Mr. President, I just want to say how much I have come to admire, in a short period of time, the junior Senator from New Jersey. That was a--that was a real speech, you know. We are, obviously, spending 30 hours on the floor to oppose Russ…
Mr. President, I just want to say how much I have come to admire, in a short period of time, the junior Senator from New Jersey. That was a--that was a real speech, you know. We are, obviously, spending 30 hours on the floor to oppose Russ Vought's nomination, and, you know, a lot of people have to come here and speak for 60 minutes or 30 minutes or 90 minutes, and we will take anything, right? Some people just read whatever they have got, and we appreciate all of it because we have to take the floor, and we have to maintain presence on this floor.
But that was a beautiful, well-crafted speech about American democracy,
about his life story, about his dedication to public service. So I am very honored to work alongside him.
Last week, without any advanced notice, OMB issued a memo freezing all Federal funding in order to end wokeness, ``Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies.'' Like, I just want to--we can pause right here, right?
This is not the kind of thing that the OMB is supposed to say, right? It is the Office of Management and Budget. They are not supposed to have an opinion about wokeness or not wokeness or anything like that. It is just a very odd way to view what is otherwise a kind of technocratic position, and that is what is very important about this particular OMB and this particular OMB Director. He does not view it as merely administering the budgets and the spending bills within the government. He views it as a power center through which all of his ideology and all of Project 2025 is going to be implemented.
Like, to think of the Office of Management and Budget as a place to fight wokeness and Marxist equity--I don't even know what any of that means, but I think a lot of us know the previous OMB Director. She was really well-regarded by both sides of the aisle. I think the Presiding Officer actually knew her from Louisiana. And, you know, like, she was left of center, but she would never say anything other than what is sort of straight down the middle as it relates to the Office of Management and Budget.
And that is--why would we take the floor for the OMB Director? Well, because he is the author of 2025. He is essentially the architect behind the Federal funds freeze. And in Project 2025, among all the things that they talk about, they also, like, devote a huge passage to how important OMB is and how powerful the next OMB Director should be.
Just so happens that the author of that section saying the OMB Director should be, like, pretty close to all-powerful and, essentially, representing the President in all things policy and budget, so happens that the guy that wrote that passage is the guy that is going to be in the job to do that. So, I mean, that seems kind of neat. I think OMB should be all powerful; also, I think I should run OMB. So that is what we are talking about.
But just understand what happened last week was not some attack on wokeness--whatever the hell that actually means. It was an attack on all of us. It really was an attack on all of us. All Federal funding was suspended. Millions of Americans around the country were in the dark, how they would access basic things--healthcare, education, childcare, small business loans, VA loans, disaster relief, opioid treatment. Everything from road repairs to cancer research was shut down across the country.
And you have to ask, aside from the very obvious fact that withholding funding from Congress that has already appropriated funding is plainly illegal, you have to ask: What on earth does so-called wokeness have to do with repairing a road? Or letting people refill their prescriptions at a community center? Or helping survivors of a flood or wildfire to try to rebuild their lives?
Is a child having a healthy meal wokeness? Is that DEI? Is that, I don't know, gender ideology, or is that the Green New Deal? Like, seriously, what the hell are we doing here?
A President is allowed to make policy. A President is expected to make policy. But they can't take a law and repeal it by Executive order, and especially as it relates to a spending law. Those laws are not actually optional, right?
And there is a very simple way for a President to get his way in the spending context. The Republicans control both Chambers of the Congress, the House and the Senate and the Presidency. They had a big victory--I didn't love it, but they had a big victory. So if they want changes in spending policy, they can just do it the American way. And so this is like a combination of laziness, impatience, a not- inconsiderable splash of illegality.
But, I mean, this is amateur hour. You want to change something. You want to fight wokeness--again, whatever the hell that actually means. If we have gotten to the point where shutting down a construction project is, like, attacking wokeness, then the actual word has ceased to mean anything. And DEI is this other, like, epithet they throw at things, but it is--the dragnet has caught all of Indian country, most Native people everywhere. Do you know what they did? They literally ``control F'' searched for keywords and then pulled those things out. They don't know anything about these programs. They pulled these things out if it said ``gender'' in it, or if it said ``equity,'' or if it said ``inclusive,'' or if it said ``climate,'' and they just, like, pulled it out and said: We are not funding that.
First of all, what a goofy way to make policy. Seriously, what a goofy, like, childish way to make policy.
Second of all, just to reiterate, you don't get to do that. If you want to make a change in a law, you have to make a change in a law. You can't just write a memo saying: I don't like the law; therefore, it no longer exists because I won.
It is true that the President won a free and fair election, absolutely a free and fair election. I didn't like the result, but I was absolutely prepared to tolerate policy outcomes that I didn't like.
But this is not that. This is them, like, skipping a step. And by skipping a step, I mean literally skipping the legislative branch.
And so there has been a lot of consternation on the Republican side; I mean, a lot of consternation. Rightwing Republicans, moderate Republicans--all of them are a little, like, I don't know about this.
But you can't stand up for the legislative branch in secret. You can't uphold the Constitution privately. At some point, you have to stand up for your prerogatives. And, listen, there is a lot of very talented people here, actually. I don't agree with them. Some of them I don't even like, but supertalented people, high-achieving human beings who could be doing something else.
