are ready to do that. I have a bill that I introduced with Senator Wyden, the Government Surveillance Reform Act. There is a counterpart to that in the House of Representatives. It passed out of the markup in the House Judiciary Committee just last week. It contains these and other reforms, reforms about having to get a warrant, reforms that would impose some consequence to those government agents who abuse the system. And lest you think, even for a moment, that these abuses are contrived, fictitious, or a figment of our imagination--some sort of paranoid fantasy hallucination--they are not.

We need to support this point of order. We need to not waive it. Waiving it is lawless. Waiving this particular point of order would contribute to more circumvention of the Fourth Amendment.

In the spirit of English parliamentarian John Wilkes, whose rights under English law and the English Constitution were violated just before Easter in 1763, he stood up to the government. He stood up to the government. He stood up to the government of King George III, and he said: No, you are not doing this. He sued the officers who had carried out what was, in effect, a warrantless search of his home under the use of a general warrant. In some ways, it looks a little like a 702 collection of a citizen. In other ways, it is different because they didn't have the technology that we have got now, but the same principle applied.

He sued the King and his Ministers, and he won a large money judgment. He got all this as a result--and he was searched as a result and he was jailed in the Tower of London for a time as a result of his publication of a document known as North Britain No. 45.

North Britain No. 45 criticized King George III and his Ministers for, among other things, using general warrants, warrants that basically said go out and find people who did bad stuff, search them, seize their papers, their possessions, them, if necessary, and make it happen--no particularity requirement, no probable cause. Just go do it.

No. 45--a reflection of North Britain No. 45--quickly became synonymous on both sides of the Atlantic with the cause of liberty and with John Wilkes himself and with the cause against warrantless searches and seizures and the use of general warrants, which might as well be warrantless searches and seizures.

John Wilkes would be appalled by what he sees today. And the American people, just as they heralded him, an ocean away, in the 1760s and 1770s, after this happened, just as he was celebrated all over England by remembering him by the No. 45, they were celebrating him then too.

So, too, today the American people will be pleased because they will have reason to celebrate that they are no longer subject to these warrantless searches because they are wrong.

Once again, lest you be convinced, even for a moment, that this is hyped up, it is not. Now, look, if you are comfortable with the government, under the pretext of looking for foreign surveillance and without any kind of warrant, let alone evidence establishing probable cause, let alone something that would satisfy the particularity requirement of the Fourth Amendment--if you are comfortable with the government violating civil liberties of the American people this way, if you are comfortable with them violating the liberties of at least one sitting Member of the U.S. Senate--could be any of us--violating the civil liberties of at least one sitting Member of the House of Representatives--could be any of them, not sure who it was--with them violating the civil liberties of protesters, both conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, with them violating the civil liberties of 19,000 law-abiding innocent Americans whose only common thread was the fact that they all happened to have donated to a particular political campaign, if you are OK with these and hundreds of thousands of other egregious violations of the letter and spirit of the Fourth Amendment, then, by all

means, you should feel free to go ahead--go ahead--and support the motion to waive.

But if you are not OK with any of those things and don't think anyone is immune from them--if you are not OK with any of these things--it is illogical, it is irrational, it is insane to do anything other than to oppose the motion to waive the point of order.

So I will close by asking the question: Why would they want to do this? Those who are so dug in and making this even harder for the NDAA to pass in the House--you know, because of the fact that they airdropped this thing into the NDAA at the last minute sparked such a controversy over there that they are having to bring it up under a procedure known as suspension of the rules.

Suspension of the rules requires them to pass it with 290 votes instead of 218. It would make it infinitely easier for this thing to get passed and passed quickly over there if we just listen to Senator Paul, if we just sustain rather than waiving, foolishly, the point of order that he is making under rule XXVIII.

They are wanting to avoid not only changing 702 and making the Federal Government answer to the people according to the U.S. Constitution, they are unwilling even to face the music of this debate--a debate that is long overdue, a debate that we should have had and that should have culminated in reforms through legislation in 2018 but did not. And shame on all of us for not making that happen. Some of us tried. We were overcome. But the American people are not going to take this anymore, nor should they.

So if you are not comfortable with those kind of abuses--and I think we should all be uncomfortable--with this sacrifice of liberty on the altar of fear, uncertainty, doubt, and dogged secrecy, then support Senator Paul--support him in his meritorious point of order and oppose the motion to waive that point of order. The American people expect more, and the Constitution demands it.

