Floor Statements

Mr. President, it is a great day to be a billionaire in America; for the rest of us, not so much. Egg prices are the highest they have ever been. Rent is through the roof. Prescription drug costs are squeezing families and seniors. But billionaires like Elon Musk-- billionaires--are doing just great. In fact, they are about to be doing a whole lot better because, if Donald Trump and my Republican colleagues have it their way, they are about to get another massive handout--a $4.5 trillion handout, to be precise--yes, trillion with a ``t''--and one that will explode the national debt.

This bill, the one we will all, but certainly soon, consider on this very floor, reads like a thank-you card to the ultrawealthy. It supercharges the President's 2017 billionaire windfall.

But how, we should ask, are we going to pay for it? Well, we already know; don't we? They are going to come after Medicaid. Forty-four percent of their proposed cuts to fund this tax cut for billionaires are to Medicaid.

They are going to come after Medicare and healthcare generally. They are going to come after the services that keep our veterans housed, our communities healthy, our children educated. All of it--all of it--is on the chopping block, and here is the thing: They are already chopping away.

So let's be crystal clear about what Republicans are asking us to consider. It is a smash-and-grab, targeting not the local store but the national Treasury--a cash grab from the programs that keep so many hard-working families afloat and what will be the biggest wealth transfer in modern American history, and in exactly the wrong direction, from the working and middle-class families to the uberrich, at a time when billionaires need it the least. Now, don't get me wrong. I am all for people succeeding beyond their wildest imagination. But like everyone else, they should earn it through hard work, not by stealing it from working people.

All of this comes as Elon Musk and Donald Trump seek to co-opt every lever of government to go after anyone who dares stand up to them. When I called out Musk for seeking access to Americans' personal banking and financial data from the IRS, he retweeted one of the replies and aimed it at--well, me, yours truly.

It read:

He's not trying to snoop around my personal finances. He's

trying to snoop around yours--

Meaning mine.

They are not even hiding it anymore. The goal has never been to cut government waste or make government more efficient. No, the goal is to help their wealthy friends and go after anyone who dares criticize them or holds them accountable. They plan to use a weaponized IRS, a weaponized DOJ, and a weaponized FBI to investigate and prosecute and persecute Donald Trump's enemies, not just elected officials like myself but anyone who steps out of line: business owners, big or small, who could be next in line for an audit if they express their opposition to the President and what he is doing to hurt them with tariffs or anything else, or journalists who write stories that the President doesn't like--anyone--because anyone standing up to them is standing in the way of their very simple, well-demonstrated goal: One-man rule-- give Donald Trump all the power, so he can take from the poor and give to the rich to feed his ego and bank account and that of his pals.

Remember the winter of 2023? Donald Trump stood at the gold-plated Mar-a-Lago podium and told a room full of the richest people in America:

You're all people that have a lot of money. . . . You're

rich as hell. . . . We're going to give you tax cuts.

Most of my California constituents are not ``rich as hell''--far from it--and Donald Trump couldn't care less about them. The vast majority of them make less in a decade than it costs to pay the million-dollar membership fee at Mar-a-Lago, let alone the amount necessary to get a gold-plated promise from the now-President that their taxes will get lowered.

But for this administration, it has never been about ordinary Americans. And if you look at what Donald Trump is proposing here, the priority is exceedingly clear. If you look at what Elon Musk has done over the last few weeks, his priority is pretty damn clear as well.

A single mother choosing between paying rent and buying groceries, that is not the priority. A veteran wondering if the housing assistance that helped them get off the street is going to dry up, that is not their priority. But that billionaire who wants another yacht, now that is their priority. When a CEO wants another corporate loophole, that is the priority.

Now, of course, they won't put it that way. They will tell you this is about spurring investment or creating jobs or unleashing the power of the free market. We have heard that story before. Remember 2017, when Donald Trump gave trillions to the wealthy and promised these tax cuts would pay for themselves? Guess what--and you won't believe this. They didn't. They didn't pay for themselves. In fact, they exploded the deficit by as much as $2 trillion. And now they are telling us the only way to fix the hole they dug is by cutting services for the Americans who actually need them and, of course, more tax cuts for rich people.

We all heard it when they told us: If we just cut corporate taxes a bit more, the savings are sure to trickle down to working families. Well, they didn't. Corporate profits hit record highs. CEO bonuses soared, but wages--wages for regular people--they barely budged, to the point where it would take an average worker at an S&P 500 company almost 200 years to make what their CEO made last year. Just think about that for a moment. It would now take an average worker at an S&P 500 company almost 200 years to make what their CEO made last year.

How is that right? How is that fair? How is that good economics? And how could they possibly want to make that worse?

What is their goal? To provide another tax cut for the wealthy so that it will now take 300 years for an average worker to make what their CEO makes?

We are hearing the same pitch all over again, but, I will tell you, what has changed since 2017, since that last big give-away? Nothing. Nada. Bubkes. They want you to believe that we can afford to shower the wealthiest people and corporations with even more tax breaks, but we can't afford to pay Federal workers, including a ton of veterans who dedicated their lives to serving this country at home and abroad.

Now, we can hand trillions to millionaires and billionaires, but we can't afford to help families afford childcare, or hire firefighters, or fund critical

cancer research--that the real problem, they would have you believe, in the richest country in the world is the program that helps seniors retire with dignity.

At the end of the day, governing is about choices. The choices aren't always easy. There are very few clear choices in a complex and robust democracy, but this should not be a hard choice, because today we are not asked what we can afford. We are asked what we choose to afford. We could choose to invest in our children, in our workers, in our future; or we can choose to hand the wealthiest Americans another tax cut they don't need. We can choose to honor the commitments we made to seniors, to veterans, to families struggling to get by; or we can choose to break those commitments just to make sure that Elon Musk's tax bill stays as low as humanly possible. After all, launching your car into space isn't cheap.

We could choose to build an economy that works for everyone, or we could choose to keep writing blank checks to those who already have more than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes or 200 or 300.

Donald Trump has made his choice. Elon Musk has made his choice. What will we choose?

Donald Trump and Elon Musk would have you believe that America is broke.

America isn't broke, but it is broken for so many people who actually do the work.

So, no, it is not a great day to be a teacher struggling to pay the rent or a nurse working a double shift just to afford groceries. It is not a great day to be a retiree watching Social Security and Medicare under attack. But it is a great day to be a billionaire in America, and that, my colleagues, is exactly the problem.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today, we consider the nomination of RFK, Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

In a time when science has given us the tools to extend life, to eradicate disease, to protect the most vulnerable among us, this body is being asked to confirm a man who has dedicated the better part of his career to attacking science.

But the debate over RFK, Jr., and his anti-science agenda does not take place in isolation. It is part of a broader and far more reaching and destructive agenda. It is part of an effort to dismantle public services, to strip away all the country's resources, to defund the Department of Health and Human Services, to take away from those who have little and hand it to those who have everything.

So this is not just about RFK, Jr.; it is about every senior who relies on Medicare, every low-income family whose children get healthcare through Medicaid, every person who depends on

the government not as a luxury but as a necessity.

I want to take us back for a moment to talk about why we even have a Department of Health and Human Services in the first place. Because when a government works the way it is supposed to, when public health and security is taken seriously, HHS exists to ensure that no American has to choose between their health and bankruptcy. It exists because we decided as a nation that we would not let people lose everything just because they get sick, that we would not let children die from preventable diseases, that we would set basic rules on food and drug safety to protect families, that we would invest in science not as an indulgence but as a way to improve the life and the quality of life for all Americans.

And, tonight, we are being asked to hand over that responsibility to a man who has spent his career undermining scientific achievement, to a man who has told Americans a thousand different times in a thousand different ways not to trust the very science that has saved millions of lives.

So who exactly is RFK, Jr., and what does he believe? Let's talk about what this nominee has actually said. In 2005, he wrote an article, one so riddled with falsehoods that even the publisher, Rolling Stone, retracted it--this article accusing the government of covering up a supposed link between vaccines and autism, an article that said vaccines ``poison[ed] an entire generation of American children.'' That claim has been debunked more times than any of us can count.

The New England Journal of Medicine, the CDC, the WHO, the American Academy of Pediatrics--every credible institution that studies this issue has confirmed what the science has long established: Vaccines do not cause autism.

But Mr. Kennedy did not retract the claim. He did not acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus. No. No. He doubled down. He founded the Children's Health Defense, an organization that masquerades as a public health group while spreading disinformation that has fueled vaccine hesitancy across this country and beyond.

His group has falsely linked vaccines to neurological disorders, to chronic illnesses, to developmental delays. They have suggested, without a shred of evidence, that childhood immunization schedules are unsafe. They have flooded social media with scare tactics, with conspiracy theories, with outright lies that have led parents to refuse vaccines for their children.

They even sold children's onesies with catch phrases like ``No Vax, No Problem'' and ``Unvaxxed, Unafraid.''

And because words have power, because a lie repeated enough can masquerade as truth, the damage has been staggering.

The 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa: Why did that happen? Because vaccination rates plummeted down to just 31 percent after anti-vaccine activists spread fear and misinformation. Robert F. Kennedy was part of that.

His organization amplified the very lies that led Samoan parents to hesitate, to delay, to forgo the measles vaccine--reckless, irresponsible, and deadly.

Mr. President, 83 lives were lost when measles tore throughout the region. Most of those killed were children. There were parents who trusted, as all parents do, that the world would be safe for their sons and daughters, and what did they find? They found that trust abused by people peddling misinformation, by reckless speculation dressed up as concern, by the very ideas Mr. Kennedy has trafficked in for years.

Let's not pretend that this is some harmless contrarian at play here, that this is some cocktail party eccentric, or that this is some kind of lively academic debate. When a man tells millions of people not to vaccinate their children and they listen, children die.

It did not stop there. In 2021, in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic, as COVID-19 tore through communities and filled emergency rooms to capacity, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., used his platform not to encourage vaccination, not to protect the public, but to do quite the opposite. He promoted the lie that mRNA vaccines alter human DNA. False--they do not. He suggested, without evidence, that the COVID vaccine was more dangerous than the virus itself--false. He compared vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany, invoking Anne Frank--a grotesque and offensive distortion of history.

As recent as 2023, RFK was on podcasts arguing that ``there's no vaccine that is safe and effective.''

This is the man we are considering for Secretary of Health and Human Services--a man who, when presented with lifesaving science, does not champion it, he undermines it; a man who, when given the choice between protecting public health and indulging conspiracy theories, chooses conspiracy every single time.

It is worth asking ourselves why Donald Trump would support a nominee so unqualified for this position, whose views are so contrary to science. Yes, I get it, RFK dropped out of the Presidential race and endorsed Donald Trump, but is there more to it than that? I think the answer is yes.

To understand why Donald Trump would support a nominee so unqualified, it is worth asking ourselves why scientists like Anthony Fauci, who have devoted their long careers to deploying science in the service of better health, have been made a villain by Donald Trump. Because the answer lies in the mirror image of the two. Why promote RFK, Jr., the vaccine charlatan, and at the same time vilify Anthony Fauci, the vaccine champion?

I will say this: Of all the attacks on our institutions during the first 4 years of Donald Trump, nothing was more corrosive to our democracy than his relentless assault on the truth because nothing is more useful to a demagogue than to destroy the very idea of truth. If nothing is to be believed, then nothing is to be believed. If there is not some shared experience to draw upon, then what is left to decide who should govern but political tribe or violence and one-man rule?

This is why the demagogue always attacks a free press and calls it fake. He must cause the public not to believe its lying eyes. A vicious mob attacks the Capitol; the would-be despot calls them tourists. The mob attacks police and beats them; the would-be despot calls them political prisoners. He fires inspectors general whose job it is to root out corruption and says it is to fight corruption. He wants to dismantle the Agency that protects consumers; he says that it is to protect consumers. He wants to plunder the Treasury to make his rich friends richer and shower them with tax cuts, and he says he is saving the Treasury by emptying it.

But why the attack on science? What has science to do with a despot's need to attack the truth? Well, what is the scientific inquiry but a search for fact and truth? And what is the scientist but the symbol of a search for fact and truth? Want to attack the truth? You must attack the truth tellers. You must attack science itself. Out with the Faucis and in with the charlatans.

But the truth cannot be made to disappear so easily. I remember who saved our country during its most deadly pandemic in 100 years, and it wasn't the charlatans. It was the scientists and the healthcare workers and the essential workers.

We saw true heroes during that pandemic. I remember the images clear as day--first responders without the necessary PPE rushing into homes where infected individuals were afraid and alone; nurses and EMTs working back-to-back shifts and watching their friends, neighbors, and communities torn apart inside and out by this horrible disease.

We got out of that pandemic in significant part because of the vaccine and the brave healthcare providers who administered it and other lifesaving care, not despite it.

