Legislative Session
Mr. President, yesterday was a very sad day for women in America. Yesterday, Senate Republicans blocked a bill that simply expressed support for a woman's right to choose. That is it; no more, no less. Supporting a woman's right to make…
Mr. President, yesterday was a very sad day for women in America. Yesterday, Senate Republicans blocked a bill that simply expressed support for a woman's right to choose. That is it; no more, no less.
Supporting a woman's right to make her own healthcare decisions should have been one of the easiest ``yes'' votes we have taken all year. By voting no, Republicans told every woman in America: ``Your body, our choice.''
Republicans are saying ``We don't care'' to all the women who live in States where reproductive rights are almost gone, from Texas to Florida, to Alabama, and beyond.
This is the terrible legacy of the Senate Republicans and the Trump administration: They cleared the way for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe.
Years ago, Donald Trump himself said overturning Roe was part of the plan. He said:
[I]f we put another two or . . . three justices on [the
Supreme Court]--that will happen.
And then, Senate Republicans--even many who don't abide by the MAGA philosophy--just laid down and voted for all of the President's nominees.
To this day, Senate Republicans keep doubling down and tripling down on undermining women's rights, despite so much blowback from the American people. Senate Republicans voted no on protecting contraception. They voted no on protecting IVF. And they voted no again yesterday on supporting the right to choose.
So let me say to America: Do you want to know who is on your side protecting abortion and women's rights? It is the Democrats. Every Republican--with one or two exceptions--has universally voted to take away women's rights. That is the truth of it.
Our Republican colleagues can run, but they can't hide. They are voting against women because extreme MAGA groups are pushing them to do it or maybe because of belief. Either way, they are out of touch with America.
Now, for all the chaos and disaster of the first Trump Presidency, it pales in comparison to the threat of a second Trump Presidency. We have all heard about the policy platform, 2025, drafted by the Heritage Foundation--a project overseen by former Trump officials and advisers and appointees. It is a manifesto for the second Trump Presidency.
What does it do? The Trump manifesto lays a groundwork for a nationwide abortion ban. That is the heart and soul of the Republican Party. That is where they always go when they are in power, folks. When they are not in power, they say some words here and there. When they are running for office, they try to run away from how they vote and how they feel. Then they come here, and they vote to roll over women's rights again and again and again. And each time they do it, it becomes more extreme and more extreme. And that is just the beginning on the issues.
The Trump manifesto, 2025, calls for the most conservative agenda America has ever seen. It calls for more tax cuts for the very wealthy, more tax cuts for corporate elites, more tax cuts for megacorporations. It calls for reversing Democrats' clean energy agenda while empowering the Nation's biggest oil and gas polluters. And the Trump manifesto even calls for silencing and attacking all of Donald Trump's political opponents.
Can you imagine? It is like a dictatorship. It is like a dictatorship, with nothing--Trump says: ``I am going to prosecute people''--no evidence. Wow. What happened to rule of law in this
grand country? What happens to the visions of the Founding Fathers when Donald Trump and the MAGA Court take over?
The hard right is done speaking euphemisms. They are smelling blood. They are saying it straight to our faces: If you disagree with Donald Trump, watch your back. It is bone-chilling. It is un-American. It is dangerous for our democracy.
The Trump manifesto is an autocrats' dream. If MAGA Republicans get the chance to act on the Heritage Foundation's ideas, the damage to the America we all know and love may well be irreversible. We will never get it back. Our children and grandchildren will live in a less grand country than we have lived in. The destruction would be unthinkable, and it would betray everything America has represented for 248 years.
U.S. Supreme Court
Mr. President, on SCOTUS, above the entrance to the Supreme Court are these words: ``Equal Justice Under Law.''
Last week, the conservative Justices put some new writing on those walls, figuratively: ``The President of the United States is above the law.'' Instead of ``Equal justice under the law,'' they replaced it with ``The President of the United States is above the law.''
In the aftermath of the 2020 elections, Donald Trump and his allies conspired for weeks to undermine the will of the people and halt the peaceful transfer of power. These efforts culminated in the violent insurrection on January 6. These are the facts. Many of us in the Senate lived through it. I was within 30 feet of the hooligans who invaded the Capitol.
No free Nation can condone a tyrant who abuses his office to try and cling to power, but that is, in effect, what the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has done. By ruling Donald Trump enjoys broad immunity from criminal prosecution for his actions as President after the 2020 election, the conservative majority has violated the most basic premise of our Constitution that no man is above the law.
Most Americans will see what the Court did and think it was grossly political, a shameless attempt to help Donald Trump out.
I worry that over time, Americans will increasingly lose trust in what the courts say. They have already begun to lose that trust with these rightwing MAGA decisions, very few of them founded in any precedent at all. It could be the unraveling of trust in our democratic institutions.
The good news is that the Constitution provides a remedy to the Supreme Court's terrible decision: Congress has the authority to exercise strong checks on the judiciary through legislation. We should look precisely into that. One possible avenue: clarifying that Donald Trump's election-subversion acts do not count as official acts of the Presidency. Such a notion should hardly be controversial, and I am working with my colleagues on legislation to see what kind of proposals would be appropriate.
We were all taught in grade school that there are no kings here in America, but what the conservative Justices have done is placed a crown on the head of Donald Trump. They declared, in effect, the same thing Nixon told David Frost in 1977 when he said--this is what Nixon said, chased out of office for potential criminal acts:
When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.
That is going to be the new ``rule of law'' in America with these Justices? What a bone-chilling proposition. If future Presidents no longer fear prosecution for their conduct in office, then what the heck is going to rein them in? One election every 4 years? That is cold comfort if a corrupt President can use their office to undermine elections in the first place. It is a catch-22, a very evil one. It is autocracy 101. What if future Presidents order the DOJ to arrest election workers? What if they escalate their attacks on the press? What if they take bribes in exchange for favors or money? What if, in each of these instances, they claim they were acting in an official capacity? America would be in a state of constitutional pandemonium.
The American people are tired of Justices who think they are beyond accountability. We in Congress should be open to sensible, reasonable solutions to restore the checks and balances that the MAGA Court has taken away.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.