A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to "Extension of Deadlines in Standards of Performance for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources and Emissions Guidelines for Existing Sources: Oil and Natural Gas Sector Climate Review Final Rule".

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am coming down to the Senate floor for the second time in about a month to try to pass a really important bill for some really heroic constituents of mine, Alaskan Native Vietnam veterans, and I am going to explain this bill a little bit.

Hopefully, the Senate is going to work well, because when I tried to pass this a month ago, Senator Padilla said: Hey, I am going to object, but if you work with us on some bills that you can move in a pairing, then we will pass this.

So I have done that, and I will talk about that. I am actually going to try to pass two bills.

I see that the senior Senator from New Mexico is on the floor, which doesn't bode well for the passage of this bill, which is disappointing, and I am going to get to why it is disappointing. It is remarkable that this bill would be blocked, again, by Democrats. But let me give you a little bit about the background.

So Alaska Native people in my State serve at higher rates in the military than any other ethnic group in the country--what I refer to as special patriotism. You go into Alaska Native villages, you ask how many veterans are there, and almost everybody raises their hand. It is remarkable. It is patriotic. It is incredible. If the rest of the country were like Alaska Native people in terms of service to our military, we would have a better America.

They underwent an incredible injustice because so many Alaska Natives went to Vietnam to serve in the war when a lot of Americans--let's face it--were avoiding service in Vietnam. So these great men and women went to serve their country in Vietnam. When they got drafted, they would say: Hey, it is my time. My dad fought in World War II. My uncle fought in Korea. I am just going.

So they all went. And what happened--every Alaska Native had the ability to get, under a 1906 law, a Native allotment. You could go and say: Hey, I grew up in this area. I hunted and fished here. I want to get 160 acres for an allotment.

The Federal Government would say: Here, you get that allotment.

That was in the law.

When these guys were over serving in Vietnam, Congress changed that law. It is complicated, but they passed what was called the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act--a very important bill--and it extinguished the ability for Alaska Natives to get their Native allotment.

Well, guess what. A lot of these guys and a few women were overseas serving their country in Vietnam. They didn't know. There was no internet, no cellphones, right? So they got home. They weren't treated well because they were Vietnam vets. Let's face that. They weren't treated well because there is still a lot of discrimination with regard to Native people, indigenous people. And then they were told: Oh, by the way, that Native allotment that you wanted? Sorry. When you were fighting for your country, we passed a law saying you can't get it anymore.

Well, look, I thought that was a huge injustice, so I worked on a bill during President Trump's first term to say: Now, wait a minute, if you were overseas serving your country, and you missed your ability to apply for a Native allotment, you should get your ability to do that.

That law passed. I was in the Oval Office when the President of the United States signed it. He said: This is an injustice. I am going to fix this for the Alaska Native Vietnam vets.

I mean, what is more bipartisan than that? Why would you come down to the Senate floor and block this bill?

So anyway, when Secretary Haaland, Secretary of the Interior--when she went through her confirmation process, I talked to her about a number of things. She was a Congresswoman at the time. I said: The No. 1 issue I care about more than anything--more than oil and gas, more than resource development--the No. 1 issue I care about that you need to commit to me, Congresswoman Deb Haaland, is to rapidly implement this bill, OK? These are Vietnam vets. A lot of them are dying, OK? Make this a priority.

I met with her twice, and she committed to me twice to do that. Guess what. Secretary Haaland did not keep her commitment at all. As a matter of fact, one of the first things she did when she got into office, the Secretary of the Interior under Joe Biden, she delayed implementation of this bill for 2 years, just put a moratorium on it.

I was like, whoa, you certainly lied to me there, Madam Secretary. OK. Two years. She just did nothing.

Overall, the program is a 5-year program. She shamefully did 40 allotments in 4 years. Forty Alaska Native Vietnam vets got this. There are 2,000--over 2,000 who are eligible. They just didn't do it because they didn't want people to get land--even Alaska Native Vietnam veterans.

So anyway, this bill has a 5-year window. It expires in December. All I am trying to do is extend it for 5 more years. That is it. This is a one-sentence bill. It changes the words ``5 years'' to ``10 years.''

Guess what. Last year in December, I came down to the Senate floor, and I passed this unanimously. It passed. So the Senate passed it last year. The House has already passed it. If this bill passes tonight, it is going to go to the President, and he is going to sign it.

Why would anyone block this?

So I tried to do this a month ago, and Senator Padilla was on the floor, and he said: Hey, I am going to block it because we kind of don't think it is fair if we just get one Republican bill over the goal line.

So he and I talked on the floor and said: Let us work with you, Dan, because we know this is important to you. We know this is important to your heroic constituents. Let us work with you. If you pair this with a Democrat bill that is important, we will work to pass it.

So Senator Padilla objected when I tried to pass it last time. Democrats even suggested to me what bill to pair it with. It is called H.R. 1034 or S. 909. It is the La Paz County Solar Energy and Job Creation Act. It is a pretty good bill. It is a land exchange. This is Senator Gallego's bill.

So the Democrats told me: If you can pair your bill for Vietnam vets with the Gallego bill, H.R. 1034, then that is fair because we are moving a Democrat bill and we are moving a Republican bill. They are paired together. By the way, they are both ready to go to be signed by the President. That would be fair.

So my team worked really hard to clear all the Republican holds on the Senator Gallego bill. We worked on it for the last 3 or 4 weeks. There were a number of holds, and I went to my Republican colleagues: Hey, guys, can you lift the hold, right? This is a pretty good bill from Senator Gallego. It is important to him in Arizona, and this is really important to me.

I explained the Alaska Native Vietnam vet bill. So we lifted the holds. Republicans cleared the hotline.

So that is what has happened.

