Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy relating to "Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards for Commercial Refrigerators, Freezers, and Refrigerator-Freezers".

Mr. President, yesterday marked 100 days since Donald Trump was sworn in as President. It happened right down that hallway. He promised a golden age for America. He has not delivered that golden age. In fact, in that 100 days, all he has delivered is chaos and destruction.

Consumer confidence is plummeting, and today we learned that our economy is shrinking. This is all a totally self-inflicted, Trump- inflicted wound on America and American families.

That is here at home. On the world stage, Candidate Trump promised to be the great peacemaker, to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza on day one, but he has nothing to show for that other than distrust from our allies and smiles from our adversaries. He has thrown the Ukrainian people under the bus, and in Gaza, the hostages have not been released, and we are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe.

Over the last 100 days, Donald Trump has embarked on a lawbreaking spree that has torn up our Constitution, torn apart our government, and torn down our economy.

Over 200 lawsuits have been filed in Federal courts around the country because we are watching this President break laws on every front, on everything from his illegal freezing and impoundments of taxpayer funds for important public programs that benefit communities all over the country, to his illegal firing of patriotic Federal employees, including many veterans who provide critical public services, to letting Elon Musk loose on Federal Government programs with a chain saw--not to make government more efficient but to rig government for the already rich and powerful like Elon Musk at the expense of everybody else.

President Trump has also been abusing his authority to create tariff chaos that has sent consumer confidence plummeting, badly damaging our economy. He is violating the First Amendment by cracking down on students at colleges and universities for their exercise of free speech and right to assemble and also violating another vital constitutional provision: the constitutional right to due process for those who live in America.

It is a staggering amount of lawbreaking in just 100 days. That is why all of us should fight back--in the courts, in this Congress, and in communities all over America.

We know that the American people don't like what they are seeing, what they are experiencing. They are rising up in communities all over America to voice their disapproval with President Trump's performance. They are giving him a big fat F for the first 100 days--total, miserable, failure.

The only people who don't seem to get it are some of our Republican colleagues here in the Congress who apparently live in constant fear of being on the wrong end of a tweet from Donald Trump or Elon Musk and want to look the other way in the face of this massive lawbreaking and ripping up of the Constitution.

So I want to take a little inventory, just a small sampling of the actions of this lawless President. I want to cover four categories: his violations of constitutional due process rights; his violation of First Amendment rights; his illegal withholding and impoundment and freezing of public funds that benefit communities all over America; and fourth, exceeding his authorities, claiming emergency powers that he doesn't have in the area of tariffs, making sham claims to justify his tariff chaos that is sabotaging our economy as we speak.

I want to start with Trump's violations of the constitutional right of due process--a bedrock American principle.

As we speak, President Trump is violating the due process of many, many individuals, including the rights of a man by the name of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was snatched off the streets of Maryland and illegally shipped to one of the most notorious prisons in Latin America, called CECOT. As I have repeatedly said, this case is not about one man alone. It is about all of us. I am not vouching for Mr. Abrego Garcia, but I am vouching for his constitutional right to due process--because, if Donald Trump can ignore court orders and trample over the rights of one man, he threatens the rights of everyone who lives in the United States of America.

Mr. Abrego Garcia had legal status in the United States. He lived in Maryland with his family. He had a work permit. He was an apprentice with the sheet metal workers, SMART Local 100, where he worked full- time to help support his family. He was driving in his car with his 5- year-old autistic son when he was pulled over by Federal agents. He was taken to some facility in Baltimore where he asked to make a phone call to let folks know what was happening. He was denied the opportunity to make that phone call.

He was then shipped to the State of Texas. From there, his feet were shackled. He was handcuffed. He was put in a plane where he couldn't see out the windows, and he didn't know where he was going, and he landed in El Salvador and was taken to one of the most notorious prisons in our hemisphere, a place reserved for the worst of the worst, for terrorists.

Now here is the thing: There was a standing court order not to deport him to El Salvador because doing so could put his life in jeopardy from gangs. Indeed, the Trump administration admitted in Federal court that Abrego Garcia was wrongfully seized and shipped to this prison in El Salvador. But instead of fixing the problem they admitted to in court, what did they do? They punished the lawyer who told the truth in court.

And now the Trump administration is ignoring orders from the Federal district court, the Fourth District Court of Appeals, and a 9-to- nothing order from the Supreme Court. We don't get 9-to-nothing decisions out of the Supreme Court very often. But that is what all those courts ordered the Trump administration to do with respect to facilitating the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia, to facilitate his return.

This is not just trampling over his rights. And, again, I want to emphasize: If you allow the President to trample over the rights of one person, you do threaten the rights of everybody who lives in America.

That is why yesterday I wrote to President Trump about this case, and I am going to read that letter to the Senate so no one can say they don't know what is going on in this matter.

Here is what I wrote in that letter:

Dear President Trump,

I read with great interest your interview with Time

Magazine regarding the Supreme Court's 9-0 decision ordering

you and your Administration to ``facilitate'' the return of

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who your lawyers admitted in federal

court was wrongfully seized and deported to prison in El

Salvador. You conceded in that interview--

This is the interview he had with Time magazine just a short while ago.

You conceded in that interview that you have not asked

President Bukele--

That is the President of El Salvador--

to return him. You also said, regarding this case, that you

``don't make that decision'' because your lawyers do. Your

comments and the actions of your Administration clearly

demonstrate your failure to comply with court orders as you

continue to violate Mr. Abrego Garcia's constitutional and

due process rights--and when you deny the due process rights

of one person, you threaten them for everyone in America. The

American public knows this. Recent polling shows that a

majority of Americans reject your trampling over

constitutional rights in this case.

I went on to write this:

During my visit to El Salvador, I had the opportunity to

meet with [the] Vice President. . . . My conversation with

him revealed the extent to which you and your Administration

are violating the orders of the federal courts and the

Constitution of the United States. Our discussion--

Again, referring to my discussion with the Vice President of El Salvador--

showed that your Administration is doing nothing to comply

with and implement the Supreme Court order to ``facilitate''

Mr. Abrego Garcia's return to the United States and revealed

that the Government of El Salvador is holding him solely at

the request of your Administration and, specifically, because

you are paying them to imprison him.

While I had expected a private meeting with Vice President

Ulloa, when I arrived at his office there were several

cameras rolling--

I think they were probably his own private cameras. I don't know, but they were rolling to record the conversation.

[So] I agreed to have our conversation on the record.

And then I write:

[Mr. President,] I want to report some important details of

our [conversation].

Vice President . . . told me that, ``El Salvador is not

able to take any action regarding the case because the case

is in the U.S. and usually we do not express any opinion on

domestic affairs.''

He went on to say--

I quoted him again--

I mean, the ball is in your court.

Meaning the ball is in America's court, and he used that expression multiple times during our conversation.

I went on to tell President Trump that the Vice President of El Salvador:

. . . made clear that ``once the case will be resolved

definitely and there will be clear instruction regarding this

case . . . El Salvador's government will apply [our]

principles . . . of course we will act accordingly.'' He

indicated that, ``at this current moment we cannot take any

actions because the case is still in the United States'

situation.'' He reinforced this point throughout our

conversation, saying the ``bottom line is this is an issue

that has to be solved in the United States. We have not

expressed, we cannot express any opinion on that case,

because it is up to you.''

Again, this is what the Vice President of El Salvador told me and what I reported to President Trump in this letter.

I went on in my letter to President Trump to say:

All of this makes crystal clear that, even though your

Administration's lawyers admitted in federal court that Mr.

Abrego Garcia was wrongfully detained in Maryland and sent to

prison in El Salvador and despite the Supreme Court's order

to ``facilitate'' his return, your Administration has not

lifted a finger to comply with the court order. As [the] Vice

President. . . . indicated, ``the ball is in your court.''

When I asked--

And I am continuing to report this to the President of the United States.

When I asked [the] Vice President. . . . whether El

Salvador had any evidence that Mr. Abrego Garcia had

committed a crime, his response was, ``how can I have it?''

He said the Government of El Salvador does not ``qualify

those persons who are there, we just take them.'' I asked if

El Salvador is imprisoning Mr. Abrego Garcia simply because

the United States is paying to keep him and others there. His

response was, ``exactly, that's it.'' He also said, ``I mean,

if the person that you send is not a criminal, is not

whatever, I mean it is up to you, that's what I'm saying. I

don't want to express any opinion . . . I think it is up to

you . . . The ball is in your court.''

And the Vice President of El Salvador ``made it clear that they did not review the file of Mr. Abrego Garcia.''

He said, ``we have a deal with the U.S. government. They

send people. We host them. They pay. And that's it.''

When I asked the Vice President why El Salvador cannot

release Mr. Abrego Garcia from prison when the U.S.

government conceded in court that he was wrongfully

abducted--and whether he is being charged under El Salvador's

law--he responded, ``What is your recommendation to El

Salvador's government? We can take him to the airport and ask

an airline to take him to the States? Are you saying the

airline would take a person without a passport? What kind of

visa should we carry?''

He went on to say--this is the Vice President of El Salvador:

President Bukele said we cannot smuggle a person to the

United States. Because if we send a person without a visa,

tourist visa, working visa, student visa, what kind of reason

can we call to get legally into the United States?''

Regarding his papers, he asked, ``Who will provide that? We

don't have it.''

So I continued to report on this conversation in my letter to President Trump, and I said:

I repeatedly pointed out that neither I nor anyone else was

asking El Salvador to ``smuggle'' Mr. Abrego Garcia back into

the United States. That argument is, of course, a red

herring. I repeatedly pointed out that Attorney General Bondi

had said, when President Bukele was in the Oval Office with

you--

Referring to the President of the United States--

that the U.S. would send a plane to pick up Mr. Abrego

Garcia. So, I was not asking the Government of El Salvador to

``smuggle'' him into the United States, only to release him

from prison.

And I pointed out to President Trump that ``Your Administration illegally took Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador in a plane, and Attorney General Bondi has said the United States could send a plane to pick him up. And the U.S. government can certainly provide him with the papers necessary to return.''