Madam President, I raise a point of order that section 7902 of the conference report to accompany H.R. 2670, the National Defense Authorization Act, violates rule XXVIII.

During the 1960s, the FBI spied on Martin Luther King and other civil rights protestors. The FBI spied on Vietnam war protesters. The Church Committee was formed in the 1970s and detailed these abuses, and the response by Congress was to pass something called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. FISA was ostensibly passed to limit spying on Americans. It was supposed to be a reform, but as far as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows government to spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant, it is unconstitutional.

As Dr. John Tyler from Houston Christian University points out, ``the FISA text, the Constitution's text, and the relevant opinions by the U.S. Supreme Court conclusively demonstrated that FISA, and its secret, ex parte''--meaning you only hear from one side of the court--these ``courts are unconstitutional for three reasons.''

``First, the secret, ex parte courts violate the case or controversy requirement of Article III.''

Courts are about deciding disputes between two parties. They aren't originated just to say: This is a pronouncement. There has to be a dispute, and in the FISA Court, it is more about having a generalized comment.

``Second, FISA violates Fourth Amendment liberties from unreasonable searches and seizures.''

``Third, FISA and its secret ex parte courts violate the due process guarantees of the 5th and 14th Amendments.''

Dr. Tyler goes on to say that ``lastly, the Supreme Court has ruled that national security does not require secret courts or justify ignoring the Fourth Amendment liberties.''

This unconstitutional government spying has been further authorized by adding section 702 to FISA. That law entrusts America's intelligence Agencies with broad authorities, supposedly to surveil foreigners abroad. But time has proven, again and again, that America's intelligence Agencies cannot be trusted with this immense power and responsibility.

Section 702 expires at the end of this year. We have known this for 5 years, and yet somehow the Senate has no time to debate this and wishes to simply extend it.

Members of Congress anticipated using this deadline as an opportunity not just to make meaningful changes but to reform FISA generally to better protect Americans' civil liberties, but it doesn't appear to be allowed to happen at this point. Everything is rush, rush, rush; let's pass it without debate. But they have known for 5 years that it was going to expire at the end of this year, and yet they just want to punt it with the hope that they will never have to debate it.

Extending this section 702 robs Congress of the ability to make reforms now and likely robs Congress of the opportunity to make reforms any time in the next year. That means that, once again, the intelligence Agencies that ignore the constraints on their power will go unaddressed and unpunished, and the warrantless surveillance of Americans in violation of the Bill of Rights will continue.

Using 702, Americans' communications, content, and metadata is inevitably swept up and kept in government databases without a warrant. Law enforcement Agencies then access Americans' communications, once again without a warrant. In other words, your texts, your emails, and your phone calls are collected into this massive government database, without a warrant, and then searched willy-nilly by thousands of different employees without a warrant.

As Judge Andrew Napolitano points out, ``the Constitution requires probable cause of a crime to be demonstrated to a judge before a judge [grants] a warrant. That was the law of the land until FISA.''

But now FISA has set up a special court that meets in secret, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and it

authorizes ``judges on that court to issue search warrants based on a lower standard of probable cause.''

The Fourth Amendment says you have to prove to a judge probable cause of a crime. This says you only have to prove probable cause of an association with a foreign entity. This is contrary to the Constitution. This is not the Fourth Amendment.

The Constitution requires that warrants be issued on probable cause that a crime has been committed, but as Judge Napolitano makes clear, ``FISA established probable cause of foreign agency.'' So it lowered the standard. It is not probable cause of a crime. It is probable cause of association with a foreign agency.

But even that standard ``morphed [down] into probable cause of speaking to a foreign person,'' which then again morphed even further down to ``probable cause of speaking to any person who has ever spoken to a foreign person.'' All of that happened in secret and without Congressional approval.

With this weakened standard to order surveillance, these FISA judges, who meet in secret, grant 99.97 percent of all warrants. They are a rubberstamp for whatever they want to do. The left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice further explains why a law designed to protect the Fourth Amendment has led to their dissolution.

The Brennan Center states that ``dramatic shifts in technology and law has changed the role of the [FISA] Court since its creation in 1978.''

``The fundamental changes not only erode Americans' civil liberties, but [they] likely violate Article III of the U.S. Constitution, which limits courts to deciding concrete disputes between parties rather than issuing opinion on abstract questions.''