Now, I guess, unless he is here to talk about how he supports my bill--so 2 hours ago, we thought this was going to clear. Gallego's bill. Sullivan's bill. Good for Arizona, Democrats. Good for Alaska Native Vietnam vets. We get a call an hour ago saying: Nope, the Dems are going to move the goalpost, and they are going to object.

Why? I am really looking forward to hearing from my good friend from New Mexico on why they are going to object, but I am pretty sure I know why. He is going to tell me: Hey, we want to move more bills.

Well, wait. You guys just told me 2 weeks ago: Pair the Gallego bill with the Alaska Native Vietnam vet bill, and we will pass it.

Normally, the Senate works on trust, right? So I did that. But I guess now the Democrats are going to move the goalpost, and they want to leverage--leverage--Alaska Native Vietnam vets, heroes, to get more stuff. I don't know. I want to hear from Senator Heinrich.

You know, the Dems are starting to get really good--it is a pattern-- at leveraging really good Americans--air traffic controllers for the last 40 days--to get other stuff. Now it looks like they are going to leverage Alaska Native Vietnam vets who got hosed by their own government. All they want is to get their allotment that they missed the opportunity to get when they were serving their country in Vietnam. Like, how hard is that?

So, again, we have two good bills right now. One is a Dem bill, and one is a Republican bill. If we pass the H.R. bill, they are going to go right to the President's desk.

Now, the other objection I heard from my Democratic colleagues is that, well, they don't want to pass House bills. So I am like, all right. Well, if you don't want to pass House bills, let's pass the Sullivan Senate

version of this and the Gallego Senate version.

Again, I am down here on the floor trying to help Senator Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona. He is a marine. I like marines. He has a good bill here. It seems like it is going to help his constituents. So I am ready to go.

All right. If you guys want to object to the House bill, I get that. We are objecting--some of our Senators are objecting to House bills even though those go right to the President's desk. We will move forward on the Senate bill. Now, that means it will have to go back over to the House, so it won't get signed by the President right away. So I am ready to do that too.

I just want to help the people I represent, and these are very special people. If any of you or Senator Heinrich met some of these Alaska Native Vietnam vets, you would cry when you hear their stories. So heroic. And all I am trying to do is help them. And we got this done.

By the way, the program expires in December. The program that I got done with President Trump's signature on it expires in a month. Secretary Haaland slow-walked it. I got it passed last year to extend it, and now my Democrat colleagues are going to slow-walk it. It is going to expire next month.

I came here a month ago. They told me: All right, Dan. We know it is important to you. Go pair it.

They said: Go pair Gallego's bill with this, and we will sign off on it.

I got all the Republicans to sign off on my bill and Gallego's, and just an hour ago: Nope. We are going to leverage these Vietnam vets against you, Dan Sullivan, to get more.

Now, look, the Senator from New Mexico is probably going to say: Hey, I want to move more bills.

All right. I will help you move more bills. You just saw I worked Gallego's bill. But these two bills are ready to go to the President's desk--a Democrat bill which is a pretty good bill for Arizona and a Republican bill which is a really good bill for my constituents, heroic constituents.

So I am going to try, and maybe Senator Heinrich is going to get up and say: Gosh darn it, Dan Sullivan. This is a great bill, and I just want to come here and speak out on behalf of it.

You know, a lot of the Democrats talk about indigenous people, people of color, how much they care about minority communities. When it comes to my State, these guys target Alaska Natives. I have seen it my whole career. I mean, geez, the minority leader--the guy goes after Alaska Natives like they are some kind of criminals. It is outrageous.

This is a bill for indigenous people of America, and all the Democrats: Oh, we care about--no, you don't. If you did--maybe Senator Heinrich tonight is going to talk about how much he cares about indigenous people in Alaska. I have seen him talk about it before. If he does, then he should prove it right now.

So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following bills en bloc; further, that the bills be considered read a third time and passed en bloc and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc: H.R. 410, the Alaska Native Vietnam Era Veterans Land Allotment Extension Act of 2025, and H.R. 1043, the La Paz County Solar Energy and Job Creation Act.

Mr. President, I am disappointed in this. Now, I was trying to pass the H.R. bills from the House because those bills have already passed--the Gallego bill, the Sullivan bill, the lands transfer bill for Arizona, the Alaska Native Vietnam vets bill for my brave Alaska Native veterans. I was informed--and you heard it from the Senator from New Mexico--that maybe they don't want to pass House bills. He kind of said that. He did mention that he is objecting because he doesn't want to favor one party over the other. That argument is irrelevant because I am passing a Democrat bill and a Republican bill. So this is even stephen when it comes to the parties.

I am very surprised that he is objecting on behalf of Senator Padilla because, when Senator Padilla objected to my bill a month ago, he literally said: Hey, Dan, work with us. Pair it with the Democrat bill. Then Senator Padilla's team even suggested which Democrat bill to pair it with, which was the Gallego bill, which I am trying to pass right now.

So, as to what my colleague from New Mexico just said, none of it makes sense unless people are going back on their word, which is a little bit frustrating because the Senate operates on trust here. Maybe it is because my colleague doesn't like a House bill.

So what I am going to try and do now--again, for Senator Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, and for me, a Republican from Alaska--is try and pass by unanimous consent the Senate version of these bills. What I did--because I told the other side that I would do it--is I told Senator Gallego and Senator Padilla that I will clear Senator Gallego's bill; that I will clear it on the Republican side. It took a lot of work, but we got that done. So let's see if we can pass the Senate version of these bills.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following bills en bloc; further, that the bills be considered read a third time and passed en bloc and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc: Senator Gallego's bill, S. 909; the La Paz County Solar Energy and Job Creation Act; and my bill, S. 785, the Alaska Native Vietnam Era Veterans Land Allotment Extension Act.