And my view is, like, if you are going to forfeit your constitutional prerogatives, like, go be--I don't know, whatever. Do something else. Do something more interesting. Do something more lucrative. Do something more easy. But if you are going to be here and you are going to go through all the pain of running for election, of getting beat up by everybody left, right, and center, of people complaining about you, of putting your family through challenges--I am serious. Why would you do that and then forfeit, like, I would say two-thirds of the power that you are in possession of. You ran, presumably, to achieve some measure of influence so that you could actually change things. And now there is just a collective shrug of the shoulders.
So the problem with Mr. Vought is twofold: One, we have a government with three coequal branches, and Congress is the article I branch that holds the power of the purse, and we decide what to fund and at what levels. And in the face of an illegal action, the courts can step in and strike it down, as several judges did with the original funding freeze memo.
And this is one of the things, to the extent that there are at least 20 or 30 people still watching, Donald Trump and his team are running a huge bluff. It is not that they are not causing damage. I know they are causing damage. But understand that what they want to do is multiple illegal things and then see if they can get a few of these things to stick.
They have articulated that pretty clearly. Mr. Vought has said that. JD Vance has said a version of that. And just say: We are going to defy the Federal law and see whether we can come up with some judges who will give us a different interpretation.
And so the reason that that is an important thing to say is not just for me to be another Democrat saying: I can't believe he did this--but to understand Donald Trump is not the only person in the world who is not constrained by Federal law.
We saw last week the Federal funding freeze was found to be illegal and it was suspended and there is an injunction against it.
Last week--or maybe it was 2 weeks ago--the birthright citizenship nonsense was rejected by a Federal judge. Even what is happening with the access to the Treasury payments is being constrained in the court system. So I am
not, like, Pollyanna about the status of the court system. I am very frustrated, especially with the Supreme Court, and I do not expect, if it is at all a close call, for it to break our way.
But these are not close calls. These are clear violations of Federal statutory law, and so we don't want to give up in advance. The roots of democracy are still strong. And, like, my old now-friend, one-time adversary, the Former Speaker of the House in the State of Hawaii Calvin Say, he used to say:
Be like the bamboo, bend but don't break.
So we all have to understand that Donald Trump is a disrupter, and it is going to be rocky. But this idea that he is just going to rack up wins and there is nothing anybody can do about it is a dangerous premise because it can become self-fulfilling--people out on the streets, people in the courts, people in the legislature. We are out of power, but we are not powerless.
So everybody needs to understand that Russ Vought represents a very specific view of Presidential power, which is essentially unitarian, executive--whatever you want to call it. But it is a view that once you win, you are basically a monarch and that all those niceties--rules--I mean literally rules, right? You make a law, and usually the Agency has to make rules to kind of explain specifically how to implement any law. They view that as just an impediment to the inherent constitutional power of one man.
This is also consistent with the way that the tech bros view government. They view government as unnecessarily slow, too many checks and balances.
Why doesn't the government run like a business? Let me tell you why. Because if you ran government like a business, you would shut down every rural hospital. If you ran government like a business, you would actually not have a national transportation network; you wouldn't have a library in Kai. If you ran government like a business, by the way, most of the money would be spent in the cities. So we have a system of government that we all have to be committed to defending.
I want to spend a little bit of time with some letters that I received from constituents last week.
I just wasn't expecting it all to go sideways so quickly. After the OMB memo came out that said Federal Agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to the obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance--what a crazy--can you imagine being a person who previously was at OMB--this person is not new to this--issuing a memo saying: Pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of funds. I knew immediately--I was like, oh, my God.
There are these portals, and they are basically websites. If you are the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands or the Hawaii Department of Transportation, almost daily, you are doing draws. You have your little code words. You have to send your little invoice, and then there is an electronic transfer of money to a clinic or a construction project or the Veterans' Administration or whatever it is. Those portals were shut down, and everybody was in an actual panic. I am not exaggerating.
People voted for Trump for all sorts of reasons, but one of the reasons that kept coming up over and over: They thought he would bring down the price of eggs, the price of groceries, the price at the pump. What they did not vote for was to lose their ability to get a home loan or healthcare or childcare or a healthy meal or a good education for their children.
I want to read a couple of letters from constituents:
I am reaching out with a heavy heart as a program planner
and student adviser who works directly with students across
several Maui County schools. I also want to include
representation of our sister programs, which collectively
provide vital support for low-income, first-generation Native
Hawaiian students.
This year has been one of the most difficult in recent
memory for our students and their families. The devastating
Lahaina wildfires left deep scars in our community, and many
of our students are still working to recover from the
emotional, physical, and financial toll that disaster caused.
For many of them, this catastrophe was a breaking point
where they saw their homes, their schools, and even their
sense of safety and stability go up in flames. Despite
overwhelming loss, these students are still resilient. They
are fighting to stay afloat, to keep their dreams alive, and
to continue their education, despite the trauma that they
have endured.
These support programs have been there for them every step
of the way, offering them emotional support, academic
assistance, and a safe space for students to process their
grief and focus on the future. Through our programs, they
have found a sense of community and hope.