I went on in my letter to President Trump to say this:

My conversation with [the] Vice President. . . . clearly

demonstrates that the Government of El Salvador has no

independent legal basis for imprisoning Mr. Abrego Garcia;

that, as they readily concede, the only reason for keeping

him in prison is that they entered into an agreement with

your Administration to be paid by the United States. This

also reveals that your Administration could easily facilitate

his release by letting El Salvador know that--given his

wrongful detention--they are not contractually bound to

continue imprisoning Mr. Abrego Garcia. My conversation with

Vice President Ulloa shows that your Administration's claim

that El Salvador is exercising its ``sovereign'' decision to

continue to hold Mr. Abrego Garcia is a farce. The Government

of El Salvador is imprisoning him because your Administration

is paying them to do so and they claim to be contractually

obligated. Obviously, your Administration could say El

Salvador was no longer contractually obligated to imprison

Mr. Abrego Garcia. Then El Salvador can release him, and

Attorney General Bondi can, as promised, send the plane.

I went on to write to President Trump that:

It is outrageous that Mr. Abrego Garcia and his family have

been forced to suffer through this trauma because your

Administration has, to date, refused to follow the

requirements of the Constitution and the orders of the

federal courts. Instead of fixing the egregious

``administrative error'' that the Administration conceded has

wrongfully deposited Mr. Abrego Garcia in a prison in El

Salvador, your Administration chose to attack and punish the

lawyer who told the court the truth. That is shameful.

I went on to write to the President--I think this is important.

It is also shameful that you and your Administration

continue to try to change the subject in this case. You--

Referring to President Trump--

continue to put out information on social media asserting

that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 and Vice President

Vance falsely asserted that he has been convicted of crimes

in the United States. Yet the federal district court judge in

this case said your Administration had presented the court

with ``no evidence linking Abrego Garcia to MS-13 or to any

terrorist activity.'' So your Administration should put up or

shut up in court. I am not vouching for the man, Kilmar

Abrego Garcia, I am vouching for his rights.

I am going to take a little departure here. I don't know if my colleagues witnessed the interview that President Trump had with an ABC reporter, Mr. Moran, yesterday, but it is all over social media because it turned out that, you know, President Trump had taken a picture of what was Abrego Garcia's fingers, and he had superimposed--or someone in the administration put an ``MS-13,'' written that on. That had been photoshopped or otherwise falsely there. Apparently, no one informed the President of this, or he just decided to pretend he didn't know.

In this interview, he said: He had MS-13 on his knuckles, tattooed. The reporter said: That was photoshopped. And Trump's response was to the reporter: Terry, they are giving you a big break of a lifetime. I picked you, but you are not being very nice.

Well, my point here, again, is whatever evidence there may be, the proper form to submit it is in the courts of the United States. And at least today, judges in those cases have made clear that the declaration has not relied on such evidence.

I went on in my letter to President Trump to say this:

It is also dangerous for you to suggest that we cannot

fight gang violence without trampling over constitutional

rights. More than two decades ago [I pointed out to him] I

helped establish a regional anti-gang task force to combat

MS-13 and other gang violence in the Maryland-Virginia-D.C.

area. We have made substantial progress in this fight, but

there is more that can be done. But that is not what you and

your Administration are doing. You are engaged in gross

violations of the Constitution and due process rights.

I then, in this letter, cite Judge Harvie Wilkinson, who wrote on behalf of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit the following. I am going to quote him, and I have this in my letter to President Trump:

It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of

the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The

government is asserting a right to stash away residents of

this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due

process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.

Further, it claims in essence that because it has [already]

rid itself of custody there is nothing [else] that can be

done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the

intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from

courthouses still hold dear.

I should point out that Judge Wilkinson was a Reagan administration appointee and this was a unanimous opinion of the three-court panel.

I went on in my letter to President Trump to say:

The Fourth Circuit got to the heart of the case. Kilmar

Abrego Garcia was snatched from his car while he was driving

in Maryland with his five-year-old autistic son, then

illegally stashed away in a prison in El Salvador. His wife,

his mother, and his brother have been unable to communicate

with him in any way. He has a work permit and his fellow

sheet metal workers have been organizing to bring him back

[home], as have thousands of Americans. His constitutional

rights must be respected.

I close with this paragraph in my letter to the President:

This case is not about Kilmar alone. It is about everyone

in America. While Mr. Abrego Garcia is at the center of this

case, its consequences impact the due process rights of

everyone who lives in America. If your Administration can

strip away the constitutional rights of one man in defiance

of court orders, it can do it to all of us. I will continue

to fight to defend the Constitution and due process rights of

all who live in America.

That was my letter to President Trump. I haven't heard anything back from them, and they continue to violate the Supreme Court orders.

You know, colleagues, Members can look the other way but cannot deny the fact that this is happening as we speak today. I would urge every Senator to recognize the threat to everybody's rights under the Constitution.

Now I want to turn to another area of lawbreaking--constitutional violations being committed by the Trump administration because not only are they violating the due process clause of the Constitution in the Abrego Garcia case and others, but they are also tearing up the First Amendment and trampling over free speech rights of individuals in America, especially students on college and university campuses but many others as well.

The Trump administration and Secretary Rubio apparently think the First Amendment is like an a la carte menu. In other words, they seem to believe that the U.S. government can punish those who engage in speech that they don't like. That is not how it works. They don't get to cherry-pick speech under the First Amendment and use governmental power, state power, to sanction those who disagree with their points of view.

But that is exactly what they are doing in cases like those of Rumeysa Ozturk, Mahmoud Khalil, and Mohsen Mahdawi. Mohsen Mahdawi was illegally snatched as he was taking his citizenship test in the State of Vermont.

I want to read one of the questions that is on the U.S. citizenship test. It is important that everybody recognize what we ask those who are working to become citizens to understand. Question 6 on the citizenship test reads:

What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?

And under it there are a number of things, but the first one on there is speech. The second one on there is assembly--speech and assembly. I think members of the Trump administration need to take a refresher course, the kind we ask citizens to take in this country because, apparently, President Trump, Vice President Vance, Secretary Rubio, and others would like to cross that question right off the citizenship test.

We observed recently, when Vice President Vance took an overseas trip, that he lectured some of our European allies like the UK and Germany about freedom of speech. He said that they had too many limits on freedom of speech; that they were curtailing freedom of speech for people who lived in their countries, but here at home, they are tearing up the First Amendment of the Constitution. Apparently, here at home for the Trump administration, freedom of speech exists only for those who agree with their point of view.

Mr. President, you know that our colleague who served with us, Senator Rubio, used to take to this Senate floor regularly to talk about an American foreign policy based on democracy, based on human rights, based on freedom of religion, and, yes, based on freedom of speech and suppression around the world, telling other countries that it was wrong to have the governments lock them up for expressing their points of view. And yet now in their home, Secretary of State Rubio is trashing freedom of speech. He is ripping up the First Amendment of the Constitution, and it is shameful. The American people should not stand for it because if you rip up the First Amendment for some people, you threaten it for everybody who lives in the United States of America.

I was fortunate to grow up in a Foreign Service family. We sort of went back and forth between the United States and other countries. I was proud to be from a family that represented the United States overseas. We are far from perfect, and we have a lot of work to do to live up to the principles that we say we stand for around the world. But one of the things we do--or used to do--is stand up as a beacon for human rights and freedom of speech. That is no longer happening. You can't say you want everybody else around the world to live up to that principle when you are violating it right here at home.

Now Secretary Rubio has doubled way back into a McCarthy-era statute from what was called the McCarran-Walter Act. That was a law passed at the height of the McCarthy era, and he is using that to claim that these students represent a threat to the foreign policy of the United States.

It is pretty pathetic that students expressing their views represent a threat to the foreign policy of the United States. We have students of all different faiths who are protesting the war in Gaza and advocating for Palestinian rights. Others may agree or strongly disagree with what they say, but to claim that they somehow represent a threat to the foreign policy of the United States is ridiculous. It is so clearly being used as a ruse to deny their First Amendment freedom of

speech rights that I hope the courts will see right through it. What it is, is an effort to punish speech.

Donald Trump's lawbreaking doesn't end with his efforts to tear up the constitutional rights of due process and the First Amendment. He is also tearing up article I of the Constitution by illegally freezing, withholding, and impounding funds for important public purposes--funds that have been appropriated by the Congress and signed into law.

The Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars of investments to support public services in communities all over America. The latest count is they are holding up about $430 billion that was appropriated by the Congress.

You know, just this morning, we had a hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee about the Trump administration's freezing and cutting of funds for NIH, the National Institutes of Health. There was lots of powerful testimony from witnesses, including from a mom who was there with her daughter who had suffered through childhood cancer. And because of past research at NIH, her daughter's cancer was, thankfully, in remission, gone away. But she was there--the mother was there--to say she wants other families who have kids with cancer to have the same opportunities and that those opportunities only exist if we continue to do research into lifesaving cures and treatments. And yet, the Trump administration is sowing chaos at NIH and has frozen some clinical trials.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk and his DOGE cronies are taking a chain saw to the Federal Government and are destroying the ability of the Federal Government to deliver reliable services to the American people, like the damage they are doing at the Social Security Administration. First they say there is no more phone service, use the internet. People couldn't get through on the internet. Go to the local Social Security offices. We are closing the local Social Security offices, and, by the way, we are also firing thousands of people so there won't be anyone in those local offices. And then they say: Oh, well, maybe we better turn the phones on again.

This isn't about government efficiency. This is about rigging the government for people like Elon Musk at the expense of everybody else.

This is an issue that should concern every Member of Congress because it is a direct attack on article I, and it is an attack on the American people and their rights to have these investments made when their elected officials direct them to be made on their behalf.

And yet, just yesterday, the head of the Government Accountability Office, as we know by GAO, testified before a Senate appropriations subcommittee that the Trump administration was stonewalling GAO's efforts to investigate this illegal withholding of funds. Gene Dodaro, who is the Comptroller General, testified that the Office of Management and Budget ``has not been responsive'' to GAO's questions about the freezing of billions of dollars in funding Congress had already approved.

Now, this is not the first time we have seen a Trump administration violating the Impoundment Control Act. The last time President Trump was in office, he illegally withheld funds that the Congress had appropriated for helping the people of Ukraine, and he refused to spend those funds--Donald Trump did.

So, back at the time, I wrote a letter to the GAO, asking them to investigate that withholding to see if it violated the Impoundment Control Act. That is a statute of the United States of America. In that case, the GAO found that, yes, the Trump administration--the first round--had illegally withheld those funds. It was an illegal impoundment. So that is what we are seeing right now, and they are not even working too hard to show that they are violating the Impoundment Control Act.