Mr. President, I am just going to end by saying I am very disappointed. I tried to do this a month ago. This bill of mine is really for some great heroes in America, and the program is going to expire in a month. This bill passed unanimously in December. My colleague from New Mexico came down and talked in process terms about why he is objecting. It is a little hard to understand, but I actually think there is probably something else going on here as I have been around this place long enough.

This is a chart that I have called the last frontier lockup. It lists the 70 Executive orders and Executive actions all throughout the State of Alaska to lock up my State--70 Executive orders and Executive actions issued by the Biden administration to shut down Alaska, to stop getting access to Federal lands in Alaska, to stop any kind of resource development in Alaska--and 1 of those 70 was to delay and stop the Alaska Native Vietnam Era Veterans Land Allotment Extension Act

that Secretary Haaland committed me to implement.

This is what my Democrat colleagues do. This is what they do to Alaska. They have groups--far-left groups--that tell them, when they get in power, to shut down Alaska.

But wait a minute. We have bills that help Alaska Native indigenous people.

They are like: Hey, we don't care about them. Shut down Alaska. Shut down indigenous people's opportunities.

I saw, for 4 years with the Biden administration, this whole area of the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, which is meant for oil and gas development--that they shut down the whole thing, OK? Guess who wanted that to be open. All the indigenous leaders of the North Slope: the Tribe, the Alaska Native Corporations, the Borough Leadership. They came down here eight times to DC--eight times--to try to meet with the Secretary of the Interior, saying: Don't lock up my lands. Don't lock up my lands. She never met with them. She never met with them.

My colleague from New Mexico has been the leader in locking up Alaska. I mean, I have come down to the floor and raised a little bit of heck on all of the actions he has taken to lock up my State.

So, look, the Democrats really don't want anyone, including heroic Alaska Native Vietnam vets, to have access to land even though that is the law. It is really, really ironic that they always say they want to help indigenous people, but in my State, their actions are very different, and this is a great example of what they are doing.

You know, it is really ironic, too, that during the 4 years of the Biden administration, when this was going on, it was ``drill, baby, drill'' in New Mexico. New Mexico, with the Secretary of the Interior's help, increased oil production from 1 million barrels to 2 million barrels a day on Federal lands. Yet the Senator from New Mexico and the Secretary of the Interior and Joe Biden said: We are going to shut this place down.

Now they are saying: We are going to make sure the Native Vietnam vets--they have had a real injustice. We fixed it under law. Then it was delayed by the Biden administration's Secretary of the Interior.

All I am trying to do is get a two-word change so this program can continue. These guys are dying every day, these great heroes. I came to the floor a month ago and tried to get it done.

The Democrat Senator said: Do this, Dan.

I did it.

Do this, Dan.

I did it.

Pair it with the Democrat bill.

I did it. It was ready to go.

Then, an hour ago, they said: Nope. We are going to block it again.

It is an outrage--it is an outrage--and it is not because of process. It is because they want to keep my State shut down. I see it every time here, and it is wrong. It is wrong.

I will keep working. If you guys want to pass more bills, I will keep trying, but I am starting to lose a little trust. A month ago, I was on the floor, and you guys told me what to do to move this. I did it and none of you kept your word and that is not how this place operates.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I think what Senator Murphy was objecting to was calling Donald Trump the most pro-law enforcement President in American history, and I think he laid out all the reasons why that simply isn't true.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975

Mr. President, I am here because today marks the 50th anniversary of the Senate's passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, known as IDEA. It was just a few weeks after the Senate passed that bill that it was signed into law on November 29, 1975, by President Ford--a bipartisan achievement and a landmark achievement for the United States of America.

I am grateful that my colleagues Senator Kaine and Senator Hirono are also on the floor with me today to discuss this important achievement 50 years later.

When that passed the Senate and, of course, when it was signed into law, it guaranteed the right to a free, appropriate public education for children with disabilities. For the first time in America, the law required that schools meet that commitment to all our kids, including kids with disabilities. That is why schools have now developed individualized education programs for students who need them, to meet that requirement. Now children with disabilities share classrooms with kids without disabilities. And it created a process for families to challenge schools that don't uphold their child's right to a good education.

This was a watershed moment in our history and the history of education. IDEA helped end a very dark chapter in our not too distant past when our public schools excluded 80 percent of children with disabilities, and many States forced disabled people to live out their entire lives hidden away in institutions.

For decades, the Federal Government wrote off people with disabilities as ``uneducable,'' and they claimed they could not learn in schools, and they claimed that they could not fit into our society.

The government was wrong. It was dead wrong. It was wrong on the facts because people with disabilities can succeed in school and in the workforce with the right accommodations, and it was wrong morally because that discrimination violated one of the most fundamental American values--that all people are created equal, and all deserve equal dignity and opportunity. It was IDEA that helped right that wrong.

I would be remiss if I did not take the occasion of this anniversary to acknowledge all the people who make special education work every day in America. They are the students with disabilities and their families and their caregivers. They are the teachers, the special education teachers, the paraprofessionals, and the teachers' aides. Then there are the researchers, the advocates, and so many more--the people who created IDEA and the people who keep it alive today. I commend and salute all of them on this important anniversary.

But I can't say the same about this Congress or, in fact, any of the Congresses that convened between that passage 50 years ago and today because while today marks the 50th anniversary of the Senate's passage of IDEA, it is also true that today, 50 years later, we are seeing the continuation of Congress's failure to actually fund the IDEA at the level we promised, at the level the Federal Government committed to.

You see, when Congress established IDEA, when they passed it into law and gave schools new responsibilities to uphold the rights of students with disabilities, Congress also pledged to cover 40 percent of the cost per pupil so that schools had the resources needed to meet these new responsibilities. In other words, we established a Federal mandate for a very good purpose, but then we failed to fund that mandate at the level we promised.