According to the Brennan Center, ``today's FISA Court does not operate like a court at all, but more like an arm of the intelligence establishment.''

``The FISA Court's wholesale approval process also fails to satisfy standards set forth by the Fourth Amendment, which protects against warrantless searches and seizures.''

Some people issued prescient warnings about the destruction of civil liberties and constitutional rights at the time. At the time, then- Senator Joe Biden stated that he was voting no on this section 702, this expansion of FISA powers. Senator Joe Biden said it ``would be a breathtaking and unconstitutional expansion of the President's powers and it is wholly unnecessary to address the problems the administration has identified.'' Then-Senator Biden added that he would ``not give the President unchecked authority to eavesdrop on whomever he wants in exchange for the vague and hollow assurance that he will protect the civil liberties of the American people.''

Boy, I wish that Joe Biden were still around and remembering his comments about FISA.

Patrick Eddington of the Cato Institute has dedicated his career to exposing the abuses of surveillance authorities. He argues that section 702 of FISA and its predecessors comprise the ``biggest unconstitutional mass surveillance dragnet in American history'' and that ``we have documentary evidence from the federal government's own records of repeated, systemic abuses'' of this authority.

Even the FISA Court itself, in 2018, held that the FBI's procedures for accessing Americans' communications that are incidentally collected under 702 violate both the statute and the Fourth Amendment. Even the FISA Court, which rubberstamps these warrants like there is no going away, says that they believe they are violating the Fourth Amendment.

But this warrantless surveillance on Americans goes on. In 2021 alone, the FBI conducted 3.4 million warrantless searches of Americans' communications. Like the spying on Martin Luther King and Vietnam war protesters, the FBI still targets individuals for their beliefs.

The FBI accessed the 702 database without search warrants to access the information of 19,000 political donors. They accessed the records of those involved with a protest on January 6. They accessed the records of a Member of Congress and ``Black Lives Matter'' activists.

You might think, oh, I have got nothing to hide, no big deal. You might think that if you avoid political activity, you can avoid the long arm of the government.

But think again. If you call a merchant in England or text a family member in Germany or email a friend in Israel, the feds can seize and search your communications without permission, without a warrant, and without due process.

But that is not all. The Federal spies can then capture all the communications of the persons you subsequently reached out to and all the persons they reached out to. It goes on and reaches its tentacles out, such that it gathers millions of communications.

Imagine a Senator or a Congressman who talks to a Prime Minister overseas. Their communication is in the database.

To allow this to happen--imagine all of the people who are in international business and who make international phone calls. Their phone calls are in the database.

And it would be one thing if we were just collecting this to look at terrorist activities, but, no, we let the FBI search any American's name in there. They can go in under any pretext.

We told the FBI: You have to list why you are searching the name. And they didn't do it. They actually go around some of the rules by saying: Oh, let's search 10,000 things and call it 1 query.

We cannot trust them. You cannot trust the fox to be in charge of the henhouse. We need controls, and Congress needs to do their job.

We had 5 years to think about this. It comes up, and we are just going to airdrop it in and say: Sorry. We haven't had time to think about this. We don't have time to reform it. We don't care about Americans' privacy.

That is what the majority, who will vote to just drop this in and turn the other way, will do.

It would be bad enough if the FBI limited itself to eviscerating the Fourth Amendment and indiscriminately collecting and searching the private communications of millions of Americans, but it is far worse than that.

As we all know, the FBI abused the immense power conferred to it by FISA to subvert a Republican Presidential campaign. In its zeal to investigate Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to Candidate Trump, the FBI sought to obtain permission to conduct electronic surveillance on Page, not by going to a real judge, in public, in an article III court, but by going to a secret judge.

Imagine the chilling effect, if you can try to get beyond the politics of whether he is a Republican or a Democrat. Imagine the chilling effect of the government investigating political campaigns. How could anybody think that that is a good idea?

To eavesdrop on Page, the FBI needed to get approval from the FISA Court, not a real warrant but just a warrant that he was associated with a foreign government. The secretive court that grants 99.97 percent of warrants gave it to them.

But the FBI also relied on information they were given by the Trump opponent's campaign--Hillary Clinton's campaign. You have something called the Steele dossier that was all over the news. That dossier was given to the FBI by a political campaign. It was essentially opposition research. Clinton's Presidential campaign and the Democrat Party obtained the secret surveillance order by subterfuge.