When the head of OMB--the Office of Management and Budget--Russ Vought, was before the Senate Budget Committee for his nomination, at his confirmation hearing, I asked him about the Impoundment Control Act, and I asked him about the past violations of the Impoundment Control Act because, guess what, he also was the head of OMB at the time of the earlier violation, and Russ Vought is back at it again as the head of OMB. So when I asked him about the Impoundment Control Act at his hearing, I got this answer. I asked him about President Trump and the Impoundment Control Act. Here was his answer at the hearing:

Senator, the President ran against the Impoundment Control

Act.

My response to him:

Mr. Vought, I know what the President did. He wants to

change a lot of things. He can submit legislation to do that.

But you are going to be the head of OMB, and here today, at

this hearing, you are refusing to comply--to commit to

comply--with the Impoundment Control Act; is that right? Are

you refusing to commit to complying?

This dance went on and on, and never did he commit to comply with the Impoundment Control Act.

So that is what we are witnessing right now--a violation of the Impoundment Control Act.

We, the Senate, were supposed to get the Trump administration's spending plans for the remainder of fiscal year 2025 a few days ago. For many Agencies, we haven't seen them yet. So we don't know what they say their plans are, but we do know that, as of now, they are withholding about $430 billion of appropriated funds.

Finally, I want to talk about another area where Donald Trump is violating the law to the detriment of our economy, and that is in the area of tariffs.

Now, Presidents, of course, have some authority to apply tariffs, and I have supported targeted tariffs in the past for strategic purposes. But a number of small businesses around the country and others have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration for their illegal use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

I see the ranking member of the Finance Committee on the floor here, and he has spoken to this many times, and I want to thank him for his leadership.

I do want to read directly from the complaint that has been filed because the complaint--and this is one.

Congress passed the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to counter external emergencies, not to grant Presidents a blank check to write domestic economic policy.

They go on to point out that, yes, we have a fentanyl crisis in America--all of us agree with that--but using this statute, which is for economic emergencies, and using the statute in the way the Trump administration is doing is a gross violation of the President's legal authority.

As we can see by the downturn in the economy--we just learned that we are seeing the economy contract; we are seeing consumer confidence plunge--President Trump's illegal use of that statute is causing incredible economic pain across the country.

So I want to end with this: When you see this kind of massive lawbreaking going on--violations of the due process clause, violations of the First Amendment, violations of article I and the Impoundment Control Act--I mean, you can just take a marker through the Constitution and cross out those provisions, right? The 14th Amendment--cross it out. The First Amendment--cross it out. Cross out article I. That is what everybody in this body who is not standing up to the President is complicit in right now.

What bullies do--and make no mistake, President Trump is a bully. What they do is they try to pick on people they think are weak. If the rest of us don't stand up for the rights of those people, then it is a very fast and slippery slope to losing the rights of everybody who lives in America.

So I hope that, as we review this first 100 days and the massive lawbreaking that is going on and the tearing up of the Constitution and the tearing apart of the government and the tearing down of our economy, we will all wake up because the American people are waking up. They understand what is going on, and they don't like what they see. So we had better do our jobs here in the U.S. Senate, and I hope, starting today, all 100 Senators will begin to do exactly that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, over the past month, we have seen a wave of righteous outrage across the country in response to President Trump's completely lawless move to disappear hundreds of people to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador, without even the barest semblance of due process.

And as I join my colleagues in calling for the Trump administration to abide by the Supreme Court ruling and facilitate the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia--a man they said in court was sent to El Salvador by mistake--I have to emphasize that his case is one of many where Trump has completely shredded our norms and laws.

In addition to Garcia, Trump sent off some 200 people, including innocent people who were in our country legally, to a foreign prison without any due process whatsoever, and they did it all on the basis of some arrangement negotiated in secret and paid for with millions of taxpayer dollars.

What we do know is that many of these people were sent there without any criminal conviction. The administration actually admitted that. In their own court filing, the Trump administration acknowledged that many of these people have no criminal records in the United States, and yet all of these people have now been imprisoned in a foreign country with no end date in sight.

Unconstitutional doesn't even begin to cover that.

There are so many questions--basic questions--about this that we all should be demanding answers to. At the barest, smallest, slimmest minimum--and I mean as a starting point--the administration must release more details about this secret agreement where it is paying El Salvador with our taxpayer dollars to imprison people without a trial-- details like:

Who all is being imprisoned? How long is El Salvador holding these people with Trump's orders? How many people is El Salvador going to imprison under this agreement? What outside contact is possible for those people? And how do we learn their status and condition? Are they alive? Are they healthy? What are the details?

Most of the details we do have are from reporting, and news reports say the deal was only for El Salvador to take convicted criminals. So why did Trump send people with no criminal record?

And, importantly, where in the world is this money coming from? Does anyone here remember voting to pass a single dollar in appropriations to fund a torture prison in El Salvador? Because I sure don't, and the last I checked, Congress has the power of the purse.

Do you know what else we don't know? We still don't know the names of everyone they did this to. Think about that. We don't have their names. That information should be released immediately--today--because there are families who still have no confirmation where their loved ones are. And the only list we have right now was not even released by the administration. It was reported by the press. Some families only learned their son was gone, their husband was gone, their father was gone through photos of them being marched into a torture prison. This is the first, last, and only update we have had on just about all of those people.

We do not know if they are alive. We don't know if they are being treated decently. We don't even know if they have been moved. Even their lawyers can't reach them.

Here is what we do know, though: There are many names on the El Salvador list of people who were here legally who had no criminal record. That seems to be getting lost in the debate for some of my Republican colleagues. This is not about any one case or any one person. It is about a lawless system for the President to deny due process. And when you cut out due process, you put innocent people in harm's way.

I heard one of my Republican colleagues say last week:

I don't see any pattern here.

Well, I ask him now, and I ask everyone now, to pay attention to the full picture because, of course, you won't see a pattern if you just look at one case and you ignore the many, many others.

There is the case of Andry Hernandez Romero. He is a barber who came here legally. He has no criminal record.

There is the case of Arturo Suarez Trejo. He is a musician. He came here legally. He has no criminal record.

There is the case of Merwil Gutierrez, who--you guessed it--came here legally. No criminal record. In fact, he was apparently grabbed by mistake. One officer reportedly said: No, he is not the one. And another said: Take him away anyway.

Trump sent them all to a maximum security prison in El Salvador with no trial--disappeared. They have no contact with their lawyer, no contact with family. We do not know if they are alive, and they don't know if anyone is even advocating for them--how hopeless that must feel, how dark.

So is that enough of a pattern for my Republican colleagues? Do you still need more? Because there is also Jerce Reyes Barrios. He is a soccer player. He came here legally. Again, no criminal record.

There is Gustavo Aguilera, a food delivery driver. Legally here, no criminal record.

Or Anyelo Sarabia--here legally, no criminal record.

I mean, how many more before my colleagues can actually admit this is a pattern? How many people have to be disappeared with no due process before it becomes a problem?

Because, for me, one is too many, and the pattern isn't even over yet.

Trump was reportedly ready to disappear even more people to El Salvador before the Supreme Court put its foot down. In this latest round, the Trump administration was preparing to disappear a man who came here legally and had no record, except a traffic violation. Another was a young man accused of being a gang member because of a photo with a toy water gun. That is the level of so-called evidence that gets you locked away in a foreign torture prison under President Trump.

And I will keep saying it. Most of the people they disappeared have no criminal records, and many were even here legally.

They came here for a better life, and Trump disappeared them based on nothing more than tattoos that say ``mom'' and ``dad,'' or that celebrate soccer teams or a daughter's birth or autism awareness.

And I realize I keep hammering home that many of these people are not criminals and that many of these people came here legally. But I do want to remind my colleagues that this question is not whether someone who has vanished to El Salvador without a trace is good or bad. The question is whether everyone in this country, including American citizens, have the rights they were promised in our Constitution? At the end of the day, it is not about who these people are; it is about who we are--whether we are a country of due process or not, a country of laws or not.

Trump has said where he stands. He literally said: We don't have time to give them due process.

If the Trump administration thinks that someone is a criminal, if they are really bad and dangerous, prove it in court. Prove it. Just simply prove it. It shouldn't be hard. That is how this works. Everyone in this country understands that. You can't just say: Criminals don't get due process when due process is how you determine who is a criminal in the first place.

I mean, in the case of one person they sent to El Salvador, not only did the government's file against him show no criminal record, but it also got his name wrong several times and used two different identification numbers. Those are pretty major errors to make when you are locking someone away, the kind of errors that due process helps to avoid.

That is not some theory. We are seeing it happen in another case right now. There is a couple that Trump is saying is part of a gang. But instead of just disappearing them with no trial to speak of, the administration was forced to prove it--to prove it in court. And do you know what happened? The government failed. The judge found the government's claims completely and wholly unsubstantiated and ordered the couple to be released.

That just goes to show, if we ignore our laws, if we tear down the guardrails that saved that couple, it is not criminals who pay the price; it is innocent people, because due process protects them too.

Due process allows us to confirm whether people are lawfully present. Due process lets us confirm whether Trump is about to send them to a foreign prison. Due process lets us confirm whether people are guilty, instead of going off how they look or what tattoo they may have. And at the end of the day, due process means they get an actual determination of guilt or innocence, instead of getting disappeared with a question mark.

But no one here was told they are facing x years in a foreign prison. There is no end date in El Salvador because there was no sentence, because there was no trial. There was just Trump ignoring our laws, ignoring our courts, and sending people to gulags to rot and die and never be heard from again.

How can anyone ignore that outrageous breach of our laws, of our values?

And as a coequal branch of this government, I want to impress upon my colleagues: It is not just due process that is getting trampled here; it is basic checks and balances.

Trump is imprisoning these people under the Alien Enemies Act. He is using a war power. We are not at war. Everyone here should know that. After all, Congress--we--have to vote to declare war.

I remember every war vote we have taken in my time here in Congress, and I can tell you there has never been a vote on this so-called war Trump declared all on his own.

As if that weren't enough, earlier this month, the National Intelligence Council--the National Intelligence Council--determined that Venezuela is not directing an invasion by gangs. That directly undercut what Trump claimed when he announced his illegal end run around Congress.

Here is the simple question for everyone. There is no invasion. There is no

war. So why is Trump invoking a wartime authority?

But add on top of that that Trump has reached some secret, multimillion-dollar deal to pay El Salvador to imprison these people without a trial.

I am vice chair of the Appropriations Committee. I can tell you, we did not include a single cent, not one penny, for running torture prisons in El Salvador in our last funding bill.

Congress has the power of the purse, but Trump is picking our pockets to fund his own personal gulag.