As a result, every year since it was first passed into law 50 years ago, Congress has failed to provide the promised funds for IDEA. In fact, today, we find that IDEA is funded at 12 percent--a little under 12 percent, in fact--of the cost per pupil instead of the 40 percent, leaving schools and students short a whopping $38 billion every year. In my State of Maryland alone, we are getting $670 million less per year than was promised. All across the country, States--Virginia, Hawaii, other States--struggle to make up that gap for themselves.

When we don't live up to our obligations at the Federal level, it strains the entire education budgets at the State and local level, hurting disabled students and also all other students.

Now, 20 years ago, when I was in the House of Representatives, I had the privilege of passing a number of bills related to helping people with disabilities. That included the ABLE Act, which was a bipartisan piece of legislation to help provide families with kids with disabilities with access to tax-advantaged accounts so that they can help those kids and better prepare for their futures.

I have had the great opportunity both in the House and the Senate to pass many other pieces of important legislation, but one of my greatest disappointments has been the fact that the Congress has never fully funded IDEA, never did what we promised we would do.

Way back in 2003, I introduced a bill to end the funding gap, to fully fund IDEA, to require that the funding be phased in over a period of time until the Federal Government met its responsibilities. I have introduced that legislation every Congress for the last 22 years.

I have watched as Democrats and Republicans from the Senate and the House go back to their States and to their districts and tell people that they really support IDEA and that they really want to make sure kids with disabilities have that education, that quality education. They say to families that we are all in to support IDEA. But too many, when they come back here to Washington, DC, and have to make real decisions as to where funds are allocated in the Federal budget, when they have to choose between kids with disabilities and another tax break for the ultrawealthy, somehow many have a way of forgetting what they told folks back at home.

You know, I introduced this bill again this Congress, and I am glad we have 39 Democratic Senators as cosponsors, and we may get more. We have zero--no Republican Senators as cosponsors. I hope that will change. I really hope it will change.

As I said at the outset, it was President Ford, a Republican President, who signed into law the IDEA 50 years ago this year. He signed that law. That law requires that the Federal Government provide that 40 percent, and we are at 12 percent today.

So I hope, on this 50th anniversary of the time the Senate passed it, our Republican colleagues will join us on this legislation because the consequences of failing to fund IDEA are visible all over the country. Expenses are only rising as more students struggle with disabilities.

The good news is that we are developing new techniques for screening our children and helping them succeed in school. Some of those techniques require more resources, not less. Yet we are continuing to fail to meet our responsibilities.

Today, because we don't fully fund the IDEA here at the Federal level, schools make IEPs for their students, but many cannot follow through on their own plans, those individual education plans. Deaf students are going to class without sign language interpreters. Students with intellectual and developmental disabilities are going without the one-on-one aides--the aides who help them learn and make sure they don't get physically hurt.

Underresourced special education staff burn out huge numbers, leaving tens of thousands of vacant positions. In classrooms all over America-- in each of our States--there is a child who is sitting at the back of the room, struggling to follow a lesson, falling further and further behind.

While that child is trying, the Congress is not doing its job. It would cost $38 billion for Congress to keep its promises to fund special education this year--$38 billion. That could be made up by the entire funding gap, three times over, that was included in the so- called Big Beautiful Bill--more tax cuts for very wealthy people. If you were to add up all of those tax cuts, it would be $132 billion only for the part of the population that was in the top 1 percent. So folks in the top 1 percent income category got $132 billion in tax cuts. That is three times what would be needed to simply fulfill our obligations under the IDEA this year.

The Trump administration chose tax cuts for the top 1 percent over the IDEA just like it chose to give away trillions of dollars to the very wealthy and pay for it, in part, by defunding programs that working families depend on, including healthcare, Medicaid, SNAP, and public education funding, while failing to fully fund the IDEA.

It actually gets worse because, since March, the Trump administration has fired half of the people at the Department of Education. Then, during the recent shutdown, the Trump administration attempted to fire the remaining staff--all of the remaining staff--at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. Those are the people who implement the parts of the IDEA that we do fund. These are great American patriots, these Federal employees. Some of them are Marylanders, some of them are from Virginia, and some of them are from other parts of the country. They have experience in helping these kids, and they have knowledge that is very difficult to replace.

Fortunately, a Federal judge paused the firings of these individuals during the shutdown. The judge wrote that those attempted firings were nothing more than ``political retribution,'' and that judgment was reflected in the recent continuing resolution, at least through the end of January. Nevertheless, the Trump administration keeps looking for new ways to take resources away from our schools.

In fact, just yesterday--just yesterday--it announced the near total dismantling of what is left of the Education Department's advancing education programs. Secretary McMahon has said that her mission at the Department of Education is to shut down the Department of Education, to put out of business the Federal Department of Education. She claims that her objective is efficiency. She claims that kids won't be hurt. She, obviously, hasn't talked to the parents of kids all over the country, including the parents of kids with disabilities.

You know, she specifically said at a Senate Appropriations Committee, on June 3, that ``we are not cutting any of the IDEA funding.'' That claim covers up what is really happening here because, in September, the Department of Education and the administration cut 34 grants for special education, saying that they conflicted with the Trump administration's priorities. Their targets included teacher training, parent resource centers, and assistive technology for children with both hearing and vision loss. Somehow, helping those kids did not meet with the Trump administration's priorities.

Let me just say that what we are witnessing in realtime is an effort to gut the special education programs that exist today at the Department of Education. At the same time, we see a refusal to fully fund the IDEA program at levels promised by the Federal Government when it was first launched 50 years ago.

You know, there has always been a credibility gap since that first commitment was made 50 years ago. I have been standing on the floor-- first in the House and now in the Senate--and making remarks about the IDEA and the importance of closing this funding and credibility gap for over 20 years. We still haven't moved ahead.

Again, as I said, every Member of Congress, when they go back home from here, says they really want to support the IDEA. Now, it is time that people actually mean what they say and follow through because we are now at the 50th anniversary of the IDEA.