While Mr. Kennedy postures as a skeptic, while he frames himself as a crusader against corruption, his organization did nothing to help us through that deadly pandemic, and, in fact, he has profited handsomely from the fear that organization sows.

In 2020 alone, Children's Health Defense saw its revenue double, raking in millions as the pandemic worsened. Mr. Kennedy built himself a lucrative career not by exposing anti-science falsehoods but by spreading them, by cultivating them, and profiting from them. This is opportunism of the most grotesque kind. This is grift masquerading as principle. And now, we are being

asked to entrust the health of 330 million Americans to this man?

I have to ask because it demands to be asked: What exactly is the vision here? What kind of Health and Human Services Secretary does the Trump administration believe they are appointing?

I think they know, and I think they know they have their man in RFK, Jr., because if your goal is to dismantle public health, if your goal is to dismantle the truth, if you want a Secretary who will tell people to ignore doctors and trust whatever random YouTube video they last saw, then, yes, this is your guy. If you want a Secretary who won't say no even if the falsehoods cost lives, like advocating bleach or horse dewormer to cure COVID, this is your guy.

If you want a Secretary who has no will, desire, or guts to stand up to Elon Musk or Donald Trump, who craves nothing more than the attention that a high office will bring, then this--this is most definitely your guy.

If your goal is to make sure that Medicaid--the single largest source of health insurance in this country--becomes nothing more than a cautionary tale at the behest of RFK, Jr., and Dr. Oz; if you want millions of people to lose coverage; if you want seniors to see their Medicare protections gutted, then by all means, let's give Mr. Kennedy the job.

While they are gutting healthcare, while they are stripping away protections, while they are making measles great again, they want to hand out tax cuts to billionaires like party favors. Trillions of dollars taken out of our healthcare system and handed over to the wealthiest among us. Trillions of dollars to people who already have more than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. But that child in Medicare or Medicaid who needs insulin, that senior on Medicare who has a heart condition--no, we are told there is just not enough in the budget for them.

Well, I reject the cynical notion that government exists only to serve the powerful. I reject the idea that expertise is optional, that science is negotiable, and that the well-being of the American people is just another chip to be bargained away. I reject it, and I know I am not the only one.

I do not believe in a government that exists only to protect the powerful, I do not believe that we are at our best when we are most indifferent, and I do not believe that the American experiment was meant to end with a nation that surrenders its own future to cynics and con men.

So let me tell you what I do believe. I believe in the doctor pulling a double shift in the community hospital, exhausted but unwavering, because she took an oath to heal. I believe in the mother who walks her child into a free clinic and breathes easier knowing that today, at least, her son's asthma will be treated and he will breathe easier. I believe in the scientist who spends a lifetime working in obscurity so that one day no child has to suffer such a terrible and specific disease again. I believe in a government that does not mock these people, that does not sabotage them, that does not sell them out for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many. And I believe we need the best and brightest to shepherd our healthcare system, our resources, to maximize every dollar in search of every cure.

RFK is not the best or the brightest. He will not bring back Camelot or make America healthy again, but his ignorance of science just might make people sick again, might deprive them of a treatment they need again, might cause hospitals to close again, might discourage young people from entering the sciences again. He just might.

We must not confirm a man who so willingly endeavors to be the enemy of the truth when it comes to our health. We need to vote like our lives depend on it because, for a great many Americans, it will.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, after Tulsi Gabbard was selected as Donald Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence, the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda was overjoyed. They wrote: ``The CIA and FBI are trembling.'' Sadly, the Russian newspaper is probably right about that.

Another Russian state outlet called her a ``Comrade.''

On a separate broadcast, top Putin mouthpiece Vladimir Solovyov, after gushing about Kash Patel, said: ``And what about our girl? We have our girl there.'' ``Our girl'' is evidently the Kremlin's way of referring to our nominee Tulsi Gabbard. His guest asked, so as to be sure, ``Intelligence?'' The answer was yes.

RT, yet another Russian outlet that Ms. Gabbard ``regularly read and shared articles from,'' took to Twitter to defend her: ``We've got your back, Tulsi.'' Yes, they certainly do. In September, it was revealed that RT was acting covertly on behalf of Moscow to spread propaganda in the United States. It is not a surprise that RT has Tulsi Gabbard's back. The question is, Should we?

The Director of National Intelligence is the nerve center of our Nation's intelligence network. It is the linchpin between 18 Agencies tasked with detecting and preventing threats to our national security and coordinating our intelligence resources. It is a job that requires judgment. It requires experience. It requires a high degree of trust. Above all, it requires a deep and unwavering commitment to the truth and a willingness to stand up to despots. Yet the nominee before us is stunningly lacking in all of these qualities.

Ms. Gabbard's record in Congress is not one of distinction in intelligence matters. She did not serve on the Intelligence Committee in the House and was not known for advancing meaningful legislation on intelligence in this space. When she did sign on to legislation, it was to eliminate critically important intelligence programs or it was to praise those who leaked classified information and did great damage to our Nation, like Edward Snowden.

She did not wrestle with the complexities of the intelligence- gathering analysis process. In fact, in the moments when her voice was heard on matters of foreign policy, it was in ways that should concern all of us. She has echoed, amplified, and at times outright defended the positions of autocrats and despots.

When now-deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people, she cast doubt on the findings of our own intelligence Agencies--cast doubt on them just like the Russian propaganda outlets did--this, after she engaged in her own form of freelance foreign policy, traveling to Syria to meet with Assad and get the full scoop on his government's narrative of that murderous crusade.

On her return, she positively crowed about how lovely this dictator was. ``He wants to be seen as someone who cares for his country.'' Well, maybe if he wanted to be seen as someone who cares for his country, he shouldn't have gassed his own people. ``He wants to be seen as someone who would not conduct these kinds of atrocities,'' Tulsi Gabbard said--except that he did. He did commit these kinds of atrocities.

When Vladimir Putin launched his brutal war against our ally Ukraine, she once again parroted Kremlin talking points about so-called ``provocations'' by NATO. She repeated Russian propaganda claims that the United States had set up secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine and argued that the United States, not Russia, is responsible for Putin's nuclear brinksmanship.

This is the nominee for our intelligence Agencies--not the Kremlin's; this is our nominee, Tulsi Gabbard. This is who this President seeks to hand over the keys to our national security; to entrust her with the Nation's most closely held secrets; to be the final voice in the room advising the President on intelligence; to be, in the plain words of the law, ``the principal adviser to the President, to the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to the national security''--this, Tulsi Gabbard.

This nomination is not just unwise, it is dangerous.

Make no mistake, Ms. Gabbard is entitled to her own personal opinions. She can apologize for Assad or Putin or any other murderous dictator to her heart's content. But we are not considering Ms. Gabbard for some position in which her bizarre fondness for foreign despots is beside the point. She is not the nominee for Postmaster General. We are considering her for one of the most important jobs in our intelligence community. For that, Tulsi Gabbard is a walking five-alarm fire and must be rejected--must be.

There is a reason the Director of National Intelligence must have the confidence of both the intelligence professionals that they oversee and the national security establishment--because the job requires accountability; it requires trust; it requires truthfulness.

In 2015, Ms. Gabbard joined a congressional delegation trip to the Middle East, the kind that so many of us in this Chamber have participated in. She visited a Turkish town near the Syrian border where countless refugees were sheltering. Her guide took Ms. Gabbard to meet two Syrian girls, age just 9 and 4 years old, who had been badly burned in a bombing carried out by the Syrian dictator's warplanes. The children's parents had been killed in that attack. These brave, small children told their story to the then-Congresswoman.

In this situation, I think any of us would have roughly the same response: some form of sympathy, some form of empathy, some attempt to provide comfort to these children who saw their lives and their families destroyed in front of them. But Ms. Gabbard had a very different response.

By the account of the guide who was with her, she looked at the children and said: ``How do you know if it was Assad? What if it was

Mr. President, it is getting late, too late for some of the people we serve to even be awake--though I imagine many are. Not by choice, a mother in the Central Valley is awake, staring at her kitchen table, trying to work out where her sick child can receive the medical care that child needs now that a Federal grant supporting the only rural healthcare center in her community is in limbo.

A Federal employee is awake trying to figure out how they will make the rent next month if they are laid off. Maybe they spent a few decades serving this country overseas and were just called back home. Now what?

People around the world are awake watching humanitarian help that means their next meal or safe harbor from disease has disappeared, wondering why, in their time of most need, their longtime ally has decided to abandon them, because the Trump administration has turned their lives, turned so many of our lives, into a series of question marks, because this President and his cronies like Elon Musk and Russ Vought are putting politics and profits over people's lives, over people's livelihoods, over lives.

They are creating chaos, and then, somehow, worst of all, they are gloating about it. Imagine gloating about acts so callous. ``Chaos'' seems to be the watchword of this administration, but the chaos is not a consequence of this. The chaos is the goal. The chaos is the purpose. By throwing everything at the wall, they can create confusion. They hope to muddy the waters while opening the floodgates: unconstitutional Executive orders, illegal memos, illegally accessing private citizens' data. The scope and the speed of these actions are almost impossible to comprehend, and the impact is incalculable.

This is all part of a larger effort to consolidate power, every possible power, in the control of one man--well, maybe two men--so they can plunder the country to benefit themselves and their billionaire buddies.

What is this all about, what we have witnessed in the first couple weeks of this administration? What do these disparate acts have in common? What is the through line? What is it that the seizure of data belonging to millions and millions of Americans by Elon Musk--what does that have in common with the efforts to shutter American development assistance around the world through USAID? What does that have in common with efforts to fire top prosecutors at the Justice Department and purge FBI agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation? What does this have in common, too, with pardoning violent criminals who attacked this building? What does it have in common with a funding freeze and then a memorandum to implement the funding freeze and then the repeal of the memorandum and all the confusion that has caused? What does the mass deportation order have in common with all of this? What is the story of what they are doing here? How does this all fit together?

It fits together in this way: This is an effort to try to consolidate power--all of the power of this government--in the hands of Donald Trump and a few of his handpicked, very wealthy, billionaire friends. It is designed to consolidate that power to essentially take the resources of this country and enrich themselves and their friends--an effort to enrich themselves which would not be possible, will not be possible, if our system of checks and balances work. But if they can somehow take apart these institutions; if they can somehow persuade or demand or cow the people in this institution and the House of Representatives and the courts and the Supreme Court; if they can prevent us from playing our institutional role as a check and balance, then what is left between them and the Treasury? Nothing. Nothing.

So this is the goal: Discredit the government, dismember the government, dismember checks and balances so they can raid the till. Make government purposefully dysfunctional, discredit every institution so that all that is left is the power of the strongman, and the wealth of this country can be stripped away.

Checks and balances be damned. Congressional authority be damned. The President wants to steamroll all of that, and at the moment, it appears he is succeeding. But Donald Trump can't do this on his own. He needs enablers--enablers to subvert our laws, enablers to divert congressionally approved funds.

Sure, everyone knows Elon Musk, but it is not just Elon Musk. And today, we consider the nomination of the system's engineer to lead the Office of Management and Budget--probably the most important Agency no one has heard of. That engineer, that architect of this effort to strip the country of its resources so they can be plundered by the President and his wealthy friends; the architect, the engineer of this, the one who will make the trains run on time, the guy that stops the train to allow the highway robbery of that train, is a man named Russ Vought.

We all recall Project 2025. Project 2025--Russ Vought helped to write it. That funding freeze? Vought helped orchestrate the plan for it. And the slew of outrageous, dangerous actions taken by this administration over the past several weeks were in many ways a direct result of Vought and his plan to dismantle and destroy the government in the service of Donald Trump and his wealthy friends.

One analysis found that two-thirds of the Executive orders that Trump has signed come from--that is right--Project 2025.

Russ Vought doesn't believe in government except as a vehicle to take from the poor and take from the middle class and give to the wealthy people, who should be running everything. He doesn't believe in the simple idea that we the people compose our institutions; we the people are the government--a government that is supposed to be for the people, not for a handful of very wealthy people. No, Russ Vought believes in dismantling that government of the people piece by piece, brick by brick, until what remains is a hollowed-out bureaucracy that serves the interests of the wealthy and abandons everyone else, to make it so small they can drown it in a bathtub, because that is what this is all about.

This is all about taking the Nation's resources for themselves. It is about using the infrastructure, the architecture of the government to enrich themselves. This is about plunder. That is what they are trying to do.

The last few weeks are not incompetence. It isn't mismanagement, although there is plenty of that. No. This is a deliberate effort to break the Federal Government so completely that people lose faith in its ability to function at all. When people lose faith in the government of the people, when they stop believing it is for the people, that is when the real damage begins. That is when they can dismantle the safety net program by program. That is when they can make the people beholden to the strongman. That is when Federal workers-- scientists, economists, social workers, public health experts--are replaced by unqualified ideologues or driven out entirely. Turn the Federal workforce--or what is left of it--into an arm of the President, beholden only to the President. No more oath to the Constitution but an oath to the person of the President, a loyalty oath demanded of our Federal employees.