Our academic advisers and mentors have been working
tirelessly to ensure, even in the wake of the fire, that
these students know that they are not alone, that there is a
path forward.
But now we face a crisis that can further jeopardize these
opportunities for these young people. OMB has imposed a
Federal freeze on funds set to take effect at 5 p.m. eastern
time. This freeze will halt the disbursement of federal
funds, including those essential for our programs.
Without access to these funds, we will be unable to
continue providing services that our students need to heal,
thrive, and succeed. The support that they so desperately
need--academic tutoring, mentorship, college prep, and a
strong network of peer support--will be in jeopardy.
For many of our students, this isn't just a program; it is
a lifeline. These students are not just looking for a way to
finish high school; they are looking for a chance to rebuild
their lives, to break the cycles of poverty and hardship, and
to find their footing in a world that has been turned upside
down. To take away the programs that have supported them
through the wildfires and their ongoing recovery would be
devastating.
Is this program woke? Is it DEI? Is it Marxist? What the hell are we doing here? What the hell are we doing here? Why would we cause this amount of pain? Some sense of like fiscal discipline? We are not saving the money.
On top of everything else, thousands and thousands and thousands of employees--not just at USAID but at the Small Business Administration and at the CIA--were sent home. By the way, because of civil service law, we can't lay them off. It is not a private sector situation. You can't lay them off as a matter of law. So we sent them home to not work. We are shutting people out of their emails to not deliver service to the public. Awesome. Let's run the government like the worst business ever where we are just going to pay people not to work.
I am an eighth grade student at Halau Ku Mana in Honolulu,
Hawaii. I am writing to ask for your support in protecting
federal funding for Native Hawaiian education. The proposed
freeze on federal financial assistance under executive memo
M-2513 puts programs like ours at risk. Without them,
students like me will lose access to the cultural education
that connects us to our identity.
At Halau Ku Mana, our learning is different from other
schools. We don't just sit in a classroom all day. We malama
aina, meaning care for the land. We learn from cultural
experts and study through real experiences. Programs
funded by federal grants allow us to go on educational
journeys, restore fishponds, grow food in kalo taro
patches, and learn traditional skills. These experiences
teach us about our past and prepare us for the future.
I guess it was too woke.
As your constituent, I am writing to express strong
opposition to the White House order to freeze federal funding
across all federal agencies. Millions of families will lose
access to services provided by SNAP, TANF, and HUD housing
assistance. Millions of students in Head Start, grade
schools, and colleges will lose access to classroom funding,
school resources, federal loans, and Pell grants. Millions of
local firefighters and public safety officials will lose
federal grants and resources needed to protect communities.
Millions of veterans would lose access to VA mortgages and
home loans and suicide prevention services.
Is that woke, Marxist ideology?
You see, what is happening is they want to dismantle the public services that we all rely upon. Can you imagine a week ago--I guess it was a little more than a week ago--air traffic controllers were told to quit? And we have--I think it is a 30-percent vacancy rate. We are short of air traffic controllers.
I understand. I have been in politics, I have been an appropriator for a while. Sometimes people cry wolf: If you don't give us this money, it is going to be dire. But the air traffic controller situation is quite dire, and we saw the impact of being understaffed last week.
So the language about woke and Marxism and all that stuff is a smoke screen. What they truly want to do is dismantle whatever the Federal Government does--if it is firefighting, if it is the CIA, if it is the National Weather Service, if it is VA home loans.
Their Project 2025 is to--they call it dismantle the administrative state, but really what they want to do is provide less service to people. The reason they want to do that is they have a yawning $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion gap that they have to fill because they want to provide a $1 trillion to $2 trillion tax cut
for the wealthiest corporations that have ever existed--literally have ever existed. They have a bunch of hardcore fiscal conservatives on the House side that just won't do it on a deficit finance basis, so they have to find savings, and that is what this is.
They really are cutting the stuff that matters to regular people, and then they are going to book that as savings, and then they are going to shove it in the direction of billionaires and billionaire corporations.
I see my friend Senator Murphy is here. It is a little bit like old times to see you on the floor at 2 a.m. It used to be easier when I was on Hawaii time, but I have been here for a couple of weeks, so this is actually late for me.
I just want to recognize that we have most Democratic Senators speaking at some point through this 30-hour period, but Murph decided to take the 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. shift.
I hope you haven't had too much Mountain Dew at this point.
I would be happy to yield to the Senator from Connecticut.
With the permission of the Chair, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy without having to go through the Chair every time.
Can I say one thing about--I did not know that this whole Senate is powered on Celsius. I never had Celsius before. I was walking around offering people coffee, and everyone had a Celsius.
I just want to drill down on why the profit motive is so dangerous to public service.
If you are in the business of trying to figure out where to drop a Starbucks or whatever, you have got to figure out where the people are, right? You would not drop a Starbucks in a place where it is, you know, a 300-person town. Fair enough. You don't have to drop a Starbucks there, but you do need a health clinic somewhere around there, and you do need a public library somewhere around there, and you are going to want a fire station somewhere around there. And if everything becomes a question of profitability and arithmetic and ROI, what is going to happen is that rural communities are not going to get what they need because, if you do that arithmetic as if you were a private sector investor, I promise you that the only place anything makes any sense to do it is in the cities, and that is what they are going to do. They are going to eviscerate public service across rural America.