Some of the children I was hoping to help back in 2003, when I first introduced the full funding legislation, now have children of their own. Some of the children we promised to help in 1975--``we'' being the Congress back then--are now grandparents. We should not allow another generation to grow up under the shadow of our broken promises.

We passed the IDEA 50 years ago in the same spirit in which we signed the Declaration of Independence almost 250 years ago. In both cases, we made great and noble promises. We promised that all men and women were created equal and that the government would uphold that equality. But when it comes to funding education for kids with disabilities, that promise remains broken.

Judy Heumann, who is the mother of the disability rights movement, once wrote:

Change never happens at the pace we think it should

[happen]. It happens over years of people joining together,

strategizing, sharing, and pulling all the levers they

possibly can. Gradually, excruciatingly slowly, things start

to happen, and then, suddenly, seemingly out of the blue,

something will tip.

Something tipped 50 years ago, when the Senate, on this day, passed the IDEA bill. It has been a long, excruciating length of time since then. I hope that now, 50 years later, we will see another tipping point wherein Members of the House and Senate finally live up to the obligations that were made 50 years ago to really fully fund special education at the levels which we promised. We celebrated the passage of the IDEA 50 years ago. Let us commit ourselves to finally fulfilling that promise now.

With that, I am happy to yield the floor to the great Senator from Hawaii, who has been so focused on education generally and special education in particular, Senator Hirono.

Mr. President, I rise together with my colleagues from Maryland and Hawaii to celebrate 50 years of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. I will not speak long because I have a separate matter that I will take up after this.

My colleagues did a good job, I think, of shining a spotlight on the challenges that exist with the IDEA at 50--the chronic underfunding of this program, the Federal Government not meeting the commitment that it made in 1975 to fund 40 percent of these extra costs for kids with disabilities, the firing of staff recently.

These are serious issues, but I want to spend my time more focused on the celebration of what these 50 years of the IDEA have done.

When it was originally passed 50 years ago this month, the bill was called the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the EHA. It was renamed the ``IDEA'' in a reauthorization in 1990.

Guess what the vote was in Congress around the passage of this law that was signed by President Ford. In the Senate, the vote to pass this landmark civil rights and education law was 87 to 7, and in the House, the vote was 404 to 7. For a big, landmark civil rights and education law to pass with that kind of a margin is really near miraculous.

The reason that it passed so overwhelmingly was because society realized that we had been treating kids with disabilities in a very, very tragic and unforgiveable way.

Get this: In 1975, more than a million school-age children in this country were essentially locked out of public education because of the fact that they had a disability--either not being educated at all or being educated in institutions often far away from their homes and families, far away from their friends and neighbors, in a way that was not providing them adequate educational support.

So think about that million that has now grown to 7 million--nearly 1 in 7 students in our public school system receives special education services--what the trajectory of their lives was like before the IDEA passed and after the IDEA passed.

Students with a designated disability under the IDEA receive an individualized education plan so that their particular disability can be focused in a meaningful way to enable them to be all they can be. Isn't that what we want for all children? Let all children be all they can be.

It is not often noted, but it should be noted that many students who receive individualized education plans--the IEPs--only require special education services for a couple of years because even a couple of years of speech therapy or other kinds of special services is enough to get that student completely successful without additional services.

I know this from my own family, my own three kids who went through public schools, that sometimes the IEP and the services provided only need to be provided for a short period of time. Students who receive these services early in their educational careers often don't need them for more than a couple of preschool years or early grades, and then they are perfectly successful.

The IDEA works. It works. It works to enable these students who had been consigned to the shadows of life for generations to be able to achieve all that they can.

You know, one of the measures of success of the IDEA at 50 is this: As a mayor, public education was the biggest part of my city budget. As a Governor, it was the biggest part of my State budget. And, man, did I hear a lot of complaints from people about the IDEA. My educator said that Congress isn't funding it well enough. My educator said that the paperwork to do an IEP and then to assess its compliance is way too complicated. But I never had a single person, an educator or anyone else, say we should undo the IDEA.

For all of the challenges about underfunding, for all of the challenges about paperwork, there is uniform recognition in this country that the passage of the IDEA, the 50 years of a commitment by society that every child should be all they can be, is a good thing. Can we make it better? Of course, we can. But that bedrock promise that was made in 1975 is a good thing, and it has worked to enrich the lives now of tens of millions of people, to make them productive adults, just like any of us aspire to be. What a great thing to be able to celebrate.

That is why I join my colleagues today to celebrate what the 50 years have meant to the tens of millions of students who benefited from the IDEA and the commitment that we must do better.

I am very, very troubled by the underfunding and applaud my colleagues for focusing on that, but I am also very troubled by the actions of this administration to shed the staff who are needed to work with States and work with local governments to make sure that services are being appropriately provided.

I remember being on the HELP Committee during President Trump's first term and examining his nominee for Secretary of Education in the first term, Secretary DeVos. She was talking about letting the IDEA just be run by States, with no Federal role.

I remember questioning her at the hearing: Well, what about States that decide not to do it?

Because it is expensive, there would be some States, without Federal oversight, that would just decide they would rather not provide services, not fund services for students with disabilities.

I asked her the question: Do you think a parent of a child with a disability should just have to move to another State that is more compassionate?

No. We have a Federal, national commitment that a child born with a disability, whatever ZIP Code in this country they are born in, should be entitled to receive these basic services.

That promise is being threatened right now by the firings. That promise has always been threatened by the chronic underfunding.

So while I join with my colleagues in committing to continuing to work to improve it, I don't want this moment to be lost without acknowledging the tremendous good that has been done by this most bipartisan law to enrich the lives of tens of millions of children and their families.

With that, I yield the floor on this topic and would ask to continue on now a second matter.

Mr. President, in a moment, I am going to ask unanimous consent for the passage of S. Res. 473, and that is a resolution commemorating the seventh anniversary of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and calling for accountability for his murder.