And, by the way, while we talk about checks and balances, let's not forget how the Trump administration is arresting judges. His allies and advisers are attacking judges publicly and calling to impeach those who disagree with him.

And, of course, Trump is blatantly ignoring the courts. And worse than that, the White House is in open defiance of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court wrote: The administration must facilitate Mr. Garcia's release.

The White House wrote that he is never coming back.

The Supreme Court wrote: People being targeted under the Alien Enemies Act must have a reasonable opportunity to file for habeas corpus.

The Trump administration said: No. We will give them 12 hours.

Foreign policy is not an end run around the courts or the Constitution. The President cannot just be given unilateral authority to cut completely unethical deals with foreign nations.

What happens when a President negotiates in secret to have his political rivals detained abroad? Is that allowed? Can he argue the courts can't require him to call such a deal off? Or maybe he just denies it and says any agreements are state secrets. Does that work?

If President Trump said he would pay El Salvador $6 million to assassinate his rivals, I think we would all agree that that is blatantly unconstitutional. And if the court said he had to facilitate the reversal of that deal, and he said, ``Well, it is a sovereign nation; I can't stop them from assassinating anyone,'' I think we would all have a huge problem with that.

So do we want to say that is wrong now, or are we going to have to wait until he tries it?

What are we waiting for? We cannot just all stand by silently as the President pries open a Pandora's box that is altogether unprecedented and that poses a direct threat to our Republic. And let's cut through this BS where Trump and El Salvador are both trying to pretend there is no way to facilitate the return of people sent there wrongly.

Here is the thing: El Salvador has already sent back people that Trump tried to disappear. El Salvador immediately sent back a Nicaraguan individual, and they sent back women--yes, Trump tried to disappear women to their all-male torture prison in El Salvador. If anyone wants to try and pretend this was some careful vetting process, please explain that to me.

It is not like El Salvador can't send people back. They have already done that.

The administration should be making clear, one, these people were wrongly sent, and, two, that as with others wrongly sent, they need to be returned.

Though I want to keep in mind, of course, that ``wrongly sent'' is still kind of an understatement. The reality is, these people were completely denied due process. The reality is, President Trump is not just disappearing these people to El Salvador, he is disappearing our most basic constitutional rights, and he is doing it in plain sight, not just in El Salvador either, right here in America.

His immigration crackdown is upturning lives and overturning some of our most basic values like freedom of speech. We have people who are here legally who are being detained and threatened with deportation, not for any crime, not for any violence, but for speech, for protest, for things as simple, as fundamental, as writing an op-ed the administration disagreed with--in America, the land of the free and the land of free speech.

Is dissent the bar for deportation now? Is that what this country has come to? What next? How far does Trump's new standard apply? Can you get deported for saying we shouldn't invade Canada? Can you get detained for an op-ed saying Greenland is not going to be a State? Are you going to have legal status revoked for admitting Biden won the 2020 election? Because this seems outrageous, but it seems perfectly in line with Trump's new policy which amounts to ``disagree with the President, your rights are gone.'' That is fundamentally un-American.

And beyond people who are being targeted for protest, there are thousands of students in this country that Trump is trying to push out over minor issues: fishing citations, jaywalking, speeding tickets, even charges that were dismissed. So far, some 1,800 foreign students are having their visas revoked with little to no explanation, to say nothing of due process. And that includes students in Washington State, my home State, at U-Dub, Gonzaga, Shoreline Community College where I once worked, my alma mater, WSU, and more. It is not clear whether these students have done anything wrong, and it is not clear, in some cases, what exactly they are supposed to do next because when the administration can't revoke visas, it has been trying to remove students' records, something courts have already ruled against.

One of the judges really put it best. I want to read this and quote it to you:

I've got two experienced immigration lawyers on behalf of a

client who is months away from graduation, who has done

nothing wrong, who has been terminated from a system that you

all keep telling me has no effect on his immigration status,

although that clearly is BS. And now, his two very

experienced lawyers can't even tell him whether or not he's

here legally because the court can't tell him whether or not

he's here legally, because the government's counsel can't

tell him if he's here legally.

The point seems to be, if we can't deport you, we can scare and confuse you. And to add even more confusion, DOJ announced they were reversing course on some of this only to then say they are still working on a plan to push out all these students.

By the way, we are only still scratching the surface of just how inhumane Trump's immigration crackdown has become. Trump is slashing funds to ensure 26,000 migrant kids have legal assistance, meaning more 4-year-olds are being marched in front of immigration judges expected to make their own legal case with a plushy toy.

Trump is also trying to mass cancel protected status for people who came here who were fleeing harsh conditions and dictators. Trump is sending Christian refugees and women back to live under the Taliban where they will face near-certain persecution.

Trump is sending ICE officials to elementary schools where they tried to gain access by lying about having permission from parents to speak with their kids. ICE officials are arresting people with maximum violence and lawlessness, showing up without judicial warrants, since the Trump administration says it is fine to storm into some someone's house without one; showing up in masks, grabbing people off the streets without any badge or identification to distinguish them from a kidnapper; whisking people away in unmarked cars and even smashing windshields.

Back in my home State of Washington, I heard from folks who saw that firsthand.

Last month, ICE aggressively detained Lelo, a farmworker in my State. And it appears he may have even been targeted because of his advocacy for better working conditions for his fellow farmworkers. They are still denying him bond despite no criminal charges.

I spoke with his wife last week who watched in horror as they arrested her husband shortly after he dropped her off at work. She told me through tears about how officers broke his window and pushed him against the car and how Lelo wants to be free so he can take care of his brothers and sisters and work so they can study. He wants to continue doing his work with the community and with the union. And they are working right now to try to get bond, something I strongly support.

This is not someone with a dangerous record. It is someone with a record of hard work and trying to make his community better.

Skagit County is known for its agricultural industry. That industry does not survive without the immigrant farmworkers who help power that local economy, period. More than that, we

are talking about many families who have been here for decades. They are part of our community. They are not just the people who feed this country, these are people who work hard. They followed the law. They should not be terrorized as if they were violent criminals.

Last week, I met with farmworkers there who told me there have been days they have been afraid to go to work because an unmarked vehicle was seen in their neighborhood. They are absolutely terrified of being grabbed off the street by ICE and locked up with no semblance of due process regardless of their legal status.

And this situation is not unique to Skagit County or even to my State. It is happening across the country. Let's not forget, Trump is trying to deport a cancer researcher to Russia where she fears retaliation for protesting the war in Ukraine. Sending her away would both put her in danger and completely upend groundbreaking cancer research. Her colleagues say her role is irreplaceable.

But it is not just cancer research. Trump also deported a little girl--a U.S. citizen--who was on her way to get cancer treatment. She was with her mother, an undocumented immigrant who was forced to choose being separated from her 10-year-old daughter or being sent away together. What an unthinkable choice to force on a mother. What an unthinkable thing to do to a child, a citizen--a citizen--who is fighting cancer.

And Trump has done that twice. That is right--twice. He has deported a mother along with a kid who is fighting cancer--a kid, by the way, who is an American citizen.

He is doing that without giving these parents any meaningful time to talk to a lawyer or a spouse or to figure out what is best for that child. We know that because Trump deported another U.S. citizen last week. That is right, another one. Trump deported a 2-year-old, an American citizen. They refused to tell this kid's father where his wife and kid were being held. They refused to let him talk to his wife for more than a minute. They even forced him to hang up the phone when he tried to give his wife their lawyer's number. And then, as the judge put it, they seem to have ``deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.''

Now we are hearing about a family in Oklahoma--U.S. citizens who recently moved in who had their home raided by ICE. A mom and her daughters were forced out of their house in the rain in underwear. ICE agents seized their phones, their laptops, even their life savings, and didn't leave so much as a number they could call to get their stuff back. That happened to U.S. citizens who did nothing but move into a new house.

These horror stories underscore something important--Trump's cruel war on immigrants is hurting American citizens too. U.S. citizens are having their spouses ripped away. Even servicemembers are seeing their families targeted. They are having their parents ripped away. They are having their lives turned upside down.

Let's not forget, U.S. citizens are even being detained by this administration. We have several instances now where American citizens have been caught up in Trump's immigration crackdown. American citizens have been detained and wrongly locked up, even after someone showed them their birth certificates--even for days.

Let's keep in mind, if you are a citizen who is mistakenly detained and you are being denied due process and you can't reach someone to show them your birth certificate, how are you supposed to get released? What if you are put on the next plane for El Salvador before you get a chance to set the record straight?

Let's not pretend that is farfetched, not when citizens have already been mistakenly detained, not when the government has already admitted it sent some people to El Salvador by mistake, not when Trump has already disappeared some people who were here legally and many people who had no criminal record with no due process and not when Trump has already said he wants to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador prisons. He was caught on mic telling the President of El Salvador he needs to build more jails, telling him the ``homegrowns'' are next.

What happens when you get sent there, and you can't contact a lawyer? These are serious questions. What happens? Because if there is nothing we can do for the people there now, what precedent does that set for the people that are sent there next?

Mr. President, I have been speaking for a while and posed a lot of questions. I hope my colleagues think about this carefully. I am going to wrap it up, but I want to end with just one more. Where will Republicans draw the line because we are well past the bounds of law, and we are well past the bounds of basic humanity.

So I hope more of my colleagues will join me saying enough is enough and demanding transparency, accountability, and justice from the Trump administration.

That starts with some very basic things. First, accurate up-to-date information on the names of people who are being detained and then deported from ICE facilities across the country, including, by the way, the Northwest ICE Detention Center in Tacoma, so their loved ones and community members can at least know where they are.

And we need a clear list of every person who was disappeared to El Salvador, along with what evidence, if any, the government has as well as the full terms of whatever agreement the Trump administration has negotiated with El Salvador's dictator.

But it doesn't stop there. We need to see clear, good-faith efforts to abide by court orders and to bring back everyone wrongfully, unjustly sent to a foreign prison. We need to have lines of communication so these people can talk to their lawyers or talk to their loved ones and let us know they are OK. And we need due process with evidence, with judges, and a meaningful opportunity for people to present a defense.

Let's be clear, we are not saying everyone is innocent. We are saying no more than what the Constitution says, no more than what the courts have said time and again: Everyone in the United States of America gets due process.

I yield the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding the time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.J. Res. 75, a bill to force small business owners to use more energy and spend more money.