That is when the next disaster--whether it is a pandemic, a financial collapse, or a natural disaster--becomes unmanageable, because the very institutions designed to respond have been gutted, because that is their end goal--not just to shrink the government of the people but to sabotage it, to make it dysfunctional, to make it ineffective, to paralyze it, and then to turn around and say ``Hey, see, it doesn't work. The government of the people doesn't work'' because of course they don't want it to work except to

the degree that it can be used to take the resources of the American people and give them to their wealthy friends and to large corporations, to distribute every possible dime amongst the privileged few and not working families.

This is why they are elevating Russ Vought, because when you need someone to dismantle the very machinery of governance, to turn the government of the people into an engine of destruction rather than an agency of stewardship, Russ Vought is your guy. And now he has a second chance--a second chance to make sure that when that mother in the Central Valley reaches for help, there is nothing there.

We are seeing, of course, Head Starts around the country--the Head Start Program--wonder whether they are going to be able to open their doors the next day, wondering what is going to happen to--if they are supported. Of course, all the parents that have their kids in Head Start are wondering what the future holds for their kids. But the view of this administration is, hey, that Head Start is getting valuable money they would rather give to themselves and to their wealthy friends. If it means the sacrifice of those kids in the Head Start, well, that is just the price you have to pay for oligarchy.

Russ Vought is your guy.

A second chance--he has a second chance now to turn Social Security and Medicare into bargaining chips in a political game that none of us have agreed to play, keeping seniors up at night worrying whether a Social Security check might not make it to them after all.

He has a second chance to rewrite the rules in a way that ensures that the wealthy and well connected are taken care of while everyone else is left behind.

We should be clear about what this nomination represents. Russ Vought wants to oversee the erosion of the very services that millions of Americans rely on every day--every single day; to lead the charge to remake the United States into a country where people are left to fend for themselves, where the government doesn't work because they don't mean it to. They don't want it to. They don't want a government of the people or a government by the people or government for the people; they want a government of them, they want a government by them, and they want a government for them.

But let's be very clear. It does not have to be this way. We can reject this vision. We can reject this nominee. We can reject the idea that our government exists only to serve the powerful or to punish the vulnerable. And we will reject it because if we do nothing, if we simply sit back and let Russ Vought take the reins of OMB once again, then we will be complicit in the destruction that follows.

So let's take a closer look at the last few weeks. Let's take a closer look at Donald Trump and Elon Musk's hostile takeover of the Federal Government and the targeting of our institutions one after another, over and over again. Let's take a closer look at this effort to gut critical programs to pay for their enormous tax breaks and what that means for all of us. Let's start with access to your personal data.

As of today, Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire--I think maybe the wealthiest man in the world--with a vested financial interest in this administration's success--you would think that being the wealthiest man in the world or one of the top wealthiest people in the world would be enough, but no. He has a vested interest in the administration's success and billions in government contracts--because apparently the billions he has already are not enough.

He has deployed a team of loyalists who infiltrate government Agencies to help with the plunder of the public fisc. So let's think about that for a moment. Let's try to take this in. The world's richest man has brought in his loyalists--some of them apparently just teenagers--to breach Federal Departments to access sensitive data, classified information, and who knows what. Are we supposed to think that is OK? Are we supposed to pretend this is normal, to have the wealthiest man in the world run roughshod over private data, over our Agencies? Are we supposed to act like this is anything other than what it is--a blatant and unconstitutional grab of power and our personal data, a takeover of government by a billionaire who has decided that the rules and laws don't apply to him and our national security doesn't matter?

But why? Why go to these lengths? Again, we have to follow the money. Trump's 2017 billionaire tax cuts--the ones that handed corporations and the ultrawealthy an unfathomable windfall while exploding the deficit--are set to expire this year, and Elon Musk and his buddies want to keep these tax cuts in place. If they are going to do that, then Donald Trump and Elon Musk--Donald and Elon--have to find $4 trillion somewhere. So where do they look? Not to the billionaires who profited from these tax cuts, not to the corporations that benefited the most--no. They are going to go after money where the cuts will hurt the most. They are going to go after what they consider low-hanging fruit. After all, what is the power of the poor, what is the power of even the middle class compared to the power of the oligarchs?

They are going to go after where the money is easiest to grab. So they are going to go after Medicaid.

They are going to go after Medicaid.

After all, it is just seniors or folks who are disabled or folks who are working class or struggling to get by and reliant on it for their healthcare. What is that weighed against more money for Elon Musk and his friends? What is that in the balance with Donald Trump and his desire to enrich himself?

There was a press conference about a week and a half ago. It kind of got lost in the blizzard of everything happening. But I found it very striking at this press conference. The President was asked by a reporter whether he was going to stop trading in his own personal interests and his meme coin.

What followed was this discussion between the President and this reporter while the cameras were rolling where the reporter says: You are making a lot of money.

And the President asked: How much money am I making from this meme coin?

Well, a lot.

I don't know what the exact language of this dialogue was, but it was blatant. It was so out in the open. I mean, it takes your breath away.

I remember, because it seems quaint, the beginning of the first Trump administration, when you remember he had that press conference and he was talking about how he was--I don't know--going to make sure that his business interests were somehow separated from his interest as President or the country's interest. And he had those stacks of--I don't know--binders or white paper. I don't think anybody knew what was in those stacks of paper or whether it was blank paper. But at least there was a superficial effort to suggest that he was going to have some walling off of his personal financial interests.

Of course, what we saw of those 4 years was there was none of that walling off. There were Gulf nations that were essentially paying tribute by staying in his hotels and all kinds of other graft going on.

But now, there is no effort to even hide the profit-taking with this meme coin or the distribution from his social media platform to people like Kash Patel. I mean, the grift is out there right in the open.

But that is really still small potatoes compared to the ability to raid the Treasury, compared to the ability to take all the money that goes into providing healthcare for sick people and Medicaid and using that to enrich yourself. Now, that is where the money is.

Part of what they are targeting is also USAID, and they are targeting Federal workers. They want Federal workers to resign. They sent Federal workers a letter that says, basically: Hey, you can reply to this message and say you quit and have basically a paid vacation until September.

Of course, there is no money to pay for that. It is unlawful what they are offering. But if people respond to that message, then they are on a list.

Why do Elon Musk and Donald Trump want all these Federal workers to quit? That is more money for them. That is more money for those tax cuts. They have to find those trillions somewhere. Let's see if we can push people who work for the government out the door.

Education of our kids--let's close down the Department of Education. OK, comparatively, you look at the Department of Education and you look at the Department of Defense. There is not a whole lot of money already in the Department of Education, but, hey, if it helps to pay for one more of those tax cuts, let's do away with the Department of Education.

Essential public services. OK, Federal grants for firefighters or firefighting equipment--what is that in the scale of things when we are talking about another tax cut for very wealthy folks? Take it from those who need it to fund giveaways for those who need it least.

It is kind of your reverse Robin Hood.

And who is leading the charge? A billionaire with billions in government contracts who stands to benefit financially if this administration stays in power and these cuts go through. That is what is happening.

That is what they are trying to do. That is what this is about. This is about consolidating power, doing away with the checks and the balances, consolidating power so that you can raid the Treasury. If we saw it during the financial collapse, banks that were too big to fail, this is a caper too big to stop--but only if we don't do our jobs in this building.

Strip government to the bone, funnel money to people who already have more than they could ever spend--how many lifetimes would it take to spend all those billions--and use the Federal Government as an instrument of personal gain, without accountability and without justice.

And, tragically, one of the things that makes this whole caper so possible now was something that took place in the building just across the street from here, when the Supreme Court of the United States said to the President of the United States: You can commit criminal acts while you are President and they can't touch you. If you use the Justice Department, you have absolute immunity. If you use other Departments, your immunity is so strong, you can argue the presumption is pretty much irrebuttable. They gave the President immunity to commit crimes.

His pardoning of all these violent criminals that attacked this building is a message that says: Hey, can't hold the President accountable--not anymore, not after this Supreme Court gave him that ``get out of jail free'' card. You do things for me that are unlawful; you do things for me that are unethical--I have your back. There is a pardon waiting for you at the end of all this.

Let's turn to USAID. What is the deal with USAID? USAID has been kind of a favorite issue Agency--idea, theme--that conservatives have loved to attack for a long time. And why? Because I think, reflexively, the idea of providing assistance around the world isn't the highest priority for many people. I totally get that. Of course, what we don't realize, unless we dig into what that money goes for, is a couple of things.

One, the money we invest in development around the world ultimately helps the United States a great deal. If we are looking at this just from a fairly selfish point of view, the money we invest in USAID helps us a great deal. Why is that? Well, if there are diseases halfway around the world like Ebola, like other potential dangers to the United States if they were to get to our shores, if we can work with our friends overseas and we can stop these viruses where they are, it means we don't have to deal with them here. If we can stop the instability in places around the world, it means less fertile soil for terrorism and terrorists who might attack us here. It improves our security. It improves our health. It wins friends for the United States around the world.

Now, I realize the administration has an America-first policy, which I think the way they are executing it means everyone else last. Of course, not a policy ``everyone else last'' that is doubly endearing to your allies, but this administration doesn't seem to think we need any friends around the world.

But even as we, through this administration, decide, well, we are done with development around the world, guess who stands to benefit. Certainly not the people around the world, not the people fighting HIV/ AIDS, not the people fighting malaria, not the people fighting poverty, not the people fighting starvation. No, our adversaries benefit. Probably the biggest beneficiary is China.

Why does China benefit from our abandoning the field? Because it opens the field for China. China is already around the world investing in other countries and doing so with strings attached. It is making debtor nations of other countries. It is making them obligated to China--countries that are rich in rare minerals. It is giving China the foothold or, even more explicitly, giving China military bases and naval bases. And they are using development systems to leverage other countries.

These other countries, so many of them will tell us: We don't want to work with China. They are not doing this for altruistic reasons. We know what China is all about. But if America is going to abandon the field, if we have no choice but to seek friends elsewhere, we will do what is necessary to feed our people. We will go to where we need to go to get help when we confront disease. And if America abandons the field, we will go to China.

China is winning so much in these last 2 weeks, it is getting tired of winning.

Just today, we learned that, apparently, some list, according to public reports, of officers at the CIA was sent to the White House in an unclassified email. Now, I remember a time that seems very quaint, when Donald Trump was always talking about Hillary's emails. What about this email that potentially exposes the identity of people who are working at the CIA, who want to work at the CIA, and according to public reports, the administration response is: Don't worry. That unclassified email only contained their first name and the first initial of their last name.

Well, I am sure that China, with all of its big data analytics will have no trouble with that at all. With an answer like that, the administration may think they can pull the wool over our eyes, but they can't. What is more, they cannot pull the wool over the prying eyes of our competitors, our adversaries around the world.

So USAID. First of all, let's start with a rather mundane point, it would appear, in this administration. What they are doing is illegal. I guess if you have absolute immunity, you don't worry about those things. But we in this body should worry about that. We should worry about whether the President and some wealthy billionaire are violating the law. We are in the business of making laws. We used to cherish our institutional prerogative. We used to think it was valuable in the scheme of things. We used to believe the Founders were quite brilliant in how they established each institution as a check on the other so none would have absolute power. But here we are faced with something which I think we have to acknowledge is plainly unlawful, and not a peep--not a peep--about that by those who could most strongly resist this.

It is harder for us in the minority. We don't control anything in the Senate. We don't control anything in the House. If this administration succeeds in neutering the Congress of the United States, there is little we in the minority alone can do without the help of others who cherish this institution. We just cannot do that alone.

We will do all that we can. We are here all night. We will be here as many nights as it takes. We will raise public awareness of this unlawful scheme. We will use litigation, and we are. We will use every tool at our disposal. But it shouldn't be just us. It shouldn't be just us.

I think a lot of Americans are wondering now whether the Constitution is so brilliant after all, whether it is adequate to meet this moment-- a moment that our Founders really anticipated when we would have a demagogue who would ride the whirlwind of the confusion that he sows. Well, I think it is a brilliant Constitution. I think it is the best in the world, but it is not self-effectuating; it depends on all of us. To work, it depends on all of us.

The genius of the Constitution is not that we are today where we are, where we have a Supreme Court that said the President is above the law; where we have a President acting like he is above the law; where we have the administration bringing in unelected billionaires to take data and who knows what else; where we have terrible national security breaches and not a murmur of dissent about them. The genius

of the Constitution is not that this is happening but that it was forestalled until now; that we have gone through these more than two centuries without confronting this. But this is where we are, and this will be the real test of our Constitution--what it will mean in this moment when the President and a wealthy billionaire--the world's richest man--are engaged in things that are plainly unlawful. Doing away with an Agency like USAID is plainly unlawful.