This resolution is to honor the life and the absolutely gruesome death of the Washington Post journalist and Virginia resident Jamal Khashoggi.

For those who are not aware of Jamal Khashoggi's story, he dedicated his life to uncovering the truth. His work shed light on the repressive nature of the Saudi Arabian Government, and it exposed him to great personal danger. He fled Saudi Arabia in 2017, and his family found a home in Northern Virginia.

The Khashoggi story is now, unfortunately, too well known. On October 2, 2018, Mr. Khashoggi was brutally murdered by the Saudi Government agents at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkiye--murdered within a consulate, a place that is supposed to be a safe haven. His body, by all accounts of the United States and other intelligence, was dismembered by those Saudi agents within the consulate.

Mr. Khashoggi was not killed because he committed a crime. He was killed for speaking the truth as a journalist and shining a spotlight on the repressive nature of the Saudi Arabian Government. He was killed for standing up for the rights of his fellow Saudi Arabians.

Mr. Khashoggi's death is not a mystery. This is not a cold case waiting to be solved. We know exactly who is responsible for this killing.

The U.S. Government's Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as other U.S. intelligence Agencies, determined the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad bin Salman, or MBS as he is often referred to, approved an official governmental operation in Istanbul to capture or kill Jamal Khashoggi.

As a result of that operation approved by MBS, Mr. Khashoggi was ambushed as he went to the consulate to get some paperwork regarding his marriage. He was strangled, killed and his body was dismembered, and then evidence of that crime was attempted to be destroyed.

Seven years later, there has been no accountability for the person most responsible for the horrifying murder, no real justice for Jamal Khashoggi, no justice for his family, no justice for the many others who have raised their voices in Saudi Arabia and who, for something as simple as tweeting, are being threatened with execution.

Instead, the leader who approved the operation to kill Jamal Khashoggi, the man who is proud to oppress his own people, MBS, is being celebrated today at our White House. MBS was welcomed with a black-tie dinner. He is being offered F-35 fighter jets--one of the crowned jewels of our security apparatus over the open objections of our ally Israel and potentially in violation of the law. He is being offered extremely high-tech computer chips and other valuable U.S. technology. He is being offered a major mutual defense agreement.

It is, frankly, outrageous to me that the President of the United States would assert that American servicemembers should put their lives on the line to defend the oppressive regime in Saudi Arabia.

Yesterday, when President Trump was asked by a reporter from ABC

about Jamal Khashoggi, he said ``a lot of people didn't like'' Jamal. He said, about the killing, ``things happen.'' Things like a gruesome strangling in an Embassy and the dismembering of a body of a journalist for the Washington Post with a bone saw--things happen.

And then our President threatened ABC's broadcast license because the reporter had the audacity to ask him a question he didn't like.

I have said it many times, and I am going say it again: Standing with this regime with no accountability for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi is not ``America First.'' It is not consistent with our values as a world- leading democracy.

I was very vocal in my frustration about this matter not only during President Trump's first term but also during President Biden's term. When President Biden visited Saudi Arabia in 2022 and fist-bumped with MBS, I was vocal in my dissatisfaction.

I was vocal in my disappointment over this effort when the Biden administration's State Department sided with MBS in his efforts to gain sovereign immunity in the United States to avoid accountability for this murder. I was frustrated when Biden administration Middle East policy officials left the White House in January of 2025 and in short order, started signing lucrative contracts with the Saudi Government.

And I continue to be appalled as the families of senior Trump administration officials--Kushner family, Witkoff family, and President Donald J. Trump's own children--signed major deals with the Saudi regime in cryptocurrency or real estate development.

Just a few days ago, on November 15, the New York Times reported that the Trump organization was in talks to bring Trump-branded property to one of Saudi Arabia's largest government-owned real estate development.

I have huge questions, as I think many Americans do, about whether the intertwining of cryptocurrency or real estate deals is behind the President's casual reference to ``things happen'' to whitewash and excuse the assassination and dismembering of a Washington Post journalist who lived in my State.

When the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour made overtures about maybe acquiring the PGA in 2023, there was bipartisan outrage about that. But I have heard little outrage from any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle regarding MBS's visit.

Is the PGA more important, more worth raising concerns about than the transfer of F-35 jets to Saudi Arabia?

Shouldn't we ask: What is the Trump administration's priority? Is it democracy? Is it human rights? Is it national security? Or is it real estate or cryptocurrency deals that benefit family members of those in the administration?

Why is the administration willing to move so far to accommodate this regime, this individual, that our own intelligence Agencies have said is responsible for the murder of a Washington Post journalist who lives in my Commonwealth?

What is the United States getting from offering MBS all of this? Or is the United States getting anything? Is it instead individuals are getting their pockets filled at the expense of our Democratic human rights values?

Standing with Saudi Arabia against the interest of the American people, against our national security, against our human rights proclamations, against the security of our ally Israel, and against the freedom of the press right here at home is unconscionable.

Mr. President, I would like to ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 473; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, it has been a little over a year since President Trump was elected in his second term of office. The key part of the campaign and mandate was to secure the border and to reverse the disastrous open-border policies of the Biden administration.

As we see, President Trump is delivering on that campaign promise by implementing the very policies that the American people voted for, not to mention the fact that these policies and these laws were passed by Congress and signed into law, and our law enforcement Agencies are merely enforcing laws that Congress itself has passed.

The President is doing this by securing the United States-Mexican border to prevent more illegal aliens from coming into the country and also removing illegal aliens who entered our country during President Biden's open-border disaster.