But the FBI didn't verify or check the claims made in the dossier, as it is required to do by law. To put it in plain English, the FBI was able to spy on an American citizen because it presented the Democratic Party's opposition research as evidence to obtain a secret order on a campaign operative.

This was fraud. This was an abuse of power. This was an attempt to undermine a Republican Presidential campaign.

People talk about election interference. My goodness, what could be more of an interference in a campaign than getting a secret order from your intelligence Agencies to spy on a political campaign.

The order was ultimately found to be misleading, and you would think this would have led to scandal. You would think this would have led to punishment, but no one, really, was ever punished for this.

Even the New York Times described the effort to wiretap Carter Page as ``a

staggeringly dysfunctional and error-ridden process.''

But these are not errors. These are not honest mistakes. These are abuses of power. The audacity to dupe and manipulate the secret FISA Court demonstrates that the misconduct was not mere accident, but rather demonstrates the arrogance that inevitably results when a secretive, one-sided process all but assures these Agencies will never be challenged.

And what are we doing? The Senate will sweep this under the rug. We will have no reform. They have known for 5 years this is coming up, and they are not going to do a thing to reform it.

Since the FBI demonstrated a willingness to evade the rules to spy on an aide to a Presidential candidate, we should not be surprised that Carter Page was far from the only victim of the abuse of FISA authorities. A subsequent Department of Justice review reviewed 29 other FISA applications and found that each one contained factual discrepancies and errors, at an average of 20 mistakes per application.

More recently, Special Counsel John Durham's report on the FBI's probe into the alleged collusion between Donald Trump and Russia revealed that at least some FBI agents abused America's surveillance apparatus to open a groundless counterintelligence campaign against a Republican Presidential candidate.

And yet despite the abuses, despite the years of calls for reform, the Senate is presented with a defense bill that continues the status quo. In 5 years, they have had no time to debate this because they don't want to. They want to rubberstamp this, and they want to look the other way. Not one reform is included in this conference report that would address the neglect of the Bill of Rights. Rather, the only thing this conference report ignores is the long record of abuse of the Fourth Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment is no mere limitation of government power. The Fourth Amendment is fundamental to the concept of American liberty.

Today, the elected representatives of our country, whose Founders overthrew a King who claimed a mandate from Heaven to rule an empire, cannot muster the courage to tell its own law enforcement Agencies that we will not tolerate the evisceration of the Bill of Rights, nor the destruction of our electoral process.

Why would any Senator vote to waive this point of order? How can you look your constituents in the eyes and justify your vote to empower government at the expense of American's individual rights?

Do not fall for the hollow and cynical retorts from the other side who inevitably argue that the world is on fire. Those who make the lazy and predictable argument that government is your only shield from threats, always fail to mention that government itself is often a threat.

I think it is high time we quit letting fear overrun our constitutional duty. The Members of this body should do themselves the honor of standing by their oath to the Constitution. To protect our civil liberties and the integrity of the congressional conference committee process, we must strip this extension of domestic spying authority out of the Defense bill.

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

Madam President, I come to the floor again to discuss two U.S. attorney nominations that have been on the calendar for weeks: Rebecca Lutzko, nominated to be U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, and April Perry, nominated to serve as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

On several previous occasions, I have had to come to the floor to request unanimous consent for the Senate to take up these noncontroversial, bipartisan nominations and confirm these law enforcement nominees. Each time I have come to the floor, asking for this, the junior Senator from Ohio has objected. He says that he ran for office to ``[f]ight the criminals--not the cops.'' It turns out to be a hollow promise when he is holding up criminal prosecutors, at a professional level, in two major parts of the United States--one of them in his own State.

Our communities desperately need top Federal prosecutors in place. Interested in stopping fentanyl? I am. Thousands of people are dying. Well, who is going to prosecute those cases? The U.S. attorneys will-- 93 of them across the United States--but you can't prosecute the case if you don't have the U.S. attorney there to lead the effort and to coordinate the effort with other branches of government. You can have an interim in there, and I am sure that person will do as good a job as he can, but it isn't like having the permanent person that you need as a U.S. attorney. Here we have two who have been chosen by the junior Senator from Ohio to stop--one from his own State.