Even if you don't care about what USAID does, even if you are content to let China take over development around the world and win over friends and mineral rights and turn our allies into debtor nations, even if you are OK ceding global leadership to China--which I am most certainly not--the moment you say it is OK for them to violate the law--to shut down this one Agency--you have said it is OK for them to violate the law and shut down anything--anything.

If they can do this with USAID, they can do this with the Department of Ed. If they can do it with the Department of Ed, they can do it with Head Start. If they can do it with Head Start, they can do it with Medicaid. If they can do it with Medicaid, they can do it with Social Security. They can do anything.

The USAID was established by the U.S. Congress. It cannot and should not be eliminated on the whims of a President or his unelected billionaire friend. Shutting down USAID or pausing its work will have devastating global and potentially irreversible consequences, but the biggest consequence will be to us. It is the world's largest provider of humanitarian aid, and through it, the United States saves countless lives every year.

I have to say, as I have had the opportunity as chair of the Intelligence Committee, and even prior to that position in the House, to travel to some of the most dangerous parts of the world--to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, to Yemen--you name it--I have met these USAID employees, the ones who just got this order: You need to get on a plane and come back. You are on leave whether you like it or not. I have met these folks. They are so patriotic and passionate about their work and such dedicated public servants.

I remember being in Afghanistan fairly early in the war, and I met this young man with USAID. He looked to me to be in his early twenties. His deployment was for 1 year in Afghanistan. He had only been there for a few months. These folks were operating without much of a safety net, and in order to be effective, they needed to be out in the villages. They couldn't just stay on their base. They had to be out, exposed. This USAID worker--this young man--had been there only for a few months of a 1-year deployment, and he told me he had already signed up for his second year.

I remember saying: Wow, that is pretty impressive. You like it here? You like your work that much where you have only been here for a few months and you have already decided you are going to re-up for another year?

And he said: No. It is not that. We are in the development business. You really can't see the fruits of your labor in a single year. I want to be here long enough where I can see the results of the projects that I am working on, where I can see them come to fruition.

This was the kind of public servant who populates USAID all over the world. This is the kind of public servant--I don't know if this young man is still with the USAID, but if he is--wherever he is in whatever part of the world where he is doing God's work--he just got an email saying: You are on involuntary leave. Thank you for nothing. Don't let the door hit you on the backside on the way out. Sincerely, Uncle Sam.

What a hell of a way to treat people.

These folks at USAID are stopping diseases from spreading. They are helping to feed communities that are starving. They are showing the United States cares about people around the world; that it cares about others; that the most powerful Nation in the world hasn't forgotten about the most powerless communities in the world. USAID represents decades of soft power that the United States has built. It has shown allies in developing nations that we stand by them in crises; building partnerships that last; protecting our national security.

I remember visiting Pakistan. Now, Pakistan probably doesn't have a lot of great things to say about the United States much of the time, which I think and I recognize is frustrating--when you are trying to help and it doesn't seem like anything you do is enough. I get that. I totally get that. But I remember when an earthquake struck northwest Pakistan, and American helicopters were helicoptering in relief, and a toy became very popular in Pakistan. It was a replica of an American helicopter because we suddenly became associated with helping people in their time of need. It was probably the single most valuable diplomacy we had done in years. I guess we are not going to do that anymore.

All of that--all of that effort--to show that the United States is concerned about the well-being not just of ourselves but of others all over the world--all of that is at risk. Well, there are champagne bottles being popped right now in Beijing--and probably quite a few in Moscow--at the idea tonight that we are abandoning the field and that we are poised to confirm the architect of that abandonment--an otherwise obscure man named Russ Vought.

Alliances and decades of work are going out the window. Russia's and China's influence are on the rise. And for what? USAID represents less than 1 percent of the Federal budget, but that 1 percent gets Elon Musk and Donald Trump closer to the $4 trillion hole they need to fill to give another tax cut to the wealthy; so it is on the chopping block, plain and simple.

Let's look at some of the other events of the last couple of weeks and put them in perspective. Let's look at the firing of these top Department of Justice officials.

Within hours of Donald Trump's order, the Justice Department fired more than a dozen prosecutors--many career public servants--who had worked on criminal cases involving the people who attacked this building or maybe they worked on criminal cases involving the one who incited the attack on this building. They weren't removed for incompetence, and they weren't removed for corruption. They were removed because they did their jobs patriotically. They were removed because they had the audacity to try to hold a powerful man accountable.

The official justification for their firing was that these prosecutors--many of whom had worked under Special Counsel Jack Smith-- could not be trusted to implement Trump's agenda.

Let's think about that.

A President of the United States who spent years railing against the so-called weaponization of the government, which is the expression he would use for holding him accountable for law-breaking--that President who railed against the Department for weaponizing government has now purged his own Justice Department of the very people who investigated his many crimes. This purge was a product of the White House. The order came from Donald Trump himself. The firings were executed by his appointed allies in the Justice Department.

When it was done, his administration made the end game clear: The Justice Department no longer represents the American people. It no longer enforces the law. It enforces Donald Trump's will. This is not a Department that can be counted on anymore to investigate corruption but to defend Donald Trump. It is a Justice Department that doesn't prosecute certain criminals. It protects them as long as they serve the President's interests or are the President himself. This is the new normal in Donald Trump's second term--a government that exists not as a check on his power but as an extension of it.

The message was unmistakable to prosecutors, to judges, and to anyone working in law enforcement who still believes in the rule of law or an idea now which seems quaint--that no one is above the law. Do your job. Protect the person of the President, not the people of the country or you and your job may be next because, in Trump's America, there is only loyalty--not to Constitution, not to country, but to the person of the President.

Now with the firings complete, the vacancies will be filled not with independent prosecutors but with loyalists; with lawyers who will spend the next 4 years reshaping the very foundation of the Justice Department, ensuring that

the next time Donald Trump or anyone like him breaks the law, there won't be anyone left to prosecute. They will be there to go after Trump's enemies whether they are real or just perceived.

We are not inevitably headed toward authoritarianism or one-man rule, but firing these top prosecutors takes us one step closer. If we don't stop it now, if we don't draw a line here, there will be little justice left in the Department to save.

I spent almost 6 years with that Department. I was an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles--one of the best jobs I ever had. I worked with a cadre of prosecutors who was just top notch, some of the brightest lawyers in Los Angeles. They gravitated to that office. They were some of the most capable and idealistic young lawyers who wanted to do justice. The office was completely apolitical. I had no idea whether my fellow prosecutors were Democrats or Republicans. And, yes, when U.S. attorneys changed and Presidents changed, there might be different priorities in the office, but they were broad policy priorities. There might be more of an emphasis on drug cases or there might be more of an emphasis on white-collar crime cases, but it was a difference of policy; it was never about the politics of vengeance or retribution. No one in that office had any misunderstanding or misapprehension of what their role was, and their role was to do justice.

Now, I think the Department made a mistake after this building was attacked, after our police officers were savagely beaten, after our President--this President--sat in that White House dining room and watched that violence occur, I think the Department of Justice made a mistake--not by investigating that massive crime on this building, on our police, on the peaceful transfer of power, on our democracy, but in taking so long. I think they made a mistake in focusing on the foot soldiers of that attack who broke into this building rather than those who incited it and organized it.

But I understand why that mistake was made. That mistake was made because there was a desire, after the first 4 years of Donald Trump and the terrible politicization of that Department by Bill Barr, there was a desire to restore the independence of the Department. There was a reluctance to follow the evidence where it would lead. That reluctance, that desire to insulate the Department from criticism resulted in justice being delayed and ultimately justice being denied.

One of the biggest culprits in that failure of the justice system was that building across the street and, indeed, the entire court system because that court system, and most particularly the High Court, understood what was happening, understood the endless delays in bringing to justice the ones who incited those attacks. They understood exactly what was happening, and they permitted it to happen.

More than that, the High Court not only permitted it to happen, but by countenancing these endless delays by letting the President play rope-a-dope in the courts, they ensured that justice would be delayed so that justice might be denied. And in fact, it was denied. That was the mistake of the Department: excessive caution. And that mistake means that a court that has become a partisan court could use delay as a weapon to defeat justice, and it did.

But in this Alice in Wonderland world in which we live, Donald Trump would make that desire to move the Department away from the politicization of Bill Barr, restore a reputation for independence, that laudable goal, would turn that in some Alice in Wonderland way into a weaponization of the government.

Why? Because it believed that the rule of law applies to everyone, even the most powerful man in the world.

So why get rid of these prosecutors? Why purge the FBI agents? Why after promising in their nominees--Pam Bondi, Kash Patel--we have learned how much we can rely on the promises, the commitments they made in their confirmation: zero.

But why is this firing the FBI agents such an important piece of this whole effort by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their enablers? Because if they are going to take money from the public fisc, if they are going to enrich themselves with their meme coins, if they are going to raid the Treasury, if they are going to take people's private data, if they are going to try to illegally shut down Agencies, they don't want a Department, God forbid, to say no, that violates the law. They don't want an FBI that is going to examine anything they are doing. So stripping the Department of its independence, instilling fear in thousands and thousands of FBI agents, telling them you are just one wrong step away from being fired, this is the way to ensure that when they raid the Treasury, there is no one there to call out what they are doing.

This is also part and parcel of what these pardons were all about. What role did these pardons play in this effort to bring about one-man rule and to enable that one man to raid the public fisc?

So on his first day and with the stroke of a pen pardoning 1,550 people--people who violently beat law enforcement--the President wished to make something abundantly clear: If you use violence in my service, I will have your back.

So people who came in through these doors and bear-sprayed police officers and beat them with flagpoles, took apart metal barricades and beat them with that, crushed them in the doors--Officer Daniel Hodges, I will never forget the images of him being crushed in that revolving door.

The people who did that, they got a pardon. He pardoned the ring leaders or gave them clemency, leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, violent, unrepentant White nationalists who conspired to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power. I mean, how did we get here, where a President of the United States would pardon people for doing that?

Some were convicted of seditious conspiracy, one of the most serious crimes in our legal system. Others were convicted of dragging police officers into violent crowds and of beating them, of bear-spraying them, of crushing them. We witnessed it. We were here. I was here, not on this side of the Capitol, but on the other side. I was here. I was here when they were breaking windows to get in. I was here on the House floor with one of the floor managers that day, opposing the efforts to overturn the election. I was here when the Speaker was whisked out of her chair. I was here when the Capitol Police first informed us there were rioters in the building.

I was here when the Capitol Police told us that we needed to get our gas masks out. I was here when we struggled to open the damn things that were in these steel plastic pouches. I was here when those masks were deployed. It was a polyurethane bag you were supposed to pull over your head with an elastic band around your neck. I was here when the fan that circulates the air in those masks so that you don't asphyxiate, when the sound of those fans was everywhere on the House floor and in the Gallery.

I was here when the Capitol Police told us that we needed to get out, that they cleared an exit route and we needed to get out. I was here when some of my Republican colleagues in the House--as I waited on the House floor, we could really hear those people banging on the doors to get in--said: You can't let them see you.

One of them said: I know these people. I can talk to these people. I can talk my way through these people. You are in a whole different category.

I have to say, at first, I was oddly touched by their evident concern for my safety. But my next impression was, if they hadn't been lying about the election, I wouldn't need to worry about my safety. None of us would.

Donald Trump pardoning the folks who were attacking police officers that day, this wasn't about mercy. This wasn't about justice. These people hadn't made restitution or shown any--far from it. This was about power. This was about a hope to erase the crimes that they committed in his name. This was a message to his supporters that the violence and illegal acts aren't just to be tolerated; they are to be rewarded because that is what this was.

This was a message--a message that if you fight for him, if you storm the Capitol, if you brutalize police officers, if you try to overthrow an election, you will be protected; you will be hailed, even. They will make choirs with you, like Kash Patel. You will be absolved because he, the President, so desperately wants to be absolved. He

wants to somehow remove the stain of his impeachments, of the violent attack in his name.

So what has happened to some of these criminals since they have been pardoned by Donald Trump? One of those pardoned was killed in a shootout with police in Indiana--a model citizen, I am sure.

One of them was arrested four times between storming the Capitol and being pardoned by Donald Trump. Another was rearrested for unlawfully possessing a gun as a felon. That was for his 2017 conviction for a domestic violence battery by strangulation. Seems like a worthy candidate for a pardon by Donald Trump.

One rioter who attacked police with bear spray and a metal whip on January 6 is now grappling with unresolved charges of soliciting a minor--a third-degree felony carrying up to 10 years in prison. Maybe he will be pardoned for that.