Here we are at the end of March, and Republicans have not brought one bill to the floor to lower costs and tackle the cost of living for our neighbors back home. Instead, Republicans in Congress have stood idly by while American families and small business owners are left to twist in the wind, making life harder for people back home, more expensive, more difficult to receive the Social Security they rely on, adding taxes through tariffs.

It is just unconscionable because what people really want is for us to work together on solutions, and Republicans in Congress are missing in action. People want answers, but Republicans won't have townhalls. Some of them will not even answer the phone.

I also had a townhall back in St. Petersburg, Florida, last week when I was home, and people want answers. They want to know what you are doing to tackle the cost of living. Then, you come up here to the House of Representatives, and Republicans are making it more expensive because they don't want you to have an energy-efficient appliance.

This isn't something that happens overnight. This is something that manufacturers and consumer advocates worked on for years.

The previous speaker asked when the Department of Energy got into energy efficiency. It has been decades that they have been doing this, trying to help people save money through conservation.

I know that doesn't align with my Republican colleagues' Big Oil and Gas allies, but people want to save money. They want to cut pollution. They don't want us wasting their time with inane bills like this that are simply going to cost people more money.

It gets worse because Republicans in Congress are barreling toward a massive tax giveaway to billionaires paid

for by targeting the family members we love the most: our parents who rely on skilled nursing, children, pregnant women, and our neighbors with disabilities.

We know what this is. This is an attempt to distract from what is going on behind the scenes here in Washington, D.C. I have to say I think my Republican friends are out of touch with working people.

People are tired of being ripped off by special interests and politicians in Washington. This resolution is another example of that. This makes it harder for small business owners to save money through energy-efficient appliances. It essentially picks your pocket.

Mr. Speaker, have you ever been in a crowd where you are getting jostled, and then you reach back and your wallet is gone? That is exactly what is happening right here.

I hope that Republicans join Democrats in trying to reduce electric bills, but no. I hope that Republicans are going to stand up to Elon Musk as he takes a chain saw to Social Security, but no. Today, the Republicans don't even want to address the real challenges facing our neighbors, helping them with the cost of living, housing, healthcare, and electric bills. This bill will simply make matters worse.

These DOE standards are long overdue. It has been, I think, at least 6 or 7 years since they have had an update. The law says you update energy-efficient standards for appliances every few years. That is what happened under the Biden administration. They came together. Those kinds of standards also incentivize American innovation. Manufacturers in America have been the leaders.

By weakening these rules, we open our markets to companies in countries that manufacture low-efficiency products, like from China, at the expense of American companies and American families. It is not right.

I heard Mr. Pallone say that he had a townhall. A lot of the Democrats are having townhalls. I had a townhall back in the Tampa Bay area. They want help with hurricane recovery. Do you know what they are having to replace right now? Appliances. They want an appliance that is the most modern, the most efficient, the most affordable, and that is made in America, and that is what these appliance standards do. They help you save money over the long run.

They also want us to safeguard their healthcare. They want us to have an eye on Elon Musk as he takes his chain saw to all sorts of agencies.

Social Security was a topic of conversation in my townhall. Lo and behold, yesterday, there was a press report about the backdoor cuts to Social Security. It says: ``The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones in place of receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. Amid all this, the agency no longer has a system to monitor customer experience because that office was eliminated . . . by Elon Musk. And the phones keep ringing. And ringing.''

``The turmoil is leaving many retirees, disabled claimants, and legal immigrants needing Social Security cards with less access or shut out of the system altogether.''

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the article titled: ``Long waits, waves of calls, website crisis: Social Security is breaking down.''

Long Waits, Waves of Calls, Website Crashes: Social Security is

Breaking Down

(By Lisa Rein and Hannah Natanson, Mar. 25, 2025)

A flood of cuts led by Elon Musk has sent the agency into

chaos as a new commissioner prepares to take charge.

The Social Security Administration website crashed four

times in 10 days this month because the servers were

overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled

Americans from logging in to their online accounts. In the

field, office managers have resorted to answering phones in

place of receptionists because so many employees have been

pushed out. Amid all this, the agency no longer has a system

to monitor customer experience because that office was

eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon

Musk.

And the phones keep ringing. And ringing.

The federal agency that delivers $1.5 trillion a year in

earned benefits to 73 million retired workers, their

survivors, and poor and disabled Americans is engulfed in

crisis--further undermining the already struggling

organization's ability to provide reliable and quick service

to vulnerable customers, according to internal documents and

more than two dozen current and former agency employees and

officials, customers and others who interact with Social

Security.

Financial services executive Frank Bisignano is scheduled

to face lawmakers Tuesday at a Senate confirmation hearing as

President Donald Trump's nominee to become the permanent

commissioner. For now, the agency is run by a caretaker

leader in his sixth week on the job who has raced to push out

more than 12 percent of the staff of 57,000. He has conceded

that the agency's phone service ``sucks'' and acknowledged

that Musk's U.S. DOGE Service is really in charge, pushing a

single-minded mission to find benefits fraud despite vast

evidence that the problem is overstated. The turmoil is

leaving many retirees, disabled claimants, and legal

immigrants needing Social Security cards with less access or

shut out of the system altogether, according to those

familiar with the problems.

``What's going on is the destruction of the agency from the

inside out, and it's accelerating,'' Sen. Angus King (I-

Maine) said in an interview. ``I have people approaching me

all the time in their 70s and 80s, and they're beside

themselves. They don't know what's coming.''

King's home state has the country's oldest population.

``What they're doing now is unconscionable,'' he said.

Leland Dudek, who became acting commissioner after he fed

data to Musk's team behind his bosses' backs, has issued a

series of rapid-fire policy changes that have created chaos

for front-line staff. Under pressure from the secretive Musk

team, Dudek has pushed out dozens of officials with years of

expertise in running Social Security's complex benefit and

information technology systems. Others have left in disgust.

The moves have upended an agency that, despite the

popularity of its programs, has been underfunded for years,

faces potential insolvency in a decade and has been led by

four commissioners in five months--just one of them Senate-

confirmed. The latest controversy came last week when Dudek

threatened to shut down operations in response to a federal

judge's ruling against DOGE that he claimed would leave no

one in the agency with access to beneficiaries' personal

information.

Alarmed lawmakers are straining to answer questions back

home from angry constituents. Calls have flooded into

congressional offices. AARP announced Monday that more than

2,000 people a week have called the retiree organization

since early February--double the usual number--with concerns

about whether benefits they paid for during their working

careers will continue. Social Security is the primary source

of income for about 40 percent of older Americans.

Trump has said repeatedly that the administration ``won't

touch'' Social Security, a promise that aides say applies to

benefit levels that can be adjusted only by Congress. But in

just six weeks, the cuts to staffing and offices have already

taken a toll on access to benefits, officials and advocates

say.

`creating a fire'

With aging technology systems and a $15 billion budget that

has stayed relatively flat over a decade, Social Security was

already struggling to serve the public amid an explosion of

retiring baby boomers. The staff that reviews claims for two

disability programs was on life support following massive

pandemic turnover--and still takes 233 days on average to

review an initial claim.

But current and former officials, advocates and others who

interact with the agency--many of whom spoke on the condition

of anonymity for fear of retribution--said Social Security

has been damaged even further by the rapid cuts and chaos of

Trump's first two months in office. Many current and former

officials fear the push is part of a long-sought effort by

conservatives to privatize all or part of the agency.

``They're creating a fire to require them to come and put

it out,'' said one high-ranking official who took early

retirement this month.

Dudek, who was elevated from a mid-level data analyst in

the anti-fraud office, hurried to cut costs when he took over

in mid-February, canceling research contracts, offering

early-retirement incentives and buyouts across the agency,

and consolidating programs and regional offices. Entire

offices, including those handling civil rights and

modernization, were driven out. The 10 regional offices that

oversee field operations were slashed to four.

``I do not want to destroy the agency,'' he said in an

interview Monday. ``The president wants it to succeed by

cutting out the red tape to improve service while improving

security.''

Musk's Department of Government Efficiency team began

poring through Social Security's massive trove of private

data on millions of Americans, working in a fourth-floor

conference room at the Woodlawn, Maryland, headquarters, with

blackout curtains on the windows and an armed security guard

posted outside.

At first, the DOGE team was obsessed by false claims that

millions of deceased people were receiving benefits. Then

came new

mandates designed to address alleged fraud: Direct-deposit

transactions and identity authentication, operations that

affect almost everyone receiving benefits, will no longer be

able to be done by phone. Customers with computers will go

through the process online; those without will wait in line

at their local field office. A change announced internally

last week will require legal immigrants with authorization to

work in the United States and newly naturalized citizens to

apply for or update their Social Security cards in person,

eliminating a long-standing practice that sent the cards

automatically through the mail.

``We realize this is a significant change and there will be

a significant impact to customers,'' Doris Diaz, deputy

commissioner of operations, told the field staff Monday

during a briefing on the changes, a recording of which was

obtained by The Washington Post. She said the agency was

``working on a process'' for homeless and homebound customers

who cannot use computers or come into an office--and

acknowledged that service levels will decline.

In the weeks before that briefing, phone calls to Social

Security surged--with questions from anxious customers

wondering whether their benefits had been or would be cut and

desperate to get an in-person field office appointment. That

is, if they could get through to a live person.

Depending on the time of day, a recorded message tells

callers their wait on hold will last more than 120 minutes or

180 minutes. Some callers report being on hold for four or

five hours. A callback function was available only three out

of 12 times a Post reporter called the toll-free line last

week, presumably because the queue that day was so long that

the call would not be returned by close of business.

The recording that 66-year-old Kathy Martinez heard when

she called the toll-free number two weeks ago from the San

Francisco Bay Area said her hold time would be more than

three hours--she was calling to ask what her retirement

benefits would come to if she filed for them now or waited

until she turned 70. She hung up and tried again last week at

7 a.m. Pacific time. The wait was more than 120 minutes, but

she was offered a callback option, and in two hours she spoke

with a ``phenomenally kind person who called me,'' she said.

Martinez said she wants to wait to file for benefits to

maximize her check. But ``I'm kind of thinking, I wonder if I

should take it now. When I apply, I will do it over the

phone. But will there still be a phone system?''

`not acceptable'

Aging, inefficient phone systems have dogged Social

Security for years. A modernization contract with Verizon

begun under the first Trump administration suffered multiple

delays, system crashes and other problems. As commissioner in

the last year of the Biden administration, former Maryland

governor Martin O'Malley moved the project to a new

contractor, Amazon Web Services, and data shows that the

average wait time for the toll-free line was down to 50

minutes, half of today's average. But O'Malley ran out of

time to switch the new system to field office phones, he

said.