U.S. attorneys lead the Nation's efforts to prosecute violent criminals and protect our communities from violence, terrorism, and more. The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio is no exception. While the entire Nation has been impacted by the opioid epidemic, Ohio has been hit harder than almost any other State. Over the course of 1 year--from April 2022 to April 2023--more than 5,000 Ohioans lost their lives to drug overdoses. That number is shocking-- 5,000 in 1 year. On average, every day, 14 Ohio families lose a loved one to drugs.

The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio could, as we speak, be tackling this drug crisis with community stakeholders, like the Toledo Metro Drug Task Force. Instead, her nomination has been languishing on the calendar here in the Senate for months because one Senator, the junior Senator from Ohio, has promised, I guess, former President Donald Trump that he would do his best to get even with the Department of Justice for even considering holding Donald Trump responsible for his conduct. It would be laughable if it weren't so damned dangerous.

Because Senator Vance is not just harming my State and is not just harming his own State, the precedent he is setting will undermine public safety across the entire Nation for years to come.

As I have stated before, the Senate has a long history of confirming U.S. attorneys by unanimous consent. We don't even have rollcall votes. When it came time for the Trump U.S. attorneys, no votes were required. Democrats--in control for most of that period of time--said to the President and his administration: You pick the U.S. attorneys. That is your right as President. The junior Senator from Ohio does not agree with that.

Before President Biden took office, the last time the Senate required a rollcall vote on a U.S. attorney was in 1975. At the beginning of a new Presidential administration, it is customary for all the U.S. attorneys to resign en masse and for the new President to select their replacements. That is the ordinary course of business. As we have learned in the Senate, you can change that if you want to and run the risk of not bringing someone new to the position if it is that important. That is why, during the Trump administration, 85 of President Trump's U.S. attorney nominees moved through the Judiciary Committee.

Senate Democrats--Democrats--allowed Trump's nominees--every single one of them--to be confirmed by unanimous consent, many of whom we would not have chosen personally, but that was the tradition that we held to. It would not have been realistic to force a floor time debate on every single one of those nominees and still expect 85 U.S. attorneys to be confirmed and be on the job in a timely manner.

That tradition and the logic behind it obviously escapes the junior Senator from Ohio. So we respected our colleagues, and we respected the need for Senate-confirmed leadership in U.S. Attorney's Offices. The Democrats put public safety and the needs of law enforcement ahead of the obvious politics of the day. But now the Senator from Ohio is setting an unfortunate standard as he is putting us on a path of requiring cloture and confirmation votes for every U.S. attorney nominee--something everyone here knows is not feasible.

Does this sound reminiscent of another Republican strategy from another Republican Senator in the State of Alabama? He held up, I believe, 400 military promotions for months at a time. He was angry about a new policy in the Department of Defense after the Dobbs decision. To protest that, he literally put a brick on 400 nominees for promotion in the U.S. military. Finally--finally--2 weeks ago, he relented. We still have 11 to take care of.

To think of the hardship caused to those individuals and the fact that we didn't have leadership when we should have had for our national security is an indication to me of how this strategy of ``just stop the train; I want the world to get off'' is not a sensible one.

So what will happen in the future when, inevitably, dozens of U.S. attorneys are left to function without Senate-confirmed leadership? Public safety will suffer, and we are setting a terrible precedent. To get angry with the administration and to try to require a rollcall vote--at least one, maybe two--on each nominee is just unnecessary; it is not logical, and it doesn't follow the precedent of the Senate--all because one Senator has decided that, because Donald Trump is facing indictments and prosecution in various parts of the United States, he wants to protest by hurting the selection of U.S. attorneys in his own home State of Ohio and the State of Illinois.

We have before us two highly qualified nominees to lead their respective U.S. Attorney's Offices. Until we confirm them, law enforcement agencies in both Illinois and Ohio will be held back from doing their best to fight crime and to end our drug crisis in this country.

When the Senator from Ohio was asked why he was doing this and what his goal was, he was very explicit:

I will hold all DOJ nominations. . . . We will grind [the

Justice Department] to a halt.

June 13, this year.

I can tell you, we just had a hearing--as you know, as a member of the committee--with the Director of the FBI. He talked to us about the battles he is fighting, the terrorism threats across America since the October 7 attack in Israel. He sees blinking lights, he says, in every direction of danger to the United States.