These are the people whom Donald Trump pardoned, that he celebrated because they showed loyalty to him; and in Trump's world, nothing else matters.

In order to carry out this plunder of the Treasury, to make the whole of government the vehicle for his self-enrichment and self- aggrandizement, he must have a loyal cadre willing to do even the most violent acts in his service.

``Stand back and stand by.''

So let's turn quickly to the funding freeze. How does that fit into this effort?

There was a memo, as we know, to freeze all Federal funding, Federal loans, and assistance. We saw the reports, the days of chaos. We saw hospitals wondering whether they would get funding to keep their clinic doors open. We saw parents wondering whether their childcare would be available, seniors wondering whether they would have the services that they needed. And for what?

Once again, this is an effort to prepare to raid the Treasury, to take the resources that belong to the American people and use them to fund a massive tax cut for those who don't need it.

I represent a State that has been battered by natural disaster, so I take this very personally, this freeze on Federal funding, because my constituents need the help of FEMA. They need the help of the SBA. They need to know that as the government has been there for every other State in a natural disaster, it will be there for us.

The idea of freezing that funding and inhibiting that recovery so that there can be just a bit more money for Donald Trump and Elon Musk and his allies is anathema to my constituents, and it should be unacceptable for all the rest of us.

I yield the floor.

On behalf of California fire victims counting on FEMA, I vote no.

Mr. President, just over 8 years ago, Donald Trump assumed the Office of the Presidency for the first time. He began that administration with at least a few people of independence and stature, people that had enough of a respect for themselves and the rule of law that, when they were asked to do things that violated the law, their oath, or their own sense of decency, they said no or resigned--people like Defense Secretary Mattis, who wrote in his resignation letter:

My views on treating allies with respect and also being

clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors

are strongly held and informed by over four decades of

immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to

advance an international order that is most conducive to our

security, prosperity, and values, and we are strengthened in

this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.

Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense

whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other

subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my

position.

Treating allies with respect; being clear-eyed about malign actors; advancing an international order conducive to our national security, prosperity, and values; the solidarity of our alliances--these didn't use to be novel ideas. They didn't used to be controversial ideas. What Secretary Mattis said about an ``international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity, and values'' may also be applied to a domestic order that is respectful of our Agencies and institutions, our norms and values.

Not everyone in Trump's first administration was like Secretary Mattis. Some took much longer to realize that the President's demand for loyalty to him be placed above all else was incompatible with their own oath of office. Attorney General Bill Barr, once so desperate for a job in the Trump administration that he wrote a lengthy job application castigating an investigation he knew little about, found, ultimately, that there were lines even he could not cross, like lying about the election.

Others still, like Kash Patel, seemed never to find a demand by the President too taxing of their own moral code to raise an objection, but rather viewed any questionable order as a means of advancement.

The question we face with the nomination of Pam Bondi is, What will she do when, inevitably, she is put to the test by a President who feels unbound by law or propriety?

Her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee tells us that she will not pass the test. When asked about whether the President lost the 2020 election, she could not answer. When asked whether she would preserve evidence gathered in the January 6 investigation, she could not agree to do so. When asked about potential pardons of violent criminals who attacked police on January 6, she indignantly assured us that she would review all pardon cases on a case by case basis--a promise breached by the President so soon thereafter that her words seemed still to hang in the air.

If she could not assert her independence now, before Congress, before taking office, what hope can we have that she will do so when put to the test by the President?

When asked about this, too, she demurred: That is a hypothetical.

But it wasn't then, and it isn't now. The President has already pardoned hundreds of violent criminals. He has already issued Executive orders that violate the law and Constitution.

Would Pam Bondi have objected to the firing of inspectors general? Do any of us believe that she would?

The President has issued an Executive order attempting to amend the Constitution. A Federal judge struck down this order as presenting perhaps the simplest constitutional question he had ever heard. Could we have expected Pam Bondi to defend it? Sadly, yes.

The President issued an Executive order freezing and illegally impounding congressionally appropriated funds. Would she have uttered a word of protest? Certainly not.

Dozens of top prosecutors have already been fired, by the Department of Justice, who did their lawful duty investigating the rioters who attacked police. Would she have resigned in protest?

She has witnessed this Saturday night massacre and still wants the job. So, plainly, the answer is no.

She is no Elliot Richardson. Top-ranking FBI agents have been fired. Questionnaires have gone out to identify the hundreds--perhaps thousands--of agents who were involved in the legitimate prosecution of these felons. Would she have defended these FBI

agents at the risk of her own job, as one senior FBI leader has done? Of course not, and let us not pretend otherwise.

Donald Trump only took the oath of office a mere 2 weeks ago--with an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, to faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, to faithfully execute the laws of this country that Congress passed and funded. Each day, it seems he has found new ways to bend and break those laws, to put in power unelected billionaires and political cronies to dismantle Agencies, take control of payment systems, and exact political retribution.

One after another, each of his nominees, asked whether they would oppose such conduct, has claimed that they won't engage in hypotheticals, claimed that there was simply no way the President would take these actions, stated that what the President promised to do during the campaign simply wouldn't happen. But it is happening. It has happened. His campaign of retribution is happening. His empowering of a shadow President is happening. His dismantling of congressionally approved Departments is happening.

We cannot afford an Attorney General who believes their role is to defend him rather than the American people and the democracy we have inherited from our Founders--this big, bold, brave, and improbable experiment in self-governance. We need an Attorney General with a backbone of steel, with a stature to say no, whose purpose is to enforce the laws against any lawbreaker, including the President of the United States. That person is not Pam Bondi.

Senator Rufus Choate, who once walked these halls and served in this body, reminded us nearly 200 years ago that we have built no temple but the Capitol, that we consult no common oracle but the Constitution. And what does that oracle tell us? I think maybe simply this: We have been given the most brilliant Constitution ever devised to constrain the worst impulses of human nature, but even that brilliant document will not protect us if we do not inhabit positions of great responsibility with people worthy of them, with people who view our system of checks and balances not as a weakness to overcome or to overrun but as a source of strength, who view the domestic order they produce, to borrow Secretary Mattis's words from a different context, as ``most conducive to our security, prosperity and values.''

We need an Attorney General who will stand strong when the President seeks to turn this Capitol into a rubberstamp for unconstitutional and unlawful actions, when the President seeks to empower the likes of Elon Musk to ignore laws that Congress has passed and Departments that Congress has funded, when the President ignores our allies and emboldens our enemies, when the President targets those in government who did their job to investigate crimes and malfeasance and does so to exact vengeance. Vengeance. Apart from self-aggrandizement and self- enrichment, the President's only motivation--vengeance.

Donald Trump is hoping that in the chaos of his Executive orders, of oligarchs marauding through the Agencies of government, of tariffs that turn on and off like a blinking light, that we will get lost and in getting lost, be lost. We must not be.

His actions will get worse. They will. With a congressional majority that empowers him, with appointees that embolden him, he himself will only grow more emboldened in return. His unconscionable and unconstitutional actions will multiply, and when that happens, will Pam Bondi take up her role, her duty, as the people's lawyer or will she serve as the President's lawyer as she has done before? Will Pam Bondi say no to the President's unlawful actions? no to purges of perceived political enemies? no to investigations of career officials? because if she will not say no, if she cannot say no, it is up to us today to say no. No to this nomination. No to Pam Bondi. It is up to us.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, 8 days ago, democracy and the rule of law were dealt another blow. It wasn't at the hands of a mob this time. No bear spray. No battering rams. No chants of ``Hang Mike Pence'' or ``Where's Nancy?'' echoing through these halls. This time when the blow came, it made barely a sound. No screaming rioters in military garb and Viking helmets--only a President in a suit and tie with the demure flourish of a pen.

Eight days ago, President Trump pardoned over 1,500 people who assaulted this Capitol, brutalized police officers, and sought to overthrow a free and fair election. Among them were the ringleaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers--violent, unrepentant, White nationalists who orchestrated an insurrection; some who were convicted of seditious conspiracy, others of beating police officers, of dragging them into a mob, of bear-spraying them, of crushing them in a revolving door. Horrifying, sickening stuff.

With the flick of a wrist, their benefactor, their inspiration, Donald Trump, erased their crimes and handed them something unthinkable in a democratic society: absolution in the form of pardons and clemency.

This was not mercy; this was madness--1,550 pardons; 1550 acts of absolution for those who committed violence against our Constitution and against those who swore to defend it; 1,550 ``get out of jail free'' cards handed to individuals who tried to overturn a free and fair election.

Make no mistake, these pardons were a promise--a promise that if you commit violence in Donald Trump's name, you will be protected and you will be hailed, even glorified, for your violence; a promise that no matter how egregious your actions on behalf of this President may be, accountability will not find you; a promise that America will now have to live with the fear that January 6 may not be the last of the violence in service of this President.

Senator Kaine was saying that we have seen what happens when democracies falter, when leaders resort to violence and when those who were meant to stop them lose their will, when those who defy the rule of law are exalted instead of prosecuted. History is littered with the wreckage of nations whose leaders decided that violence for them was more important than justice, more important than the law, more important than the people.

Sadly, these pardons are not the last action the President will take to bend and subvert the rule of law to his will.

Already, we have seen this President and his Justice Department fire those who led a completely justified investigation into him, which led to indictments and, if allowed to proceed to a jury, would likely have led to his conviction.

We have seen his Justice Department announce an investigation into the investigators and those who prosecuted important cases against January 6 violent criminals.

We have seen this Justice Department, his Justice Department, reassign those who were viewed as not loyal enough.

We will see a lot more before the week, the month, and the year are out--much more. If we are to remain a democracy, we had better see much more done to stop it. In this body, in this vital check on the power of the Executive, we must see more done to stop it. We must draw a line here. We must draw a line now.

The Vice President argued that these pardons are about liberty. They are not. I ask you: What does liberty look like to the police officer who was beaten with a pole that once held the flag he was sworn to defend? What does liberty look like to the congressional staff who barricaded themselves in their offices, listening to the chaos outside? What does liberty look like to the families of those who died as a result of the violence that day?

Liberty and justice don't come from pardoning the perpetrators of violence; it comes from ensuring that violence is not repeated, condoned, absolved.

The question before us is simple, one that our Founders answered correctly and that today we must answer again: Are we a nation of laws or are we a nation of men or more specifically, of one man, above accountability, beyond reproach? Because make no mistake, we cannot be both.

What does it say if the Senate cannot and will not pass such a straightforward recognition of the law enforcement officers who protect us or a condemnation of the rioters who attacked them and tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power? It says that we are willing to see our cherished legacy die with a whimper, one sordid absolution after another. It is really that simple.

I urge my colleagues to join me, to join us, in condemning this most grotesque abuse of power. Condemn these pardons.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the men and women serving at home and overseas under the flag of the United States of America are counting on us. To guide the Pentagon through times of war or peace, they need and deserve a Secretary of Defense who is a person of considerable experience and can run a mammoth Agency, who has exhibited good judgment, who is a person of good character, who appreciates the role of women in the military in and out of combat, and who they can look on in confidence to guide us through some of the most difficult and complex national security threats we have ever faced. While I greatly respect his time in the service, regrettably, that person is not Pete Hegseth.

This is no minor or ceremonial position. The Secretary of Defense is responsible for a nearly trillion-dollar budget, one-eighth of all Federal spending, and the 3 million people who serve under that charge.

In my time in Congress, I have worked with Secretaries of Defense from both parties who understood their sacred responsibility and upheld their oaths to support every one of our troops and lead our Nation's military to the best of their ability. Secretaries Gates and Panetta, Mattis and Carter, and many others come to mind.

But Mr. Hegseth lacks the experience to be the Secretary of Defense. Mr. Hegseth has not shown the judgment to be Secretary of Defense. Mr. Hegseth has not shown the character to be Secretary of Defense. For this job is a heavy responsibility, and he is not the right person for the job.

His record speaks for itself: financial mismanagement in the organizations he led--organizations much, much smaller than the Pentagon, with budgets that were a fraction of the size and nevertheless squandered and mismanaged. He has at times demonstrated a callous disregard for human rights and the laws of armed conflict, going so far as to recommend that the President disregard the Geneva Conventions and intervene in cases of servicemembers convicted of war crimes. He has a history of belittling our brave women in uniform, of denigrating the service of women in uniform and their abilities. These failures are not trivial. They are real, they are significant, and they cannot be ignored.

So let's not mince words: Pete Hegseth is the wrong choice for Secretary of Defense.

Mr. President, many of my colleagues have spoken on the floor about Mr. Hegseth's personal shortcomings and lack of experience to carry out the job to which he has been nominated. I would like to speak also about what we need from a Secretary of Defense and what a more appropriate nominee should bring to this position of such immense responsibility.