Now a perfect storm has overtaken the system. Turnover

that's normally higher than 10 percent has worsened at the 24

call centers across the country. Some employees took early

retirement and buyout offers--a number that Dudek said was

``not huge'' but that current and former officials estimate

could be significant.

Shonda Johnson, a vice president at the American Federation

of Government Employees Council 220 who represents 5,000 call

center staffers, said low pay (starting salary is $32,000 a

year), anger at a return-to-office mandate after years of

telework, rapid policy changes, and frustration with how the

Trump administration is treating federal employees have hurt

morale to the point that people aren't giving their all to

the job.

``When you're facing threats yourself, it kind of prevents

you from being totally there for the public you're

servicing,'' she said.

Asked about worsening phone service, Dudek told reporters

in a call last week that ``a 24 percent answer rate is not

acceptable.''

``I want people who want to get to a person to get to a

person,'' he said, adding that ``all options are on the

table'' to improve phone service, including outsourcing some

call center work.

The new limits on phone transactions take effect at the end

of the month, but field offices have been deluged for weeks,

even as DOGE is targeting an unspecified number of field and

hearing offices for closure over the next three years.

In one office in central Indiana, the phone lines are

jammed by 9 a.m. with hundreds of retirees, further taxing a

staff of less than a dozen that is responsible for nearly

70,000 claimants across the state, according to one employee.

That worker, who like others spoke on the condition of

anonymity for fear of retribution, said the questions have

become predictable: What is the U.S. DOGE Service doing to

Social Security? Will the office close? Will my benefits

continue?

The employees, with no training yet on the impending

changes, have few answers. ``I hope we're going to be here,''

the employee tells caller after caller. ``But I can't

guarantee anything.''

Complicated benefits cases are falling by the wayside, the

employee said. Online claims, which are completed by field

staff, are piling up.

``There is just no time to breathe or get anything else

done,'' she said. ``We used to be efficient.''

Another employee in a regional office said the staff was

told at a recent briefing that field offices across the

country are seeing ``exponential growth'' in foot traffic.

The elderly are not only calling but showing up at bricks-

and-mortar buildings to ask about the DOGE-led changes.

In one Philadelphia office, the federal government's

return-to-office edict has left 1,200 staffers competing for

about 300 parking spots, according to an employee. Staffers

wake up as early as 4:30 a.m. to try to snag a space, and

some are buying backup spots for $200 a month nearby. As

morale has cratered, some employees have stopped wearing

business clothes and now come to work in jeans and a T-shirt

because, as they tell colleagues, they no longer take pride

in their work, the employee said.

`OFF THE CHARTS'

Scammers are already taking advantage of the chaotic

moment, according to internal emails obtained by The Post.

Last week, employees in several offices were warned that

seniors were reporting receiving emails from accounts

pretending to be linked to Social Security. The messages

asked recipients to verify their identity to keep receiving

benefits.

``Sounds like scammers are jumping on this press release to

trick the elderly,'' one Social Security staffer wrote to

colleagues Thursday, referring to the agency's announcement

of the in-person verification program.

In Baltimore, an employee who works on critical payment

systems said nearly a quarter of his team is already gone or

will soon be out the door as a result of resignations and

retirements. Talented software developers and analysts were

quick to secure high-paying jobs in the private sector, he

said--and the reduction in highly skilled staff is already

having consequences.

His office is supposed to complete several software updates

and modernization processes required by law within the next

few weeks and months, he said. But with the departures, it

seems increasingly likely that it will miss those deadlines.

His team is also called on to fix complicated technology

glitches that stop payments. But many of the experts who make

those fixes are exiting.

``That has to get cleaned up on a case-by-case basis, and

the experts in how to do that are leaving,'' the Baltimore

employee said. ``We will have cases that get stuck, and

they're not going to be able to get fixed. People could be

out of benefits for months.''

Meanwhile, a DOGE-imposed spending freeze has left many

field offices without paper, pens and phone headsets--at the

exact moment phone calls are spiking, the employee in Indiana

said.

The freeze drove all federal credit cards to a $1 1imit,

and purchasers for the agency were reduced to about a dozen

people for 1,300 offices, said one employee in the Northeast.

These purchasers must get a green light from higher-ups for

anything other than 12 specific preapproved transactions,

according to emails obtained by The Post. The list includes

``shipping costs,'' ``phone bills,'' ``Legionella testing''

and ``services to support fire safety and emergency

response.'' It does not include basic office supplies.

The field office in Portland, Oregon, is so slammed that

the claims staff has told advocates to send questions or

information by fax because they can't get to the phones,

according to Chase Stowell, case management supervisor for

Assist, a nonprofit that helps disabled people apply for

benefits. Many of them are homeless.

``The attrition rates in Portland are off the charts,''

Stowell said. ``They just don't pick up the phone. They were

already short-staffed. They've told us they just don't trust

that there's a reliable system to get ahold of them by

voicemail.''

The service issues keep bubbling up to members of Congress.

Hundreds of Maryland residents turned out for a town hall

meeting last week hosted by Baltimore County Council member

Pat Young about a mile from Social Security headquarters.

Asked by one retiree in the audience to provide ``a little

bit of hope'' that his Social Security benefits would not be

cut, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Maryland) conceded, ``The

truth of the matter is that we don't know what they intend.''

Mr. Speaker, this is a real cry for help, and we need Republicans and Congress focused on Americans' pocketbooks, not trying to distract from the massive tax giveaway to billionaires and special interests.

Mr. Pallone is absolutely right. They are out of touch. Let's send a message and vote ``no'' on this bill and get back to work on safeguarding the pocketbooks of our neighbors back home.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. Speaker, by the direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 242 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume.

During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, last night the Rules Committee met and produced a rule, House Resolution 242, providing for the House's consideration of several pieces of legislation: H.R. 1048, H.J. Res. 24, and H.J. Res. 75.

The rule provides for consideration of H.J. Res. 24 and H.J. Res. 75 under closed rules. The rule provides each with 1 hour of debate, equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, or their designees. Additionally, the rule provides each a motion to recommit.

Additionally, the rule provides for consideration of H.R. 1048 under a structured rule. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate equally divide and controlled by the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Education and Workforce or their designees. The rule also provides for one motion to recommit.

The rule before us today provides Congress with another opportunity to take a stand for consumer choice in America and take a stand against our Nation's foreign adversaries who continue to infiltrate colleges and universities across the Nation.

The DETERRENT Act, one of the bills considered under this rule, offers a necessary injection of transparency, accountability, and clarity to foreign gift reporting requirements for colleges and universities. It offers legislative prescriptions that are long overdue.

Under current law, section 117 of the Higher Education Act, colleges and universities must adhere to reporting requirements related to foreign donations. However, many fail to do so because of how weak the current law actually is.

A 2019 Senate report found that up to 70 percent of colleges and universities fail to comply with reporting requirements outlined in section 117 of the Higher Education Act. You heard that right. Up to 70 percent of colleges and universities fail to comply.

The DETERRENT Act updates section 117 to provide the very clarity and guidance that colleges and universities need to ensure they properly disclose foreign sources of funding and remain in compliance. It also adds a set of razor-sharp teeth to current law to hold colleges and universities accountable for failing to comply with section 117. Again, the DETERRENT Act offers legislative prescriptions that are long overdue.

The other two pieces of legislation under consideration via today's rule are two separate Congressional Review Act resolutions: H.J. Res. 24 and H.J. Res. 75. These two CRAs will strike down separate rules from the Department of Energy that were finalized under the Biden administration.

H.J. Res. 24 overturns a wrongheaded midnight rule from the Department of Energy relating to conservation standards for walk-in coolers and walk-in freezers. The Department of Energy issued this final rule a mere 2 days before Christmas last year. This is yet another gift from the Biden administration that nobody asked for.

This midnight rule piles on additional costs to the shoulders of Main Street businesses, while at the very same time takes a hatchet to consumer choice.

H.J. Res. 75 will overturn yet another wrongheaded rule from the Department of Energy related to conservation standards for commercial refrigerators, freezers, and refrigerator-freezers.

Like the previous rule from the Department of Energy that was just discussed, this rule is yet another example of the regulatory barrage that the Biden administration launched against Main Street as well as consumers. Thankfully, the regulatory warfare of the past 4 years is over. Republicans are back in charge.

Mr. Speaker, regulating this country into the ground benefits absolutely no one. It does not benefit Americans and their families. It does not benefit free enterprise and entrepreneurs. It does not benefit small businesses. Nobody wins when the Federal Government goes hog wild with regulations.

These two CRAs that the House will consider under this rule will help us break out the shovels and bury the Department of Energy's rules in the grave. They won't be missed.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I spent time last week in my district, too, talking to people. I spend time every weekend talking to the people in my district. Do you know what they complain about the most? Unnecessary rules and regulations.

I met today with folks from the homebuilding industry. They can document that 25 percent of the rules related to homebuilding are unnecessary and drive up the costs of doing business for homes. We need new homes everywhere.

My colleagues are trying to make it look like what we are doing is frivolous. Mr. Speaker, this is far from frivolous. We in Congress are taking back our authority from unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats who, in the dark of night, write unnecessary rules and regulations that burden the American people and drive up the cost of business and drive up the cost of products.

It is important for us to have further discussion on this critical Congressional Review Act that we are operating under. The Congressional Review Act agenda as a whole is important. My Democratic colleagues are falling into a repeated trap of copying and pasting comments these days. It is true of remarks for rule debate, as well. Every week, they come before this body to complain that we are undoing this or that regulation and that our collective time could be better spent

elsewhere. Well, Republicans beg to differ.

The Congressional Review Act provides the American people the greatest possible say over the endless tide of regulations that always stem from Democratic administrations, and it is one of the greatest keepers of Congress' Article I authority. It is also upsetting in many ways that the Democrats complain we are doing these individual rules when they opposed the Midnight Rules Relief Act, where we could have taken care of these all in one fell swoop.

Let's not forget it was a Democrat, President Clinton, who signed the Congressional Review Act into law on a bipartisan basis, but our colleagues have obviously fallen far from those past overtures of consensus and common sense.

Republicans and President Trump are constantly emphasizing common sense, which is not very common from the other side of the aisle. Many Members of Congress provide lipservice to excessive rules and regulations, but the Congressional Review Act provides Congress the ability to put our money where our mouth is.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has tabulated that Federal regulations impose a cost of $1.9 trillion on the economy. This averages out to more than $14,000 imposed on every American household, a hidden regulatory tax that is eating up American paychecks.