You know, I think the Senator from Connecticut knows this:
I care very much about NOAA, the National Weather Service. Part of Project 2025 is this idea that we should privatize NOAA. Like, these people launch satellites; provide us with data; and then people can make, I mean, basic plans of what they are going to do that day. But aviation depends on it; farming depends on it; shipping depends on it. And the backbone of this is, like, a pretty expensive data collection enterprise and satellite-launching and maintenance enterprise. Then, in the back of that--right?--like, there is AccuWeather and these private sector companies, and they will put a skin on it and give you an app that tells you what the weather is, but they are all using the NOAA data. They are using the National Weather Service data. What they want is to be able to monetize this public service. It is always that--it is socializing the losses and privatizing the gains.
I think that is what these folks want to do, but--they have always kind of wanted to do this. They have always had this point of view, and some of our Republican colleagues, like, have a
point of view where, at the edges, we could have an argument about what ought to be a private sector enterprise or what ought to be a public- private partnership. Like, those are all kind of within the bounds of normal political discussion. But that is not what this is. This is, like, arson.
If there is any internet.
I used to run a social services agency. We had a couple hundred employees, and we delivered mental health services, and we were a Medicaid provider. It was back in the day when we weren't yet receiving electronic payments, and I would go to--like, I would wait for the mail every Wednesday and Thursday to see if we had to dip into our line of credit to make payroll. We ran a successful agency, and we were one of the bigger social services agencies on the island of Oahu-- the most populous island in Hawaii.
But that is what this is like. Even if you are a pretty solid social services agency or health clinic, it is always hand to mouth. You don't have some, like, cash reserves. So when they turned off that spigot, it was instantaneous, right?
I think part of what is happening with 2025--and excuse me for, you know, maybe diverting our conversation slightly--is that there is just a lot of very ideological people in cubicles who haven't been outside of Washington, DC, and are actually thinking in abstractions, and they truly believe in their heart of hearts--it is the billionaires, first of all, but it is also some other people who wrote the document who believe--I mean, deeply--that no one is going to miss the Federal Government if it doesn't deliver these services.
I think one of the things that has given me some comfort in the last couple of weeks--and, you know, it has been a rough couple of weeks--is that, boy, it was instantaneous, right? People were freaked out across the country--red States, blue States, rural, urban, suburban, exurban. Like, everyone was, like, what the hell, right? Like, I might have voted for Donald Trump or I might not have, but, like, nobody wants this. You are at the helm of the Federal Government, and then you just, like, within the first 2 weeks, go, like: I am going to destroy this place. Isn't that what you wanted?
No. People didn't vote for Donald Trump so he could destroy the Federal Government. They like that he is a disruptor. They like that he, you know, doesn't talk like the rest of us. They were pissed about the cost of eggs and groceries and gasoline and all the rest of it. I understand all of that, but I don't think this is what people signed up for. Like, I would like this guy to shut down the Medicaid portal. I would like for Head Start to have difficulty making payroll. I would like for construction projects to be staged and then send everybody home because there is no money to pay them. Like, this is not the kind of disruption that people thought they were getting.
They thought it was going to be like, I am going to make those Democrats uncomfortable or I need a businessman to, like, not--you know, to ``think outside of the box.'' But this is not that. This is arson, and people see it for what it is. It wasn't one of those things where we are arguing about the impacts, and then 3 years from now everybody figures out what the impacts were. It was instantaneous, and it was pretty violent, right? I don't mean physically violent, but I do mean, like, Whoa! What are you doing to us across society--right?--and all under this, like, Marxist ideology, woke, DEI? Like, it is just like you put a bunch of--like, ``Please say cliche stuff about Democrats'' into ChatGPT and then, like, spit out an Executive order.
I think about my constituents in the IFPTE who work at
the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. I think about 20 years ago, I guess, the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard was low-performing. It was not great. There was the BRAC Commission to determine if we were going to get rid of some of these bases and installations, and quite reasonably, people were looking at Pearl Harbor as one of those to possibly get rid of because it was so low-performing.
They have, in the great tradition, by the way, of--after Pearl Harbor was bombed and they quickly built a fuel storage facility and rebuilt ships in, like, months when it was expected that it would take a couple of years, what they did was literally miraculous and caused us to win the war. Without it, we wouldn't have won the war. Those guys dug in, understood there was a need for improvement, and now it is the best performing naval shipyard.
Are they woke? Are they DEI? What are we doing here?
I want every American to share our sense of outrage on behalf of the nurses and the firefighters and the technical workers and the welders and the boilermakers and the TSA agents and the Coast Guard men and women. These are patriots. By the way, some are also in a cubicle pushing paper. That paper probably matters. It might be your VA benefits. It might be your Social Security benefits. It might be your ACA subsidy.
Nobody likes a big bureaucracy. I am a Kaiser member. God bless everybody who works there, but I have my frustrations getting through to someone, navigating the system. So it is easy to hate anything that is big, whether it is Verizon or Comcast or Kaiser or the Federal Government. You don't have to love everything that happens in any big organization, and you don't have to think it is perfect. It is not perfect.