Aggressive immigration enforcement is not unprecedented. President Obama, who has been praised by the left for unifying the country, deported more than 2\1/2\ million illegal immigrants, earning him the title ``Deporter-in-Chief.'' Democrats seem to have forgotten this data point, but I am happy to remind them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the progressive left in the Democratic Party these days has lost its mind in the face of enforcement of current immigration laws--again, which the American people voted for and Congress has passed. They haven't hesitated to spread misinformation and vilify the very men and women in law enforcement who are enforcing our immigration laws. These groups have not stopped spreading lies. They are actually inciting violent mobs to impede the enforcement of laws that Congress has passed.

Inciting mob violence against any law enforcement officer is unacceptable, and those who do so have to be held accountable. For this reason, I am holding a hearing, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, to examine these unfounded attacks on our law enforcement agents.

In particular, we will consider what is unfolding in America's so- called sanctuary cities.

Under President Biden, millions of unvetted illegal immigrants entered our country across the U.S.-Mexico border. These included criminal aliens, violent gang members, including MS-13, Tren de Aragua, and individuals on the Terror Watchlist that came not just from Mexico or Central America but from literally every corner of the world.

And where did they go after they crossed the border? These individuals found refuge primarily in America's sanctuary cities-- places like Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there are currently 12 sanctuary States and more than 200 sanctuary cities in the United States. Many of these States and communities have passed laws that actually prevent local police officers from cooperating with Federal law enforcement officers employed by ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This means that, in some instances, these local law enforcement officers can't share information about detained or incarcerated aliens, or honor DHS--Department of Homeland Security--detainers placed on criminal aliens. So ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has no alternative but to conduct raids on various sites to detain illegal aliens and then see that they are removed from the country.

So just to explain that a minute, when an illegal alien is arrested and placed in a local jail, if local authorities are allowed to and do, in fact, cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that transfer from the local jail to the immigration officials can occur in the jail, and then ICE doesn't need to conduct dangerous raids in our communities in these sanctuary cities.

But in the sanctuary cities, that is not possible. They have no alternative, since there is no cooperation at the local level. So in those jurisdictions, in the so-called sanctuary cities, criminal aliens are released back into their communities and inevitably reoffend--that means they commit other crimes--rather than being detained by the Department of Homeland Security and allowing them to take custody.

This practice not only defies common sense; it makes the role of immigration enforcement officers more difficult and, in the end, more painful for each of these communities.

I would hope, at least, that some of my colleagues across the aisle would agree that criminal aliens should be detained and deported. I am not sure they would agree with that. It seems, by their conduct and by their votes, they are suggesting that illegal aliens have just as much right to be in the United States as you and me.

So once these criminals are picked up off the streets and detained in jails, why wouldn't we want Federal law enforcement officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be able to accept them, transfer them from the jail authorities to ICE custody, and then deport them?

Any alien who has already shown a complete disregard for U.S. law should not be allowed to stay in the United States.

Sanctuary cities, instead, have the practice of actually releasing these very people--sometimes dangerous people whom we all know should be first in line for deportation.

ICE would not have to go into communities and find criminal aliens if elected officials and local governments would simply cooperate with Federal law enforcement authorities. These cities could have facilitated enforcement the easy way, but, instead, they chose the hard way.

Instead of reporting this unfortunate reality truthfully, mainstream media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and ABC have ignored the real harm that these criminal aliens have caused in these communities and instead directed their ire toward law enforcement. This is sort of a manifestation of what used to be called the ``defund the police'' movement, which has made so many communities in our States and Nation unsafe, because ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, which are employed by the Department of Homeland Security, are Federal law enforcement officials.

And, basically, when the mainstream media accuses them of what, in essence, is just doing their job, they are suggesting that the laws should not be enforced and that the fault, if there is fault, lies with the Federal law enforcement officers that are simply doing their job as mandated by Congress.

The mainstream media and Democratic elected officials have used incendiary rhetoric to fan the flames of public protest that are anything but ``mostly peaceful.'' The result has been widespread assault on our law enforcement officers.

Protestors and criminal aliens have physically attacked them in some instances. They have rammed officers

with vehicles, thrown tear gas, smoke grenades, rocks, bottles, and even punched and shot at these law enforcement officers for simply doing their job.

Leftwing protestors have laid down on the street in an attempt to prevent vehicles belonging to law enforcement from entering or leaving detention facilities and even slashed government vehicle tires, all in an effort to prevent ICE and Customs and Border Protection from doing their job.

Officers have been pepper-sprayed, choked, punched, and injured to the point of hospitalization in some cases. These individuals who seem to be celebrated and certainly given a lot of publicity in the mainstream media, as if they were in the right--these groups have prevented the arrest and removal of criminals--documented criminals-- including facilitating the escape, in one case, of a convicted child rapist who is now out there somewhere in the community at large.

The Democratic Party claims to be the party of the people, but when it comes to protecting the American people from violent gangs like Tren de Aragua, pedophiles, and rapists, they simply look the other way or claim that the fault lies with law enforcement, not the people who have already violated our laws.

Progressive activists have done everything they can imagine to impede immigration enforcement officers from carrying out their duty, including doxing them, putting their personal information on the Web, and even making death threats.

The leftwing media has been intent on giving this behavior a pass, but Senate Republicans will not give them a pass.

So I encourage all of my colleagues and all of my constituents back home in Texas to tune into the hearing that we intend to have this afternoon in the Senate Judiciary Committee. In this hearing, we will hear testimony from Sheriff Boyd, who will give an update on Texas's cooperation with immigration enforcement and how it protects their officers and local communities. Danielle Carter-Walters will offer insight into how leftwing policies are failing Chicago residents and other Americans living in sanctuary cities, and Mia Cathell, an investigative journalist from the Washington Examiner, will offer a journalist's perspective on how leftwing groups are funding these protests against ICE.

While the mainstream media, apparently, will stop at nothing to spread lies and vilify the very people who have sworn to uphold our laws, my Republican colleagues and I are not afraid to push back in order to let the American people know the truth.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Maryland for his passionate advocacy for IDEA. IDEA is a critical program of the U.S. Department of Education.