The challenges we face today are enormous. They demand real experience and leadership.

The largest land war in Europe since World War II rages on.

The Middle East is a tinderbox, with a terrorist group still running Gaza, with hostages still in captivity, with a new Syrian regime of uncertain direction, a weakened but still dangerous Iran with all of its proxies, still threatening retaliation.

China looms as a peer global competitor, with a stated object of expanding its influence and territory and outpacing the United States.

China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are increasingly aligned with the shared goal of rolling back U.S. influence and have developed a robust operational partnership. Iran and North Korea provide Russia with drones and missiles to prosecute its relentless war of aggression against Ukraine, all while China provides money and dual-use technologies to underpin Russia's resurgent wartime economy. Trade amongst this bloc seeks to frustrate U.S.-led international sanctions.

We don't know what technology and know-how Russia has already or will provide rogue states like Iran and North Korea for their nuclear, missile, and other WMD programs.

This growing alignment among authoritarians threatens our country and our allies. Yet here we are, being asked to hand over the keys to our national defense to someone so patently unqualified, so palpably unprepared.

I think it is telling that Mr. Hegseth's opening statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee failed to even mention the war in Ukraine. Just imagine, perhaps the most important national security issue that the previous Congress debated--whether to provide aid to our partners in Ukraine to turn back the Russian attack and defend their homeland--doesn't merit a sentence in his opening testimony. This is a conflict that President Trump now owns, and we must rely on him and his administration--including, if he were confirmed, Mr. Hegseth--to support our democratic partner.

When the Senator from Maine asked Mr. Hegseth about the omission of the war in Ukraine from his prepared remarks, here was his response:

Senator, that is a Presidential-level policy decision.

This from the person who is supposed to be the President's senior adviser on defense matters and a key official needed to rally NATO and other nations to Ukraine's defense.

We have a moral and a legal obligation and imperative to aid Ukraine in its existential fight against Russia and to protect our NATO allies should Russia's ambitions be left unconstrained. The last Congress made clear its support with bipartisan, overwhelming votes to reaffirm our support for Ukraine in this fight, and we will do so again as necessary.

It is not just a matter of Ukrainian security. If Russia is allowed to succeed in its objectives in Ukraine, whether on the battlefield or through a forced but favorable negotiated settlement, it will not stop there. Russia is already engaged in influence operations, cyber operations, and attacks against critical infrastructure up and down its border with NATO.

Allowing Russia to tear off parts of Ukraine will embolden Putin, allow him to better arm his war machine, and will send a message that NATO is fragmented and weak.

It will not be just Russia that receives this message; Xi Jinping is watching intently what is happening with Ukraine and whether America will continue to defend its allies and its values.

That is why Taiwan supports U.S. aid to Ukraine, even if it means sending weapons there that might otherwise be shipped to Asia--because Taiwan wants to know that if and when they face their own day of reckoning, that the United States will honor its commitments to come to its defense.

Our allies must be able to count on us, on the President, on the Secretary of Defense. They must. A nominee who ignores our obligations or our national interests in helping Ukraine roll back Russia's war machine is not a person capable of defending our interests across the globe. They just aren't.

The responsibilities go well beyond our foreign commitments. The Secretary of Defense has an enormous task to continue to rebuild the strength and readiness of our forces. For nearly two decades, wars in the Middle East and a long list of contingencies have pushed military readiness to the breaking point. The Army, Air Force, and Navy continue to face major recruitment challenges just to maintain their current size, let alone what may be necessary to--God forbid--fight a major war in the coming years against technologies we can only imagine now. We need a Secretary of Defense who can lead and inspire our troops, from the most senior officers to the youngest enlisted men and women.

Mr. Hegseth has belittled women in the military. He has attacked people who live their lives differently than he would prefer. He has stood with those who violate the law rather than those who keep the peace. And he has no experience running a large enterprise. His experience running small enterprises was a terrible failure.

We need a Secretary of Defense with the management experience to rebuild and reshape our national security for the challenges of the present and the future. As our assistance to partners in the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East have shown, we need to bring about urgent reforms if we are to produce the platforms, weapons, and ammunition necessary to supply our partners with the tools they need to fight and win.

So long as our enemies test the dearness of our beliefs with fire and steel, we must ensure that our military remains the best equipped, best prepared fighting force in the world. This requires investment in our manufacturing sector and the defense acquisition process. Anything less is not an ``arsenal of democracy'' or ``Freedom's Forge''; it is a failure of our duty to defend ourselves and our allies, which is to say nothing of the need to develop new technologies and new operational concepts, tapping into the best innovative minds across the country.

Let's face it, the United States is on the brink of losing its overwhelming technological edge. Bringing it back will require reshaping the Pentagon to include new participants ready to disrupt some of our hidebound, bureaucratic, and expensive processes--new innovators and technologies, including many from my home State of California.

Partners that embrace new technology are more nimble to meet today's challenges. There is simply nothing in Mr. Hegseth's background or his performance to demonstrate that he has the necessary understanding or ability to make these changes.

GEN Matthew Ridgway was one of the greatest military minds of the 20th century. His service spanned decades and continents--and after the end of his service as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, he was recruited to join the ``Wise Men,'' a group of retired diplomats, politicians, and generals who assembled from time to time to give their advice to President Lyndon B. Johnson.

He knew then--as we know today--what makes effective leadership in both war and peace on the front lines and on the homefront. He said:

There is far more to professional fitness than knowledge

and skill in the techniques and tools of war. These the

officer must have, but the final test of his ability is not

in what he knows but in what he is. There is no substitute

for those innate qualities which we generally refer to as

character.

My fellow Senators, put aside the nominee's lack of knowledge and lack of experience to prepare him for a role of this magnitude. We must also consider this nominee's absence of character becoming of a Secretary of Defense. You heard it in his confirmation hearings. You have heard it described by my colleagues today. You have seen it on television, read about it in the materials that we have been provided that demonstrates Mr. Hegseth's unfitness for this office. Character matters--it does. It still does.

And no amount of tough talk on TV or bromides about a warrior spirit can make up for a distinct lack of character.

GEN Omar Bradley, the first ever chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the longest serving active duty servicemember in the history of the United States Armed Forces, wrote to the Infantry School Quarterly in April of 1953. He said:

Leadership in a democratic Army means fairness, not

harshness; understanding, not weakness; justice, not license;

humaneness, not intolerance; generosity, not selfishness;

pride, not egotism.

Think about those qualities. Think about whether the nominee we consider today resembles even just one of them. Certainly not generosity. Certainly not humanity. Certainly not understanding. Certainly not.

I understand that politics can be complicated, but there is nothing complicated about this. Our servicemembers are watching. Their families who fear that their loved ones may be sent to battle are watching. Our adversaries are watching. There is an inscription down the hall that says it plainly, what we should consider in this moment:

Our government, conceived in freedom and purchased with

blood can be preserved only by constant vigilance.

Constant vigilance. The vote before us today is about Mr. Hegseth, but it is also about all of us. What do we stand for? Are we being vigilant in the defense of our country?

This candidate is not qualified. This candidate is not experienced. This candidate lacks judgment. This candidate lacks the character we need to lead this Department at a time of great national peril.

He is simply the wrong one for the job. I urge a ``no'' vote.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to address the Senate on behalf of the people of California. And I thank my colleague Senator Padilla for his leadership during this time of incredible difficulty and strain for our fellow constituents.

The unimaginable has happened, and our hearts are broken--a city encircled in a blaze and a perfect storm of fire and wind and with a system stretched beyond its breaking point. A natural disaster so immense in size and scale it will dwarf any recovery and rebuilding effort since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.

It is that immense and impending recovery effort that I am asking--I am pleading--for your help with today.

Already, the support that you and the President have given California have helped firefighters battle the flames, helped save lives, and helped those who lost everything find shelter.

I want to express my particular appreciation for President Biden and what the administration has done, the almost immediate declaration of a disaster which unlocked important FEMA and other funding, the commitment to match--to provide, really--100 percent of Federal funding for the first 6 months of these fire mitigation efforts.

I am very grateful for what the Congress and the President have done.

This recovery is going to be measured in years, not months. Even so, we must bring a sense of urgency to the recovery and not let it linger.

When the flames are finally out, the cleanup begins in earnest, and the rebuilding moves forward with all haste. After the attention of the world has turned away from the raging inferno and its aftermath, ours in this body must not because the loss is immeasurable--lives lost, homes lost, businesses lost, neighborhoods lost, pets lost, memories lost, neighborhoods simply gone in an hour. Entire communities burned to ash. Families brought together in grief. Churches and synagogues have burned down, but their members still gather as one because amidst the darkness and destruction, we have seen rays of hope. For when one part of our State is hurting--literally on fire--we all come together.

First responders from all across our great State and so many others rushed to Southern California. A woman I met at a Red Cross at the Pacoima evacuation site, so grateful, despite everything, for the assistance that she was receiving, for the dignity with which she was treated by these Red Cross workers--she told me she plans to set up a $10-a-month donation from her monthly Social Security disability check. People are dropping off clothes and supplies by the thousands, so much that some of these centers are overwhelmed with people bringing material by.

That is the California way.

This is deeply personal for Senator Padilla and myself. We know so many families impacted by these fires because they are our neighbors and friends.

I represented Altadena in the House of Representatives for decades. It is a vibrant, diverse community, a city of families, of places of worship, and of deep culture and history. When I drove through Altadena just a few days ago, the destruction was complete--entire city blocks razed. Homes, small businesses, schools gone in just a few minutes like some post-apocalyptic scene.

Driving around that area at night in which small fires still dotted the landscape amidst the rubble, it was hard to recognize what I was seeing. The place where my wife and I got married burned to the ground. So many other community institutions vanished: the Altadena Community Church, gone; the Pasadena Jewish Temple, gone, still smoldering, that temple, when I saw it, and burning inside like an eternal flame, a symbol of God's presence even amidst the unimaginable; the mountains above Altadena, once the scene of such beautiful greenery and nature, now charred beyond recognition.

Just like Altadena, much of the Palisades are just gone. Fire ripped through this community leveling entire neighborhoods. One bakery owner in Topanga described the fires that tore through her community simply as ``Armageddon,'' charred cars, burned-out furniture block after block.

These were generational homes and neighborhoods--neighborhoods people are proud to be part of and raise their children in, now forever changed.

In Altadena, Victor Shaw was found in his house holding a garden hose. He died trying to save his home. His sister Shari barely escaped as the house went up in flames.

One man, Zaire, was separated from his sister who lived next door. Amidst the chaos, he was able to evacuate his baby and elderly mother. The next day when he returned, he found his sister's car outside her home and found her remains in the rubble. ``Evelyn, why didn't you leave,'' he asked.

``[W]hy didn't you leave?''

One father refused to leave the side of his son who had cerebral palsy, fighting to his last breath. The last words he said to his daughter were, ``Baby, I'm getting ready to evacuate, I love you . . . Baby, I got to go, the fire's made it to my yard.''

Anthony Mitchell is a hero.

Edgar McGregor is well known in Pasadena for his daily trash pickups in the foothills. But now, to the community, he will be known for something more. In a Facebook group post, he alerted residents 2 days before the fires to pack go-bags. When it mattered most, he typed two words: ``Get out.''

``Get out.'' His simple post may have saved lives.

People are surviving now but only barely hanging on.

I spoke with Patricia at one of the shelters on the West Side. She stayed a couple of nights in a motel but could no longer afford it, and her asthma was making it hard to breathe.

One firefighter, Jonathan, had been battling the blazes in the Palisades since the first night. I remember talking to this L. A. Fire Department firefighter, and he had told me he wasn't sure he was going to make it out when he was there during the early hours of the fire. I asked him what that was like. He said: Well, there were flames in front of me and flames behind me. The water was running low. My communications were going out. He said it was ``the closest thing to hell I can imagine.''

One family in Altadena who all lived on the same street lost three homes. What was once a dream to live so close to each other had turned into a nightmare.

Over the past week, we have seen firefighters--exhausted and yet unyielding--waging war to save communities and lives and property.

And in the last few days, we have seen some hopeful signs as the level of containment--particularly of the Eaton fire--has increased; more slowly, the containment of the Palisades fire. But we are not out of the woods.

We have seen neighbors helping neighbors. We have seen Angelenos opening their doors to strangers left with little more than the clothes on their back.

These are the angels who remind us that even in our darkest hours-- through smoky skies and uncertain times--we do not stand alone because what makes this city of Los Angeles so extraordinary--what makes California extraordinary--is that we are not defined by our tragedies; we are defined by our response to them.

In Los Angeles, resilience is a way of life. It is what has allowed the city to rise from the devastation of earthquakes and floods and riots and fires time and again. And we are stronger, more resilient, more united, more compassionate.