The amount of rules far exceeds statutes by Congress. In 2022 alone, there were more than 3,100 rules issued by agencies compared to 247 laws passed by Congress. Yet, despite these figures, my Democratic colleagues can't seem to muster the courage to find one regulation that they believe is worthy of repeal.

The fact is that we have a very limited window under the Congressional Review Act to expunge these harmful rules, again, written by unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats. These rules continue to drive up costs for American families and take away consumer choices.

I am so glad that we are taking up these CRA resolutions, ones that would protect consumer choice and competitive prices for freezers, refrigerators, and walk-in coolers.

To my colleagues on the other side, these may seem like small issues to you, but driving up the cost of appliances is a regressive approach that will hurt low-and middle-income Americans the most. Regulating every possible square inch of the economy in the name of your zealous green radicalism may give the coastal elites a sense of accomplishment, but it is doing real harm to Americans.

When the Congressional Review Act window is completed, we are going to be tabulating the cost of these regulations, as well as the votes to repeal them. It may seem like a little bit of cost here and there, but wait until you see the cumulative price. I hope my colleagues can heed the warning, but if the past is prologue, I won't be holding my breath.

I reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I have said it before. They are cutting and pasting and saying the same things over and over again. Fear-mongering is beneath the dignity of this body. That is not what we are here to do.

We have told our colleagues over and over, and they know this, but they refuse to acknowledge it. Nothing we have done this session has touched the sanctity of Social Security, nothing. In fact, President Trump has over and over again said that he will not touch the sanctity of Social Security. I have said that, and our colleagues have said that. We have done nothing.

Putting out false information to the American people is really unfortunate because it does frighten people. However, we have the facts on our side, Mr. Speaker, and the facts are that no bills we passed, the budget bill nor the Trump administration continuing resolution, hurt in any way Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, or any other program that the Federal Government has a contract with the American people on. It is time for our colleagues to stop saying that.

In fact, Republicans sued over ads that were being run in certain districts last week, and the Democrats had to pull those ads because the court ruled that they were not factual. They were the same kinds of things that are being said on this floor day after day.

Nonetheless, let's get back to the bill at hand: the rule that we are discussing and the underlying bill of that rule.

We have talked in the abstract, but I would like to drill down on the actual problems this bill would address and the specific failures of disclosure that this bill addresses.

A 2019 Senate report found that up to 70 percent of all institutions, these are postsecondary institutions, failed to comply with section 117 and those that do not comply often underreport.

Investigations by the Trump administration discovered that there was $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed gifts and contributions provided to so-called elite colleges, and this money came from countries that pose serious national security threats to our country.

In 2020, the Department estimated that schools had anonymously accepted $8.4 billion in foreign money over the past decade.

Let's keep in mind that the Biden administration did not utilize section 117 authorities at all in its 4 years. You heard that correctly, Mr. Speaker. In 4 years, the Biden administration did not enforce section 117. Despite the Trump administration's uncovering and investigating, the Biden administration didn't invoke section 117 at all, not once.

Let's turn to some more recent examples.

In April 2023, the former chair of Harvard University's chemistry and chemical biology department was sentenced to prison for lying about his affiliation with and income from the Wuhan University of Technology in Wuhan, China.

In July 2024, University of Maryland, College Park paid $500,000 for failing to disclose foreign funding from the Chinese companies of three researchers who simultaneously received Federal grants.

In September 2024, the Research Foundation of the State University of New York paid $313,574 after a scientist failed to disclose Chinese support.

In December 2024, the University of Delaware paid $700,000 for not disclosing that a faculty member receiving a NASA grant taught at a Chinese university.

A 2024 joint investigation between the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the House Committee on Education and Workforce found 21 joint U.S.-Chinese education institutes. A case study of two such institutes, UC Berkeley and Georgia Institute of Technology, revealed both a lack of proper disclosure under section 117 and research with clear military applications. Just those two schools alone totaled over $40 million in unreported contracts with China.

Clearly, Congress needs to do more to bring these unreported contracts, gifts, and funding sources of all sorts into the public eye. Taxpayer dollars are going to these universities. The public is owed the facts about where the rest of these funds are coming from.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, give me a break. We are to believe that something printed on the front page of The Washington Post is always true? Mr. Speaker, only 31 percent of the American people have any faith in the print media in this country, and they are very, very wise in that assessment. That is almost as low as the 27 percent of Americans who have faith in the Democratic Party right now.

I would like to clarify something else that was said. It was said that Republicans hate universities or there is a question as to why we hate universities. Mr. Speaker, we don't hate universities. We just want the universities to be honest, and we want them to be transparent. That is one of the bills we are discussing here today that this rule covers. It is very important that we have transparency throughout our government, and that is what Republicans want.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman and the gentlewoman seem to believe that the new personnel structure at the Department of Education couldn't possibly implement this bill, yet our colleagues failed to mention the fact that section 117 investigations weren't invoked a single time under the Biden administration. What were the people at the section 117 desk doing under President Biden's watch? They were collecting a check, apparently, or perhaps they were asleep at the switch, which is very fitting for the Biden era.

Mr. Speaker, President Trump has made it clear that the Department of Education will implement the laws that we pass here in Congress until such time as the full transition is made with the Department.

The number of personnel at the Department doesn't really matter if you don't have the political will to carry out the authorities. I know that the people in the Department of Education will carry out these authorities until such time as the Department does not exist, and at that time, whatever laws exist will be implemented by appropriate agencies and departments.

Whatever we do is going to be better than what was done under the Biden administration when this law was never enforced and should have been.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would characterize what we are doing here today as the people's business. We are the people's House. We are here to look after the American people in the best way that we can. We are fulfilling our constitutional duties. Unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats pass rules and regulations in this city every day that they should not be passing.

Congress gave us the ability to stop them, and my colleagues are complaining that we are wasting time, that it is slow and inefficient to implement the Congressional Review Act. It is slow and inefficient, but we passed a bill called the Midnight Rules Relief Act primarily with Republican votes that would have allowed Congress to dispense with multiple rules and regulations under one bill. That bill is currently in the Senate, and if that would pass and be signed by the President, we could all save time and be much more efficient. We are doing the people's work today.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, being lectured to about how we feel about anti-Semitism on our side of the aisle is not something that I am used to hearing. It is the Republicans who have led the fight against anti-Semitism on our college campuses.

Mr. Speaker, we did make Democratic amendments in order in this rule. If my colleague had submitted his amendment in a more timely fashion and not just a few minutes before the Rules Committee met yesterday, we would have certainly had a chance to consider it. The deadline for submitting amendments was last Thursday, and that gives us an opportunity to review the amendments to see what can be put in.

Mr. Speaker, I urge our colleagues to follow the rules for deadlines because that is very important for all of us.

Mr. Speaker, I am not really amenable to hearing people criticize us about our response to anti-Semitism when I fight it every day of my life. I am wearing my necklace that I wear every day, which says: ``Bring Them Home.'' I am wearing my yellow ribbon. Being told that I am not sympathetic to fighting anti-Semitism is not something that I take lightly.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, we are nearly at the end of this, and I don't believe that we need to have a colloquy. We each have an opportunity for closing comments.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, House Republicans are laser focused on governing and advancing legislation that addresses pertinent issues across the Nation. It is unfortunate that our colleagues do not agree that protecting Americans from unnecessary rules and regulations is not something that is important to them.

It is very important to us, and we are following regular order here. The Rules Committee is represented by me, the chair, on this important rule today. That is significant.

The three pieces of legislation that will be considered under the rule that will be debated tomorrow are part of our governing efforts and are in alignment with the mandate that Americans gave us last November.

Shielding consumer choice and combating foreign influence within higher education are issues that Americans care about. We have heard their concerns, and we are addressing them yet again this week.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the previous question, ``yes'' on the rule, and then, later, ``yes'' on the bills that will be presented as a result of this rule.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. President, I rise today to engage in this great debate that is raging across our country. Turn on the TV, read the newspapers, or open your phone, and you will be overwhelmed by the back-and-forths over tariffs, trade deficits, prices, and markets.

We hear the talking heads say that America simply can't afford President Trump's insistence on more favorable trade policies. We hear much less about whether America can afford to continue down the road we have traveled these past 30 years.

That is not a question that people in this city are asking. For many, it is not a question that appears to have occurred to them at all. The debates right now are about the future and how President Trump's policies will shape it. That is good. These are important debates that we should have. But, today, I rise because I want to speak about the past.

I am speaking as an American but, in particular, as a proud Missourian, a boy from Bridgeton. My folks--they weren't wealthy. My grandfather was an infantryman in World War II and returned from the war with an eighth grade education and some money he won playing craps on the Queen Elizabeth on his way home. All of his children worked in his butcher shop growing up. Later, I remember seeing my dad work 7 days a week on the midnight shift to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. He worked hard and lived honestly. And, just one generation later, look where we are.

What a remarkable story about my life--I suppose it is a remarkable story--but the truth is, it is just how unremarkable it really is in this country. That was the everyday magic of America--a country where lives like ours were not just possible but common. It was who we were.

America built the modern world. Our country was forged by pilgrims, pioneers, settlers, and explorers--men whose dreams were too big for the low horizons of the Old World. Our ancestors settled a new continent, tamed a frontier, raised up a great civilization from the wilderness, and planted our flag on the Moon. It was American genius that connected the world, first

through the great steam engine, spanning this continent from coast to coast, then through the miracle of flight. We gave humanity the telephone, the internet, the skyscraper, modern technology, electricity, and the industrial assembly lines that built modern civilization. Even the things we didn't invent, we perfected. Everything that mattered happened here.

But, over the last few decades, the people in power squandered that inheritance. They sent our children and our wealth overseas to defend the borders of distant nations while throwing open our own borders to a tidal wave of mass migration here at home. They shipped the good- paying, middle-class American jobs that once were the backbone of our economy to places like Mexico and China, transforming once prosperous towns and cities into hollow shells of their former selves, often defined by addiction and death. All the while, in the forgotten corners of this land, the men and women who built this country have suffered in silence. They watch in quiet despair as their towns crumble into disrepair, their way of life disappears, and the country they love slips away from them.