Are we going to have the Department of Justice on the job, with professionals doing the best they can, or are we going to let it grind to a halt? ``Grind to a halt''--those were his words. I hope we have some common sense in this situation, and I hope we do it right now.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 314 and 315; that there be 2 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form on each nomination; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the nominations in the order listed; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Madam President, I keep hearing this argument over and over again--weaponizing the Department of Justice. His complaint is that the Department of Justice has decided that Donald Trump, an American citizen, should be held responsible for his own conduct. Why would you argue that any citizen in this country is above the law?

I didn't choose to make that strategy or even support it publicly, but I can't argue with the decision by the attorney general, nor the State of New York, nor the State of Atlanta, who believe that Donald Trump did things that he should be held accountable for. He will have his day in court, like every American citizen. He should not be put in some saintly status that he can't be touched.

To think that in order to show my protest to any policy, I want to see the Department of Justice of the United States grind to a halt-- does the Senator have any idea what he just said? To think that we would stop the court proceedings, we would stop the prosecutions, we would stop the war against drugs, we would stop the war against terrorism, have them grind to a halt because I am mad that the former President is being, in my mind, harassed by this administration--this is irresponsible conduct, it is dangerous conduct, and it is a terrible precedent to set in the Senate that we would say to any individual: You have the power to stop a nominee who has been found to be acceptable on a bipartisan basis through the Senate Judiciary Committee.

You know as well as I do that these nominees come before the committee, and both staffs, Democrat and Republican, tear through them to look for any flaws or any reason to stop the nominations.

These two nominees in Ohio--his home State--and in Illinois both passed the test, the bipartisan test, and they were on their way to do a job for America and make it a safer place to live, and he stops them because he doesn't like the way Donald Trump is being treated. Is that a fact? He admits it on the floor of the Senate.

It is hard to explain to the Senator--he is new to the Senate, relatively new to the Senate--that some of the traditions in the Senate are worth keeping.

The fact that we gave 85 U.S. attorney nominees to Donald Trump as Democrats and did it without a single record vote is an indication we were trying to help his administration do their job. Why won't the Senator from Ohio let the Biden administration do their job and keep his own State safe?

I yield the floor.

Madam President, 2 weeks ago, our Nation surpassed 38 mass murders--the highest level since 2006. Since then, at least three additional mass murders have occurred. This harrowing record serves as another forceful call to action for Congress. We must act today to end gun violence. That is why I rise today in support of my 3D Printed Gun Safety Act.

I rise for those festival-goers in Las Vegas. I rise for patrons of Pulse nightclub and Club Q. I rise for the children in Sandy Hook, Uvalde, and Nashville. I rise for Mainers in Lewiston. I rise for all those victims whose names are not well known and whose stories do not dominate the airwaves. I rise, I rise, and I rise again.

There is no conceivable reason to further delay another gun violence prevention vote in the U.S. Senate. Senate Republicans are blocking the will of the American people and exposing Americans to unnecessary bloodshed.

This month, the Gun Violence Archive reported just under 40,000 gun- related deaths in the United States this year, including over 22,000 suicides. Additionally, over 1,500 minors under the age of 18 have been fatally shot.

I rise today for the 40,000 families whose lives are forever changed because Republicans refuse to take action on gun violence--40,000 families.

This Congress unfortunately has no shortage of brutally tragic stories to remind us that the most vulnerable among us will continue to suffer from firearm violence if we fail to act. We need to act now--and we should have acted a long time ago--to pass commonsense legislation that keeps guns out of dangerous hands.

There is a long list of commonsense bills that Democrats have introduced this Congress to prevent gun violence, but Republicans have not allowed a vote on a single bill. None of the bills have ever seen debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Just last week, Republicans blocked votes on a bill requiring safe storage of firearms and on a background checks bill, which is supported by 9 out of 10 Americans.

Experts continue to point to the availability of guns as the primary cause of the rise in gun violence in our country. It is unconscionable for my colleagues on the other side to continue to ignore this reality.

We are now faced with a terrifying new source of gun violence: 3D- printed firearms. 3D printing is an easy, quick, and inexpensive method for people to obtain a firearm who otherwise would be prohibited from doing so. Middle schoolers with access to their school's computer labs could print them. Convicted domestic abusers could print them.

It is not only 3D-printed guns but also gun components, 3D-printed components, including silencers, scopes, and braces, which increase lethality for those who are harmed by them, and 3D-

printed components can turn a semiautomatic firearm into an automatic firearm.