This is a moment when we can and must call ourselves to the better angels of our nature--the angels that are all around us: the paramedics who rescued and evacuated seniors from a nursing home at the edge of a fire line, the volunteers I met who showed up at a shelter ready to help before anyone even asked, the father who stayed behind to try desperately to keep his son alive.

In the coming weeks, after the fires are extinguished, we will seek answers. We must not do so for partisan gain or seeking fault; in fact, just the opposite because only with the truth about what went right and what went wrong can we arrive at solutions.

I remember talking to one woman who lost her trailer in the Palisades. She wants answers about the lack of water to fight the fires. I want to know that too. I want to know if the Federal and State resources we are fighting to procure will be enough to stop the next potential megafire. I want to know what we can do to rebuild and rebuild with speed so the neighborhoods that we lost can be reclaimed by the neighbors who have been displaced, and communities can come together once more.

I am grateful for the Governor's efforts to streamline the permitting process so people can begin to rebuild and rebuild quickly. And I want to know if there is anything more that we can do or could have done to save more lives and more homes. We should all want that.

We should all want to rebuild because Los Angeles is one of our Nation's great cities. And to rebuild, we will need your help without fanfare or partisan rancor.

We need your help. Just like we worked together to help rebuild New Orleans and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, we must do so again here. Just like after countless hurricanes struck Florida and the South, we rushed in aid. Just this year, after Hurricane Helene, FEMA is still on the ground in North Carolina helping those in its destructive path. And we won't leave--we can't--until the job is finished. That is what we must do here.

During my time in Congress, I have seen a lot of disaster aid bills. Never in my time have I ever considered whether an area votes red or blue. When people need help, we get them help. When people are fighting to rebuild, we help them rebuild, period. It cannot and should not change no matter who is President, no matter who is in charge of Congress, no matter who the Governor is or who their Senators are.

That is my urgent plea today. We need your help desperately.

Southern California, we will rebuild. We will. But whether we can do so quickly will depend on the actions we take in the next few months.

This big and beautiful diverse city is not just made of steel and stone but of people--people who stand together when the skies turn dark and rise together when the smoke clears.

We are going to rise again because it is who we are. And when we do, we will show the world what it truly means to be the ``City of Angels.''

I yield the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor eight members of my staff--Patrick Boland, Mary Hovagimian, Tim Hysom, Qiao Li, Colleen Oinuma, Ann Peifer, Margarita Pinon-Gutierrez, and Teresa Lamb Simpson--who have each spent more than a decade serving the House of Representatives and constituents in the great state of California.

Patrick Boland

Patrick Boland, my current Chief of Staff, is a proud son of California's 30th Congressional District, growing up in Pasadena and attending Loyola High School. After graduating from Colby College, Patrick worked in communications roles on Capitol Hill for Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Charles Schumer, Rep. Scott Murphy (D-NY) and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA). He also worked on the campaigns of Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA) and Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA).

Patrick joined my team in 2012, serving as Communications Director and a senior advisor for both my personal office and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In his role as a spokesman and speechwriter, and director of the war room, during the first impeachment inquiry, Patrick's intellect, pragmatism, and dedication were crucial to the impeachment team's presentation of our case to the House, the Senate, and the American people.

Since 2021, Patrick has served as my Chief of Staff, playing an integral role in my transition back to the Judiciary Committee. Through his leadership, Patrick has fostered a collaborative, inclusive, and results-oriented culture in my personal office. Additionally, he has mentored countless junior staffers and brought them under his wing as they begin their careers on Capitol Hill, always advocating for those he believes deserve a spot on Capitol Hill and a chance to work in public service.

Patrick also worked as a Senior Advisor for my Senate campaign, helping oversee our political, communications, policy and paid media operations. His contributions and strategic vision on the trail were crucial to both our successful statewide campaign and to our support of numerous California incumbents and challengers who prevailed this November.

Patrick is married to Jill, a Senior Policy Advisor to Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), with whom he has a one-year-daughter Riley.

Patrick is truly gifted at his job, holding an intimate understanding of the media as an enterprise and a business rivaling that of any other professional on Capitol Hill. He brings leadership, levity, and political acumen to my office every single day, and I am looking forward to seeing all that we will accomplish together as we continue our service to the state of California.

Mary Hovagimian

Born in Burbank, California, Mary Hovagimian attended St. Mary's Richard Tufenkian Preschool & Kindergarten and Rose and Alex Pilibos Armenian School. She continued her education at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, graduating Cum Laude in 2009 with a bachelor's degree in communication.

Mary was determined to delve into a career where she could give back to the community and make a meaningful difference in people's lives. When a career counselor at the University of Southern California shared with Mary that my office was seeking a District Representative, she did not hesitate to apply. In this capacity, Mary has devotedly served the constituents of my district, helped organize community outreach events, served as a liaison between constituents and my office, and directed Armenian American outreach. Mary has been recognized for her work in the community and received the 2014 Woman in Government Award from the Armenian American Chamber of Commerce.

I have proudly represented one of the largest Armenian American communities in the United States, and Mary's Armenian-speaking skills in both Eastern and Western Armenian, a skill she credits to her family and education, have proven essential throughout the years. She has helped many constituents who have needed translation assistance. In 2013, Mary also helped me speak this beautiful language when I decided to deliver my remarks in commemoration of the 98th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in Armenian on the House Floor. And no matter the issue facing the community, Mary navigates it with tact and skill unparalleled.

Mary leads the effort on the annual Women of the Year nominations, which recognizes remarkable women from California's 30th Congressional District. Each year, she works tirelessly to acknowledge individuals who have made significant contributions to their communities through civic engagement, community service, and leadership in their respective fields.

During her time with my office, I have had the opportunity to see Mary excel balancing her responsibilities in my office while working toward her master's degree in leadership, which she obtained in 2021 from the University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy. She brought what she learned inside the classroom back to my office to champion the needs of the community. Mary is deeply committed to her family and community, one of the many reasons that she has excelled at public service.

I'm excited that she will continue to make a significant contribution to our team's success in the U.S. Senate. Her deep understanding of the Armenian community and her unwavering commitment to constituents will undoubtedly be an invaluable asset to the team.

Tim Hysom

Tim Hysom has spent over twenty years on Capitol Hill, serving a number of members in a variety of roles. A graduate of Dominican University, Tim began his Congressional career in the district office of Rep. David E. Skaggs (D-CO). After some time in the private sector, he joined my D.C. team as a Legislative Assistant in 2003. In this role, Tim advised me on my work on the Judiciary Committee. He also played an integral role in bringing my office into the 21st Century, completely overhauling my office's online presence and building and managing our constituent database. He also developed my office's strategic communications through emerging mediums, such as online town hall meetings, tele-town halls, and video conferencing.

After five years with the Congressional Management Foundation, where he advised Members on how to effectively correspond with constituents, Tim rejoined my team as our Deputy District Director. As the boundaries of my district shifted, he created a strategic plan for community outreach for different communities and geographic areas to reach our new constituents. He also advised me on key transportation, entertainment industry, and political issues in our district.

After two years in this role, Tim moved back to Washington, D.C., to serve as Chief of Staff to Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA) from 2013 to 2021. Building a congressional office from scratch is no easy feat, but Tim made it seem easy--leading to a successful House career for Rep. Lowenthal. After stints as Chief of Staff with Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) and as a House Shared Financial and Human Resource Administrator, Tim joined my team for a third time, as a senior advisor assisting me and my team in the conclusion of my tenure in the House and launching my Senate office.

Throughout his career, Tim has proven his versatility as a leader in policymaking, project and human resource management, and constituent service skills. He has also mentored many junior staffers finding their way on Capitol Hill. His contributions to this institution have been immense, and I am excited knowing that I will continue to have his guidance and wisdom on my Senate team.

Qiao Li

Qiao Li, a graduate of UC Berkeley, first entered public service while working for Los Angeles City Councilmember Tom LaBonge, a public servant of the highest order who guided the paths of so many in our community, including Qiao. She began with my office in 2011 as a District Representative. In 2013, Qiao took a brief detour to pursue a Master's degree in Global and International Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

In 2019, she rejoined our team, applying her knowledge to casework to better serve the community. In her role as a casework manager, she is the first point of contact for constituents who need assistance with federal agencies. It is not always an easy job, but Qiao's smile and dedication to helping individuals never wavers. Not a week goes by when I do not receive thanks for a constituent she has assisted in their casework with the IRS, VA, State Department, BCIS, or other federal agencies.

Qiao addresses a wide range of issues and serves as the bridge between constituents and the federal government, helping them to navigate complex processes to ensure they receive the services and benefits they are entitled to.

Outside of her role in the office, she is an active member of the community. For six summers, she coordinated the YUNASA Summer Camp for Gifted Kids. During her 11 years in public service, Qiao has been an invaluable part of the team, and I am so grateful that she will continue to leverage her expertise in all areas of casework to make a significant impact for people across the state of California in the United States Senate. Her kind spirit and unwavering commitment to public service will undoubtedly benefit our team and the state as a whole.

Colleen Oinuma

Colleen Oinuma is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where she earned her B.S. in Environmental Science and actively participated in student government. Before taking her current role, she worked for a research unit studying MRI spectroscopy to help diagnose neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's, addiction and traumatic brain injury.

Colleen joined my district team in 2011 and has covered a variety of issue areas, including the Environment, Energy, Rim of the Valley, and Space. Because of her work on the Rim of the Valley, we have been able to make progress in securing and protecting nearly a hundred thousand acres in the Southern California region for future generations. Colleen also manages all aspects of my schedule for California and played a crucial role in our successful statewide campaign for Senate, serving as director of scheduling and advance. Her strategic vision and critical thinking made the gears of a large campaign run, and we could not have done it without her.

Outside of the office, she served on the board of OCA-Greater Los Angeles, a non-profit dedicated to advancing the social, political, and economic well-being of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Colleen has also served as the Co-Director of the Asian Pacific American Legislative Staff Network. In this role, she took great pride in mentoring Asian American and Pacific Islander staff members. Because of her mentorship, countless individuals have entered and stayed in public service, leaving a lasting impact that will be felt for years to come.

Colleen is married to David, and is a mom of three, Madeline, Hannah and Quinten along with her dog Austin.

I am looking forward to her joining my United States Senate office, where she will serve as Deputy State Director. Her leadership and strategic vision will ensure I am able to serve all Californians.

Ann Peifer

Ann Peifer began her career in public service as an intern for an Orange County State Senator while obtaining her B.A. in Social Ecology from UC Irvine in 1981. After serving in that office over ten years as a caseworker, field representative and ultimately district manager, she subsequently moved to the State Board of Equalization, State Assembly, and the City of Long Beach before re-joining the State Senate as my District Coordinator in 1997.

Ann was the first person I hired when I was elected to public office. We met at an IHOP in Burbank and discussed how to establish my first district office and build out our staff. Her ambition, political acuity, and wealth of knowledge as a lifelong Californian and public servant prompted me to make Ann my District Director. After four years in my State Senate office, Ann moved with me to the House of Representatives, where she has served as my District Director ever since.

As the longest-serving member of my staff, I owe Ann a debt of gratitude for building my constituent service operation and providing direction to our constituent services that is rooted in an authentic desire to help others and a dedication to public service that is unmatched.

Under Ann's leadership, our staff has brought compassion, diligence, empathy, and a high level of professionalism to our constituents through casework and community engagement. Ann cares deeply for her staff and the nearly 750,000 constituents of California's 30th District. Her dedication to public service is underscored by the sheer volume of cases my staff has undertaken: Under Ann's leadership throughout my time in the CA State Legislature and House of Representatives, my office has resolved 36,000 cases for our constituents.

Ann has been with me every step of the way--from the 21st State Senate District, to the 27th, 29th, 28th and now 30th Congressional District. I am grateful for her continuing service as my State Director in the United States Senate.

Margarita Pinon-Gutierrez

Margarita Pinon-Gutierrez was born in Harbor City, California, and was raised in San Pedro. She attended Mary Star of the Sea High School in San Pedro and Los Angeles Harbor College in Wilmington. Prior to joining my office, she worked for UnidosUS, formerly known as the National Council of La Raza, the largest Latino nonprofit advocacy organization in the country, before moving into a life of public service to work for Lieutenant Governor Leo McCarthy, Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-CA), and Rep. Hilda L. Solis (D-CA). Margarita also served as Administrative Assistant to several deans at San Pedro High School.

Margarita has been a Caseworker on my team since 2007. I first met Margarita when I attended an event at Steven's Steak House and Seafood in Commerce, California, and I was deeply impressed with her dedication to the needs of Californians. Throughout her time with my office, she has handled casework involving the Social Security Administration, U.S. Department of State, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, Office of Personnel Management, U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S. Department of Education and the Internal Revenue Service.