The Federal Government needs reform. I actually think there are some really interesting opportunities to provide better service using AI. I am all in if you want to make the government work better. But DOGE is kind of dressing up what they are doing as some sort of effort at efficiency and a better delivery of service. That is actually not what they are doing.
You don't terrorize your employees. Anybody who has run an organization larger than two people knows that if you are going to get stuff out of someone, then you can be tough, but you can't actually terrorize them.
They would get--I was about to swear. It is the Senate floor. I will not. But they would get canned. They would get immediately sacked.
Like, this guy is nuts. Get rid of him.
Even in the private sector, just so we are clear--because there are also differences between the public and the private sector in terms of civil service protections and unions and all that. I am happy with that because, by the way, the unions are some of the people who are standing up not just for the rights of the workers but the services they provide.
I think this is a little bit of a--look, I know not everybody is paying super close attention to all aspects of this, but I think in the abstract, people might have gone, like, yeah, maybe you should cut the Federal workforce by X, and there is probably a lot waste, fraud, and abuse. Conceptually thinking, yeah, who cares? Then suddenly you realize, oh, no, that is a VA home loan. Oh, I actually don't want a shortage of air traffic controllers. No, I don't want a private company collecting my biometric data as I go through the airport.
So there is kind of a broad recognition, there is a waking up to the idea that destroying the Federal Government is doing damage to the United States of America. It is not doing damage to woke something. It is not doing damage to the left. It is just that the Federal Government has an important role in society whether you like it or not.
We can argue about the size and the scope of that Federal Government, but that is not what we are arguing about anymore. They are out to destroy it. They don't want to make it 4 percent smaller over a period of time or 20 percent smaller; they want to commit arson.
I want to talk about USAID. I understand USAID is not an animating issue for, like, most voters. Fair enough. You have got your own problems, and imagining money going elsewhere is sometimes hard to swallow. But I want to set that aside, whatever your view is of foreign aid, which you and I both strongly support because instability elsewhere is dangerous to the United States of America.
But setting all of that aside, they literally just shut everybody out of their email and told them all to go home. We were standing there trying to enter USAID to just conduct some oversight and ask what is happening, and we were told by the security guard that no one was there. No one was there. So this isn't, like, some efficiency effort; they are sacking everyone.
Now I think it is 1,400--it might be more--Foreign Service officers across the planet who got an email. They are everywhere. They are at the Embassies in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in Central America-- everywhere--and they just got an email saying: Come home. You have 30 days. If you want an exception for any health reason or any specific circumstances, you can submit it to us, but otherwise, you are out.
These people have their kids in school. These people are there to respond to disasters. These people are there to build relationships on behalf of the United States of America.
Imagine the kind of person who takes the Foreign Service exam and then says ``I want to work in Ghana'' or ``I want to work in Ecuador on behalf of this country.'' Those are legit patriots, and they get deployed wherever they get deployed or sent--I shouldn't say ``deployed''--they get sent wherever they get sent, and they try to dig in. Their kids are going to the American school in whatever city it is. It is challenging, but it is exciting, and it is important. Then they just get an email saying: We are recalling you, and there is no choice.
That is not an efficient way to do anything; that is just arson.
Is that it has too many Democrats.
Well, I want to just sort of pause on that because, Chris, you are right. This is a purge.
I was sort of yelling in the Press Gallery--maybe not the best idea, but it was at a press conference--and I just basically pointed at all these people whom I have a lot of respect for in the media, but I am getting quite frustrated because this is actually not that hard to see if this were happening somewhere else.
We are both on the Foreign Relations Committee. We do a lot of travel. A lot of times, you sit down with some foreign leader--a Minister or a Prime Minister or another legislator from another country--and if you can see autocratic behavior like that, then it is literally on your talking points to encourage them to not engage in purges, to maintain a free media, the importance of an independent judiciary, blah, blah, blah. But when it happens to our own country, we just can't see it. If this were happening in Belarus, we would be like, ah, creeping autocracy. If this were happening in a Middle Eastern country, we would know what this was.
So I think you are really, you know, hitting the right point as it relates to public service.
I think about the U.S. military, which has been always, always a bastion for integration.
All sorts of integration. And now we are deciding that some people are not eligible to serve, not because they can't meet the requirements but because somebody finds it weird.
We are going back not 5 years but 20 or 30 in terms of--by the way, this anti-DEI and anti-woke thing, I just want to drill down on it just for a moment.
If what you don't like about DEI is the whole consultancy where someone comes into your workplace with a PowerPoint or whatever and makes you feel guilty for your personal ethnic background, I have been in some of those meetings, and there is a lot of eye-rolling in there, and they are very ineffective, and they do not increase diversity, equity, or inclusion. I am sure there is good versions of it.
But there is a lot of people who got frustrated with DEI because when they think of DEI, they think of a kind of goofy consultant guy telling everybody how to divide everybody in the workplace and how to be sensitive in the workplace, and a lot of people are thinking, I am fine, I am nice to people, I don't harass anyone, I don't discriminate, why are you hectoring me about this issue?