These guns present modern and unique challenges. Some 3D-printed guns are entirely plastic and evade metal detectors. This increases safety risks in public venues secured with metal detectors, such as airports, courts, concert halls, and government buildings. And 3D-printed guns are not typically serialized and therefore are not readily traceable. That increases the burden on local law enforcement as they work to solve cases across our country.

It is imperative that we put an end to the proliferation of these deadly weapons. So how can we do it? Well, we need to stop this problem at the source: readily available online blueprints.

Currently, the online sharing of blueprints is legal in all but two States in our country. My bill, the 3D Printed Gun Safety Act, would change that. My bill would make it unlawful to intentionally distribute 3D printer files that can produce firearms or any related parts. This change is common sense and constitutional, and it will save lives. A world where 3D printing instructions for firearms are freely accessible is a world where anyone can have a machine gun printed out in minutes.

I understand and appreciate that we do not all share the same views on gun violence prevention, but thousands of Americans have already died this year due to Republican obstructionism on sensible gun violence prevention reform.

We must end the stranglehold the National Rifle Association--the NRA--has on congressional Republicans. It is time to make NRA stand for ``not relevant anymore'' in American politics. That is what has to happen. That is the revolution we need in this country.

I thank Senator Menendez and Representative Moskowitz for their partnership. I thank Brady, Everytown, Giffords, and March for Our Lives for their advocacy. I thank the many organizations and organizers on the ground who are in every State helping families and communities to heal from the devastating impacts of gun violence. I thank my Democratic colleagues, who have staunchly supported every action that has come to this floor in an attempt to put an end to the scourge of gun violence.

Gun violence is tearing apart Republican and Democratic communities alike in this country. Stand with us on the right side of history. Today, we can start the long process that we are going to need of national healing right here in this Chamber.

I ask my colleagues for their support for my bill today.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 1819, the 3D Printed Gun Safety Act of 2023, and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, for the 62nd year in a row, the Senate is passing our annual Defense Authorization Act--one of the most important bills we work on each year to protect the American people and ensure our long-term security.

At a time of huge trouble for global security, passing the Defense authorization bill is more important than ever. It will ensure America can hold the line against Russia, stand firm against the Chinese Communist Party, and ensures that America's military remains state of the art at all times all around the world.

I thank my colleagues on both sides for their great work on the NDAA. I applaud the leadership of Chairman Reed--steady, steadfast, always getting it done--chairman of the committee, as well as the great cooperation he had from Ranking Member Wicker and all the members of the committee. I commend them for their good work.

Thanks to the good work on both sides, the final version of the NDAA contains many of the most important bipartisan provisions we had in the Senate's original bill.

We will give our servicemembers the pay raise they deserve. We will strengthen our resources in the Indo-Pacific to deter aggression by the Chinese Government and give resources for the military in Taiwan. We will give DOD more resources to deploy and develop AI, protect against foreign cyber threats, and increase transparency on unidentified aerial phenomena, which I was proud to work on with Senator Rounds.

Critically, we will approve President Biden's trilateral United States, UK, and Australia nuclear submarine agreement. The AUKUS agreement is a game changer. It will create a new fleet of nuclear- powered submarines to counter the Chinese Communist Party's threat and influence in the Pacific.

I want to commend all the staff who made this possible: Liz King, Jody Bennett, Kirk McConnell, Damian Murphy, Andrew Keller, David Weinberg, Chris Mulkins, and so on. I also want to thank the floor staff and the legislative staff that worked so long and hard to get it done. And, of course, everyone knows I love my staff: Yazeed Abdelhaq, Gunnar Haberl, Raymond O'Mara, Mike Kuiken, Meghan Taira, and so many others. The staff has put in long hours, and all 100 Senators thank them.

As I have repeatedly said, we began the month of December with three major goals here in the Senate before the end of the year. First, we had to end the blockade of the hundreds of military nominees. We have done that. Second, we needed to pass the NDAA. We are doing that now. And, finally, hardest of all, we must reach an agreement on a national security supplemental. We are trying.

Democrats are still trying to reach that agreement. We had very productive talks with our Republican colleagues today; but, of course, we have a lot of work to do left. We are going to keep working.

I yield the floor.

Vote on Conference Report

I ask unanimous consent that the cloture motions filed during Monday's session ripen at 12 noon tomorrow, Tuesday, December 14.