Let me tell you what is happening to the U.S. Department of Education under President Trump.

We have a regime--that is what I call the Trump administration. It is a regime hell-bent on dismantling the Federal Government. From withholding billions in Federal funding to conducting mass firings of Federal workers and shuttering critical Agencies with hardly any notice at all, to implementing countless, harmful Executive actions, the Trump regime has sown chaos, corruption, and cruelty from day one. It is no wonder that there are now over 300 lawsuits to stop Trump's illegal actions.

It is clear Trump doesn't give a rip about our government or the millions of Americans who rely on the services it provides. That includes the U.S. Department of Education, which does critical work to ensure our country's more than 50 million--50 million--public school students can get a quality education.

Instead of trying to strengthen the Department of Education's support for our Nation's public schools, Trump and his allies are trying to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education completely. This has always been part of

his plan. He began his second term by summarily firing nearly half of the Department's workforce. He did this in one fell swoop. These committed people at the Department of Education were told: You don't have to come to work tomorrow. So this followed the plan laid out, basically, for President Trump and Project 2025. Then, just this week, his Secretary of Education laid out plans to slash and dismantle the Department even further.

Education is foundational. It certainly was for me. As an immigrant, I came to this country not knowing any English. I didn't read or write English. It is the education system that this country afforded me that provided me the opportunities that resulted in my standing here, giving these remarks.

So, while we can all agree that there are ways we can improve our education system, we should also be able to agree that there is a role for the Federal Government in helping to ensure that all students--50 million--receive a quality education. For decades, the Department of Education has played that role of working to protect students against discrimination and ensure equal opportunities in our schools.

Of course, one of the ways it does this is by supporting students with disabilities. Signed into law in 1975, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, protects the rights of more than 7 million students with disabilities across the country--7 million. The IDEA helps to ensure these students receive free and appropriate public education that meets their needs. It also provides funding--yes, we need to fund the IDEA to the extent that is required--to help support these students and ensure the oversight of services for students with disabilities.

Before the IDEA was enacted, we did not have these kinds of Federal protections for students with disabilities. As a result, there was no way to ensure that students with disabilities were not denied access to education or were not neglected in our schools. As noted by my colleague from Maryland, many of these students didn't even get to go to school. They didn't have IDEA.

So, later this month, we will celebrate the 50th year of IDEA--the landmark law that has provided millions of young people with access to a free and appropriate public education.

Despite the success of the IDEA and programs like it, this regime is accelerating plans to dismantle the Department of Education and roll back the progress it has enabled by moving important programs to other Departments with no education expertise.

Recently, for example, Trump tried to take advantage of the shutdown to illegally fire hundreds more workers from the Education Department, including the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and the Office for Civil Rights.

Education Secretary McMahon--herself one of Trump's billionaire buddies--has made the preposterous claim that the shutdown proved the Education Department is unnecessary. This is the kind of unsubstantiated--I can hardly believe that she would consider this proof of any kind, but this is the kind of stuff that the Trump administration always claims. The regime makes these kinds of unsubstantiated claims on a regular basis to justify its ill-conceived and often illegal acts.

In reality, I had constituents reaching out to my office during the shutdown to share concerns about how furloughs of the Department of Education were impacting Hawaii's public schools and the students they serve, including the students with disabilities.

I heard from the mother of a 4-year-old boy who attends a title I school in Hawaii. She was concerned about how the mass firings of special education staff threatened the services her child received.

Every public school child who receives special education must have, as mentioned, an individualized education program, or IEP--a plan to help meet the unique needs of each student. But without the necessary trained staff to support oversight of these programs, there is no one to help guide teachers or schools in developing these plans and ensuring that they are implemented or followed.

As mentioned, just yesterday, Secretary McMahon released a detailed plan for reorganizing the Department of Education by moving dozens of programs and services to other Agencies that do not have the necessary staffing, funding, or expertise to oversee these programs. We can expect that she will try to move IDEA too.

I heard from a middle school teacher on Hawaii island who emphasized just how unrealistic Trump's plan is to move oversight of IDEA to another Agency outside of the Education Department. He rightly pointed out that other Agencies have ``no expertise in the complex education law that is I-D-E-A.''

Education specialists, officers, and analysts within the Office of Special Education programs are trained to best support IDEA. It is not as though you can just move this program to Homeland Security or Human Services and expect them to be able to provide the kind of support that IDEA requires. Moving this program would mean a loss of expertise that will not be rebuilt quickly, leaving our most vulnerable students to pay the price.

As another example of moving programs out of the Department of Education as part of the dismantling of the Department--I could not resist this example--President Trump proposes to move the student loan portfolio to the Small Business Administration, which has neither the capacity nor the expertise needed to handle this massive program. The SBA is one of the smallest Federal Government Agencies. How is it supposed to handle a Department of Education program with over 40 million borrowers and over $1.5 trillion in loans? It can't.

Clearly, neither Trump nor Secretary McMahon see a Federal role in education because they are just moving programs without figuring out how these programs are even going to be continued. In fact, that is not their intention. Their intention is to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education, and they can't do that because only Congress can do that. So what do they come up with? These alternative ways to dismantle the Department.

Shouldn't supporting our public schools and our children's education be a national priority? I mean, obviously President Trump and Secretary McMahon don't think it is a national priority. Certainly, it is a national priority in other countries. Why? Because these other countries know, as I said earlier, that education is foundational and that an educated populous is an engaged populous.

By gutting staff and funding that students rely on and attempting to eliminate the Department altogether--a plan that will inevitably hurt our students, no question--this regime's actions make it abundantly clear that they don't want an engaged populous. One can't help but wonder why.

This regime is not committed to public education. They are not committed to public education. They don't see a Federal role for public education, and that is the long and short of it.

We can and must do better to support the education of 50-plus million children in our country.