The political ideal of a republic is self-reliance. As our Founding Fathers understood, the art of self-government is about people's ability to rely on themselves. There was always trade, of course--this is a natural and good privilege of productive surplus economies--but in a republic, there was also trade between sovereign, self-sufficient communities. The citizen of the classical republic had no need for cheap trinkets, fashion, and sweatshops halfway across the globe. He and his neighbors were the ones building their homes, growing their own food, and when necessary, taking up arms to provide for their own defense. People who depend on others for essential things cannot rule themselves, and if they cannot rule themselves, they cannot keep a republic.

Yes, times have changed. The economy of today is altogether different than the economy our ancestors knew, but that is no excuse for standing by as our home becomes a dumping ground for cheap Chinese goods. Are we really still a sovereign people today? Our independence and our sovereignty are not commodities to be sold on the global market. We can't and won't make everything here, but we must recover the will and the ability to make the vital necessities of our national life. Our country now depends on foreign imports for most of those necessities.

By a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, more Americans now work in government than in manufacturing. Nearly half of our cars, more than 60 percent of our machine tools, 80 percent of our pharmaceuticals, and nearly 90 percent of the semiconductor chips we need for everything from phones to fighter jets are foreign made. That is why the crisis that confronts us today is not merely economic. It is about communism and slave labor versus freedom. It is about who will win the 21st century. The stakes are high. It is about the survival of our civilization. It is about the kind of Nation and people we are and will be: one that creates and builds or one that simply consumes.

In this city, we tend to speak of big, sweeping abstractions--jobs, wages, deficits, growth. We talk as if these things are numbers and graphs. We forget that every job lost to China and every factory moved to Mexico belongs to a real, flesh-and-blood American, with a life and a family and a home. Each and every data point is a fellow citizen, a neighbor, a son or daughter of this great Republic. Since NAFTA, 90,000--90,000--factories in our country have closed. Think about that and what it means to those families. For the people who benefited, this was just an abstract externality. For the workers, the heartland Americans, it was everything. I know these people. These are my people--these are our people--and for too long, they have walked alone. There is no memorial for their sacrifice, no national outpouring of grief for their loss, no powerful interest group to represent them in the halls of power.

Let me tell you what 30 years of so-called free and fair trade has meant for the folks where I am from.

In the 1990s, our political class embraced a new line of thinking: that America could become more prosperous by opening all trade barriers regardless of how other countries treated us. The result was swift and devastating. By 2004, according to some estimates, Missouri had lost well over 31,000 jobs to foreign trade. By 2010, our trade deficit with Mexico had cost us 12,600 Missouri jobs. By 2013, we had shipped 44,200 Missouri jobs off to China. By 2018, Missouri had lost more than 90,000 jobs in manufacturing alone--over 25 percent of our industrial base.

Until a few decades ago, southeast Missouri was a national hub for garment and shoe manufacturing. In the 1970s, southeast Missouri was home to as many as 90--90--shoe plants. The last shoe factory from that era closed for good in 2005. It had begun as a five-story, 92,000-foot international shoe plant in Cape Girardeau, nicknamed ``the Pride of Southeast Missouri.'' At one point, it employed 1,200 workers, but cheaper imports from low-wage countries began to flood the market, and by 1990, the old factory was razed and replaced with a one-story plant of, roughly, 300 to 500 workers. By 2001, that had dwindled down to just 50.

Here is what one former employee told a local paper after the plant closed for good:

Now I am working at the Lutheran Home, driving a van, and

making a third of the amount of money I made before. My wife

also has to work, and, together, we are making two-thirds of

what I made alone at the shoe plant. It is very upsetting.

You get mad, and then you get hurt, and you think about all

the jobs leaving the country and all the people losing their

jobs.

Tri-Con Industries, which makes car seat parts, shuttered its factory in Cape Girardeau, too, and moved its production to Mexico. That was another 200 jobs gone.

There are patriotic shoe companies that still want to build in America. Belleville Boots took over a factory in Carthage, MO, in 2020. There are businesses that still love America, and they want to build on the generations of skilled craftsman in places like southeast Missouri, but for decades, our political class has rigged the rules to punish rather than help companies that put America first. This pattern repeats again and again and in every industry.

Up until the end of the 20th century, Missouri still had a major electronics assembly operation. Zenith Electronics--the last major American TV maker--had a large assembly plant in Springfield, MO. It had been in operation since just after World War II, and at one point, it employed 3,300 Missourians; but those jobs, too, had started moving to Mexico in the late 1990s. In October of 1991, Zenith shut down its plant and shipped its operation down to Mexico, taking out 1,500 Missouri jobs in one blow. In Springfield, the average worker made between 5 and 10 bucks an hour. Down in Mexico, it was just 83 cents.

The high priests of the global economy tell us that this is merely creative destruction and that other, better industries will arise to take their place of the ones that were lost. It is true that some of the workers in Springfield went on to find new jobs, but they were often much worse than the ones that they had before. Five years after Zenith shut down, laid-off workers saw an average pay cut of more than 10 percent. More than half of them had held multiple jobs since being laid off, two-thirds of them with worse benefits. Even the workers who enrolled in job retraining programs fared no better than the ones who didn't.

``Those people had worked there for 20 or 25 years,'' one laid-off worker recalled. ``They were at the top end of the pay scales, and there weren't any more TV repairman jobs out there.''

Toastmaster is a household name. Well, they were headquartered in Missouri, and they made their stuff in Missouri, too, with factories in small towns all across our State; but as we welcomed China into the world economy, Toastmaster began to feel the squeeze of cheap Asian imports. By 2001, every Toastmaster plant in our State was gone, shipping hundreds of jobs from rural mid-Missouri to China. The last one to go, in the town of Macon--near where I went to school--had been in operation since the 1950s. All that remained was a toxic waste cleanup site for the 5,500 people in the town it left behind. Although Toastmaster continued production in certain areas of the United States, Missouri wasn't so fortunate.

Boonville, a town where my grandmother went to high school, was another place that lost a Toastmaster factory. In 2011, the town of about 8,000 people lost its modular home manufacturing factory to the housing crisis too. In 2012, its bread factory filed for bankruptcy. In 2013, Nordyne, which manufactured air and heating products, announced it would be moving production from Boonville to--guess where--Mexico, taking out another 250 jobs.

``From a moral standpoint, it was kicking somebody while they were already down,'' the head of the local chamber of commerce said as he talked to a local newspaper.

This is not the distant past, folks. This is the reality that millions and millions of our fellow Americans in Missouri and across the country live this very day.

Haldex, a brake manufacturer, packed up and left for Mexico in 2020, eliminating the last 154 jobs left at the facility in the suburbs of Kansas City. Layoffs began 2 weeks before Christmas. They will save millions of dollars a year paying Mexican workers a fraction of what they paid back home.

I will tell you one more story from the Bootheel in Missouri.

For decades, the Noranda Aluminum smelter there was a lifeline employer for the folks in New Madrid, Marston, and surrounding communities. These were good, decent, hard-working, salt-of-the-Earth folks. I visited with them. The smelter was the engine for their way of life, but in 2016, Noranda filed for bankruptcy and shut down. Why? Because China's cheap, state-subsidized aluminum had flooded the market, causing global aluminum prices to plunge. In New Madrid--a town of less than 3,000 people--about 1,000 people had gone to find new jobs, usually at much lower pay. The county government went in the red. Local police and ambulance budgets were cut. The local school district lost a $3.1 million tax payment, which forced their own layoffs and saw a 10-percent drop in enrollment as families left the area.

People lost homes, the mayor of New Madrid said. People got divorced. An American town, filled with American families, left for dead by their own country. What did we do to our own people?

This is not to say that Missourians don't want fair exchange, one where they can trade and grow with the rest of the world, but the ``free trade'' that transpired was not free trade at all.

The double-edged tragedy of the system is that not all these companies wanted to leave. Some--perhaps many--wanted desperately to stay. These people were their neighbors, their friends, their family.

But over the past three decades, we punished the companies that were loyal to America while rewarding the ones that weren't. The businesses that were eager to offshore got big bonuses at the American workers' expense. The businesses that wanted to stay here found themselves struggling to stay alive in conditions where they couldn't compete.

Now, some might argue that Americans don't want to make shoes anymore, but we did a generation ago. The American workers of that age knew that there was something meaningful in creating and producing.

Today, we have been taken by the idea that our social status is not what we build or create but what we can afford to buy or consume. It is going to take generations to reverse this thinking. The post-war order has given birth to a shallow morality of materialism that measures values strictly in terms of consumption. This is a poisonous new idea, utterly alien to the traditional American way of life.

Our trade policy, like our foreign policy, failed to adapt to the new reality of the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The consequences were nothing short of devastating.

At the dawn of the 1990s, as America looked forward to the new millennium, the architects of globalism beamed about the promise of the open society--a world without barriers or borders where all nations and cultures and economies would meld into one global economic zone.

Thirty years on, what do we have to show for it? At home, our factories and the towns that once sustained them lie in ruin, razed by the ruthless logic of the new global economy and cost-efficiency. The Americans who once worked there were replaced by foreign labor overseas. The Americans who once held on were now being replaced by foreign labor here at home. Their children will graduate into a workforce where nearly 1 in 10 workers doesn't even speak their own language.

The twin horsemen of globalism--unprotected trade and unprotected borders--have been a catastrophe for our civilization. But, in many ways, I don't blame the illegal immigrant who wants to come here in search of work, but we do have a country of laws, and there are consequences. I don't blame the factory laborer in Vietnam who takes the job that once belonged to an American. Do you know who I blame? The people in power who allowed them to do it.

I blame the corporate bosses, the special interests, and, yes, the politicians who sold our country out for a seat at the table of the globalist banquet.

I blame the ideologues of the status quo, the international elites, the so-called citizens of the world who see our country as a global economic zone, a giant shopping mall with an airport attached.

I blame the people in cities like this one, who seem to have forgotten the men and women in towns like Boonville and New Madrid or their brothers and sisters, because ``American'' is not just a box you check on a tax form but a sacred responsibility that binds us to one another, an unbroken chain between our past and our future.

I do not know what the future holds, but I do know what the past has meant. I know that something has to change and that President Trump is the first politician in a generation to even care enough to try.

The 77 million ``deplorables'' who cast their lot with Donald Trump last November were the forgotten Americans--the blue-collar patriots, the conservatives of the heart, miners, mechanics, tradesmen, and farmers; men and women who worked with their hands, grew our food, built our homes, and drilled our fuel, whose labor powered our country, whose taxes sustained our government, and whose children served and sacrificed in our wars. They stand with this President because he stood with them when no one else would.

I yield the floor.