Margarita has provided translation services in Spanish to the constituents of my district and has served as a liaison to the community, attending numerous events of various organizations including the Glendale Latino Association and Adelante Latinos. Her warmth and dedication shines through every interaction she has with constituents, who are often navigating life-changing events.

Margarita resides with her husband, Dennis, her brother, Luis Pinon, Jr., and her beloved dogs, Riley, Belle, Samantha and Lulu.

Her passion for ensuring constituents have access to the services and resources they need drives her day-to-day work. I am grateful for her incredible expertise in navigating casework with a large range of federal agencies, and I look forward to seeing this commitment to service deployed in the United States Senate for the entire state of California.

Teresa Lamb Simpson

Teresa Lamb Simpson is a part of a third generation born and raised in Pasadena, California. She took an interest in politics at an early age, as her grandfather served on the local school board and her mother was a volunteer who often took Teresa and her siblings to work on political campaigns. Teresa has worked in a variety of fields, including non-profits, law firms, restaurants, and retail management. Fighting the widespread aerial spraying of the insecticide malathion in Southern California in the late 1980s launched her into a career in politics.

Teresa and I met during my earlier State Assembly campaign and crossed paths again in 1996 when she came on board to work as the Volunteer Coordinator for my successful State Senate campaign. After the election, she joined my staff as a District Representative in 1997 and continued on to work on my House staff in 2001. Teresa has a true passion for helping people, serving as an exemplary community liaison between my constituents and me. She covered the geographic areas of Atwater Village, Echo Park, Elysian Valley, Los Feliz, Pasadena, Shadow Hills, Silver Lake, Sunland and Tujunga. In addition to her work as a liaison and invaluable relationship-builder, she organized my Congressional Art Competition for high school students for many years, trained and helped manage our office interns, coordinated several community outreach events and provided guidance to my constituents on various issues.

Outside of her role in my office, Teresa is a pillar of the community. She was the co-coordinator of the Children's Village at the Arroyo Seco Earth Day Festival and served on the board of the United Nations Association, Pasadena Chapter, the executive boards of the Pasadena Police Activities League and the Pasadena Police Foundation, on the City of Pasadena's Commission on the Status of Women and on the City's Library Commission. She also volunteered with the Junior League

of Pasadena, Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley, and the YWCA Glendale and Pasadena. Currently, she is a co-founder and board member of the San Rafael Library Associates and active in local political organizations. For her community involvement, Teresa has been the recipient of the Rosemary Children's Services Golden Star Award, the Pasadena Police Chiefs Special Award for Excellence, the Democrat of the Year Award and THE Magazine's 50 Fabulous Women Over 50 Award.

Married in 2002, Teresa and her husband, James Simpson, live in their hometown of Pasadena, California.

Teresa will be joining me in the United States Senate, and I am grateful that she will continue her outstanding public service to my constituents throughout the State of California.

In my twenty-three years in Congress, I have learned the important lesson that every member is only as good as their staff, and seldom as good as that. We could not do our jobs for our constituents without them and their labors, and my staff have been laser-focused on providing the highest level of service for the great people of Southern California. They have also fostered a phenomenal culture in both the district and D.C., one which has attracted and retained so many other brilliant and dedicated public servants through the years. These eight--who have each served more than ten years in the U.S. House--are some of the most dedicated, selfless, and talented individuals I have ever met, and I have been truly blessed to have them alongside me in serving our constituents in Burbank, Glendale, Hollywood, Pasadena and beyond.

I also want to thank my other staff who will be coming with me to the U.S. Senate for their dedication, their public service, and their amazing intellect. I am so thankful that Danielle Fulfs, Marisol Samayoa, Kaitlyn Kelly, Jamie Thompson, Kyle Abrams, Dahvi Cohen, Manning Turkheimer, Colin Kruse, Mohamad Almouazzen, Maddie Barry, Christina Beros, and Jackson Boaz will also be joining me in the U.S. Senate.

I owe each of these dedicated staffers my utmost gratitude, and I am looking forward to seeing all they will accomplish in the next chapter of our service to the people of California.

Madam Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 465.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to extend my warmest congratulations to KABC-TV as it celebrates its 75th anniversary of broadcasting.

Launched on September 16, 1949 as KECA-TV on Channel 7, ABC's fifth television outlet and Los Angeles' seventh television station, the 7:00 p.m. premiere featured a program with civic leaders and a variety program, followed by a University of California Los Angeles-Oregon State University football game. On February 1, 1954, the callsign of KECA-TV was changed to KABC-TV. Since then, KABC-TV has established itself as one of the premier local news and information sources in Southern California, flourishing along with the City of Los Angeles as the area's population grew during the post-war years. The station was originally located in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles until 2000 when it moved to its current home in Glendale. Since its conception, the station has been instrumental in shaping public discourse, providing a platform for local issues, and celebrating the diverse communities of Los Angeles.

With a team of well-versed and dedicated news anchors and reporters, the station delivers compelling news stories that are relevant and important to Angelenos, communicating complex issues with clarity and empathy. KABC-TV's news anchors have been consistently described as approachable, authentic, and exceptionally skilled in their roles. Throughout challenging times such as the Covid-19 pandemic, turbulent local politics, and devasting wildfires, these award-winning anchors and reporters have served as accurate, reliable stewards of information.

In the era of rapid technological change, KABC-TV has been at the forefront of innovation in digital and social media engagement, embracing the evolving media landscape and adapting its skillful strategies to connect with audiences across the region. This commitment to modernization ensures that Southern California and Los Angeles in particular, receive timely and significant news, through televisions, accessing content via their phones, or through social media platforms.

KABC-TV has garnered numerous accolades, including many Emmy Awards from the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

I am proud to recognize this outstanding station for its enduring legacy and immeasurable contributions to the television and news industry in our local communities. I ask all Members to join me in congratulating KABC-TV Los Angeles upon its 75th anniversary.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the centennial milestone of St. Luke's of the Mountains Episcopal Church, a cherished institution in La Crescenta, California.

St. Luke's traces its roots back to the early 1920's when Canon Burson Renison, an Episcopal missionary and founder of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, began visiting the Crescenta Valley area to establish a new church. After meeting with renowned American portrait artist S. Seymour Thomas and his wife, Helen, who had fled their home in Paris, France during World War I to relocate in La Canada, the Thomases and Canon Renison began planning for the new church. The inaugural service was held in a school auditorium on November 25, 1923, and on the following Easter Sunday, April 20, 1924, 179 people gathered to lay the church's cornerstone on land donated by Pasadena philanthropist Louise Janvier. The church was believed to have been named by S. Seymour Thomas after St. Luke, the biblical saint who was an artist and medical practitioner.

Nestled in the beautiful foothills of La Crescenta, the new church, as a result of Mr. Thomas' artistic vision, was reminiscent of the California missions and chapels of the French countryside. The church's look is distinctive because it was constructed from rocks and stones that Mr. Thomas chose on his hikes in the local mountains and that the new parishioners gathered. On Christmas Day in 1925, the church opened its doors for its first service and in 1931, St. Luke's was admitted as a parish church of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

From its beginning, St, Luke's of the Mountains Episcopal Church thrived and grew, becoming the center of, and the spiritual home for, the greater La Crescenta community. The church has steadfastly followed its mission of service for one hundred years, meeting the spiritual needs of the community, continuing to positively impact the Crescenta Valley area. Some of St. Luke's programs include a community garden to support its Food Justice program, the Fire House youth center which is open to all youth, free breakfasts for middle school children, and participation in local civic organizations that host food drives and programs for foster children.

I am proud to recognize St. Luke's of the Mountains Episcopal Church upon its 100th anniversary, and I invite all Members to join me in honoring this remarkable institution.

Mr. Speaker, this week marks the one-year anniversary of Azerbaijan's military assault on the Republic of Artsakh, which began on September 19, 2023, following its long-term blockade of the Lachin Corridor. Their unjustified use of military force resulted in the surrender of the Artsakh government and the unprecedented expulsion of over 100,000 residents from their ancestral homes.

Despite promises and assurances that there would be no such attack, Azerbaijan used the language of ``anti-terrorist operations'' to justify its military assault on the peaceful inhabitants of Artsakh. Yet, Azerbaijan's blockade of the region since December 12, 2022 provided a clear warning of what was to come. When Azerbaijan's military forces closed the Lachin Corridor, the narrow strip of traversable land between Artsakh and Armenia, the United Nations and U.S. officials called on the Azerbaijani government to lift the blockade, which had caused a massive region-wide humanitarian crisis. Azerbaijan refused and the blockade remained in place until September 2023 when Azerbaijan's military commenced its assault. By then, the blockade had already crippled Artsakh due to the lack of essential goods and services, including food and fuel. The blockade was so devastating in its isolation of Artsakh that its inhabitants suffered from severe malnutrition, including a fourfold increase in the number of recorded miscarriages compared to the previous year. The blockade created such a humanitarian crisis that the International Association of Genocide Scholars warned of the risk of genocide against the Armenian population in the region.

Then came the military assault. After more than nine months of the blockade, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive on September 19, 2023. The following day, the government of Artsakh was forced to surrender to the invading force. Azerbaijan took many of the senior political leadership of the government of Artsakh as prisoners and continues to hold eight high-ranking officials of the former Republic of Artsakh, as well as several other officials and civilians. In November 2023, I introduced House Resolution 861, which calls on Azerbaijan to immediately comply with international commitments regarding the release and treatment of prisoners of war, hostages, and other detained persons. Yet, one year after its military assault, Azerbaijan continues to illegally hold the officials and civilians from Artsakh.

Additionally, since Azerbaijan's occupation of Artsakh, the risk of the intentional destruction of Armenian cultural heritage has only grown. There are nearly 500 Armenian cultural heritage sites in Artsakh and the surrounding region that have significant value to not only the global Armenian community, but also to the entire world. Yet, Azerbaijan has now embarked on a campaign to destroy these sites and erase Armenian heritage. To prevent the further destruction of these Armenian cultural heritage sites, I wrote a letter, co-signed by a bipartisan group of 47 fellow Members of the House of Representatives, to urge Secretary of State Antony Blinken to prioritize this issue in bilateral meetings with officials from the government of Azerbaijan.

However, the inescapable tragedy in this sad story is one of human suffering. The tragedy of Azerbaijan's actions one year ago can be measured in the lives that were inexplicably disrupted--over 100,000 residents who were forcibly displaced from their homes only to become refugees in neighboring Armenia. These displaced persons had homes, jobs, farms, businesses--full lives--in Artsakh. They had the ability to generate a revenue and to live with dignity in their ancestral homeland. Through no fault of their own, the Azerbaijani attack disrupted their lives, forcing them to flee to Armenia and seek shelter as refugees.

The government of Armenia has compassionately and courageously provided assistance to the refugees from Artsakh from a sense of moral duty and obligation to international norms. However, the responsibility to shoulder the costs incurred from the displacement of nearly every resident of Artsakh should fall on the government of Azerbaijan. This liability must include payments for the lost revenue that the residents of Artsakh would have generated had the attack and the subsequent displacement not occurred. To address this tragic situation, I introduced the Artsakh Revenue Recovery Act, a bill that not only places the liability for lost revenue on the government of Azerbaijan, but also establishes a mechanism by which those who lost the ability to generate revenue could receive compensation, even if the government of Azerbaijan refuses to do so. This mechanism involves the seizure of Azerbaijan's sovereign assets in the United States, and then transferring those assets to the Artsakh Revenue Recovery Fund. The Fund will compensate the lost revenue of those who were displaced from Artsakh until Azerbaijan decides to accept the responsibility for paying compensation to these victims. The compensation is for the lost revenue from jobs and property in Artsakh and does not impact the ownership status of any property. The original property owners will continue to have the right to return to their property.

Azerbaijan must accept responsibility for the enormous humanitarian crisis that its blockade and military assault on Artsakh created. It must release the hostages and prisoners and commit to the preservation of Armenian cultural heritage. It must assure those who have property in Artsakh the ability to return to their ancestral home and to rebuild their lives and ease the suffering of refugees now. Azerbaijan must accept the responsibility to compensate lost revenue of those who left Artsakh. This compensation cannot fully address the disruption to lives. But, it is an important start to address the current suffering of those who lost so much.

On the one-year anniversary of Azerbaijan's assault on Artsakh, we remember the broken promises, the human suffering, and the continued tragedy that has fallen on those who were displaced from Artsakh. We stand with those who were forcibly displaced from Artsakh. We stand for justice.

Mr. Speaker, due to unforeseen events, I was unfortunately unable to cast my vote for legislation considered on the House floor today. Had I been able to be present, I would have voted according to the following: NAY on Roll Call No. 418--H.R. 8314, No Foreign Election Interference Act and YEA on Roll Call No. 419--S. 2861, Billie Jean King Congressional Gold Medal Act.