But what DEI has become is anything that is related to civil rights, right? And so as these people, mostly kids, are getting access to the Federal payment system, they are clearly just looking for words like ``gender,'' right?
So I think in the NSF, National Science Foundation, or CDC, I forgot, research, they are no longer allowed to say gender and--
Yeah. So the problem is though, you have to do research on females in order to understand what is happening with females.
Yeah, yeah. This is the crazy thing.
By the way, different, I am an Ashkenazi Jew, right, I do actually have--there is a thing called--I think it is called Tay-Sachs or something that I have a proclivity to having it, so we have to have a special check. And the reason we know that is we actually do the kind of medical research to know how people of different ethnic extractions and different sexes will respond to medicine and what they may need.
African Americans need certain things that Jewish Americans don't need. And this isn't some woke DEI thing; it is like a biological fact. But now because these guys are, I mean, childish, right? They are not just saying: Hey, we should have a colorblind workplace; they are saying: You can't say sex--the word ``sex''--in medical research.
And we have the Fair Housing Law, we have equal employment law, like you are not allowed to discriminate in housing. And so just to understand, they are not trying to just like cancel these programs related to DEI; they are trying to cancel the civil rights movement, like in statutory law, and defund anything that mentions a woman or mentions gender or mentions civil rights, right? And these are like long-settled questions.
And so everybody needs--we don't need to spend all night talking about this, but we do need to--like to me, when I saw that thing where it was maybe DEI was the cause of a plane crash, I thought, this is when the DEI thing jumped the shark. And as I see these pages, you can Google ``jumping the shark'' later on.
Don't Google it. Google doesn't work anymore.
But anyway, this is the end of this as a useful way to understand something. It is now just an epithet that you hurl when you are not sure what else to say, right?
And so, look, back to Russell Vought for a moment, he is part of a crew, right? And it is Homan, it is Brendan Carr of the FCC, who is now trying to intimidate the media.
The Project 2025 crew is--I mean, they are really rolling. They are populating the Cabinet of the President. And the President was clever enough during the campaign to disassociate himself with Project 2025, but that did not last long because about two-thirds of his senior staffers are closely affiliated with 2025. This isn't some like ancillary thing; they are like in it.
Let me read to you something from my local FOX affiliate:
Hawai'i's rural healthcare at stake as federal funding
freezes
The freezing of federal funds has thrown many nonprofit
organizations in Hawaii, especially those providing
healthcare services, into a state of uncertainty. Amongst
these organizations is the Maui AIDS Foundation, which serves
some of the most vulnerable populations on Maui. Linda
Puppolo, executive director of the [Maui AIDS Foundation], is
deeply concerned about the potential consequences of this
freeze.
Many clients fear being exposed in other healthcare
settings due to stigma, which makes [Maui AIDS Foundation's]
discreet, nonjudgmental environment crucial.
``We have quite a lot of clients who are terrified right
now because they feel like they will be exposed somewhere
else.''
The foundation's operating budget is about $2 million, but
a significant portion of that
[comes from federal funding]. Some grants are directly
administered, while others flow through state agencies.
One of the most at-risk programs is the housing subsidy for
people living with HIV. And Puppolo fears the worst.
Without the housing grant, ``That's over $1 million of our housing subsidies right there.''
People are going to be homeless.
In addition to the financial strain, Puppolo expressed
frustration with the lack of transparency . . .
``There's a gag order on federal employees, and we can't
get any straight answers.''
And by the way, this has been the case, I am sure, Chris, you have seen this in Connecticut, Russell Vought has already done it; he is not even confirmed. He is not even a government employee, but he is clearly already at the helm, and he has clearly already achieved his objective, which is to terrify and terrorize public employees.
And so one of the things I have been saying--and it is easy for me to say, I understand that, but I will tell you that the Federal employees I have talked to who got that e-mail saying, ``fork in the road,'' were like, now I am not going anywhere, right?
And I know 20,000 people say they signed up for it, but I was thinking about this, 20,000 people out of 2 million--first of all, I don't know if that is true. And certainly, it is unclear to me whether that would be honored, but that is actually 1 percent of the workforce.
That seems like normal attrition in a 9-month period, so I think what we just did, is of the people who were planning on retiring anyway, we just gave them like a 6-month payout. So we get nothing because they get paid through September--if this thing sticks, very unclear. But if this thing sticks, they get paid through September but just retire early, and we don't achieve any sort of turnover savings. So I just think these people are trying to terrorize the workforce.
Well, and just to be clear, they don't even have their e- mail accounts working, so think about that.
First of all, it is a little weird to send people home and say, We are still operational, and then they can't even get their dot-aid, dot- gov e-mail to work, and they are not permitted to use their private e- mail to conduct public business.
And so I know someone who said: I am reading spy novels, like, I am just killing time. And we are paying them.
Right.
Well, I think I have been, on one level, trying not to overreact, but I also think there is a little danger of underreacting. And I have been talking about this a little bit with my brother, who is a professor with an expertise in former Soviet Union countries, Kazakhstan in particular. And so in this town--and you know this, Chris--in this town, the worst thing is to be overreacting, like that is just very not cool for the cocktail party and pundit circuit.
Everything is always going to be fine, and if you are alarmed, you are shrill; that means you are not savvy. And the savvy thing is always that this will land fine. And I feel like we are sleepwalking into a very dangerous place.
And so as I think of my theory of change, just mine, I don't presume to know exactly what we should do, all of us, I know in the legislative context, we have got to do a couple of things: We have got to find opportunities--we only have 47 of us, so we have to find opportunities to find three or four Republicans.
And I have had some very constructive conversations with Republican appropriators who are super uncomfortable with what is going on. Now, they might not be quite ready to go public, but they are certainly trying to figure out how they are going to exert their authorities and reestablish that it is coequal branches here.
So part of our strategy has to include: Find Republican support where we can. I think part of our strategy has to be, where we can't, to not make it easy for our Republican colleagues as they try to march to the beat of Donald Trump's drum.
I think we also have an obligation to just speak out and explain to the public, especially when we are powerless to stop things, what exactly is happening and why it is bad. But the rest of society has a role here too. I think the media has an obligation to stop underreacting, to stop treating super unconstitutional, illegal, ``thuggy'' acts as if it is just, like, the President proposed there be an AI commission or something. The way these things are talked about, it is like: President attempts to reform USAID.
It is, like, no, that is not what happened. They stormed in, and they took over the servers. They stand over people and tell them what to do. And if those people don't do exactly what the DOGE folks say--or, yeah, say--they are relieved of their duty on the spot.
And then they sent everybody home, and then they got into the secure conference facility, the SCIF. Like, this is not to be characterized as something kind of mundane and, oh, this week there is a markup on the social media bill. Like, this is different, and we have got to treat it differently.
And there also is a role for the Federal employee--and, to your point, where they can, because I don't presume to know anybody's personal situation, and a lot of people have other personal stuff going on, and I can't ask for them to be brave on my behalf.
But there are some people who are deeply committed and deeply patriotic
and care about the mission and care about public service, and all I would ask you is: Stay if you can. Stay if you can. And if someone tries to shove you around and if someone tries to tell you to do something that feels like it might not be permissible, don't do it. Talk to your union. Ask them whether this is authorized by law. Stick, because they are counting on you, sort of, vanishing from the scene.
And then the other thing--and, Chris, you and I have talked about this. You are the one that pointed it out to me. The difference between this week and last week is that individual citizens are physically showing up to protest what is happening all across the country.
I mean, we have been here in Washington, DC, and we have seen it at the Treasury building and at the Senate--they call it the Senate swamp--and elsewhere. It has been a minute since people have shown up in person this organically, and I think that is a really important aspect of any mass movement to preserve democracy.
It can't just be your legislators fighting in the legislative context. We only get credibility if there are people behind us.
And now I think--look, I think we were in a bit of a slumber, frankly, and I think the American public was in a bit of a slumber. There was this sense that some people were excited about the election; some people were sad about the election. But everybody was kind of not animated in the same way that they were prior to the first Trump term.
And over the last week, people said: Oh, my goodness, this is real. And by the way, even Republicans who were sort of imaging that this was all going to be manageable and that you are just going to get your conservative outcomes with some mean tweets. That is what people thought they were going to get. I really believe that. Good people that I know thought: This guy is going to be good for the economy. He is going to be provocative on line, and that will be that.
I am a no on that one.
Or pardon everyone in the January 6 event. You know this, and you have talked about this on the floor.
They recommend that he pardon, essentially, the people who improperly entered the building.
Now, I would have opposed that.
But then he just said: You know what? Pardon them all.
Yes, I think you are exactly right that we are--look, every day I try to sort out, of the 20 outrages, how many can I even focus on? And to your point, the Gaza thing was deeply offensive, right? Deeply offensive. But also probably not worth devoting a ton of bandwidth to because, by some accounts from people I think who do know, it is pretty clear to me he does not have a plan. He was just literally talking.
And so sometimes we are going to have to not quite pull a punch, but not ``hair on fire'' freak out because that is not--to your point, that is not happening, right? That is not happening.
They would need an appropriation. They would probably need a war authorization. And, by the way, occupying a country in the Middle East, it doesn't usually work.
Yes.
He is a smart dude. He is a smart dude, and he is a serious guy and actually knows the government. I mean part of the problem with the DOGE folks is they don't really know what they are even looking for. So they literally just, like, ``Control F.'' Oh, does it say ``gender''? Maybe this is bad; maybe this is woke. That is terrible and irresponsible, but it is also incompetent.
But Russ Vought is not incompetent. He has an actual project, not just Project 2025. But he has been like this for a while. He has a view of the government, which is that the bigger the government is, the less freedom you have.
And Ben Sasse, our old friend and colleague who is now retired from the Senate, he had that sincere view, right? And it was a kind of radical view. But it was sincerely held that--I
mean, I would go to him and go: What about rural health clinics? And, like, he was consistent--nope--right?
What about Federal firefighters?
Counties can take care of that, right?
I don't want to characterize all of Ben's views, but--what about the Federal Emergency Management Agency?
Nope, we have got to get rid of that.
And FEMA is a really good example of--there are just some things that, if you are going to have a country, that your Federal Government has to do, because I think of two examples: When the town of Lahaina burned down, the County of Maui is kind of small. It is a couple hundred thousand people. It is not a poor county. It has some tax base and all the rest of it, but it is not capable to respond to a disaster where a whole town burned down, was incinerated to the ground in like 3 hours--2,200 structures. So 2,200 structures, basically, between 6 and midnight, all of them gone--110, 109 lives lost.
And so the Federal Government comes in when--you know, this is how a disaster declaration works. The county or the State submits something to the President of the United States and basically says: We can't handle this. This disaster is bigger than our ability to handle it, right?
And then the President signs the disaster declaration, and then that releases FEMA to go and be on the scene.
And if there is no FEMA, there is no recovery. FEMA prevented--I got into some fights with FEMA about the way they were doing it, but they are good humans. They are trying their very best to alleviate suffering.
And in the immediate wake of those wildfires, nobody went hungry, nobody lacked a place to live. And it is going to be a long recovery, but people's most basic needs were met.
And when I think about Western North Carolina, in particular, on some level it is worse. It was bigger. It was more structures. It was actually more property damage, and it was so vast. I mean, just the portion that got flooded is like the size of small States. And these little towns are not even as big as Maui County, right? These are 500 people, 700 people, 2,000 people, 75 people.
If the Federal Government doesn't come in and help folks like that through FEMA, then you are just leaving people, I mean, really to fend for themselves.
And over the last year, these disasters keep getting worse and worse. I suppose we can pretend it is not climate change. Even if you want to pretend it is not climate change, you have to concede that something is out there that is causing us to have more frequent and more severe disasters.
So let's set aside the question of climate and what we ought to do about it. Everybody knows my view about it, and everybody knows yours. But the fact is we had about $150 billion worth of damage last year.
And so I am not prepared to tell small States, small counties, little towns that they are on their own. But that is what Project 2025 wants to do.
Before you came on, Senator Kim talked about taking on the New Jersey political machine. Political machines everywhere work pretty much the same. If you behave well, you get your stuff. And pork is distributed based on political alliances. I think you are right to notice that the President of the United States wants to sort of create a Tammany Hall vibe nationwide.
I will say, just to take your own advice, that on, say, withholding disaster aid from California, that feels like just--like he is just ranting, and he is not actually in a position to do that because the Stafford Act provides that this is a disaster and that once we fund it, they have to help, and they will help. They are not permitted not to help. Now, he may stretch the boundaries of the law, but I do not think he is in a position to withhold aid.
Now, do I think Mike Johnson is going to initiate a disaster supplemental for California? No. But the terrible fact of the matter is, there will be disasters going forward, and they hit blue States and red States equally. You just never know.
It is not changing laws regarding disaster preparedness or infrastructure; it is changing laws on voter ID.
That is one of the things I have noticed about this President is just the unapologetic ``I have leverage, and I am going to use it'' aspect of it and nobody bats an eyelash. If you behaved like that, you would get lit on fire, appropriately.
So I think one of the things that I have noticed over the last couple of weeks is there's--look, Democrats need to understand, this guy is unusually talented. And we used to say ``what a buffoon,'' whatever-- maybe--but he is a very talented politician in a very unconventional way. But he is also not infallible. He is capable of making incompetent decisions. He is capable of being beaten legislatively and in the court of public opinion. Right now, he is in the saddle because he has all these EOs, all these Executive orders. But, eventually, events overtake. And a President, usually, is responding to events rather than creating conditions on the ground.
So part of the thing that I want everybody to kind of understand as they feel their frustration, as they kind of process and try to metabolize the flurry of nonsense coming at the American people, is just to understand it is not always going to be like this.
They don't have 1,200 days' worth of Executive orders ready to go. And as these things are--some of them are like wishes and could have been a tweet. Many of them are illegal and, in some cases, the President does have pretty raw authority. Tariffs, he can do; and there is not much the legislature can do about it.
My favorite EO was--I think it was a Presidential memo, not an EO. But after the plane crash last week, they did a memo that this was Joe Biden's fault.
I was like, now we are cooking. He was like, I want another EO to just say it was Biden's fault. That is like when they admitted that
what they are doing is when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. They understand that their agenda is so unpopular--their agenda is so unpopular--that they can't even get it through the Congress of their own party.
As happened in 2017. They couldn't even do the things that they promised they were going to do, except for the tax cuts.
So I think they understand the fundamental weakness of their position, which is we have a President who is likely to do very unpopular things. And although he is not unpopular at the moment, he is, relatively speaking, very unpopular for a newly inaugurated President, historically unpopular for a newly inaugurated President. And it is going to get worse because everybody knows the way he conducts himself does not age well. So they are in a hurry.
But it is not always going to feel like this; it is not always going to be like this. They will lose in court. They will lose in the court of public opinion. I am not suggesting we are not about to experience some bad public policy outcomes and that people will not suffer. A lot of bad stuff is about to happen. But the roots of democracy are deep; and like my friend Calvin Say says: ``Bend but don't break.'' I want everybody to understand, ``bend but don't break.''
I am so proud of Chris for coming here and staying from 2 to 5. I may go get a little more coffee and come and join you, or I may take a nap.
I yield the floor.